How Children Constrain Possible Word Meanings

这项研究解决了语言习得的一个基本问题，即幼儿如何理解单词的意思。孩子们必须从有限的词汇用法信息中判断一个新单词是什么意思。因此，单词学习对儿童来说是一个困难的归纳问题。这项研究的前提是，部分解决方案是孩子们快速有效地关注术语的正确含义，因为他们只考虑一些假设。儿童可能限制假设的一种方式是根据互斥假设，即儿童期望每个对象只有一个标签。尽管先前的研究结果强烈表明，学龄前儿童使用相互排他性来指导他们对新标签的解释，但迄今为止几乎没有证据表明儿童开始习得语言。此外，对其中一些发现也提出了不同的解释。对这些替代解释的对照实验测试将确定初级语言学习者如何使用互斥性。这项研究将确定互斥性如何补充其他信息，以及它如何为儿童提供防止某些错误的保障。这项工作将丰富我们对单词学习假设如何与认知、语言和环境因素相互作用的理解，以帮助非常小的孩子理解单词的意思。这种对语言习得基本过程的理解的提高，可能会使幼儿教育者更好地提供有助于单词学习的学习环境，并可能促进更准确的诊断和更有效的语言障碍补救。

This research addresses a fundamental problem of language acquisition, how young children figure out the meanings of words. Children must determine what a novel word refers to from a limited amount of information about how a new term is used. Thus, word learning poses a difficult inductive problem for children. This research proceeds from the premise that part of the solution is that children focus quickly and effectively on the correct meaning of terms because they consider only some kinds of hypotheses. One way children may limit hypotheses is in accordance with the mutual exclusivity assumption, which states that children expect each object to have only one label. Although previous findings strongly suggest that preschool children use mutual exclusivity to guide their interpretation of a novel label, there is as yet little evidence about children beginning to acquire language. Moreover, alternative explanations for some of the findings have been raised. Controlled experimental tests of these alternative explanations will establish how mutual exclusivity is used by beginning language learners. The research will determine how mutual exclusivity supplements other information and how it provides children with a safeguard against certain errors. This work will enrich our understanding of how word-learning assumptions interact with cognitive, linguistic, and environmental factors to help very young children figure out what words mean. This improved understanding of the basic processes underlying language acquisition might better enable early childhood educators to provide learning environments that will facilitate word learning, and may promote more accurate diagnoses and more effective remediation of language disorders.