Clark and Hecht readings

               The Clark and Hecht reading discusses how children produce and learn to produce words for meanings that they don’t have a word for. The paper outlines a set of three principles that guide children in this endeavor. The first is the principle of semantic transparency which guides children to use already familiar words when creating new words forms and to match a single word with a single meaning. The second principle is of productivity, which guides children to pick up on “specialized word-formation devices” for particular meanings, like -er.  The final principle is of conventionality, and it guides children to replace whatever form they use to describe a meaning with the conventional form when it is learned. 

               The paper focused on the suffix -er and the different agent and instrument word forms it is used to construct. It discussed how younger children lack the knowledge of this form and how to use it to produce word forms, but how that knowledge is gained later and then mastered at “10 to 12”.   

               I used to work at a camp with kids from a variety of age ranges and have seen examples of the behavior described in the paper.  When I worked the youngest age group, I had a few kids call me and other people performing my job compound word-forms instead of “counselor” on the first day.  In general, correcting them caused them to switch over pretty fast though. 

               The paper mentions how children acquiring German as an L1 begin to create both agent and instrument nouns before the age of 3, which is younger than their English-acquiring counterparts.  Thinking back to our readings near the beginning of the year, could this be taken as evidence that the language that we speak alters our perception of our world or, in this case, our ability to make accurate descriptions earlier. Do you all think that might be the case, or is it just easier to make conventional agent and instrument nouns in German?