Abstract
Infants acquire whatever language is spoken in the environment into which they are born. The mental capability of the newborn child is not biased in any way towards the acquisition of one human language rather than another. Because psychologists who attempt to model the process of language comprehension are interested in the structure of the human mind, rather than in the properties of individual languages, strategies which they incorporate in their models are presumed to be universal, not language-specific. In other words, strategies of comprehension are presumed to be characteristic of the human language processing system, rather than, say, the French, English, or Igbo language processing systems. We report here, however, on a comprehension strategy which appears to be used by native speakers of French but not by native speakers of English.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Kaye, J. D. & Lowenstamm, J. in Phonologie Métrique (Hermann, Paris, 1983).
Andersen, J. & Jones, C. J. Linguistics 10, 1–26 (1974).
Mehler, J., Dommergues, J.-Y., Frauenfelder, U. & Segui, J. J. Verbal Learning Verbal Behav. 20, 298–305 (1981).
Segui, J. in Attention and Performance Vol. 10 (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1983).
Mehler, J. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B295, 333–352 (1981).
Bertoncini, J. & Mehler, J. Infant Behav. Dev. 4, 247–260 (1981).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D. et al. A language-specific comprehension strategy. Nature 304, 159–160 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/304159a0
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/304159a0
This article is cited by
-
Language specificity in cortical tracking of speech rhythm at the mora, syllable, and foot levels
Scientific Reports (2022)
-
The role of syllables in intermediate-depth stress-timed languages: masked priming evidence in European Portuguese
Reading and Writing (2018)
-
Syllabification strategies in spoken word processing: Evidence from phonological priming
Psychological Research (1997)
-
Limits on bilingualism
Nature (1989)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.