Previous studies show that infants store functional morphemes for inferring syntactic categories of adjacent words, and they generally perform better with nouns than with verbs. In this study, we tested whether toddlers can exploit phrasal groupings for syntactic categorization in the face of noisy co-occurrence patterns. Using a visual fixation procedure, we examined whether Mandarin-learning 19-month-olds can categorize word X to the left of functional morpheme a in a prosody-neutral 3-word sequence X- a-Y, where a structurally selects X (X and Y being unfamiliar words). Infants at 19 months were familiarized either with X- ye-Y (‘even X N Y V ’) or with X- le-Y (‘have X V -ed Y N ’). While le features a more mixed distribution than ye, 19-month-olds succeeded with both ye and le by preferring grammatical new contexts of X over ungrammatical ones, consistent with the hypothesis that phrasal groupings ([X a. . .]) support syntactic categorization. Our findings provide initial evidence for infants’ ability to capture functional morphemes for backward syntactic categorization.

Yuanfan Ying

Xiaolu Yang

Rushen Shi

First Language

First Language is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes the highest quality original research in child language acquisition. Child language research is multidisciplinary and this is reflected in the contents of the journal: research from diverse theoretical and methodological traditions is welcome. Authors from a wide range of disciplines - including psychology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, communication, sociology and education - are regularly represented in our pages. Empirical papers range from individual case studies, through experiments, observational/ naturalistic, analyses of CHILDES corpora, to parental surveys.

First Language is an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing high-quality original research in the field of child language acquisition. Child language research is multidisciplinary, which is reflected in the journal's content: we welcome studies from diverse theoretical and methodological traditions. Our pages regularly feature contributions from authors across a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, communication, sociology, and education. Empirical papers range from individual case studies and experiments to observational/naturalistic studies, analyses of CHILDES corpora, and parental surveys.

《First Language》是一本国际同行评审期刊，致力于发表儿童语言习得领域的高质量原创研究。儿童语言研究是一个多学科的领域，这一点在期刊的内容中得到了体现：我们欢迎来自不同理论和方法传统的研究。我们的页面上定期刊登来自心理学、语言学、人类学、认知科学、神经科学、传播学、社会学和教育等多个学科的作者的研究。实证论文的范围从个案研究、实验、观察/自然主义研究，到对CHILDES语料库的分析和家长调查。

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文学, 语言与语言学	3
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Toddlers use functional morphemes for backward syntactic categorization

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PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL	4