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Prosodic Structure in Early Word Segmentation: ERP Evidence From Dutch Ten‐Month‐Olds
Author(s) -
Kooijman Valesca,
Hagoort Peter,
Cutler Anne
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1080/15250000903263957
Subject(s) - speech segmentation , segmentation , text segmentation , stress (linguistics) , psychology , word (group theory) , linguistics , cognitive psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy
Recognizing word boundaries in continuous speech requires detailed knowledge of the native language. In the first year of life, infants acquire considerable word segmentation abilities. Infants at this early stage in word segmentation rely to a large extent on the metrical pattern of their native language, at least in stress‐based languages. In Dutch and English (both languages with a preferred trochaic stress pattern), segmentation of strong‐weak words develops rapidly between 7 and 10 months of age. Nevertheless, trochaic languages contain not only strong–weak words but also words with a weak‐strong stress pattern. In this article, we present electrophysiological evidence of the beginnings of weak‐strong word segmentation in Dutch 10‐month‐olds. At this age, the ability to combine different cues for efficient word segmentation does not yet seem to be completely developed. We provide evidence that Dutch infants still largely rely on strong syllables, even for the segmentation of weak–strong words.