The sound-of-words model: A developmental perspective of phonolexical acquisition

The current chapter reviews 25 years of research on the so-called consonant bias in lexical processing, according to which consonants, rather than vowels, are most relevant to build the lexicon. The evidence so far suggests the C-bias might be prevalent in adulthood, though more work is needed on tone languages that might change this view. The findings from developmental studies offer a more nuanced approach, showing important crosslinguistic differences in the timing of acquisition of asymmetrical processing of consonants and vowels in lexically-related processes, and in the direction of the bias observed. This suggests that the bias is acquired on the basis of phonological and lexical cues. We propose a new model for the acquisition of these biases, the Sound-of-Words model, that could be used to guide further research on this issue.