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Thanks to Mark Schroeder for assistance with scoring data and Dr John Surber for helpful comments on the manuscript.
INTRODUCTION
While engaging in everyday conversations with children, adults provide information about words, sometimes intentionally, but oftentimes without awareness. For example, they produce words in different sentence frames, thereby indicating that different words belong to different lexical categories: in the sentence frame this is an x, x is a count noun, while in the sentence frame this is an x one, x is an adjective. However, knowing that a word is an adjective does not tell a child to which property it refers. Physical characteristics of objects in non-linguistic contexts are one obvious source of information, but not all adjectives label perceptual attributes. Beyond word class, how much information do adults provide about adjective meanings while conversing with children?
Partial word knowledge
Information in the input is potentially relevant to lexical acquisition, even when children do not learn the meaning of an adjective immediately. Several theories of word meaning emphasize the importance of relationships among words and their linguistic contexts (e.g. Jones & Mewhort, 2007; Landauer & DuMais, 1997; Lund & Burgess, 1996). Words occurring in similar contexts in large samples of language are represented more closely in semantic space, implying that complete word knowledge requires exposure to many different contexts. In fact, there is considerable evidence that speakers hold partial knowledge of many words. Adults who deny knowing a word can sometimes pick out a sentence that uses it correctly if alternative sentences violate general semantic constraints, but not if there are more specific violations. For example, Shore & Kempe (1999) noted that individuals who recognize that dowager is a word, but who cannot define its meaning or use it in a sentence, can still recognize that (1a) contains a correct use of the word, while (1b) does not. On the other hand, when they are given a choice between sentences (1a) and (1c), they are unable to decide which is correct.
(1a)
The dowager has her dead husband to thank for her great wealth.
(1b)
The circus performer juggled a dowager and two bowling pins.
(1c)
The dowager and her husband recently celebrated their fiftieth...