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How children learn the meanings of words

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How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind.

According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways.

This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Learning, Development, And Conceptual Change

Call Number

400 BLO h

Publisher

Cambridge, Mass. ; : The MIT Press., 2000

Collation

1 online resource (xii, 300 pages) : illustrations.

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262268783

Classification

400

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Semantics.
Cognition in children.
Language acquisition.

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Paul Bloom

Other Information

Cataloger

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Source

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Validator

maya

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3577.001.0001

Journal Volume

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Journal Issue

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Subtitle

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