Language Acquisition - Meaning

Meaning

Children learn, on average, 10 to 15 new word meanings each day, but only one of these words can be accounted for by direct instruction. The other nine to 14 word meanings need to be picked up in some other way. It has been proposed that children acquire these meanings with the use of processes modeled by latent semantic analysis; that is, when they meet an unfamiliar word, children can use information in its context to correctly guess its rough area of meaning.

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Famous quotes containing the word meaning:

    The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
    Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965)

    But, most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    He is the essence that inquires.
    He is the axis of the star;
    He is the sparkle of the spar;
    He is the heart of every creature;
    He is the meaning of each feature;
    And his mind is the sky,
    Than all it holds more deep, more high.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)