Constructing a Proto-Lexicon: An Integrative View of Infant Language Development

Infants begin learning the phonological structure of their native language remarkably early and use this information to extract word-sized chunks from the speech signal. While acquiring the language-specific segmentation strategies appropriate for their native language, infants are simultaneously beginning to form word–object pairings and learning which sound contrasts are meaningful in the native language. They are also working out how to...