Two types of words• Content words:– nous, verbs, adjectifs, adverbs– open class– most are low-frequency words• Function words: – articles, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries, etc…– closed class– tend to be highly frequentAcquisition of function words• Children typically omit function words(telegraphic style)– ex: ‘gros camion’, ‘Papa donne’• Hypothesis: young children do not processfunction words– they are not perceptually salient (monosyllabic, reduced vowels)– they have no observable meaning• Experimental tests of this hypothesisProduction: repetition taskcontent word functor (function stringword/morpheme)English English Pete pushes the dogEnglish Nonsense Pete pusho na dogNonsense English Pete bases the depNonsense Nonsense Pete baso na depSubjects: 2-year-old English-speaking toddlersProduction: repetition task• Hypotheses and predictions– children fail to encode weakly stressed syllables in the input content words (English or nonsense): preservedfunctors (English or nonsense): omitted – children selectively attend to words with familiar referents English content words: preservedall else: omitted– children's functor omissions are due in part to their recognition of these elements as separable morphemes content words (English or nonsense): preservedfunctors: English ones omitted more than nonsense onesResults (low MLU subgroup)content functor504030• more omissions of functors than 20of content words• content words: no ...
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