9. Meaning in first language acquisition
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Stephen Crain
Abstract
Every normal child acquires a language in just a few years. By four or five, children are effectively adults in their abilities to understand novel sentences, to discern entailment relations, and to assess the truth or falsity of endlessly many statements presented to them in conversational contexts. There are two main approaches to explain this remarkable acquisition scenario: one emphasizes the contribution of innate knowledge, and one emphasizes the availability of relevant cues in children’s experience. Semantic knowledge is a good testing ground for adjudicating between these alternative approaches, because evidence for principles of interpretation appears to be thin at best. The main focus of this chapter is on children’s interpretation of disjunction (e.g., English or). In classical logic, disjunction has truth conditions corresponding to inclusive-or. It is evident from cross- linguistic research that human languages assign the inclusive-or interpretation to disjunction, and it is evident from recent experimental research that this is children’s initial interpretation, despite the absence of decisive evidence in children’s experience. This invites two conclusions: that disjunction has the same basic meaning in classical logic and in human languages, and that children do not learn what disjunction means from experience; rather, this knowledge is innately specified.
Abstract
Every normal child acquires a language in just a few years. By four or five, children are effectively adults in their abilities to understand novel sentences, to discern entailment relations, and to assess the truth or falsity of endlessly many statements presented to them in conversational contexts. There are two main approaches to explain this remarkable acquisition scenario: one emphasizes the contribution of innate knowledge, and one emphasizes the availability of relevant cues in children’s experience. Semantic knowledge is a good testing ground for adjudicating between these alternative approaches, because evidence for principles of interpretation appears to be thin at best. The main focus of this chapter is on children’s interpretation of disjunction (e.g., English or). In classical logic, disjunction has truth conditions corresponding to inclusive-or. It is evident from cross- linguistic research that human languages assign the inclusive-or interpretation to disjunction, and it is evident from recent experimental research that this is children’s initial interpretation, despite the absence of decisive evidence in children’s experience. This invites two conclusions: that disjunction has the same basic meaning in classical logic and in human languages, and that children do not learn what disjunction means from experience; rather, this knowledge is innately specified.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- 1. Semantic types across languages 1
- 2. Count/mass distinctions across languages 29
- 3. Tense and aspect: Time across languages 57
- 4. The expression of space across languages 92
- 5. Theories of meaning change: An overview 113
- 6. Cognitive approaches to diachronic semantics 147
- 7. Grammaticalization and semantic reanalysis 177
- 8. Meaning in psycholinguistics 210
- 9. Meaning in first language acquisition 237
- 10. Meaning in second language acquisition 274
- 11. Conceptual knowledge, categorization, and meaning 303
- 12. Space in semantics and cognition 341
- 13. Semantic research in computational linguistics 366
- 14. Semantics in corpus linguistics 409
- 15. Semantics in computational lexicons 444
- 16. Web semantics 482
- 17. Semantic issues in machine translation 499
- Index 536
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- 1. Semantic types across languages 1
- 2. Count/mass distinctions across languages 29
- 3. Tense and aspect: Time across languages 57
- 4. The expression of space across languages 92
- 5. Theories of meaning change: An overview 113
- 6. Cognitive approaches to diachronic semantics 147
- 7. Grammaticalization and semantic reanalysis 177
- 8. Meaning in psycholinguistics 210
- 9. Meaning in first language acquisition 237
- 10. Meaning in second language acquisition 274
- 11. Conceptual knowledge, categorization, and meaning 303
- 12. Space in semantics and cognition 341
- 13. Semantic research in computational linguistics 366
- 14. Semantics in corpus linguistics 409
- 15. Semantics in computational lexicons 444
- 16. Web semantics 482
- 17. Semantic issues in machine translation 499
- Index 536
