Monolingual and bilingual infants' sensitivity to agreement morphology in Spanish

描述（由申请人提供）：在学习语言时，孩子必须学习某些单词与某些结尾一致（例如，他做，但他不做）。一致性形态在语言学习中占据核心地位，一些语言障碍的特征是一致性形态的问题（例如特定语言障碍和自闭症）。因此，了解一致形态学的学习和加工机制及其正常的发展时间过程是非常重要的。虽然双语正在成为规范，而不是在美国的例外，协议形态尚未在双语人群中进行广泛的调查。双语儿童经常被错误地归类为语言障碍的风险，因为与单语发展相比，对双语语言发展知之甚少。双语发展的差异常常被解释为“非典型发展”。该项目的主要目标是记录单语西班牙语和双语（英语/西班牙语）婴儿语法发展的正常时间过程，并确定婴儿对何种类型的协议形态依赖性敏感。更具体地说，这个项目检查单语和双语婴儿何时对名词短语中的非相邻形态句法依赖敏感（例如，“男孩”，但不是“一个男孩”）在西班牙语和英语使用转头偏好程序技术。这项研究计划是PI以前对双语人群（英语/西班牙语）单语语言发展研究的延伸。因为这项研究建议检查正常的时间过程中的语法发展非常年幼的孩子，它有助于双语句法理解，可能会导致可靠的措施双语句法发展的发展信息，也可能导致更有效的方法来区分晚说话的儿童与特定语言障碍（SLI）。因此，这项研究计划是特别相关的健康科学和沟通障碍的领域。在这个项目中收集的数据将作为一个更广泛的研究计划，将调查其他类型的形态句法依赖（例如，他走，但不是他走）在单语和双语婴儿的长期目标，建立正常的时间进程的语法发展双语和单语婴儿的基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In learning a language a child has to learn that certain words agree with certain endings (e.g., he does but not he do). Agreement morphology occupies a central role in language learning, and several language disorders are characterized by problems with agreement morphology (e.g. Specific Language Impairment and Autism). Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms involved in learning and processing cases of agreement morphology as well as its normal time course of development. Although bilingualism is becoming the norm rather than the exception in the United States, agreement morphology has not been extensively investigated in bilingual populations. Bilingual children are often miscategorized as at risk for language disorders because little is known about bilingual language development compared to monolingual development. Differences in bilingual development are often interpreted as "atypical development". The primary objective of the proposed project is to document the normal time course of grammatical development in monolingual Spanish and bilingual (English/Spanish) infants, and to determine what types of agreement morphology dependencies infants are sensitive to. More specifically, this project examines when monolingual and bilingual infants are sensitive to non-adjacent morphosyntactic dependencies in the Noun Phrase (e.g., "the boys" but not "a boys") in Spanish and English using the Head-turn Preference Procedure technique. This research program is an extension of the PI's previous research on monolingual language development to a bilingual population (English/Spanish). Because this research proposal examines the normal time course of grammatical development in very young children, it contributes information on bilingual syntactic comprehension that could lead to the development of reliable measures of bilingual syntactic development and could also lead to more effective ways to differentiate late talkers from children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Thus, this research program is particularly relevant for the areas of Health Sciences and Communication Disorders. The data collected in this project will serve as the foundation for a broader research program that will investigate other types of morphosyntactic dependencies (e.g. he walks but not he walk) in monolingual and bilingual infants with the long-term goal of establishing the normal time course of grammatical development in bilingual and monolingual infants.