Language play facilitates language learning: Optimizing the input for gender-like category induction

Abstract

Gender induction has been claimed to be virtually impossible unless nouns provide reliable semantic or phonological gender-relevant cues. However, learners might exploit syntactic cues, such as definite articles, to infer the gender of gender-unmarked nouns. In children’s poems and songs, such syntactic cues are presented in a highly structured fashion. We assessed gender-like category induction in an artificial language that provided exclusively syntactic cues for its gender-like subclasses. We trained participants with structured or unstructured input presented in a prose, a rhyming, a melodic, or a rhyming and melodic fashion. Input structuring significantly facilitated gender-like category induction. Participants trained in the Rhyme-and-Melody mode significantly outperformed participants trained in the Prose mode, especially when the input was structured. The Rhyme-only and Melody-only modes yielded intermediate results. Thus, a highly structured rhyming and melodic input substantially facilitates gender-like category induction, making a case for the use of children’s songs in language teaching.