The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	How children construct the lexicon: The process of embodiment and semantic reorganization
Language	J
AuthorList	Mutsumi Imai
Affiliation	Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 32 (2), 120-130, 2016
Received
Accepted
Abstract	How do children learn meanings of words and construct a lexicon containing thousands of words? The problem children face has long been characterized as "the problem of induction." Because it is impossible for parents to directly teach meanings of words, children need to infer meanings of words on their own. However, there are virtually impossible to exatract the word from a single exposure to a word-referent association. The second great problem for children concerns building a complex system of the lexicon starting without a blue-print of its final form. How words curve up the world greatly varies across languages. This means that children cannot learn the meaning of a word without knowing the boundaries between its neighboring words. How this is unrealistic for children who have only few words in their vocabulary. This paper explores how young children first anchor their bodily and sensory experiences to words, how they infer meanings of words, how they relate different words and delineate boundaries between neighboring words to weave the vastly complex lexicon adult speakers possess.
Keywords	word meaning representation, embodiment of word meanings, abstractness and arbitrariness of word meanings, symbol grounding