Learning about sounds contributes to learning about words: Effects of prosody and phonotactics on infant word learning

► We investigate how early learning about sound structure affects word learning in infants. ► 19-month-olds were presented with high or low phonotactic probability labels for novel objects. ► Labels were produced with trochaic or iambic stress. ► Infants learned the labels most like native language words: high probability trochaic labels. ► Infants failed to learn low probability and iambic labels.