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Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Gervain, J; Sebastián-Gallés, N; Díaz, B; Laka, I; Mazuka, R; Yamane, N; Nespor, M; Mehler, J
Published in: Frontiers in psychology
January 2013

One universal feature of human languages is the division between grammatical functors and content words. From a learnability point of view, functors might provide entry points or anchors into the syntactic structure of utterances due to their high frequency. Despite its potentially universal scope, this hypothesis has not yet been tested on typologically different languages and on populations of different ages. Here we report a corpus study and an artificial grammar learning experiment testing the anchoring hypothesis in Basque, Japanese, French, and Italian adults. We show that adults are sensitive to the distribution of functors in their native language and use them when learning new linguistic material. However, compared to infants' performance on a similar task, adults exhibit a slightly different behavior, matching the frequency distributions of their native language more closely than infants do. This finding bears on the issue of the continuity of language learning mechanisms.

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Published In

Frontiers in psychology

DOI

EISSN

1664-1078

ISSN

1664-1078

Publication Date

January 2013

Volume

4

Start / End Page

689

Related Subject Headings

  • 52 Psychology
  • 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 1701 Psychology
 

Citation

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Gervain, J., Sebastián-Gallés, N., Díaz, B., Laka, I., Mazuka, R., Yamane, N., … Mehler, J. (2013). Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 689. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00689
Gervain, Judit, Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Begoña Díaz, Itziar Laka, Reiko Mazuka, Naoto Yamane, Marina Nespor, and Jacques Mehler. “Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence.Frontiers in Psychology 4 (January 2013): 689. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00689.
Gervain J, Sebastián-Gallés N, Díaz B, Laka I, Mazuka R, Yamane N, et al. Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence. Frontiers in psychology. 2013 Jan;4:689.
Gervain, Judit, et al. “Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence.Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 4, Jan. 2013, p. 689. Epmc, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00689.
Gervain J, Sebastián-Gallés N, Díaz B, Laka I, Mazuka R, Yamane N, Nespor M, Mehler J. Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence. Frontiers in psychology. 2013 Jan;4:689.

Published In

Frontiers in psychology

DOI

EISSN

1664-1078

ISSN

1664-1078

Publication Date

January 2013

Volume

4

Start / End Page

689

Related Subject Headings

  • 52 Psychology
  • 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 1701 Psychology