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Lexicon Structure and the Disambiguation of Novel Words: Evidence from Bilingual Infants Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Werker, Janet Feldman, 1951-

Abstract

In ambiguous word learning situations, infants can use systematic strategies to determine the referent of a novel word. One such heuristic is disambiguation. By age 16-­18 months, monolinguals infer that a novel noun refers to a novel object rather than a familiar one (Halberda, 2003), while at the same age bilinguals and trilinguals do not reliably show disambiguation (Byers-­Heinlein & Werker, 2009; Houston‐Price, Caloghiris, & Raviglione, 2010). It has been hypothesized that these results reflect a unique aspect of the bilingual lexicon: bilinguals often know many translation equivalents, cross­‐language synonyms such as English dog and Mandarin gǒu. We studied the role of vocabulary knowledge in the development of disambiguation by relating 17­‐18 month­‐old English‐Chinese bilingual infants’ performance on a disambiguation task to the percentage of translation equivalents in their comprehension vocabularies. Those bilingual infants who understood translation equivalents for more than half the words in their vocabularies did not show disambiguation, while infants who knew a smaller proportion of translation equivalents showed disambiguation just as same-­aged monolinguals do. These results demonstrate that the structure of the developing lexicon plays a key role in infants’ use of disambiguation.

Item Metadata

Title
Lexicon Structure and the Disambiguation of Novel Words: Evidence from Bilingual Infants
Creator
Byers-Heinlein, Krista; Werker, Janet Feldman, 1951-
Publisher
Elsevier
Date Issued
2013-09
Description
In ambiguous word learning situations, infants can use systematic strategies to determine the referent of a novel word. One such heuristic is disambiguation. By age 16-­18 months, monolinguals infer that a novel noun refers to a novel object rather than a familiar one (Halberda, 2003), while at the same age bilinguals and trilinguals do not reliably show disambiguation (Byers-­Heinlein & Werker, 2009; Houston‐Price, Caloghiris, & Raviglione, 2010). It has been hypothesized that these results reflect a unique aspect of the bilingual lexicon: bilinguals often know many translation equivalents, cross­‐language synonyms such as English dog and Mandarin gǒu. We studied the role of vocabulary knowledge in the development of disambiguation by relating 17­‐18 month­‐old English‐Chinese bilingual infants’ performance on a disambiguation task to the percentage of translation equivalents in their comprehension vocabularies. Those bilingual infants who understood translation equivalents for more than half the words in their vocabularies did not show disambiguation, while infants who knew a smaller proportion of translation equivalents showed disambiguation just as same-­aged monolinguals do. These results demonstrate that the structure of the developing lexicon plays a key role in infants’ use of disambiguation.
Subject
Infant development; Mutual exclusivity; Disambiguation; Bilingualism; Word learning
Genre
Article; Postprint
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2019-12-24
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0387326
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/72994
Affiliation
Arts, Faculty of; Non UBC; Psychology, Department of
Citation
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J.F. (2013). Lexicon Structure and the Disambiguation of Novel Words: Evidence from Bilingual Infants. Cognition, 128(3), 407-416.
Publisher DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2013.05.010
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International