Learning a second language: Global processing and word learning in infants
| dc.contributor.author | Bhagwat, Jui | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2008-06-27T18:16:50Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2013-06-27T06:23:14Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2008-06-27T18:16:50Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | The present set of studies explore how infants make their first breakthroughs into a second language. I approach this question by experimentally exposing monolingual children to a second language at different points in development in the first two years. The three studies examine how monolingual English-learning infants and toddlers (aged between 8 and 26 months) process and segment speech in an unfamiliar language (i.e., Spanish) and how they learn novel labels in this language. In this regard, I focus primarily on the cognitive and pragmatic mechanisms that might underlie these abilities. Overall, these studies provide preliminary evidence that monolingual infants are able to process an unfamiliar language at a global as well as at a more refined level, while showing developmental differences in these abilities between 8 and 18 months. Second, this dissertation provides evidence of an emerging understanding of conventionality in a bilingual context in 19-month-old monolingual infants. Specifically, infants' word learning behaviors in a bilingual context suggest that they understand that a new language, or a `communicative context', signals a distinct labeling norm, and this understanding might cue them to accept two labels, one in each language, for a single object. Finally, this dissertation also demonstrates that familiarity with a label in the first language might be a possible mechanism that facilitates learning the equivalent label in the second language. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | bibid: 6397170 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1813/10926 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.subject | infants | en_US |
| dc.subject | language | en_US |
| dc.title | Learning a second language: Global processing and word learning in infants | en_US |
| dc.type | dissertation or thesis | en_US |
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