SBE-RCUK Lead Agency - The Development of Lexical Flexibility

人类交流最显著的特征之一就是我们灵活而有创造性地使用词语的能力：我们经常用同一个声音来表示多种不同的事物。例如，我们用锤子锤，吃鸡生的鸡，用玻璃做的杯子喝水。这些灵活的词汇用法为我们提供了一种生动的表达能力：我们可以用一个词来表达一种意思，同时暗示所有其他的意思。但是，虽然灵活性可能会使语言更具表现力，但研究人员通常认为它也会使语言更难学习。特别是，如果一个单词的意思是一个灵活的、移动的目标，那么孩子们怎么可能在合理的时间内学会它呢？这使得许多研究人员得出结论，“理想”语言的单词应该是明确的。但在最近的研究中，我们提出了一个理论，表明这种假设是错误的：灵活使用单词并不会阻碍孩子们学习单词，事实上，它们似乎会促进学习。这个理论最好用一个例子来解释。想象一下，你是一个小孩的父母，你想让你的孩子避免头撞到附近桌子的腿。你的孩子还不知道腿叫什么，但他已经学会了长、直、支撑身体的部位被称为“腿”。当他们听到你说“小心腿”而没有看到任何相关的身体部位时，他们可以猜测“腿”是指与身体部位有关的东西，因此可能有合理的机会猜测你的意思。相比之下，如果你必须使用一个不同的、明确的词来表达你想表达的每个概念，你可能不得不说“Watch out for the dax”。因为你的孩子不知道“dax”是什么意思，他们不太可能注意到你的警告。与此一致的是，我们发现了初步证据，表明儿童能够以最小的困难掌握灵活的语言。该项目旨在了解儿童是如何做到这一点的，该项目结合了对发展中儿童的严格控制的行为研究，以及对儿童和父母讲话记录的注释和分析。首先，我们将建立和分析儿童与父母和其他人对话的现有数据库。我们将为这些数据库编码一些灵活词的特殊特征，然后使用先进的统计方法来检查成人为儿童提供的语言环境，以及儿童对该环境的反应。其次，我们将进行一系列的研究，评估2至4岁的儿童如何学习和理解灵活词汇的不同含义，同时在他们的头脑中保持这些含义的清晰性。例如，孩子们如何学习“鸡”既可以标记一种动物也可以标记一种肉，同时又能理解对动物适用的东西不一定对肉适用（反之亦然）？第三，我们将进行实验，探索儿童如何以创造性的方式学习他们以前听不到的灵活词汇。语言学家提供了一些诱人的孩子们创造的例子，从“扫把我的烂摊子”到“打碎我的汤”。我们的实验将探索儿童如何以这些方式学习使用单词，从而深入了解诗歌和演讲中语言创造力的起源。我们的最后一系列研究将更广泛地考察灵活性对儿童认知发展的影响。特别是，我们的理论提出了一种令人惊讶的可能性，即语言中使用灵活词汇的特定方式可能会鼓励儿童以特定的方式了解世界。例如，我们用铲子“铲”雪，这表明铲子是用来铲雪的。我们最后的研究评估了这些语言线索是否会影响儿童探索和学习物体的方式。

One of the most striking features of human communication is our ability to use words in flexible and creative ways: We often use the same sound to mean multiple different things. For instance, we hammer using a hammer, eat chicken that comes from a chicken, and drink from glasses that are made of glass. These flexible uses of words provide us with a vivid expressive power: we can use a word with one meaning while alluding to all the rest. But while flexibility may make language more expressive, researchers have often assumed that it also makes language harder to learn. In particular, if a word's meaning is a flexible, moving target, then how are children ever supposed to learn it in a reasonable amount of time?This has led a number of researchers to conclude that the words of an "ideal" language would be unambiguous. But in recent work we have developed a theory that suggests this assumption is backwards: Flexible uses of words do not impede children from learning words, in fact, they appear to facilitate it. The theory is best explained by an example. Imagine that you are a parent of a small child, and you want your child to avoid hitting their head on the leg of a nearby table. Your child does not yet know what the leg is called, but has learned that long, straight, supportive body parts are called "legs". When they hear you say "Watch out for the leg" and do not see any relevant body parts, they can guess that "leg" refers to something related to the body part, and thus might have a reasonable chance of guessing what you mean. By contrast, if you had to use a different, unambiguous word for each concept that you wanted to express, you might have to say something like "Watch out for the dax". Since your child has no idea what "dax" means, they are unlikely to be able to heed your warning.Consistent with this, we have uncovered initial evidence that children are able to master flexible language with minimal difficulty. This project aims to understand how children are able to do that, based on a combination of tightly-controlled behavioural research on developing children, and the annotation and analysis of transcripts of children's and parents' speech.First, we will build on and analyze existing databases of children's conversations with parents and others. We will code these databases for some of the particular features of flexible words, and then use advanced statistical methods to examine the linguistic environment that adults provide for children, and how children respond to that environment.Second, we will conduct a series of studies that assess how children between 2- and 4-years manage to learn and understand the different meanings of flexible words, while at the same time keeping these meanings distinct in their heads. For example, how do children learn that "chicken" can label both an animal and a kind of meat, while also understanding that things that are true of the animal need not be true of the meat (and vice versa)?Third, we will conduct experiments to explore how children learn to use flexible words in creative ways that they could not have heard before. Linguists have provided tantalizing examples of children's coinages, from "Broom my mess" to "Cracker my soup". Our experiments will explore how children learn to use words in these ways, providing insight into the origins of the type of linguistic creativity that infuses poetry and oratory. Our final series of studies will examine what the consequences of flexibility are for children's cognitive development more generally. In particular, our theory raises the surprising possibility that the particular ways that flexible words are used in a language may encourage children to learn about the world in specific ways. For example the fact that we "shovel" snow using a "shovel" suggests that shovels are made for shoveling. Our last studies assess whether such linguistic clues affect how children explore and learn about objects.