Bootstrapping Language Acquisition
How do infants bootstrap initial lexical and syntactic acquisition? What are infants’ early morpho-syntactic representations? According to the classic view, preverbal and early verbal infants lack grammatical knowledge. I will discuss empirical findings that demonstrate that infants begin to perceive and represent functional elements from the first year of life, long before they are able to produce these items. Furthermore, I will show that infants use function words and prosody for acquiring lexical and grammatical representations.
Date:
23 February 2016, 12:00 (Tuesday, 6th week, Hilary 2016)
Venue:
Tinbergen Building, South Parks Road OX1 3PS
Venue Details:
Elizabeth Bates Room - B148
Speaker:
Professor Rushen Shi (University of Quebec)
Organising department:
Department of Experimental Psychology
Organiser:
Oxford Baby Lab (University of Oxford)
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Janice Young
