Abstract
The effect of meaning and isolation of words on the acquisition of segmentation of words in sentences was examined with an artificial miniature language composed of Mandarin Chinese quasi-elements. Forty undergraduate students participated in one of four groups: Word No Meaning, Word Meaning, Sentence No Meaning, or Sentence Meaning. In each group the subjects listened to the same set of words, either as isolated words or in sentences. Additionally, the meaning groups saw accompanying pictorial representations of isolated words or sentences. Pretest and posttest assessments indicated that isolation of words is a significant factor in word segmentation for an initial word set restricted in size when meaning is not provided. When meaning is provided, the isolation of words apparently does not influence word segmentation performance.
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Vogel, D., Winitz, H. World isolation and meaning in segmentation. J Psycholinguist Res 18, 473–484 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067311
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067311