The Semantic Network: Uncovering the Mechanisms of New Language Integration
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Date
2020-12
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Semantic relations between words (e.g., between drink and soda) are crucial for language fluency. Language is replete with statistical regularities from which people can potentially form these links. We focus on two such regularities: direct co-occurrence and shared co-occurrence. Words that appear together in sentences and express meaningful ideas (e.g., drink-soda) tend to reliably directly co-occur together, and words similar in meaning tend to share patterns of direct co-occurrence across sentences (e.g. soda and milk share co-occurrence with drink). In this study, we investigate which of these regularities children (4-year-olds) and adults can capitalize on to form new semantic links between novel and familiar words. Participants heard sentences in which novel words either directly co-occurred or share co-occurrence with familiar words in a training phase. We then assessed the formation of direct and shared semantic links using an explicit labeling measure. Results suggest that children are sensitive only to direct co-occurrence regularities to form new semantic links, while adults are sensitive to both direct and shared co-occurrence regularities when forming new semantic links. This research is therefore uncovering the development of the mechanisms of semantic organization from mere exposure to language.
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Keywords
lexico-semantic development, co-occurrence regularities, novel word learning