Blog 8

This weeks reading, "Learning to coin agent and instrument nouns" by Clark and Hecht, examined how children learn how to coin and produce agentive and instrumental nouns with the suffix -er. After testing children of various ages on tasks related to either naming objects/agents based on a functional description or giving a functional description based on the name of the object/agent, the researchers found that their results were consistent with a couple principles. Children adhere to the principle of semantic transparency (obvious meaning), giving priority to a) familiar words when constructing new words (compounding) and b) the use of one form for one meaning (reducing ambiguity). Productivity is a principle that allow children to learn more specific word-formation devices to convey particular meanings. Finally, conventionality is the principle to which children adhere when they learn and use adult grammar instead of other possible coinages. Children first use simple compounds, then -er just in either its agentive use or instrumental use, but not both. Finally, they begin to use -er in the conventional manner, applying it to both agentive and instrumental cases.

I remember once playing an online version of Family Feud with one of my friends when I was 10 or so years old. I've never been the best speller, and when I typed the response "docter" to one of the questions. Unfortunately, "doctor" rather than "docter" was the correct answer, and I lost the round. I reasoned that if teachers, gardeners, bakers, and window washers all had professions that ended in -er, doctors likely followed the same pattern. However, I might have noticed that a teacher is one who teaches, a gardener is one who gardens, etc...and that would imply that a "docter" is one who "docts." I might have guessed that doctors, like nurses, are named for the verb they each perform (as are some instruments: drill, whisk). Doctors doctor. They don't doct. But then again, who can blame me for my mistake? For all I knew, doctors might doct rather than doctor. People rarely use doctor as a verb. And other examples, such as projectors which project rather than projector, could further obfuscate when to spell with -er versus -or. I think it would be interesting to ask children what tutors, conductors, ect. do. I wonder if the more common response would be that tutors tutor / conductors conductor or that tutor tute / conductors conduct. And I wonder if children notice classify -er words differently than -or words before they become masterful spellers. If so, such classification could help them to guess spellings more accurately.