Normal Language Acquisition > Chapter 5: Lexical Development/Learning Words > Flashcards

Chapter 5: Lexical Development/Learning Words Flashcards

(52 cards)

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1
Q

Introduction

A

-Part of learning language is learning words
-avg English speaking college student has about 150,000 words
-avg first graders has more than 14,000 words

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2
Q

The Mental Lexicon

A

-the store of word knowledge
-dictionary I sin the head of the speaker
-each word is an entry

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3
Q

Mental Lexicon Entries

A

-each entry specifies
-the sound of the word
-the grammatical category
-the words meaning

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4
Q

What is a word?

A

-symbols: they stand for something without being part of that something (arbitrary)
-words have reference: words refer to things or stand for referents

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5
Q

First Words Emergence

A

-appear between 10-15 months

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6
Q

Other First Words Components

A

-may be tied to a particular context (context-bound word use)
-children’s use may be limited in ways that suggest their understanding of the words meaning still falls short of adult representations of word meanings
-children’s first words may be part of routines or language games

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7
Q

Is there a Prelexical Stage of Word Use?

A

-behrend suggested that context bound words are merely responses elected by particular environmental conditions

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8
Q

Are the words pre lexical or is the child pre lexical?

A

-need to know whether there is a stage during which the child uses words only in these pre lexical ways
-and whether these pre lexical words in children’s vocabs coexist with truly referential words

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9
Q

Researchers Differ on Prelexical Stage of Word Use

A

-some say context bound first and referential words appear later
-others say children use labels to refer to objects in new contexts from as early as 9 mo

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10
Q

Harris, Barrett, Jones, and Brookes Study of First Words

A

-categorized first words into 3 groups
-context bound (largest category)
-contextually flexible nominals (names for things)
-contextually flexible, but not nominals

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11
Q

Why are some words context bound and others referential

A

-limited experiences produces limited understanding
-children seem to not make use of the full range of their linguistic experience
-children extracted narrower meanings than their experience would have supported
-may take time for the child to distill the common meaning from a variety of contexts

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12
Q

Context Bound Words Become Decontextualized

A

-words that ate at first context bound gradually become decontextualized
-other words enter the lexicon as contextually flexible from the time the child first uses them

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13
Q

Vocabulary Development from First Words to 50

A

-Slowly add from first words and then with increasing speed as they achieve 50 word vocab
-about 18mo, ranging from 15-24 mo, children achieve a productive vocabulary of 50 words

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14
Q

Classification Categories of First 50 Words

A

-specific nominals (mommy, daddy)
-general nominals: common nouns
-action words like up, go
-modifiers such as big, all gone
-personal social words like no
-grammatical function words like what, is , for

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15
Q

Content of Children’s 50 Word Vocabularies

A

-differ from the kinds of words that older children and adults have
-first words reflect their experiences
-routines are the source of early expressions
-first verbs are labels for actions that are part of children’s routines (eat, drink, kiss) and verbs with more general meanings frequent in routines (look, go come)
-45% of the vocab of English speaking children is made up of nouns, 3% verbs

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16
Q

Natural Partitions Hypothesis

A

-physical world makes obvious the things that take nouns as labels, whereas the meanings that verbs encode have to be figured out from hearing the verb in use

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17
Q

Relational Relativity Hypothesis

A

-verb meanings must be figured out from use
-they do not naturally emerge from the structure of the word and may mean that verb meanings will vary from language to language

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18
Q

Underextensions

A

-more narrow or restricted use
-dog but only for certain breeds

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19
Q

Overextensions

A

-use words more broadly than the true meanings allows
-all four legged animals are dogs

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20
Q

Reasons for Overextensions

A

-can be highly variable
-noticable but not very common
-child may not have enough vocab so uses the words they know, decline with increasing vocabulary
-some argue word retrieval

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21
Q

Word Spurt/Word Explosion/Naming Explosion

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A

-once children hit 50 word milestone, vocab increases an average rate of 22-37 words per month

22
Q

First Months after First Words

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A

-children add and average of 8-11 words each month to vocab
-slower growth
-new word doesn’t necessarily result in word learning
-words that were apparently learned at one point do not necessarily become additions to children’s productive vocabs

23
Q

Word Comprehension

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A

-word learning begins months before cild has first word
-early as 5 months show they recognize own name
-8mo understand a few phrases
-8-10mo understand meanings of individual words
-16mo children have comprehension vocabs between 92 and 321 words

24
Q

Word Comprehension and Production

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A

-comprehension and production vocabs differ in content (comp has more verbs)
-it is possible that some words may appear in production first, before they are in comprehension vocabs (context bound words that lack full understanding of meaning)

25
Word Processing
-knowing a word is not all or none -lexical representations are built gradually and become more complete w/development -become more rapidly accessible -looking while listening: increase speed in verbal processing is an outcome of lexical development and a predictor of future lexical growth
26
Individual Differences in Language Style First Words
-some children have more referential words from the start (as opposed to context bound) -different approaches to the language acquisition task (divide speech stream into small chunks or acquire big chunks) -extent to which children are risk takers -sociability
27
Referential Language Style
-children with more object labels in their vocabularies
28
Expressive Language Style
-children with fewer object labels and more personal/social words
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Why do children have varying degrees of expressive/referential language styles
-differences in language learning experiences -referential children more likely tone firstborn of college educated parents -children not firstborns pick up more of their lang from context -differences in function to which children put to language
30
Environmental Factors that Influence the Rate of Lexical Development
-hear more speech that is rich in vocab will build vocabs at a faster rate -higher SES=bigger vocabs -first born = slightly larger vocabs -mothers using longer sentences -mothers who use new words and say something about the words meaning help build Childs vocab faster
31
Child Factors that Influence the Rate of Lexical Development
-speed of processing -phonological memory -personality
32
Speech Segmentation
-children must find the word boundaries in a continuous stream of sound
33
Process of Word Learning
-children make errors -words that occur frequently are learned as object labels -stress or rhythm can be a cue to word boundaries -phonotactic cues help understand boundaries -sentences directed toward children are shorter making less boundaries the child has to find -child directed speech has smaller vocab -adults stress new words and put them at end of sentence
34
Interdeterminacy of word meaning/mapping problem
-child has successfully identified a word is speech stream -now what does this new word refer to?
35
Fast Mapping
-children may begin by making an initial fast mapping between a new word they hear and a likely candidate meaning
36
Lexical principles/lexical restraints
-children have knowledge (either innately or derived from experience) about how the lexicon works
37
Whole-Object Assumption
-assumption that words refer to whole objects rather than to part of an object or property of the object -why some children think hot is a label for stove
38
Assumption of Mutual Exclusivity
-assumption that different words refer to different kinds of things -members of category dog do not overlap with category cow
39
Principle of Conventionality
-meaning of a word sis determined by convention -has to be agreed upon and observed by all members of language community
40
Principle of Contrast
-different words have different meanings -allows for different labels with different meanings -dog and animal
41
Input as a Source of Support for Learning Word Meaning
-speech directed to children is overwhelming about the here and now -comprehension is supported by nonlinguistic content -adults provide explicit instruction about word meanings -adults offer corrections of children's imprecise lexical choices -adults provide info about word meanings
42
Syntactic Bootstrapping Hypothesis
-knowledge of language structure is generally useful for learning new verbs
43
Differences between proposals of how children solve the mapping problem
1.) specify to word learning: knowledge of lexical constrains is useful only for the task of learning new words 2.) whether the source of support for word learning is within the child
44
3 Basic Capacities that Underlie Children's Word Learning
1.) an understanding of mental states (social-cog understandings) 2.) understanding of the kinds of things that get labeled (cognitive biases) 3.) understanding of syntactic clues to word meanings (syntax)
45
Taxonomic Assumption
-words refer to things that are of the same kind
46
Word Form Encoding
-understanding a new word doe the child no good if they can't remember the sound sequence -problem of encoding is more manageable if learning the sound sequence and learning the meaning do not have to happen at same time
47
Semantic Organization
-organizing the world that mediates between cognitive organization and language
48
Lexical Organization
-how children learn the semantics of their language with respect to the lexicon
49
Learning Semantic Organization
-words do not always map onto concepts 1:1 -children have concepts for which there is not a word in their language (invent to fill gaps) -words mark some, but not all, conceptually available distinctions, leaving children to figure out how their language divides the world into word sized packages
50
Eugentist Coalition Model
model that allows children to rely on multiple mechanisms in the process of learning word meanings
51
Endogenous
within the child
52
Exogenous
outside the child
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