This study investigates 12 prespeech vocal behaviors which are taken to reflect children's phonological, communicative and early symbolic development. It explores their development (onset, duration and extinction) and their relation to early lexical development. A structured parental questionnaire on prespeech vocalizations was developed, validated and used for the evaluation of 1005 Spanish children's early vocal development (8-30 months). In parallel, the same children's productive vocabulary was assessed using the vocabulary section of the European-Spanish MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Results highlight a global inverted U-shaped developmental pattern which emerges from the asynchronous development of the vocal behaviors examined, relating both their emergence and extinction to advances in linguistic development. Moreover, the protracted coexistence of prespeech vocalizations with early speech and their significant correlations with vocabulary size reveal a gradual transition into language. Overall results reinforce and extend previous findings on the development of prespeech vocalizations and establish their relevance as early indexes of linguistic development. Finally, positive evidence on the use of an assisted parental report method for reliably evaluating these developments is provided. Results are discussed within theoretical frameworks that conceive language as the emergent product of complex developmental processes.

The use of the task-evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs) methodology is emerging in the psycholinguistics literature, as a sensitive, reliable and dynamic psychophysiological measure of the cognitive effort produced by various aspects of language processing. This preliminary study aimed to assess the functionality and effectiveness of a TEPRs design for measuring the cognitive effort required for the processing and spontaneous (non-explicitly prompted) short-term retention of novel phonological forms presented auditorily. Twenty-four young adult participants (aged 19–28 years, M = 20.3, SD = 2.13) were auditorily presented with a series of pseudowords differing in their number of syllables and their syllabic complexity. Then, they were asked to produce a response to a delayed pseudoword–color matching task aimed to induce the short-term retention of the novel forms. Results on the size and timing of the TEPRs reveal a significant pupillary activation, starting immediately after the presentation of the auditory stimuli, peaking at 1080 ms and not subsiding significantly during the protracted retention period. Moreover, the differential complexity of the novel words phonology significantly affected pupillary activation. Overall, these preliminary results point to the effectiveness of pupillometry as a technique for capturing the cognitive effort entailed in the short-term maintenance of novel word forms in the phonological loop, a process deemed crucial in the everyday novel word learning process. Results are discussed in view of future research that could establish and extend their implications.

No abstract

Título: La elipsis y el diálogo en la adquisición temprana de la sintaxis. Resumen: Se investiga la transición de las fases de una y dos palabras a la aparición de las primeras oraciones completas. De acuerdo con una visión emergentista de la adquisición sintáctica temprana se esperaba detectar en este periodo construcciones de transición más complejas que la mera yuxtaposición de dos palabras pero menos que una oración simple. En particular, se esperaba el predominio de las emisiones de una o dos palabras, la presencia residual de oraciones correctas aunque no productivas y un aumento gradual de fragmentos sintácticos, como elipsis correctas no productivas, dado su uso en la lengua española. Con este fin, se examinó la evolución entre los 20 y 27 meses de una niña monolingüe española, registrando en video y analizando su habla espontánea en ese periodo y se codificó la estructura de las emisiones junto a sus contextos discursivos y situacionales. Los resultados confirman y especifican la hipótesis. A lo largo del tiempo se observa un incremento de construcciones pre-elípticas que mimetizan oraciones elípticas adultas. Un análisis pormenorizado muestra que las construcciones pre-elípticas evolucionan pasando de depender localmente del contexto situacional a vincularse a la estructura lingüística del turno anterior, en un proceso en el que el diálogo y sus contextos juegan un papel determinante. Palabras clave: Adquisición temprana de la morfosintaxis; elipsis; diálogo. Abstract:The transition from the one and the two-word phases to the first complete sentences was investigated. Within an emergentist scope, it was hypothesized that it would be possible to identify transitional constructions, more complex than the mere juxtaposition of two words but syntactically less mature than simple sentences. Specifically, predominance of one and two-word productions, and a marginal use of correct but nonproductive sentences were predicted, together with a gradual increase of syntactic fragments, i.e., correct and non-productive ellipses, given their frequent use in the Spanish language. Hypotheses were tested through a longitudinal study of a monolingual Spanish girl, from the age of 20 to 27 months. Weekly video sessions over seven months recorded her spontaneous utterances. Those were coded together with their situational and speech contexts. The results supported and specified the hypothesis. Over time, there was an increased use of constructions we have called preellipses because they mimic adult ellipses. Detailed analyses showed preelliptical constructions evolved from showing a local dependency on their production context, to becoming linked to the linguistic structure of the previous turn. Dialogue and its context played a fundamental role in these transitional steps into syntax.