This week’s reading titled Learning to coin agent and instrument nouns by Clark and Hecht
talks about the process that children go through for acquiring the suffix –er.
Both agent (people) and instrument (object) nouns are taken into account for
explaining this process.
One of the things I found most surprising is how the course
of suffix acquisition in young children mirrors the more general process of
knowledge acquisition in individuals. Perhaps the very specific, technical steps
of suffix learning don’t perfectly match one-to-one with the parts of the
knowledge-acquisition process; however, I believe the similarities are still
worth pointing out. I will illustrate this with an example – the process of
learning what an atom is.
Suppose we want to learn what an atom is. First of all, when
reading about the atom, we probably look at the diagram and learn all about the
different parts that make it up. Perhaps we’re told that, if an atom were a
football field, its nucleus would be the size of an apple. We picture this
analogy by delving into our mind, pulling out our understanding of what is
already familiar to us – that is, what a football field and an apple are – and
assembling a mental picture that puts everything into perspective. Children
start the suffix acquisition process in a similar way – they start coming up
with compounds. They search into their minds, pull out the words they are most
familiar with, and put them together to transmit the message they want to get
across. This results in real-world use of words like give-man or open-thing,
instead of giver or opener, respectively.
Going back to the atom, once we have the initial
understanding of what an atom is, we start using this new concept to answer
questions, describe patterns, etc. – and we do this sometimes erroneously but
sometimes precisely. In the same way, children start to use the suffix –er,
again, sometimes erroneously and sometimes precisely.
After the concept of the atom is mastered through feedback
and many attempts, we can use it to learn new knowledge. For example, in order
to learn what an element is, we will pull out our understanding of an atom, and
comprehend that an element is made up only of atoms. Similarly with the suffix
process, after numerous attempts, children start using -er correctly to come up
with new words that weren’t in their vocabulary before. Words such as traveler or baker are thus formed.
Overall, I think this comparison is interesting because it
suggests that looking at word formation and properties can perhaps reveal much
more beyond the study of linguistics. I wonder in what ways has the study of
linguistics improved understanding in other, perhaps unrelated fields.
Gerardo, I really liked your atom analogy. I think that we could even expand that analogy to refer to language acquisition as any scientific or mathematical concept we learn and use to built on. It is in this way that language becomes our first trial-and-error field in which the more experience we have with each concept, the better we can utilize such concept to understand further concepts that are more complex. I also think that it would be interesting to see the effect of language devices in other fields and with their own jargon. You made me think about the process and transitions one goes through to acquire the field's jargon and how such process is affected by our past experience and devices already learned.
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