The Psychology of Word Meanings

The Psychology of Word Meanings PDF

Author: Paula J. Schwanenflugel

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1134755651

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume contains perspectives from a collection of cognitive scientists on the psychological, philosophical, and educational issues surrounding the meanings of words and how these meanings are learned and accessed. It features chapters covering the nature and structure of word meaning, how new word meanings are acquired in childhood and later on in life, and how research in word processing may tell us something about the way in which word meanings are represented and how they relate to the language processor.

The Psychology of Word Meanings

The Psychology of Word Meanings PDF

Author: Paula Schwanenflugel

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume contains perspectives from a collection of cognitive scientists on the psychological, philosophical, and educational issues surrounding the meanings of words and how these meanings are learned and accessed. It features chapters covering the nature and structure of word meaning, how new word meanings are acquired in childhood and later on in life, and how research in word processing may tell us something about the way in which word meanings are represented and how they relate to the language processor.

How Children Learn the Meanings of Words

How Children Learn the Meanings of Words PDF

Author: Paul Bloom

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2002-01-25

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780262523295

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

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.

The Psychology of Word Meanings

The Psychology of Word Meanings PDF

Author: Paula J. Schwanenflugel

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1134755589

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume contains perspectives from a collection of cognitive scientists on the psychological, philosophical, and educational issues surrounding the meanings of words and how these meanings are learned and accessed. It features chapters covering the nature and structure of word meaning, how new word meanings are acquired in childhood and later on in life, and how research in word processing may tell us something about the way in which word meanings are represented and how they relate to the language processor.

Concept Development and the Development of Word Meaning

Concept Development and the Development of Word Meaning PDF

Author: T. B. Seiler

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 3642690009

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume owes its existance to many different sources and influ ences. It is based on a meeting that took place from April 30 to May 2, 1982 at the University of Technology in Darmstadt. The idea for that meeting came while we were elaborating a research program on concept development and the development of word meaning; we were inspired by Werner Deutsch of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and by the Volkswagen Foundation in Hannover (Federal Republic of Germany) to organize an international conference on the same topic. We set out to invite a long list of colleagues, and we only regret that not all of them were able to attend. This volume should not be viewed as the proceedings of that conference. On the one hand, it does not include all of the papers presented there, and on the other hand, some of our colleagues who were unable to attend were nevertheless willing to write contributions. Furthermore, some who did pre sent papers at the conference revised and reformulated them or even submitted completely new ones for this book. We feel, however, that in the end we have arranged a valuable collection of work in the theory and research of a field that has occupied not only psychologists and linguists, but also philosophers, anthropologists, and many others for a long time.

Words and the Mind

Words and the Mind PDF

Author: Barbara Malt

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-03-01

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0190295120

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience. However, as we learn more about the semantics of various languages, we are faced with an interesting problem. Different languages seem to be telling us different stories about the mind. For example, important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others. What are we to make of these cross-linguistic differences? How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development? The kinds of mapping principles, structures, and processes that link language and non-linguistic knowledge must accommodate not just one language but the rich diversity that has been uncovered. The integration of knowledge and methodologies necessary for real progress in answering these questions has happened only recently, as experimental approaches have been applied to the cross-linguistic study of word meaning. In Words and the Mind, Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff present evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out this empirical work on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories. By bringing them together, Malt and Wolff highlight some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Their results provide some answers to these questions and new perspectives on the issues surrounding them.

Understanding Word and Sentence

Understanding Word and Sentence PDF

Author: G.B. Simpson

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 1991-01-14

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 9780080867311

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Research concerning structure and processing in the mental lexicon has achieved central prominence within cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. Historically, however, much of the research on the lexicon focussed not on its role in language comprehension, but as a medium for studying semantic memory. This picture has changed in recent years, with much more research examining the role of lexical processes and output in language comprehension. Gathered together in this volume is the work of some of those researchers who are responsible for this shift of emphasis. Chapters deal with the role of sentence contexts in word recognition, processes involved in the activation and enhancement of lexical information, and the interaction of lexical and syntactic information in sentence processing. A wide range of theoretical and empirical issues relating to language understanding are discussed.

The Acquisition of Word Meanings

The Acquisition of Word Meanings PDF

Author: Heinz Werner

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-10-27

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 9781527781023

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Excerpt from The Acquisition of Word Meanings: A Developmental Study The child acquires the meaning of words principally in two ways. One is by explicit reference either verbal or Objective; he learns to understand verbal symbols through the adult's direct naming of Objects or through verbal definition. The second way is through implicit or contextual reference; the meaning of a word is grasped in the course of conversation, i.e., it is inferred from the cues Of the verbal context. It is probably true that during the early years the child learns the meaning of verbal symbols predominantly in concrete situations: through handling of objects in the presence of adults, direct pointing, naming, and the like. As the child grows Older learning of words occurs more and more through verbal contexts, and it is here that the observa tion Of Ogden and Richards concerning the acquisition of a vocabulary particularly applies: It is rare for words to be formed into contexts with non-symbolic experience directly, for as a rule they are learnt only through other words. We early begin to use language in order to learn language. (14, pp. 213i). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count PDF

Author: James W. Pennebaker

Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc Incorporated

Published: 1999-04-01

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781563212031

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Language, whether spoken or written, is an important window into people's emotional and cognitive worlds. Text analysis of these narratives, focusing on specific words or classes of words, has been used in numerous research studies including studies of emotional, cognitive, structural, and process components of individuals' verbal and written language. It was in this research context that the LIWC program was developed. The program analyzes text files on a word-by-word basis, calculating percentage words that match each of several language dimensions. Its output is a text file that can be opened in any of a variety of applications, including word processors and spreadsheet programs. The program has 68 pre-set dimensions (output variables) including linguistic dimensions, word categories tapping psychological constructs, and personal concern categories, and can accommodate user-defined dimensions as well. Easy to install and use, this software offers researchers in social, personality, clinical, and applied psychology a valuable tool for quantifying the rich but often slippery data provided in the form of personal narratives. The software comes complete on one 31/2 diskette and runs on any Windows-based computer.