Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Psychology, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, France.
J Child Lang. 2021 Mar;48(2):244-260. doi: 10.1017/S0305000920000264. Epub 2020 Jun 29.
Multiword units play an important role in language learning and use. It was proposed that learning from such units can facilitate mastery of certain grammatical relations, and that children and adults differ in their use of multiword units during learning, contributing to their varying language-learning trajectories. Accordingly, adults learn gender agreement better when encouraged to learn from multiword units. Previous work has not examined two core predictions of this proposal: (1) that children also benefit from initial exposure to multiword units, and (2) that their learning patterns reflect a greater reliance on multiword units compared to adults. We test both predictions using an artificial-language. As predicted, both children and adults benefit from early exposure to multiword units. In addition, when exposed to unsegmented input - adults show better learning of nouns compared to article-noun pairings, but children do not, a pattern consistent with adults' predicted tendency to focus less on multiword units.
多词单位在语言学习和使用中起着重要作用。有人提出，从这样的单位学习可以促进对某些语法关系的掌握，而且儿童和成人在学习过程中使用多词单位的方式不同，这导致了他们不同的语言学习轨迹。因此，当鼓励成年人从多词单位中学习时，他们会更好地学习性别一致性。之前的工作没有检验这一建议的两个核心预测：（1）儿童也会从最初接触多词单位中受益，以及（2）他们的学习模式反映出与成年人相比更多地依赖多词单位。我们使用人工语言来检验这两个预测。正如所预测的那样，儿童和成年人都从早期接触多词单位中受益。此外，当接触到未分段的输入时——与冠词-名词配对相比，成年人对名词的学习效果更好，但儿童并非如此，这一模式与成年人预测的较少关注多词单位的倾向一致。
