Taylor M, Gelman S A
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403.
Child Dev. 1989 Jun;60(3):625-36.
In 4 experiments, we examined how young children incorporate new word meanings into their lexicons. 2-year-olds were each taught a new noun for an object that already had a known label (e.g., a "fep" for a dog). Children's interpretations of the new nouns were assessed by asking subjects to select the named toy from an array of 4 toys (e.g., "Point to a fep"). The experiments were designed to determine which of several possible semantic relations between novel and familiar words was most consistent with children's performance. It was found that children often seemed to interpret the new word as referring to a subordinate of the known category. This tendency was reduced when the named object could sensibly receive a proper name (e.g., when the named object was a stuffed animal), particularly when children had to consider both the familiar and the novel label for the object in the same session. Although not all alternative explanations have been ruled out, these results suggest that, from a very young age, children may spontaneously form language hierarchies when they hear a novel work for an object that already has a familiar name.
在4项实验中，我们研究了幼儿如何将新的词义纳入其词汇表。我们给2岁的儿童每人教授一个用于已有已知标签的物体的新名词（例如，用“fep”指代狗）。通过要求受试者从4个玩具的阵列中挑选出被命名的玩具（例如，“指向一个fep”）来评估儿童对新名词的理解。这些实验旨在确定新单词与熟悉单词之间几种可能的语义关系中，哪一种与儿童的表现最一致。结果发现，儿童似乎常常将新单词解释为指代已知类别的一个下属类别。当被命名的物体可以合理地有一个专有名称时（例如，当被命名的物体是一个填充动物时），这种倾向会降低，特别是当儿童在同一环节中必须同时考虑物体的熟悉标签和新标签时。虽然并非所有其他解释都已被排除，但这些结果表明，从很小的时候起，当儿童听到一个用于已有熟悉名称的物体的新单词时，他们可能会自发地形成语言层次结构。
