Even before uttering their first words, babies master the grammar basics of their mother tongue. Thus, eight-month-old French infants can distinguish function words, or functors — e.g. articles (the), personal pronouns (she), or prepositions (on) — from content words — e.g. nouns (rainbow), verbs (to drive), or adjectives (green). Functors are frequently encountered because there are fewer of them, and they are placed before content words in languages such as English and French.
Function words distinguishable at 8 months
In contrast, there is a much greater diversity of content words, which are also longer. Experiments conducted by three researchers from the Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center (CNRS/Université de Paris) with 175 eight-month-old babies, using a simple artificial language, demonstrated that these infants understood functors were more frequent and came before content words in their mother tongue (French).
Quick adaptation to new content words but little interest for new functors
The young participants quickly adapted to new content words but showed little interest for newly introduced functors — as though already aware there were only a limited number of prepositions, determiners, and other words in this category. Babies’ preferences were evaluated by observing how long they looked at visual displays associated with the grammar words. This study appears in Current Biology, 12 March 2020.
Source:
- Caterina Marino, Carline Bernard, Judit Gervain. Word Frequency Is a Cue to Lexical Category for 8-Month-Old Infants. Current Biology, 2020; DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.070
Razi Berry is the founder and publisher of the journal Naturopathic Doctor News & Review, which has been in print since 2005, and the premier consumer-faced website of naturopathic medicine, NaturalPath. She is the host of The Love is Medicine Project docuseries, The Natural Cancer Prevention Summit, The Heart Revolution-Heal, Empower and Follow Your Heart, and the popular 10-week Sugar Free Summer program. From a near death experience as a young girl that healed her failing heart, to later overcoming infertility and chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia through naturopathic medicine, Razi has lived the mind/body healing paradigm. Her projects uniquely capture the tradition and philosophy of naturopathy: The healing power of nature, the vital life force in every living thing and the undeniable role that science and mind/body medicine have in creating health and overcoming dis-ease. You can follow Razi on social media: Facebook at Razi Berry, Instagram at Razi.Berry and join the Love is Medicine group to explore the convergence of love and health. Look for more, and listen to more Love is Medicine podcast episodes here.
