The Child as Linguist

How Children Learn Meaning

(source: as mathematics)

The redescrition into language of image schemas conceptualising spacial relations suggests a tighter relationship between language and cognition for semantics than in the case of syntax. Children bring to the word learning solution a limited number of hypotheses about possible types of word meaning. 3 to 5-year-olds assume that a new label refers to the object as a whole and not to its substance, constituant parts colour, texture, size etc. Secondly, children extend a newly aquired label to objects of the same taxonomic kind rather than to objects related thematically to the original one. Also, children tend to assume that new words refer to a basic category level (eg., dog) rather than to a superordinate or subordinate kind (eg., animal or poodle). The third assumtption calls for mutual exclusivity, such that, on hearing a new word (viper), children tend to apply it to an object for which they do not yet have a label, given that other objects present in the array are ones for which they already have a label.(see note 4).This means that children can learn a new word without relying on any pointing on the part of the speaker. These biases are not deterministic but probablistic. They can be overridden when there is sufficient other information to suggest an alternative explanation. Thus on hearing the word 'look at its nice fur' as an adult points to a cat, a child can use the mutual-exclusivity assumption to override the whole-object assumtion and aquire q new word for a feature of the referent (fur). Similar biases constrain the way in which children come to understand 'restricted' versus 'unrestricted' meanings of words. E.g.,the word 'person' continues to refer to someone throughout his or her life and in any situation. Words like 'youth' or 'passenger' refer only at certain times and in certain circumstances: they both have restricted meaning. Moreover, one can be simultaneously both a person and a passenger.