Prosodic Bootstrapping

This chapter covers theoretical frameworks and experimental findings showing that young infants are already sensitive to language prosody prenatally and can use it to learn about the lexical and morphosyntactic features of their native language(s). Specifically, the chapter first summarizes how prosody relates to the lexicon and the grammar in different languages. It then reviews empirical evidence about prosodic perception in infants. Subsequently, it shows how this early sensitivity to prosody facilitates language learning. Three areas are discussed. First, evidence is presented showing that infants can use their knowledge of lexical stress to constrain word learning. Second, the chapter argues that infants use prosody to learn about basic word order. Third, the chapter shows that infants can use prosody to constrain syntactic analysis and thus word learning. The chapter concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of the reviewed findings, and by highlighting open questions.