Abstract
Learning the meaning of a new word is an inductive process. The child must infer its meaning from the uses he hears others make of the word and from their reactions to his uses. A major goal for the theorist trying to understand the process of meaning acquisition, like that for the theorist trying to understand any case of induction, is to specify the constraints on the hypotheses the child can entertain. This point has been stressed in the philosophical literature on induction, especially as relates to theory development, and by Chomsky as relates to language acquisition. Recently, Osherson (1978) and Keil (1979, 1981) have emphasized its relevance to the study of semantic development during childhood.
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© 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Carey, S. (1983). Constraints on the Meanings of Natural Kind Terms. In: Seiler, T.B., Wannenmacher, W. (eds) Concept Development and the Development of Word Meaning. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 12. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69000-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69000-6_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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