Segmentation

Front 1

Segmentation
• Process of moving from continuous speech to the identification of word boundaries
• Children use variety of cues to identify word boundaries

Back 1

• Habituation technique
• Prosodic cues –
- Metrical segmentation strategy
- Isolated words
- Evidence
• Child’s existing lexicon
• Statistical learning –
- Regularities
- Phonotactic constrains
- Allophonic variations
• USC Unique stress consonant

Front 2

Word learning
• Once the child has learnt how to segment speech into word boundaries they need to learn the words.

Back 2

• Fast mapping
• Non-word repetition –
- Non word length
- Consonatal complexity
- Prosody/stress
- Lexicality
- Phonological frequency

Front 3

Prosodic cues

Back 3

- Use stress to segment words.
- Jusczyk 'Kingdom' 'candle' ( child looks for more familiar word)

Front 4

Metrical segmentation strategy

Back 4

Statistical based
- 90% of english words have initial stress on 1st syllable
- learner treats the stressed syllable as the beginning of the word.
Evidence
- 7.5/ 9 months prefer and recognise strong/ weak syllable pattern
-Houston & Newson explains errors 'tar' 'guitar'

Front 5

Limitations - Metrical segmentation Strategy.

Back 5

- Only achieved after sufficient representation ( need a sample of words to learn the pattern)
{Isolated words}
- Useful for lang only dominant by stress patterns not universal (see USC)

Front 6

Isolated words

Back 6

Brent - Child may use isolated words to bootstrap for novel words.
- Mother to child speech 9% isolated utterances ( may use these)
Limitations
- How do children figure these are isolated words 'i-see' 1 word 'spaghetti' 2 word

Front 7

Statistical learning

Back 7

Saffran - Phonotactic constrains ( only certain consonant clusters appear within words)
- Pabiku daropi
( PB only learnt through experience)
- Allophonic variation
- Transitional probability
Syllabification
Leads to Metrical

Front 8

Transitional Probability

Back 8

Evolutionary Basis
the learner may establish that, in the four-syllable sequence
“prettybaby”, TP(pre→tty) and TP(ba→by)
are both higher than TP(tty→ba),
thus making “tty-ba” a place of local minimum: a word
- boundary can be (correctly) identified.

Front 9

Allophonic variation

Back 9

- Jusczyk ( night rates; nitrates) no difference at 9 but shown at 10.5 ( experience must play a role)
- Only some syllables are stressed (word boundary)
- Phoneme sequences that occur rarely together

Front 10

syllabification

Back 10

- Allows the learner to identify metrical pattern of lang
- As it's assumed stress baring unit is the syllable.

Front 11

Child's existing Lexicon

Back 11

- Memory
- The words a child already knows has a bearing on segmentation
- Norris 'I am going' 'going'
- Word isn't learned until it is stored
- Jusczyk ( novel word stories)

Front 12

Unique Stress Consonant (USC)

Back 12

- unlike metrical it's universal
- word can only have one primary stress
- May provide cues so that infants can advance to other seg strategies.
- Assumed infants can distinguish between strong/weak stress patterns.