Child participating in the study. Babies listened to a four-minute recording-in a simple artificial language-in which frequent words, imitating functors, alternated with rarer ones, imitating content words. Then they heard short sentences in the language, half of which adopted French word order (frequent-word-initial). During this part of the experiment, a longer gaze was interpreted as a sign of the infant’s preference.
Child participating in the study. Babies listened to a four-minute recording-in a simple artificial language-in which frequent words, imitating functors, alternated with rarer ones, imitating content words. Then they heard short sentences in the language, half of which adopted French word order (frequent-word-initial). During this part of the experiment, a longer gaze was interpreted as a sign of the infant's preference. Caterina Marino / CNRS / INCC - Even before uttering their first words, babies master the grammar basics of their mother tongue. Thus eight-month-old French infants can distinguish function words, or functors -e.g. articles ( the ), personal pronouns ( she ), or prepositions ( on )-from content words-e.g.
TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
And extend your reading, free of charge and with no commitment.
Your Benefits
- Access to all content
- Receive newsmails for news and jobs
- Post ads
