The role of geminates in infants' early word production and word-form recognition

Journal of Child Language
Marilyn Vihman, Marinella Majorano

Abstract

Infants learning languages with long consonants, or geminates, have been found to 'overselect' and 'overproduce' these consonants in early words and also to commonly omit the word-initial consonant. A production study with thirty Italian children recorded at 1;3 and 1;9 strongly confirmed both of these tendencies. To test the hypothesis that it is the salience of the medial geminate that detracts attention from the initial consonant we conducted three experiments with 11-month-old Italian infants. We first established baseline word-form recognition for untrained familiar trochaic disyllables and then tested for word-form recognition, separately for words with geminates and singletons, after changing the initial consonant to create nonwords from both familiar and rare forms. Familiar words with geminates were recognized despite the change, words with singletons were not. The findings indicate that a feature occurring later in the word affects initial consonant production and perception, which supports the whole-word phonology model.

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Citations

Jul 28, 2016·British Journal of Psychology·Marilyn M Vihman
May 27, 2014·Cognition·Nayeli Gonzalez-GomezThierry Nazzi
Jan 30, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Mitsuhiko OtaReiko Mazuka
Jan 12, 2019·Journal of Child Language·Marinella MajoranoMarilyn M Vihman
Oct 15, 2019·Language Learning and Development : the Official Journal of the Society for Language Development·Daniel Swingley
Aug 4, 2020·Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·Osnat SegalMarilyn Vihman
Feb 12, 2021·International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health·Sofia RussoEloisa Valenza
Feb 24, 2021·Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·Maria Julia CarbajalSho Tsuji

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