Semantic Inferences and the Acquisition of Word Meaning

Abstract

It is well known that the young child acquires new word meanings at a rapid rate. Carey (1978a), for example, estimates that between 2 and 5 years, the child acquires one new word almost every waking hour. Given this rapid rate of acquisition, the question arises as to what mental machinery and prior knowledge could be responsible. What sorts of information about word meaning are children sensitive to and how do they use this information to make inferences about the meanings of unfamiliar words? Certainly one potent source of information is the surrounding linguistic context in which most novel words are embedded. For example, when an unfamiliar word takes some familiar predication, an adult is often able to infer a great deal about the meaning of the novel word.