Abstract
Five children whose ages at the beginning of the study ranged from 12 to 17 months were observed weekly for 8-10 months. For each subject the cumulative numbers of both new words and new word- combinations were plotted as a function of week of observation. An exponential function was fitted to the lexical curves, and lexical acceleration was defined as an upward deviation of the observed curves from the fitted curves. It was found that lexical accelerations occurred at the time the subjects began to produce word- combinations. It is suggested that combinatorial speech, requiring greater specificity of expression (than holophrastic speech), motivates the learning of new words. At the same time, the sensitivity to sentential speech facilitates the mapping of word meanings.
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Education,Language and Linguistics
Reference39 articles.
1. New Directions in Research on Language Development
2. Bates, E., Dale, P.S. & Thal, D. (1995). Individual differences and their implications for theories of language development. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (eds), Handbook of Child Language (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 96-151.
3. Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary
Cited by
33 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献