Kohn A S, Landau B
Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260.
J Psycholinguist Res. 1990 Mar;19(2):71-89. doi: 10.1007/BF01068091.
During early word learning, children may assume a unique form-meaning relationship: that a unique form corresponds to each meaning (Clark, 1987) and vice versa (Slobin, 1985). Homonyms appear to violate this one-to-one mapping, and therefore might prove problematic; for example, all things labeled bat might be put into the odd category 'things that fly and are used to play ball.' We asked whether parents' descriptions of homonyms to their young children provide linguistic information that could help children to differentiate conceptually and linguistically these cases. Fifteen parents described pictured sets of concrete object homonyms and categorically related objects to their young children. Parents described homonyms by using explicit statements of category inclusion, subordinate forms (compounds, e.g., kiwi-bird), and specific forms that flagged the unusual homonym relationship. Parents especially provided distinctive alternating forms for homonym pairs (e.g., iceskate vs. skate-fish) suggesting that they were attempting to preserve the unique form-meaning relationship violated by homonyms. We discuss how such linguistic information might be used by children to differentiate homonyms.
在早期词汇学习过程中，儿童可能会假定一种独特的形式-意义关系：即一种独特的形式对应一个意义（克拉克，1987），反之亦然（斯洛宾，1985）。同音异义词似乎违反了这种一一映射关系，因此可能会造成问题；例如，所有被标记为“bat”的东西可能会被归入奇怪的类别“会飞且用来打球的东西”。我们询问家长向幼儿描述同音异义词时是否会提供语言信息，以帮助孩子在概念和语言上区分这些情况。15位家长向他们的幼儿描述了一组组具体实物同音异义词以及与之分类相关的物体。家长们通过使用类别包含的明确表述、从属形式（复合词，如几维鸟）以及标明非同寻常同音异义关系的特定形式来描述同音异义词。家长们尤其为同音异义词对提供了独特的交替形式（如“iceskate”与“skate-fish”），这表明他们试图维护被同音异义词违反的独特形式-意义关系。我们讨论了儿童可能如何利用这些语言信息来区分同音异义词。
