4 What do words mean?
To segment the speech stream, it would be helpful to know what the words mean, but to know what the words mean it is helpful to have already segmented speech into words! Infants need to solve both tricky problems at the same time. So, a major task in language acquisition is working what other speakers are referring to when they use language.
Activity 2 Can you pass me the modi?
Pretend you are the child in this picture and that you don’t know many words yet. An adult says to you ‘can you pass me the modi?’ How would you know which object to hand over?
Discussion
As you don’t know what ‘modi’ refers to it could mean anything, and of course infants don’t know what any words mean to begin with so they have to work that out for themselves. In theory modi could mean anything from an object, an action, a person, a description, a comment about the weather and so on. How do infants know what words refer to? Infants use a variety of clever cues to work out what words mean (Bloom, 2000).
Children use other words in the sentence that they do know to work out those that they don’t. For example, whether adults say ‘pass me a modi’, ‘pass me the modi’, ‘pass me Modi’, pass me some modi’ will subtly change what the infant thinks the adult is referring to. They pay attention to where others are looking or pointing at the time of speaking to narrow down the range of options. Infants also keep track of what you know, and will hand over a toy they know you know the name of but not one you don’t. And of course if they have already acquired some language they can ask for clarification (e.g. ‘what’s a modi?’).
Throughout this course you will learn about the range of clues children piece together to work out what language means.