At first glance, children’s word learning appears to be mostly a problem of learning words like dog and run. However, it is small words like and and or that enable the construction of complex combinatorial language. How do children learn the meaning of these function words? Using transcripts of parentchild interactions, we investigate the cues in child-directed speech that can inform the interp...

Both the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversati...

AIMS The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that mothers of premature infants compared with mothers of term infants differ in the structure which they impose on the vocal exchanges with their infants. METHODS Thirteen mothers and their premature and term babies, were observed at discharge and 2 months later in three situations: free play, changing nappy, and feeding. Maternal c...

Both the input directed to the child, and the child’s ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child’s language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (month-old) infants (N= ); (b) these infants’ abilities to segment lexical targets from conversation...

Gender agreement elicitation was used with Russian children to examine how diminutives common in Russian child-directed speech affect gender learning. Forty-six children (2;9-4;8) were shown pictures of familiar and of novel animals and asked to describe them after hearing their names, which all contained regular morphophonological cues to masculine or feminine gender. Half were presented as si...

Interval-based rhythm metrics were applied to the speech of English, Catalan and Spanish 2, 4 and 6 year-olds, and compared with the (adult-directed) speech of their mothers. Results reveal that child speech does not fall into a well-defined rhythmic class: for all three languages, it is more 'vocalic' (higher %V) than adult speech and has a tendency towards lower variability (when normalized f...