CHILDREN’S ACQUISITION OF WORD

Samir Karmakar
Abstract:
Basic concern of this article is to explore the theoretical complicacies related with the emergence of
the subjective meaning system. The emergence of subjective meaning system is a unique case, in
the sense that the child is not sharing a set of meanings. Therefore the entire task of acquisition is
not just to set up the sound-meaning correspondence but primarily to cut the reality into pieces that
means I am worried about the emergence of conceptual boundaries, since the hidden assumption
is that the experience is first represented holistically. Moreover the emergence of compositionality,
in case of acquiring the first lexicon needs some special attention; because the lexicon internal
compositionality can be studied from two distinct levels: conceptual and categorial. The issues of
compositionality vary depending on the nature of the level. I have also argued in this paper that the
nature of boundaries is contingent, probable and interactive, whereas the syntagmatic-
paradigmatic abilities can be characterized as determinative and conservative. But how? Let us
see.
Child’s acquisition of word is a complex phenomenon, in the sense that it is
related with the ontological development. Unlike syntax, where in most of the cases,
studies are mainly related with the issues like compositionality, language evolution,
emergence of grammar etc. – the word acquisition process peculiarly related with the
basic cognitive capacities, namely, syntagmatic and paradigmatic.
Word acquisition is not a mechanical process to explore the sound-meaning
mapping, but a complex way to conceptualize the world around us. Talking about the
world may require a little bit clarification, in this early stage of our discussion.
‘Social vs. physical’ or ‘socio-physical’?
World is of two types – social and physical. Previously it has been thought that
the social world is governed by contingencies, probabilities and interactions. On the
other hand side, physical world is governed by the determinant laws of invariance and
conservation. From the first reading of the previous few lines, it seems as if in between
these two worlds there exist unbridgeable differences. Though in reality it is that very
grey area of overlapping1 where does the human being live. Therefore, to achieve the
greater degree of explanatory adequacy, one can transfuse the notion of the social world
and as well as also the physical world, into a single whole; because social world embeds
the physical world and the physical world embeds the social relation. If so then a theory
of word acquisition is neither about the facts related with the contingencies, probabilities
and interactions, nor about the determinant laws of invariance and conservation, but
about both.

1
One major debate in case of developmental psychology is family resemblance as against the definition of
levels of natural categorization. The school which proposes the concept of family resemblance advocates
that concepts have fuzzy boundaries, whereas the other prefers the strictly defined notion of logical
boundaries. Instead of considering fuzziness as a negative point, it has been proposed that fuzzy boundaries
are quite helpful in case of explaining child’s tendency towards over-generalization and under-
generalization. And the solution is quite simple and interesting – child chooses the majjhim panthaa (the
doctrine of middle path). The first lexicon of child neither consists the superordinate terms (ex. furniture)
nor the subordinate (ex. rocking chair), but the basic terms (ex. chair).

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 But why should an article on children’s word acquisition require an understanding
of the world? – Because it is not possible to discuss the word meaning in a static de-
contextualized situation, since the notion of ‘language’ itself is synonymous to the word
‘social’.2 And of course, if I am not making any ambitious remark, all will agree with me
on the fact that nature and status of an element in a social system depends on the meaning
it has in that system. More precisely representation of the event varies from one culture to
another culture in a great extant. In this point of our discussion we will make few more
assumptions in favour of our hypothesis.
• World is the sum total of events.
• Event is the sequential arrangement of the scenes.
• Scene is a state of affair.
• Sequence is made up of two effects3: temporal and
causal.
• Prior to the language learning, a child acquire the
knowledge of event representation.
• Knowledge of the particular is always an
approximation, since it is not possible to dissociate
the particular from its surroundings, which are
temporally and / or causally constrained. Hence the
particular should be situated and / or grounded,
within the event, to achieve the greater degree of
approximation.
Once we understand all these basic assumptions of our theoretical approach, it
will become quite clear, why in a controlled laboratory environment, it is not possible to
develop a full fledged theory of word acquisition; still whatever success the simulation
based experiments have earned is quite persuasive one. So in rest of our article we will
see what kind of consensus can be built up.
Once the relation between social and physical world is fixed up, it becomes quite
necessary to explore what we actually mean when we talk about word and its meaning.
Subjective vs. shared:
The meaning space is a dynamic complex continuum of two interwoven layers,
that is, subjective and shared.4 What kind of research questions can be posed depends on
the nature of these layers. Corresponding to each layer of meaning, we have a specific

2
Obviously one may raise a question in support of natural sciences, where people used to study the natural
objects in a highly abstract and idealized situation, in the sense that what ever objective truth one can talk
about is remain invariable across the cultures. I am not contradicting their view points. I just want to argue
that understanding of invariant forms of objective truths requires highly analyzed and structured knowledge
system and at the same time the higher degree of cognitive ability, which can only be acquired in latter
phase of development. So this type of meta-linguistic ability is not the concern of this paper.
3
I am little bit confused here. Should I consider both the notions of temporality and causality as two
distinct concepts of same importance and status or should I argue that “perception of temporal sequence is
elementary to perception causality”?
4
Basically there is also a third layer, proposed by Putnam as third world of reality, namely, objective
meaning system. Objective meaning is the cultural repository, which includes mathematics, logic, literature
and history. Objective meaning system is out of the scope of this paper.

2
meaning system, which ascribes meaning on the words in a particular context; because
the hidden assumption is that the speaker imposes meaning on the words.
The subjective meaning system is a complex of interactive component systems.
The basic tasks of this interactive component system are to (a) express one’s own
intuitions and (b) interpret the intensions of the others. This complex system includes the
following components-
• Perceptual system
• Memory system
• Script system5
• Conceptual system
• Semantic system
Now the assumption is that for each and every utterance, embedded within a
6
context , each speaker and hearer establishes a subjective meaning through their
respective interpretive meaning system. If so then one can put the following research
questions-
• How does an individual develop his / her subjective
meaning system?
• How does the subjective meaning emerge out?
• What amount of optimality one can expect for
subjective meaning system, to express and interpret
intentions in a given context?
• Is there any biological co-relates respective to this
system?
Each and every individual is embedded within a social environment. Language
plays a crucial role in case of socialization of a child. Since we are talking about a social
individual and as well as the instrumentality of the language, it becomes quite evident to
show how child’s subjective meaning system correspond to those of the cultural group.
Most of the studies, inquiring the emergence of the shared meaning system, basically
worried about the following points:
• Convergence
• Transmission of information from one generation to
another
Like our previous dichotomy of social~physical, though it seems that there exist a
rigid boundary between these two meaning systems, basically they are mutually
inclusive. Until and unless a child is situated and / or grounded in an interactive social
network it is quite impossible to develop a subjective and as well as shared meaning
system.
In this article our main intension is to talk about the emergence of subjective
meaning system. We have already argued that both the subjective meaning system and
shared meaning system are mutually inclusive. Now we will see to what degree do they

5
An event representation, specifying a sequence of scenes, related temporally and causally, is known as
script.
6
Here, in this article I have considered context as event representation.

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incorporate each other? - When we are arguing in favour of subjectivity, we are not
talking about a subjective reality as against the shared one, but whatever subjectivity we
are talking about that can only persist and sustain with in a shared continuum.
Three models:
In this point of discussion, we will further narrow down our discussion. Our basic
intension is to talk about the development of the subjective meaning system in case of
acquiring the meaning of the first lexicon. Acquisition of the meanings of first lexicon
can be studied under three theoretical proposals.
Referential – Perceptual (R-P) theories:
According to these theories, the essential problem for the child is to learn what the
word refers to in the real world that is to form a word-object correspondence. Moreover
the belief is that the child has a mental representation of the real world object, which is
meaning, and the task of the child is to explore the word-meaning mapping. Now this
meaning can either be considered as perceptual category or as collection of perceptual
features or as perceptual prototype or as paradigm. There is no need to mention that each
consideration has its own kind of solution to the problem of first lexicon acquisition. But
it is not within the scope of this article to discuss all these matters in detail.
Irrespective of all these debatable issues, one thing is quite clear that where
reference is concerned, children rely on some kind of perceptual representation.
Denotational – Conceptual (D-C) theories:
It proposed that the child’s concept were formed on the basis of experience with
objects in functional situations and that they included information about actions and
reactions of objects in relation to people, especially including the child himself. The
notion of function was initially described as what things do or what can be done with
them.
The basic difference between the R-P model and D-C model is a crucial one. In
R-P models words are specified as extensionally and intensionally. Because word refer
something of the real world through an intermediating notion of mental representation of
the real world object. On the other hand D-C model is primarily intensional.7
Sense-Semantic (S-S) theories:
According to these theories, a child’s acquisition of first lexicon is typically based
on the notion of semantic feature accumulation.
Irrespective of their differences, all these theories have common challenges to talk
about.
• How does a child acquire different concepts?
• How does the concept internal structure emerges
out?
Moreover, all these three theories, if integrated in a single one, provide the
following three insights:

7
Since the notions of ‘time’ and ‘cause’, as a tool of measuring action and reaction, are the construct of
human mind.

4
 • What does a child do in case of learning those
words, which have their references, in the real
world?
• Even if there exist a real world reference, in which
way child point it out by using his pre-linguistic
abilities, related with event representation?
• How the meaning has been presented within the
memory?
Knowledge representation:
It is implicit to different psychological, linguistic and simulation based studies
that experience is first represented holistically. Holistic representations are context
bound. On the other hand side, compositional representations are the direct consequences
of the high cognitive control and highly analyzed event structure8. Therefore
compositionality emerges in later course of development. It has also been found that the
ascription of the displacement property to language is the consequence of
compositionality.

From the above figure9 it becomes quite clear that holistic representation is
context bound because in this early stage of development child’s overall cognitive control
is low and as well as ontological space is less structured. But with the progress of the
time, as the child acquires the mastery over the cognitive ability and at the same time as
the ontological space becomes much more structured, the language become less context
dependent, because of being compositionally rich. If the claim is not the ambitious one,
then the next important question is to decide what do we actually mean by the term
compositionality? How does it emerge? – We will not go for an logically strict definition,
which may be sounded high, rather we will say, by compositionality we mean the

8
Here on the issue of highly analyzed event structure, I want to refer to the emergence of complex
discrimination trees in two embodied agents, as it has been presented by Luc Steels, in his paper ‘Language
as a complex adaptive system’, where he has shown how the meaning repertoire emerges.
9
This figure is slightly modified by me, for the shake of my argument. The original one was proposed by
Bialystok and Ryan, 1985.

5
emergence of boundaries10 (such as word boundaries, syllable boundaries etc. in the
phonological level) within a whole. Like phonological and morphological boundaries, the
conceptual boundaries are not linear. Boundaries in the level of concept formation are
basically constrained by the child’s syntagmatic and paradigmatic abilities. Syntagmatic
ability helps a child to understand the physical world in terms of the logical relations
among objects / parts; whereas the paradigmatic ability helps a child to manipulate the
whole out of the parts.
Therefore, the issues of compositionality in the level of subjective meaning
system are the direct consequences of the following issues:
• The ability to decompose the whole into its parts
• The ability to manipulate the whole out of the parts
First one is basically the issue of partonomy, whereas the second one is related
with the notion of taxonomy, and both of them considered as two important ingredients of
event structure. Basically, all the studies relating to the issues of compositionality is
stemming out of some philosophical issues, related with the concept of event. Before
exploring the further issues related with compositionality here I will like to introduce
some discussion on event, since it is believed that children are sensitive to event even
prior to their linguistic onset. It is their coarse level intuitive understanding which helps
them to acquire the meaning of words.
Conventional boundaries and physical cues:
It has long been realized by the philosophers that everything in this world is in
flux, and as also as in continuity. Instead of being continuous and instantaneous, we seem
to perceive it in a discrete way. Now whenever one speaks about discreteness, it becomes
his / her soul duty to import the notion of boundary. Boundaries are of two kinds,
namely, spatial boundary and temporal boundary. Since all the boundaries are
notoriously mental how does a child know where to draw the line of control? The answer
comes mainly from the Psychologists and Computer scientists. Psychologists proposed
the notion of perceptual cues and computer scientists produced and still producing the
computational model in support of the psychologist’s claim. Basically both of them
introduced two cues depending on which a child can parse the reality. Two cues11 are as
follows:
• Contour discontinuities are important for object
recognition.
• The parts of event are identified purely on the basis
of the perceptual characteristics, such as points of
maximal change in physical feature.
Moreover the issues of compositionality become much more complex one when
one considers both the conceptual and categorial level. Whatever literature I have come
across used both the terms, that is concept and category, loosely. But it is quite important
to make a distinction between these two terms; because the nature of compositionality is
quite different in both these two levels.

10
Conceptual boundaries are purely intensional, others are not.
11
I am not claiming here that these two cues are adequate, explanatorily and descriptively.

6
 Generally, concepts are considered as cognitive wholes with internal structure but
not having any individuated members. Whereas a category combines a number of
different concepts into a larger set or group. In case of a category the members retain
their individual identity, they do not merge with the whole, concept is differentiated out
of its appearance in events, whereas the category synthesized from diverse concepts that
share some aspects of similarity. Therefore the nature of the boundaries in case of
concepts and categories differ from the each other with a great extant. The conceptual
boundaries are syntagmatic in nature, in the sense that the basic concept ‘chair’ is consist
of ‘legs’, ‘handles’, ‘backrest’ etc. Obviously some of them obligatory and others are
optional. Therefore the understanding of the basic concept ‘chair’ is basically an intuitive
idea about the logical relation which holds syntagmatically within the whole of
“chairness”. On the other hand side when we are talking about categorial boundaries, we
are talking about the paradigmatic boundaries.
The discussion of categorial level compositionality requires two further
distinctions namely perceptual categories and conceptual categories. Perceptual
categories are not accessible to conscious manipulation or reorganization into new
categories, they are not straight forward. On the other hand side lexical concepts and
categories are readily accessible to conscious level and can be manipulated, changed,
defined and analyzed by the individual, conceptual categories required a high-order
cognitive ability. As a result categorization at the level of concept takes place later,
whereas perceptual categorization is a pervasive and basic cognitive function even in
infancy.
Since the perceptual categorization is not with the scope of this article, we will
not introduce a detailed discussion on it. What we just want to argue that both the
syntagmatic and paradigmatic abilities, as a pre-linguistic ability, have been acquired at
early infancy, and plays a crucial role in case of acquiring the first lexicon.
In the end:
After a long tedious discussion, I basically don’t know whether I succeed to
convey my understanding about the topic. But before going to bind it up, let’s have a
brief look, what we have proposed above.
• We have introduced the notion of socio-physical
world; because the acquisition of words in
particular and language in general is directly related
with the world. So it is necessary to define the
nature of the reality, which is not only contingent,
probable and interactive but also about the
determinant laws of invariance and conservation.
• The grey area of socio-physical world is not a
negative point in case of acquisition, rather it should
be considered as a positive one, since it explain why
in their early childhood, the child makes over-
generalization and under-generalization kind of
mistake.
• We have argued that the world is the sum total of
the events. Events have objects and order. If we

7
 dissociate order from event, we get state-of-affairs.
Order is all about temporality. Child’s
understanding of event is prior to its linguistic
ability. Our knowledge about particular is an
approximation. Higher degree of approximation can
only be reached within a whole. Hence the
introduction of situated-ness or grounded-ness.
• We are bothering only about the subjective
meaning. Acquisition of word is nothing but the
emergence of compositionality, since in the early
childhood experiences are of holistic nature;
because the world outside is in continuity and in
flux. Compositionality is all about the emergence of
boundaries. Boundaries are notoriously mental.
Acquisition or invention of the boundaries depends
on the physical cues.
• We introduced three models of meaning, namely, R-
P model, D-C model and finally S-S model. All
these models provide us a view about the
acquisition of word meaning.
• Boundaries are of two types – conceptual and
categorial. Both of them associated with two
distinct kinds of mental realities – syntagmatic and
paradigmatic. Both these two abilities are pre-
linguistic and innate.
• So the conclusion is that conceptual boundaries are
contingent, probable and interactive, since they are
relative to the society; whereas the mechanism,
related with the question of emergence of
boundaries, is syntagmatic and paradigmatic, is
determinant, invariant and follows the law of
conservation.
What I haven’t proposed but should be developed in later period of research is to
incorporate the following points, for a fuller account of explanation.
• We have argued in favour of socio-physical reality.
If human civilization is sociologically diverse then
physical world is also of different types, since both
the social and physical world embed each other.
Therefore boundaries are language specific. But
before going to make such an ambitious claim,
cross-cultural verifications are needed.
• We have also talked about the notion of
conservation, which is again related with the notion
of transmission. But within the limited scope of this
article it is not possible to take an account of
conservation. Again conservation is of two types,

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 depending on the nature of transmission, that is,
cultural and genetical.

References:
A. Papers:
1. Steels, L. (2000). Language as a complex adaptive system. Lecture Notes in
Computer Science. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN-VI. Volume
Editor(s): Schoenauer & al, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
2. Steels, L. Synthetic modeling of language origins. Evolution of Communication
journal. Amsterdam.
3. Steels, L & Kaplan, F. Bootstrapping Grounded Word Semantics.
4. Zacks, Jeffery M. & Tversky, Barbara (2001). Event Structure in Perception and
Conception. Psychological Bulletin. Vol. 127. No. 1. Pg. 3-21.
5. Zuidema, W. & Westermann, G. (2003). Evolution of an Optimal Lexicon under
Constraints from Embodiment. Artificial Life. Vol. 9. No. 4. Pg. 387-402.

B. Books:
1. Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. Edward Arnold
(Publishers) Ltd. London.
2. Hamers, Josiane F. & Blanc, Michell H. A. (1989). The social and psychological
foundations of bilinguality. In Bilinguality & Bilingualism. Pg. 67-70. Cambridge
University Press. New York.
3. Nelson, Katherine (1985). MAKING SENSE, The Acquisition of Shared Meaning.
Academic Press, Inc. Florida.
4. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. by Pears,
D.F. & McGuinness, B.F. Routledge & Kegan publication. London.