Children's understanding of homonyms.
Previous tasks have shown that preschool and early elementary schoolchildren typically have trouble learning and identifying homonyms (Peters & Zaidel, 1980; Mazzocco, 1989). It is possible that a one-to-one mapping assumption or a lack of metalinguistic skills makes homonym learning and identification particularly difficult. In three experiments we examined a total of 60 three-year-olds' ability to pick out homonym pairs, and the extent to which they realize that although homonyms share a common label, they represent two different categories. In Experiment 1 subjects were asked to identify homonym pairs. In Experiment 2, homonym pairs and non-homonym pairs were labelled, then children were asked whether the pairs had the same name, and whether they were the same kind of thing. In Experiment 3 children were shown one-half of each of several homonym and non-homonym pairs, then asked to identify a name match and a category match from a set of pictures. From these experiments we conclude that children have the metalinguistic skills necessary to identify homonym pairs; moreover, they realized that homonyms represent two different categories. Finally, if children have a one-to-one mapping assumption, it is not strong enough to prevent them from acquiring homonyms.
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Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
Gelman
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D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary