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Can a Click be a Word?: Infants’ Learning of Non-Native Words

Wiley

Forms that are non-linguistic markers in one language (i.e. ‘tsk-tsk’ in English) may be part of the phoneme inventory and carry meaning in another language. In the current paper, we demonstrate that infants’ ability to learn words containing unfamiliar language sounds is influenced by the age and linguistic sophistication of the infant learner, as well as by cues to a speaker’s referential intent. At 14 months, infants learned words with non-native speech sounds, but only when referential cues were available. At 20 months, infants with larger vocabularies failed to learn the same words even in the presence of referential indicators, while those with smaller vocabularies succeeded. The implications of the relation between linguistic sophistication and non-native word learning are discussed.

Text

2019-12-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/72883

May, L., & Werker, J.F. (2014). Can a Click be a Word?: Infants’ Learning of Non-Native Words. Infancy, 19(3), 281-300.

Reviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/