Weaving a Lexicon

by D. Geoffrey Hall and Sandra R. Waxman (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262582490
• ISBN10: 026258249X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: Bradford Books

Summary

The studies in Weaving a Lexiconmake a significant contribution to the growing field of lexical acquisition by considering the multidimensional way in which infants and children acquire the lexicon of their native language. They examine the many strands of knowledge and skill-including perceptual sensitivities, conceptual and semantic constraints, and communicative intent- that children must weave together in the process of word learning, and show the different mix of these factors used at different developmental points. In considering the many different factors at work, the contributors avoid both the "either-or" approach, which singles out one strand to explain word learning throughout childhood, and the "all-inclusive" approach, which considers the melange of factors together. Their goal is to discover precisely which strands of ability or understanding make which contributions to acquisition at which points in infancy and childhood. The nineteen chapters are arranged in two broadly thematic sections. The chapters in "Initial Acquisitions," focus on issues involved in word learning during infancy, including how learners represent the sound patterns of words, infants' use of action knowledge to understand the meaning of words, and the links between early word learning and conceptual organization. In "Later Acquisitions," the chapters treat topics concerning the stages of toddler and preschooler language acquisition, including part-of- speech information in word learning, the proper-count distinction, and a comparison of verb acquisition in English and Spanish. Because the contributors present their work in the broader context of the interconnection of different processes in lexical acquisition, the chapters in Weaving a Lexicon should suggest new directions for research in the field.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. ix
Weaving an Introduction	p. xi
Initial Acquisitions
Learning to Identify Spoken Words	p. 3
The Identification of Words and Their Meanings from Perceptual Biases to Language-Specific Cues	p. 41
Listening to Sounds versus Listening to Words: Early Steps in Word Learning	p. 79
Perceptual Units and Their Mapping with Language: How Children Can (or Can't?) Use Perception to Learn Words	p. 111
Infants' Use of Action Knowledge to Get a Grasp on Words	p. 149
Hybrid Theories at the Frontier of Developmental Psychology: The Emergentist Coalition Model of Word Learning as a Case in Point	p. 173
Myths of Word Learning	p. 205
Lexical Development without a Language Model: Are Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives Essential to the Lexicon?	p. 225
Why It is Hard to Label Our Concepts	p. 257
Everything Had a Name, and Each Name Gave Birth to a New Thought: Links between Early Word Learning and Conceptual Organization	p. 295
Later Acquisitions
Preschoolers' Use and Misuse of Part-of-Speech Information in Word Learning: Implications for Lexical Development	p. 339
Acquiring and Using a Grammatical Form Class: Lessons from the Proper-Count Distinction	p. 371
The Nature of Word-Learning Biases and Their Roles for Lexical Development: From a Crosslinguistic Perspective	p. 411
Learning Words for Kinds: Generic Noun Phrases in Acquisition	p. 445
Contexts of Early Word Learning	p. 485
Converging on Word Meaning	p. 509
The Role of Comparison in Children's Early Word Learning	p. 533
Keeping Verb Acquisition in Motion: A Comparison of English and Spanish	p. 569
Kidz in the 'Hood: Syntactic Bootstrapping and the Mental Lexicon	p. 603
Author Index	p. 637
Subject Index	p. 647
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