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Word Segmentation: The Role of Distributional Cues
Open accessAbstract
One of the infant's first tasks in language acquisition is to discover the words embedded in a mostly continuous speech stream. This learning problem might be solved by using distributional cues to word boundaries—for example, by computing the transitional probabilities between sounds in the language input and using the relative strengths of these probabilities to hypothesize word boundaries. The learner might be further aided by language-specific prosodic cues correlated with word boundaries. As a first step in testing these hypotheses, we briefly exposed adults to an artificial language in which the only cues available for word segmentation were the transitional probabilities between syllables. Subjects were able to learn the words of this language. Furthermore, the addition of certain prosodic cues served to enhance performance. These results suggest that distributional cues may play an important role in the initial word segmentation of language learners.
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“infants may be able to exploit statistical cues to word boundaries”
From Incidental Language Learning: Listening (and Learning) Out of the Corner of Your Ear (1997) · cites this paper as Saffran, Newport, & Aslin, 1996
In the citing paper
“We (Saffran et al., 1996) demonstrated, in an explicit-learning task, that adult subjects were able to use transitional probabilities to learn the multisyllabic words of an artificial language presented as a synthesized speech stream containing no other cues to word boundaries.”
From Incidental Language Learning: Listening (and Learning) Out of the Corner of Your Ear (1997) · cites this paper as Saffran et al., 1996
In the citing paper
“the input was quite impoverished, containing neither utterance boundaries nor the acoustic and prosodic cues that are probabilistically correlated with word boundaries in some languages”
From Incidental Language Learning: Listening (and Learning) Out of the Corner of Your Ear (1997) · cites this paper as Saffran et al., 1996
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Operationalising salience: definite article reduction in the North of England1
Rácz, P. (2012) · English Language and Linguistics · doi:10.1017/s1360674311000281 · Cited by 13
“…listeners certainly rely on other distributional cues, such as word stress, pauses in the signal, or simply the recognition of words previously heard in isolation, transitional probability between the segments remains the most abundant and reliable cue (Saffran et al. 1996b; Jusczyk et al. 1999).”
BackgroundLaakso, A., & Calvo, P. (2011) · Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01191.x · Cited by 13
Many morphs: Parsing gesture signals from the noise
Mielke, A., Badihi, G., Graham, K., Grund, C., Hashimoto, C., Piel, A., Safryghin, A., Slocombe, K., Stewart, F. A., Wilke, C., et al. (2023) · bioRxiv · doi:10.3758/s13428-024-02368-6 · Cited by 12
“This parsing process is something the human brain is particularly good at (Saffran et al., 1996)— spoken human language as well as language-accompanying gestures and facial signals are produced not as a set of discrete signals, but as a continuous stream of information that is perceived discretely…”
BackgroundLochy, A., Rossion, B., Ralph, M. L., Volfart, A., Hauk, O., & Schiltz, C. (2023) · bioRxiv · doi:10.1101/2023.02.20.528973 · Cited by 12
The Effect of Explicit Instruction on Implicit and Explicit Linguistic Knowledge in Kindergartners
Spit, S., Andringa, S. J., Rispens, J., & Aboh, E. O. (2021) · Language Learning and Development · doi:10.1080/15475441.2021.1941968 · Cited by 19
“…mechanism enables both children and adults to infer word boundaries (e.g., for children Aslin et al., 1998; Gómez, 2002; Gómez & Gerken, 1999; Saffran et al., 1996; for adults Endress & Bonatti, 2007; Perruchet & Vinter, 1998; Thiessen et al., 2013), acquire words and their meanings (e.g.,…”
BackgroundGuo, Z.-C., & Smiljanic, R. (2021) · Laboratory Phonology · doi:10.5334/labphon.310 · Cited by 12
“Using the formula of Saffran, Newport, and Aslin (1996), we found that the average betweensyllables transitional probability was one for all the words and ranged between 0.55 and 0.60 (mean: 0.58) for the partwords in each speech stream.”
MethodInfluentialSoares, A., Gutiérrez-Domínguez, F.-J., Vasconcelos, M. F. G., Oliveira, H., Tomé, D., & Jiménez, L. (2020) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2020.577991 · Cited by 12
Prosodic effects on L2 grammars
Carroll, S. (2019) · Epistemological issue with keynote article “Prosodic effects on L2 grammars” · doi:10.1075/lab.19050.car · Cited by 12
Learning the Language for School Literacy
Uccelli, P. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781316718537.010 · Cited by 20
Lexical knowledge boosts statistically-driven speech segmentation.
Palmer, S. D., Hutson, J., White, L., & Mattys, S. L. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037/xlm0000567 · Cited by 12
Kim, S., Cho, T., & McQueen, J. (2012) · J. Phonetics · doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2012.02.005 · Cited by 12
“This paradigm has been shown to be effective in testing effects of specific cues in the speech signal without recourse to any prior lexical knowledge and it has also revealed listeners’ use of native segmentation cues in lexical segmentation of these unfamiliar, non-native languages (e.g., Bagou et al., 2002; Kim et a…”
BackgroundMethodSeitz, A. R., Protopapas, A., Tsushima, Y., Vlahou, E., Gori, S., Grossberg, S., & Watanabe, T. (2010) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.03.004 · Cited by 12
Bonatti, L., Peña, M., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (2006) · Journal of experimental psychology. General · doi:10.1037/0096-3445.135.2.314 · Cited by 12
Learning the statistics of pronoun reference: By word or by category?
Ye, Y., & Arnold, J. E. (2023) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105546 · Cited by 13
Network structure influences the strength of learned neural representations
Kahn, A. E., Szymula, K. P., Loman, S., Haggerty, E. B., Nyema, N., Aguirre, G. K., & Bassett, D. S. (2025) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-024-55459-5 · Cited by 5
“Such statistical learning occurs in both infants (see [14] for an overview) and adults [15] and is thought to be a fundamental, domain-general learning mechanism because it arises from various sorts of sequences—from tones [16] and shapes [17] to motor actions [18].”
Close Encounters of the Word Kind: Attested Distributional Information Boosts Statistical Learning
Stärk, K., Kidd, E., & Frost, R. (2022) · Language Learning · doi:10.1111/lang.12523 · Cited by 11
Statistical learning of across-trial regularities during serial search.
Li, A.-S., Bogaerts, L., & Theeuwes, J. (2022) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance · doi:10.1037/xhp0000987 · Cited by 11
Exploring How Phonotactic Knowledge Can Be Represented in Cognitive Networks
Vitevitch, M. S., Niehorster-Cook, L., & Niehorster-Cook, S. (2021) · Big Data and Cognitive Computing · doi:10.3390/bdcc5040047 · Cited by 11
“Additional research has found that listeners rely on phonotactic probability to segment individual words from the stream of fluent speech [5], to recognize words in speech [1,2], and to learn new words [6].”
BackgroundInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N.
- Affiliations
- University of Rochester (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Memory and Language
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1996-08
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 606-621
- ISSN
- 0749-596X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2115867364
- Cited by
- 1,405
- References
- 62
- Citations by year
- 2026: 35 · 2025: 49 · 2024: 109 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 52 · 2021: 52 · 2020: 67 · 2019: 104 · 2018: 41 · 2017: 95 · 2016: 44 · 2015: 62 · 2014: 65 · 2013: 56 · 2012: 51
- FWCI
- 19.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Memory and Language (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- word segmentation, distributional cues, transition probabilities, prosodic cues, artificial language learning, infant language acquisition, word boundary detection, statistical learning
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