We investigated toddlers' phonological representations of common vowel-initial words that can take on multiple surface forms in the input. In French, liaison consonants are inserted and are syllabified as onsets in subsequent vowel-initial words, for example, petit /t/ éléphant [little elephant]. We aimed to better understand the impact on children's early lexical representations of this frequent intrusion by consonants by testing whether toddlers store multiple forms for vowel-initial words (e.g., téléphant, zéléphant) early in acquisition. Thirty-one Quebec French-learning 30-month-olds completed an eye-tracking experiment (16 girls). Children were predominantly from White, middle-class families living in a large urban area (Montreal). Each trial presented two objects while one of them was named. There were four key trial types: (a) correct vowel-initial (e.g., joli éléphant [pretty elephant]); (b) pragmatically incorrect frequent intrusion (e.g., joli zéléphant, /z/ intrusion [pretty elephants], which is grammatically acceptable but does not correspond to the picture); (c) lexically incorrect frequent intrusion (e.g., joli téléphant, /t/ intrusion, as /t/ is a frequent liaison consonant in general but is impossible with joli); (d) lexically incorrect infrequent intrusion (e.g., joli géléphant, /g/ intrusion, as /g/ is an infrequent liaison consonant and is also impossible with joli). The results showed that target recognition was successful in the frequent /t/- and /z/-intrusion trials and was also evident in the vowel-initial trials, whereas it was impeded in the infrequent /g/-intrusion trials. Our findings demonstrate that French-learning children's early lexicon contains multiple variants for words that are subject to phonological alternations, including frequent liaison-consonant variants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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法语学习幼儿词汇表征中的变量形式。

我们调查了幼儿对常见元音首字母的语音表示，这些词可以在输入中采用多种表面形式。在法语中，连接辅音被插入并在随后的元音首字母词中作为开始音节化，例如，petit /t/ éléphant [小象]。我们旨在通过测试幼儿在习得早期是否为元音首字母（例如 téléphant、zéléphant）存储多种形式，从而更好地了解辅音这种频繁侵入对儿童早期词汇表征的影响。31 名魁北克法语学习 30 个月大的孩子完成了一项眼动追踪实验（16 名女孩）。儿童主要来自居住在大城市地区（蒙特利尔）的白人中产阶级家庭。每个试验都展示了两个物体，其中一个被命名。有四种主要的试验类型：(a) 正确的元音首字母（例如，joli éléphant [漂亮的大象]）；(b) 语用上不正确的频繁侵入（例如，joli zéléphant、/z/ intrusion [漂亮的大象]，语法上可以接受但与图片不符）；(c) 词汇不正确的频繁侵入（例如，joli téléphant、/t/ intrusion，因为 /t/ 通常是一个频繁的联络辅音，但对于 joli 是不可能的）；(d) 词法不正确的偶发侵入（例如，joli géléphant、/g/ intrusion，因为 /g/ 是偶发的联络辅音，而且对 joli 也是不可能的）。结果表明，目标识别在频繁的/t/-和/z/-入侵试验中是成功的，在元音起始试验中也很明显，而在不频繁的/g/-入侵试验中则受到阻碍。我们的研究结果表明，学习法语的儿童的 早期的词典包含多个受语音变化影响的词的变体，包括频繁的联络辅音变体。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。