The Acquisition of Word Meanings

The Acquisition of Word Meanings PDF Author: Heinz Werner (linguiste))
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Meaning (Psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
"The child acquires the meaning of words principally in two ways. One is by explicit reference either verbal or objective; he learns to understand verbal symbols through the adult's direct naming of objects or through verbal definition. The second way is through implicit or contextual reference; the meaning of a word is grasped in the course of conversation, i.e., it is inferred from the cues of the verbal context. The present study endeavors to investigate experimentally the processes underlying the acquisition of word meaning through verbal contexts. For this purpose the "Word-Context Test" (WCT) was designed. This test employs artificial words embedded in sentences. The subject going from one context to another is expected to arrive finally at the meaning of the word. Each of these artificial words signifies either an object or an action varying in degrees of concreteness. There are twelve series of six sentences each. The sentences in each series are, in general, ordered in such a way that, as a child moves from one sentence to the next, the clues increase in definiteness. The subjects considered in this investigation were children between the ages of 8 yrs, 6 mo and 13 yrs, 5 mo. The interquartile I.Q. range was from 101 to 111. In all, 125 children (60 boys and 65 girls) were tested; there were 25 children in each age group. The monograph is divided into three parts. Section I deals with a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results. Section II reviews synoptically the results reported in Section I and attempts to evaluate these results in terms of general laws of development. The third section relates the findings of the present study to other empirical and experimental investigations"--(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).

The Acquisition of Word Meanings

The Acquisition of Word Meanings PDF Author: Heinz Werner (linguiste))
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Meaning (Psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book

Book Description
"The child acquires the meaning of words principally in two ways. One is by explicit reference either verbal or objective; he learns to understand verbal symbols through the adult's direct naming of objects or through verbal definition. The second way is through implicit or contextual reference; the meaning of a word is grasped in the course of conversation, i.e., it is inferred from the cues of the verbal context. The present study endeavors to investigate experimentally the processes underlying the acquisition of word meaning through verbal contexts. For this purpose the "Word-Context Test" (WCT) was designed. This test employs artificial words embedded in sentences. The subject going from one context to another is expected to arrive finally at the meaning of the word. Each of these artificial words signifies either an object or an action varying in degrees of concreteness. There are twelve series of six sentences each. The sentences in each series are, in general, ordered in such a way that, as a child moves from one sentence to the next, the clues increase in definiteness. The subjects considered in this investigation were children between the ages of 8 yrs, 6 mo and 13 yrs, 5 mo. The interquartile I.Q. range was from 101 to 111. In all, 125 children (60 boys and 65 girls) were tested; there were 25 children in each age group. The monograph is divided into three parts. Section I deals with a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results. Section II reviews synoptically the results reported in Section I and attempts to evaluate these results in terms of general laws of development. The third section relates the findings of the present study to other empirical and experimental investigations"--(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).

How Children Learn the Meanings of Words

How Children Learn the Meanings of Words PDF Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523295
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind. According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways. This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.

The Acquisition of Word Meanings

The Acquisition of Word Meanings PDF Author: Heinz Werner
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781527781023
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Excerpt from The Acquisition of Word Meanings: A Developmental Study The child acquires the meaning of words principally in two ways. One is by explicit reference either verbal or Objective; he learns to understand verbal symbols through the adult's direct naming of Objects or through verbal definition. The second way is through implicit or contextual reference; the meaning of a word is grasped in the course of conversation, i.e., it is inferred from the cues Of the verbal context. It is probably true that during the early years the child learns the meaning of verbal symbols predominantly in concrete situations: through handling of objects in the presence of adults, direct pointing, naming, and the like. As the child grows Older learning of words occurs more and more through verbal contexts, and it is here that the observa tion Of Ogden and Richards concerning the acquisition of a vocabulary particularly applies: It is rare for words to be formed into contexts with non-symbolic experience directly, for as a rule they are learnt only through other words. We early begin to use language in order to learn language. (14, pp. 213i). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Concept Development and the Development of Word Meaning

Concept Development and the Development of Word Meaning PDF Author: T. B. Seiler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642690009
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This volume owes its existance to many different sources and influ ences. It is based on a meeting that took place from April 30 to May 2, 1982 at the University of Technology in Darmstadt. The idea for that meeting came while we were elaborating a research program on concept development and the development of word meaning; we were inspired by Werner Deutsch of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and by the Volkswagen Foundation in Hannover (Federal Republic of Germany) to organize an international conference on the same topic. We set out to invite a long list of colleagues, and we only regret that not all of them were able to attend. This volume should not be viewed as the proceedings of that conference. On the one hand, it does not include all of the papers presented there, and on the other hand, some of our colleagues who were unable to attend were nevertheless willing to write contributions. Furthermore, some who did pre sent papers at the conference revised and reformulated them or even submitted completely new ones for this book. We feel, however, that in the end we have arranged a valuable collection of work in the theory and research of a field that has occupied not only psychologists and linguists, but also philosophers, anthropologists, and many others for a long time.

The Lexicon in Acquisition

The Lexicon in Acquisition PDF Author: Eve V. Clark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521484640
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Without words, children can't talk about people, places, things, actions, relations, or states, and they have no grammatical rules. Without words, there would be no sound structure, no word structure, and no syntax. The lexicon is central in language, and in language acquisition. Eve Clark argues for this centrality and for the general principles of conventionality and contrast at the core of language acquisition. She looks at the hypotheses children draw on about possible word meanings, and how they map their meanings on to forms. The book is unusual in dealing with data from a wide variety of languages, in its emphasis on the general principles children rely on as they analyse complex word forms, and in the broad perspective it takes on lexical acquisition.

Language and Social Minds

Language and Social Minds PDF Author: Vittorio Tantucci
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108484824
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Proposes a new empirical model to analyse how humans can express social cognition at different levels of complexity.

Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development

Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development PDF Author: Melissa Bowerman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521593588
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Leading scholars examine the relationship between child language acquisition and cognitive development.

The Acquisition of Word Meaning from Context by Children of High and Low Ability

The Acquisition of Word Meaning from Context by Children of High and Low Ability PDF Author: Margaret G. McKeown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Children
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description


The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition

The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition PDF Author: M. G. McKeown
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 131776823X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
First published in 1987. The purpose of this volume has been to move beyond a collection of the most recent studies in the area of vocabulary learning. The contributors, and researchers who, although they may differ in their views on vocabulary acquisition and instruction, acknowledge that many of the same questions motivate their work. These questions and the way they have addressed have been included in order to emphasize these underlying commonalities, with the hope the relationships among contrasting perspectives will become more apparent.

Semantics in Language Acquisition

Semantics in Language Acquisition PDF Author: Kristen Syrett
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263604
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
This volume presents the state of the art of recent research on the acquisition of semantics. Covering topics ranging from infants' initial acquisition of word meaning to the more sophisticated mapping between structure and meaning in the syntax-semantics interface, and the relation between logical content and inferences on language meaning (semantics and pragmatics), the papers in this volume introduce the reader to the variety of ways in which children come to realize that semantic content is encoded in word meaning (for example, in the event semantics of the verbal domain or the scope of logical operators), and at the level of the sentence, which requires the composition of semantic meaning. The authors represent some of the most established and promising researchers in this domain, demonstrating collective expertise in a range of methodologies and topics relevant to the acquisition of semantics. This volume will serve as a valuable resource for students and faculty, and junior and seasoned researchers alike.