Knowledge Representation Patterns in Child Language Acquisition
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Abstract
As children strive to represent knowledge through words, one of their biggest challenges is that of lexical differentiation. Lexical differentiation seeks to shape aiid reshape the mapping of word meanings for effective knowledge representation. The issue of how children lexicalise their conceptual distinctions has been of interest to linguists and psychologists (Clark, 1973, Dronii, 19S7, Anglin, 1993, etc.) Debates in this direction seek to explain whether children first generate noil-linguistic concepts and only then label these concepts with Words; whether new words are initially associated with individual referents and only later generalised across several instances that comprise a concept in adult language; or whether meanings of new words become more and more generalised with time, or more and more specific. In spite of these varying standpoints, there appears to be a consensus that early speech is characterised by phenomena like regular extensions, under-extensions, overexterisioiiSi chid unclassified extensions (Dromi, 19S7). As children grow and their knowledge increase Si their belief systems also change, and they undergo linguistic tefiiements/niodif cations. In this work, we tried to find out whether sitcii refinements/modifications follow a fixed pattern. This was done by observing children as they grappled with the acquisition of English language, Using the observation techniquei we carried out a longitudinal study oil two children lit tiii elitist neighbourhood (University Quarters, Pyanku, Keffi); Oiir study focused on the lexicO-semantic shifts that take place in the linguistics of child language acquisition, Results obtained Were quite revealing.