The strength of phonological cues for noun categorization in child-directed speech

Abstract

Abstract One of the most important tasks for language learning children is the identification of the grammatical category to which words belong. This is essential in order to be able to form grammatically correct utterances. The present study investigates how phonological information might help English-learning infants in the categorization of nouns. We analyze four different corpora of English child-directed speech in order to explore the reliability with which words are represented in mothers’ speech based on several phonological criteria. The results of the analysis confirm the prediction that most of the nouns to which English-learning children are exposed share several phonological characteristics, which would allow their early classification in the same grammatical category.