At what age do infants begin recognizing Spanish verb inflections and understanding that different verb forms share a common root rather than representing entirely different words?

We’re investigating at what age infants learn different verb endings (inflections) in Spanish. In other words—do infants know that canta is ‘cant+a’, which is related to ‘cant+o’, cant+as, etc (at 6 months)? Or do they think these are entirely different words? (like ballet and balón, which start the same way but are not related). To test this we have infants sit on the parent’s lap in a booth with three lights, one in front and one on each side. We have them listen for a few minutes to an audio loop featuring the target sound patterns. After the loop, we play the two patterns in isolation as well as two brand new patterns to see which ones infants listen to/pay attention to longer.

Deja un comentario

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada. Los campos obligatorios están marcados con *

es_MXEspañol de México