Abstract
Infants attune to their native language during the first two years of life, as attested by decreases in the processing of nonnative phonological sounds and reductions in the range of possible sounds accepted as labels for native words. The present study shows that French-learning infants aged 1;8 can learn new words in an unfamiliar language, Cantonese, after just 6 repetitions of each word. This shows that word learning in a nonnative language remains possible during the second year of life even in a nonnative language that is typologically distinct from the native language. Copyright © 2020 Cambridge University Press.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1276-1287 |
Journal | Journal of Child Language |
Volume | 47 |
Issue number | 6 |
Early online date | May 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2020 |
Citation
Chen, H., Labertonière, D., Cheung, H., & Nazzi, T. (2020). Infant learning of words in a typologically distant nonnative language. Journal of Child Language, 47(6), 1276-1287. doi: 10.1017/S0305000920000161Keywords
- Early language acquisition
- Word learning
- Language attunement
- French
- Cantonese