Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings

Abstract The present study proposes that children's apparent comprehension of certain words is at first dependent on a combination of their linguistic hypotheses about a word's meaning and certain non-linguistic strategies. Children aged 1;6-5;0 were given instructions requiring comprehension of the locative terms in , on and under . The results showed that children go through three stages: At first, they consistently use certain non-linguistic strategies that can be characterized by two ordered rules; next, they apply these rules to only one or two of the locative instructions; and finally, they exhibit full semantic knowledge of the three word meanings. Because of these non-linguistic strategies, the younger children always appear to understand in correctly, sometimes appear to understand on and never understand under . It is argued, nevertheless, that these non-linguistic strategies determine the order of acquisition of the three locative terms.

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