Lexical Development

Question 1

What will a child begin with

Answer 1

A child will begin by producing proto-words that hold meaning for them and the
caregiver !

Question 2

Katherine Nelson (1973) identified 4 categories for child lexical development:

Answer 2

1. Objects/people (60%),

2. Actions/events, 3. Describing/modifying, 4. Personal/social (8%)

Question 3

What supports Nelson

Answer 3

the four categories infants supposedly find easiest to

understand (Spelke)

Question 4

Spelke- infants find words in these four categories easiest to understand

Answer 4

Cohesion: clearly defined in shape! Continuity: doesn’t disappear! Solidity: is solid!
Contact: doesn’t have a life of its own!

Question 5

Who does Spelke support

Answer 5

Supports Piaget’s idea that children don’t learn words unless they understand the concept behind them

Question 6

A child’s first words

Answer 6

A child’s first words will often be concrete, common nouns from semantic fields like food, body parts and animals!
Grammatical/function words are notably absent in the early lexicon

Question 7

How do children acquire language

Answer 7

• It is clear that children acquire language exponentially !
• From 2-3 years, s/he may be learning on average 10 words a day!
• Carey (1978) called this rapid word-learning ‘fast mapping’!

Question 8

Rough measure of how many words a child acquired at different ages 1-3

Answer 8

1-1.5age=50,
2age=200-300,
3= 900-1000

Question 9

Rough measure of how many words a child acquired at different ages 4-16 then 12 years

Answer 9

4= 1500-1600
5= 2100-2200
6= 2600 (active), 20,000-24,000 (passive)
12= 50,000 (passive)