Lexical change comes from various places.
From 18th century onwards, lexical change came from many avenues:
Technology - inventions are single biggest source of lexical change, whilst most have Latinate/Greek roots - some are created in different ways.
Travel - as travel has become easier - so to have our ways of picking up words. In Victorian times, Indian words came into our lexis from the Empire e.g. pyjamas, verandah, etc.
We now have more words from Eastern cultures e.g. Tsunami, kamikaze, karaoke.
In 20th Century lexical change has come from influence of the US as a superpower - many Americanisms has come into our language.
Showing posts with label Words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Words. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 March 2013
Monday, 28 September 2009
Children Learning Words
* For children, a new word usually refers to a whole object, not part of it or a quality the object possesses.
* This corroborates Katherine Nelsons theory that most of a child's first words are nouns.
* There is some logic to this as most concrete nouns fit into the four categories that Spelke noted: cohesion, continuity, solidity, contact. Basically, children like objects that are clearly defined in shape, that don’t disappear, which are solid, and which don’t have a life of their own (unless they’re animate – animals or people).
* Children also apply a couple of other strategies: the type assumption and the basic level assumption.
* The type assumption prevents children from underextending most new words. In other words, if they are told that the new thing they have seen is a dog, they don’t assume that only that particular dog is a dog and every other dog isn’t.
* The basic level assumption prevents the child from overextending meanings too far. So, once a child has recognised what the noun ‘dog’ refers to, they seem to understand that it also refers to things with similar properties (appearance, behaviour, size).
* So a dog shouldn’t be a horse, a cat or a meerkat… But it doesn’t always work that way, and the mistakes children make seem to shed some light on the processes they’re using to distinguish these differences.
* This is where network-building comes in, when a child learns about the hierarchical nature of words (E.g Dog - Collie/Labrador)
* This corroborates Katherine Nelsons theory that most of a child's first words are nouns.
* There is some logic to this as most concrete nouns fit into the four categories that Spelke noted: cohesion, continuity, solidity, contact. Basically, children like objects that are clearly defined in shape, that don’t disappear, which are solid, and which don’t have a life of their own (unless they’re animate – animals or people).
* Children also apply a couple of other strategies: the type assumption and the basic level assumption.
* The type assumption prevents children from underextending most new words. In other words, if they are told that the new thing they have seen is a dog, they don’t assume that only that particular dog is a dog and every other dog isn’t.
* The basic level assumption prevents the child from overextending meanings too far. So, once a child has recognised what the noun ‘dog’ refers to, they seem to understand that it also refers to things with similar properties (appearance, behaviour, size).
* So a dog shouldn’t be a horse, a cat or a meerkat… But it doesn’t always work that way, and the mistakes children make seem to shed some light on the processes they’re using to distinguish these differences.
* This is where network-building comes in, when a child learns about the hierarchical nature of words (E.g Dog - Collie/Labrador)
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