18-month-olds use the relationship between prosodic and syntactic structures to constrain the meaning of novel words

We investigated whether 18-month-olds exploit the relationship between prosodic and syntactic structures to interpret a novel word as either a noun or a verb, depending on its position within the prosodic structure. Using French sentences like ‘Regarde la petite bamoule’, which can be produced either as [Regarde la petite bamoule!] - Look at the little bamoule!, where ‘bamoule’ is a noun, or as [Regarde], [la petite] [bamoule!] - Look, the little (one) is bamouling, where bamoule is a verb, we observed that 18-month-olds correctly inferred that bamoule refers to an object when it appears in a noun position, and to an action when it appears in a verb position (in a Habituation-Switchparadigm). Exploiting the relationship between prosodic structure and syntactic constituents might be extremely useful for infants, not only to categorize novel words and constrain their meanings, but also to bootstrap their way into a more complex syntactic acquisition.