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When is a word a word?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Marilyn May Vihman  and
Lorraine McCune
Marilyn May Vihman*
Affiliation:
Southeastern Louisiana University
Lorraine McCune
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
*
Department of Special Education, Southeastern Louisiana University, P.O. Box 879, Hammond, LA 70402, USA.
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Abstract

Although adult-based words co-occur in the period of transition to speech with a variety of non-word vocalizations, little attention has been given to the formidable problem of identifying these earliest words. This paper specifies explicit, maximally ‘inclusive’ identification procedures, with criteria based on both phonetic and contextual parameters. A formal system for evaluating phonetic match is suggested, as well as a set of child-derived functional categories reflecting use in context. Analysis of word use across two samples of 10 children each, followed from 0;9 to 1;4, provides evidence to suggest that context-bound words can be ‘trained’ by focusing on eliciting language, but that the timing of context-flexible word use remains independent of such training.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , October 1994 , pp. 517 - 542
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8209695 and 85 20048). We would like to thank Fumiko Arao (Stanford University), Catherine Durand (C.N.R.S., Paris), and Liselotte Roug-Hellichius and Ingrid Landberg (Institute of Linguistics, Stockholm University) for their help in applying our criteria to crosslinguistic data; we also thank Charles A. Ferguson for his thoughtful and constructive comments.

References

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