Word Family Size and French‐Speaking Children's Segmentation of Existing Compounds

The family size of the constituents of compound words, or the number of compounds sharing the constituents, affects English‐speaking children's compound segmentation. This finding is consistent with a usage‐based theory of language acquisition, whereby children learn abstract underlying linguistic structure through their experience with particular words. The family‐size effect is particularly strong for the modifier or the leftmost element. The present study tested whether the effect of family size also holds for left‐headed compounds as in French (e.g., chef de police “chief of police”) and whether the effect is due to headedness or left‐to‐right processing. Twenty‐eight French‐speaking children between 3;5 and 5;3 were asked to explain the meaning of existing compounds with constituents of varying family size. The children were more likely to mention a constituent when it came from a large family than a small family, suggesting that children's segmentation of compounds might be facilitated by analogy with existing compounds. Furthermore, as in the previous English study, children mentioned modifiers more often than heads, showing their sensitivity to the semantic roles of the constituents, rather than left‐to‐right processing.