Possible names: The role of syntax-semantics mappings in the acquisition of nominals

Abstract

Many scholars have posited constraints on how children construe the meaning of new words. These include the restriction that new words refer to kinds of whole objects (Markman and Hutchinson 1984), that words describing solid objects refer to individual objects while words describing non-solid substances refer to portions of substance (Soja et al. 1991), and that count nouns that name objects are generalized on the basis of shape (Landau et al. 1988). There are theoretical and empirical problems with these proposals, however. Most importantly, they fail to explain the fact that children rapidly acquire words that violate these contraints, such as pronouns and proper names, names for substances, and names for non-material entities. The theory defended here is that children and adults possess mappings from grammatical categories (‘count noun’, ‘mass noun’, and ‘noun phrase’) to abstract semantic categories; these mappings serve to constrain inferences about word meaning. Evidence from developmental psychology and linguistic theory is presented that suggests that even very young children possess such mappings and use them in the course of lexical development. Further issues — such as the possibility of developmental change, the precise nature of these semantic categories, and how children learn words prior to the acquisition of syntax — are also discussed. It is concluded that although these syntax-semantics mappings are not by themselves sufficient to explain children's success at word learning, they play a crucial role in lexical development. As such, only a theory that posits a deep relationship between syntax and semantics can explain the acquisition and representation of word meanings.