Children's Representation of Linguistic Stress and Function Morphemes in Early Language Acquisition (REU Supplement)

摘要本研究考察了儿童对单词和短语位置和语法类别的两种潜在线索的表征：语言重音和功能语素。绝大多数英语单词都是以重读音节开头的。如果孩子们意识到这种规律，他们就可以用它来识别语音流中单词的开头。功能语素，如冠词和动词变化，出现在短语的开头和结尾，可以帮助孩子们分离这些单位。功能语素还提供了关于被分离的单元类型的线索，例如名词短语或动词短语。然而，我们对儿童的重音和功能语素的表征知之甚少，因此也不知道他们是否能够在语言习得中使用这些线索。一组实验通过模拟图片指向任务来探讨功能语素表征的音韵和句法性质。另一组实验旨在扩展先前关于重音模式对儿童语素和非语素弱音节省略的影响的工作，并提供关于他们对其语言的规范重音模式的表征的新信息。

ABSTRACT The research examines children's representations of two potential cues to the location and grammatical category of words and phrases: linguistic stress and function morphemes. The overwhelming majority of English words begin with a strongly stressed syllable. If children were aware of this regularity, they could use it to identify the beginnings of words in the speech stream. Function morphemes, such as articles and verb inflections, occur at the beginnings and ends of phrases, and could help children to isolate these units. Function morphemes also provide cues about the type of unit that has been isolated, such as Noun Phrase or Verb Phrase. However, we know little about children's representations of stress and function morphemes, and therefore about whether they are able to use such cues in language acquisition. One set of experiments explores the phonological and syntactic nature of function morpheme representations with the use of imitation picture pointing tasks. Another set of experiments is designed to extend previous work on the effect of stress patterns on children's morphemic and non- morphemic weak syllable omissions, and to provide new information about their representation of the canonical stress patterns of their language.