PSY315H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Text Segmentation, Word Processor, Takers
Document Summary
Mental lexicon: knowledge of words that adults have. It stand for something without being part of that something. The relation between words and what they stand for is arbitrary. Reference: a word to be sued consistently in combination with a particular object is not sufficient to qualify that word use as referential. First words may be harder to distinguish from earlier protowords described in the previous chapter on phonological development. The critical difference is that although protowords are sound sequences that seem to have consistent meaning for the child, the particular sounds of protowords are not derived in any obvious way from the language the child is learning. In contrast, the firs towards are approximations of words in the target language, even if somewhat rough approximations. Like the protowords that preceded them, the first words children use may be tied to particular contexts.
