Learning to map words onto their referents is difficult, because there are multiple possibilities for forming these mappings. Cross-situational learning studies have shown that word-object mappings can be learned across multiple situations, as can verbs when presented in a syntactic context. However, these previous studies have presented either nouns or verbs in ambiguous contexts and thus bypass much of the complexity of multiple grammatical categories in speech. We show that noun word learning in adults is robust when objects are moving, (...) and that verbs can also be learned from similar scenes without additional syntactic information. Furthermore, we show that both nouns and verbs can be acquired simultaneously, thus resolving category-level as well as individual word-level ambiguity. However, nouns were learned more quickly than verbs, and we discuss this in light of previous studies investigating the noun advantage in word learning. (shrink)

Why are some words easier to learn than others? And what enables the eventual learning of the more difficult words? These questions were addressed for nouns using a paradigm in which adults were exposed to naturalistic maternal input that was manipulated to simulate access to several different information sources, both alone and in combination: observation of the extralinguistic contexts in which the target word was used, the words that co‐occurred with the target word, and the target word's syntactic context. Words (...) that were not accurately identified from observation alone were both abstract (e.g., music) and concrete (e.g., tail). Whether a noun could be learned from observation depended on whether it labeled a basic‐level object category (BLOC). However, the difference between BLOC labels and non‐BLOC labels was eliminated when observation was supplemented with linguistic context. Thus, although BLOC labels can be learned from observation alone, non‐BLOC labels require richer linguistic context. These findings support a model of vocabulary growth in which an important role is played by changes in the information to which learners have access. (shrink)

Is displacement possible without language? This question was addressed in a recent work by Liszkowski and colleagues . The authors carried out an experiment to demonstrate that 12-month-old prelinguistic infants can communicate about absent entities by using pointing gestures, while chimpanzees cannot. The main hypothesis of their study is that displacement does not depend on language but is, however, exclusively human and instead depends on species-specific social-cognitive human skills. Against this hypothesis, we will argue that a symbolic representation is needed (...) to intentionally communicate absence and that this symbolic representation is tied to language. Moreover, data on the expression of displacement in home-sign systems will be taken into consideration. In light of this data, and in opposition to Liszkowski et al.'s claim, this paper will argue that displacement gestures are not foundational to language. Instead, they predate and predict .. (shrink)