It is often assumed that all languages are fundamentally the same. This assumption has been challenged by research in linguistic typology and language evolution, but questions of language learning and use have largely been left aside. Here we review recent work on Danish that provides new insights into these questions. Unlike closely related languages, Danish has an unusually reduced phonetic structure, which seemingly delays Danish-learning children in several aspects of their language acquisition. Adult language use appears to be affected as well, resulting, among other things, in an increased dependence on top-down information in comprehension. In this conceptual review, we build the argument that a causal relationship may exist between the sound structure of Danish and the peculiarities of its acquisition and use. We argue that a theory of language learning that accommodates the existing evidence from Danish must explicitly account for the interaction between learner-related factors and language-specific constraints.

中文翻译：

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丹麦语是语言处理和学习的窗口

人们通常假设所有语言在根本上都是相同的。这一假设受到语言类型学和语言进化研究的挑战，但语言学习和使用的问题在很大程度上被搁置一旁。在这里，我们回顾了最近关于丹麦语的工作，这些工作为这些问题提供了新的见解。与密切相关的语言不同，丹麦语具有异常减少的语音结构，这似乎在语言习得的几个方面延迟了学习丹麦语的儿童。成人语言的使用似乎也受到影响，除其他外，导致理解中对自上而下信息的依赖增加。在这个概念审查中，我们提出了一个论点，即丹麦语的声音结构与其获得和使用的特性之间可能存在因果关系。