Infants' understanding of words as conventions

描述(由申请人提供)：语言是一种常规系统，一个社区中的所有说话者都使用语言来传达相同的意思，这一事实奠定了我们作为交际者的成功，并为获得语言提供了基础。这项拟议的研究将调查习得第一个单词期间传统的关键方面的起源。首先，这些研究将提供一些第一批实验工作，调查婴儿何时识别语言中的常规。其次，这项研究将通过将词语使用与其他类型的人类行为进行比较来检验婴儿假设的普遍性。第三，通过测试婴儿对新引入的单词的理解，该项目将评估婴儿对常规的理解对单词学习的贡献程度。最后，由于拟议的实验区分了常规的不同方面，该项目将为目前对这一主题的思考带来更大的精确度。拟议的研究旨在为传统知识的三个方面提供初步的优势：(1)知道所有说话人(在一个社区内)使用相同的形式-意义配对；(2)知道这些配对形成一个对比系统；(3)知道传统系统原则上可以因说话人而异。除了为进一步的研究提供基础外，这些研究还将为早期语言学习的一般过程提供新的线索。因此，这些发现可能有助于科学和专业知识的发展出错的情况，例如，在语言延迟的情况下，或更多的全球沟通障碍，如自闭症存在的情况。此外，由于这些研究关注的是关于语言社区共享系统的知识的发展，这些发现最终可能有助于我们对多种语言发展的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The fact that language is a conventional system, used by all speakers in a community to convey the same meanings, underlies our success as communicators and provides the basis for acquiring language. The proposed research will investigate the origins of key aspects of conventionality during the period in which the first words are acquired. First, these studies will provide some of the first experimental work investigating when infants recognize conventionality in language. Second, this research will examine the generality of infants' assumptions by comparing word use to other types of human action. Third, by testing infants' understanding of newly introduced words, the project will assess the degree to which infants' understanding of conventionality contributes to word learning. Finally, because the proposed experiments distinguish between different aspects of conventionality, the project will bring greater precision to current thinking on this topic. The proposed studies are intended to provide initial vantage points into three aspects of conventional knowledge: (1) Knowing that all speakers (within a community) use the same form-meaning pairings; (2) Knowing that these pairings form a contrastive system; and (3) Knowing that conventional systems can, in principle, vary across speakers. In addition to providing a foundation for further investigations, these studies will shed new light on general processes in early language learning. As such, the findings may contribute to scientific and professional knowledge about cases in which development goes awry, for example, in cases of language delay, or more global communicative deficits such as those present in autism. In addition, because these studies concern the development of knowledge about the systems shared by language communities, the findings may ultimately contribute to our understanding of multi-lingual language development.