Linking Early Linguistic and Conceptual Development

该建议涉及早期概念发展，语言发展， 以及它们之间的关系。婴儿生活在极其丰富的环境中。每天，他们 遇到新的事物，见证新的事件。如果每一个物体或 事件被视为唯一事件。因此，一个重要的发展任务是形成概念，以捕捉 他们的经验中的共性，并学习单词来表达这些。最近的研究显示， 概念和语言组织之间的强大和隐含的联系，跨越发展， 跨语言婴儿开始单词学习的任务时，有一个广泛的初始期望， 一个广泛的共同点的话。更具体的期望，连接特定类型的单词 (e.g.,名词、形容词、动词）到特定种类的关系（例如，基于类别、属性和运动的 共同点）在几个月后出现，并由母语的结构形成。 目前的建议深化了前一时期获得的见解，使我们更接近于 理解概念和语言之间的这些联系的起源，演变和普遍性 organization.第一部分的研究追溯了婴儿期望的起源和演变， 战略发展重点。本节包括确定机制的新方法 潜在的婴儿区分不同种类的单词（名词，形容词，动词）的能力， 将它们恰当地映射到它们的相关含义。第二节中的研究突出了以下证据： 这些链接在婴儿和儿童获得英语以外的语言（法语;普通话）。通过 结合发展和跨语言的方法，拟议的项目1）扩大了 现有研究的经验和理论基础，2）提供了一个窗口，通过它来查看 更清楚地了解概念发展和语言发展之间联系的起源和演变; 强调了对儿童的固有期望与儿童的塑造作用之间的重要相互作用， 环境保护研究结果应该对习得理论有所启示，并可能作为一个 研究幼儿双语能力和特殊语言障碍的跳板。

This proposal addresses fundamental issues of early conceptual development, language development, and the relation between them. Infants live in an enormously rich environment. Each day, they encounter new objects and witness new events. This richness would be overwhelming if each object or event was treated as unique. Therefore, an essential developmental task is to form concepts to capture commonalities among their experiences and to learn words to express these. Recent research reveals powerful and implicit links between conceptual and linguistic organization, across development and across languages. Infants begin the task of word-learning with a broad initial expectation linking novel words to a broad range of commonalities. More specific expectations, linking particular kinds of words (e.g., noun, adjective, verb) to particular kinds of relations (e.g., category-, property-, and motion-based commonalities) emerge several months later, and are shaped by the structure of the native language. The current proposal deepens the insights gained in the previous period and brings us closer to understanding the origin, evolution, and universality these links between conceptual and linguistic organization. The studies in Section I trace the origin and evolution of infants' expectations at several strategic developmental points. The section includes new methods to identify the mechanisms underlying infants' ability to distinguish among different kinds of words (nouns, adjectives, verbs) and map them appropriately to their associated meaning. The studies in Section II sharpen the evidence for these links in infants and children acquiring languages other than English (French; Mandarin). By combining developmental and cross-linguistic approaches, the proposed project 1) broadens the empirical and theoretical foundations of existing research, 2) provides a window through which to view more clearly the origins and evolution of links between conceptual and linguistic development, and 3) underscores the vital interaction between the expectations inherent in the child and the shaping role of the environment. The results should have implications for theories of acquisition and may serve as a springboard for research on bilingualism and specific language impairments in young children.