Input and word learning: caregivers' sensitivity to lexical category distinctions

Twenty-four caregivers and their two- to four-year-old children took part in a storybook reading task in which caregivers taught children novel labels (‘DAXY’) for familiar objects. One group (N=12) received labels modelled syntactically as proper names (‘This is NAMED DAXY’), and another group (N=1...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of child language 2003-08, Vol.30 (3), p.711-729
Main Authors: HALL, D. GEOFFREY, BURNS, TRACEY C., PAWLUSKI, JODI L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjectives
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Caregivers
Child
Child development
Child Language
Child psychology
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Developmental psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
Language Acquisition
Language teaching methods
Learning
Lexical categories
Lexical semantics
Linguistic Input
Male
Names
Nouns
Novel words
Onomastics
Parent Child Relationship
Parent-Child interactions
Preschool children
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Semantic analysis
Semantic categories
Semantics
Story Reading
Syntax
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Translation
Verbal Behavior
Vocabulary
Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary learning
Word meaning
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Summary:Twenty-four caregivers and their two- to four-year-old children took part in a storybook reading task in which caregivers taught children novel labels (‘DAXY’) for familiar objects. One group (N=12) received labels modelled syntactically as proper names (‘This is NAMED DAXY’), and another group (N=12) received the same labels for the same objects modelled syntactically as adjectives (‘This is VERY DAXY’). Caregivers took strikingly different approaches to teaching words from the two lexical categories. In teaching proper names, but not adjectives, caregivers flagged cases in which one word was paired with two objects; two words were paired with one object; and one word was paired with an inanimate object. In teaching adjectives, but not proper names, caregivers discussed meaning and offered translations. Caregivers' distinctive strategies for teaching proper names and adjectives are congruent with recent findings about children's word meaning assumptions, and with analyses of the semantics of these lexical categories. The findings indicate that parental speech could provide a rich source of information to children in learning how different lexical categories are expressed in their native language.
ISSN:0305-0009
1469-7602
DOI:10.1017/S0305000903005749