{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82624"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82624","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Soft Constraints on Mapping Form to Meaning in Lexical Acquisition","abstract":"Research in diachronic Linguistics has shown that homonyms are often avoided in language. This study proposes that this trend is a result of general cognitive principles at work during language acquisition. In support of this proposition, the first two experiments present findings demonstrating that children disprefer learning a different, unrelated meaning for a known word when that word is used in a linguistic context that fails to bias strongly for a new meaning. Children, however, appear to have much less difficulty in learning homonyms when the syntactic context clearly indicates that a new meaning is required. A third experiment investigates the implications of the proposal for polysemy. This final experiment shows that children are likely to interpret an accoustically ambiguous stimulus as a known word only if the known word is related to the context in which they hear the word. Otherwise, children prefer a novel word over an unrelated known word (i.e., a homonym).","abstract_html":"Research in diachronic Linguistics has shown that homonyms are often avoided in language. This study proposes that this trend is a result of general cognitive principles at work during language acquisition. In support of this proposition, the first two experiments present findings demonstrating that children disprefer learning a different, unrelated meaning for a known word when that word is used in a linguistic context that fails to bias strongly for a new meaning. Children, however, appear to have much less difficulty in learning homonyms when the syntactic context clearly indicates that a new meaning is required. A third experiment investigates the implications of the proposal for polysemy. This final experiment shows that children are likely to interpret an accoustically ambiguous stimulus as a known word only if the known word is related to the context in which they hear the word. Otherwise, children prefer a novel word over an unrelated known word (i.e., a homonym).","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Casenhiser, Devin Mark"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Linguistics","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Goldberg, Adele E."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2015,"date_issued":"2015-09-25T20:50:43Z","date_published":"2015-09-25T20:50:43Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:18Z","subjects":["Psychology, Developmental"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["(MiAaPQ)AAI3130890"],"render_values":[{"text":"(MiAaPQ)AAI3130890","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/82624","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Goldberg, Adele E."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Casenhiser, Devin Mark"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2015-09-25T20:50:43Z","10000-01-01","2004"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Linguistics"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Psychology, Developmental"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/82624","(MiAaPQ)AAI3130890"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Research in diachronic Linguistics has shown that homonyms are often avoided in language. This study proposes that this trend is a result of general cognitive principles at work during language acquisition. In support of this proposition, the first two experiments present findings demonstrating that children disprefer learning a different, unrelated meaning for a known word when that word is used in a linguistic context that fails to bias strongly for a new meaning. Children, however, appear to have much less difficulty in learning homonyms when the syntactic context clearly indicates that a new meaning is required. A third experiment investigates the implications of the proposal for polysemy. This final experiment shows that children are likely to interpret an accoustically ambiguous stimulus as a known word only if the known word is related to the context in which they hear the word. Otherwise, children prefer a novel word over an unrelated known word (i.e., a homonym).","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T20:50:43Z (GMT). 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This study proposes that this trend is a result of general cognitive principles at work during language acquisition. In support of this proposition, the first two experiments present findings demonstrating that children disprefer learning a different, unrelated meaning for a known word when that word is used in a linguistic context that fails to bias strongly for a new meaning. Children, however, appear to have much less difficulty in learning homonyms when the syntactic context clearly indicates that a new meaning is required. A third experiment investigates the implications of the proposal for polysemy. This final experiment shows that children are likely to interpret an accoustically ambiguous stimulus as a known word only if the known word is related to the context in which they hear the word. Otherwise, children prefer a novel word over an unrelated known word (i.e., a homonym).","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T20:50:43Z (GMT). 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