Abstract
By leveraging Phonology-to-Semantics Consistency (PSC), which quantifies form-meaning systematicity as the semantic similarity between a target word and its phonological nearest neighbours, we document a unique effect of systematicity on Age of Acquisition (AoA). This effect is also found after controlling for the effect of neighbourhood density measured for word forms and lexical semantics and several other standard predictors of AoA. Moreover, we show that the effect of systematicity is not reducible to iconicity. Finally, we extensively probe the reliability of this finding by testing different statistical models, analysing systematicity in phonology and orthography and implementing random baselines, reporting a robust, unique negative effect of systematicity on AoA, such that more systematic words tend to be learned earlier. We discuss the findings in the light of studies on non-arbitrary form-meaning mappings and their role in language learning, focusing on the analogical process at the interface of form and meaning upon which PSC is based and how it could help children infer the semantics of novel words when context is scarce or uninformative, ultimately speeding up word learning.
Highlights
The factors that influence how children learn their first language from exposure have been widely studied (Bates & MacWhinney, 1987; Pinker, 1984)
We investigated the effect of form-meaning systematicity (Amenta et al, 2017; Hendrix & Sun, 2020; Marelli & Amenta, 2018; Marelli et al, 2015) on word acquisition
We first documented a reliable correlation between Phonology-to-Semantics Consistency (PSC) and Age of Acquisition (AoA)
Summary
The factors that influence how children learn their first language from exposure have been widely studied (Bates & MacWhinney, 1987; Pinker, 1984). Building on recent studies that quantified the degree of form-meaning systematicity for individual lexical items (Hendrix & Sun, 2020; Marelli & Amenta, 2018), in this work, we assess the effect of systematicity on AoA, after controlling for known predictors of AoA itself. We are the first to assess the effect of form-meaning systematicity on AoA while controlling for measures of neighbourhood density in form and meaning as well as their interaction. We rely on measures of form-meaning systematicity which have been already shown to reliably predict reaction times (RTs) in lexical decision studies as well as morphological priming studies (Amenta et al, 2017, 2020; Hendrix & Sun, 2020; Marelli & Amenta, 2018; Marelli et al, 2015) and reading times in a naturalistic setting (Amenta et al, submitted).
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