Learning language

This week’s reading explores the details of language acquisition in children, focusing specifically on how the productive control over the suffix -er in coining agent and instrument nouns in English.

What I thought to be most interesting in the reading was semantic transparency. I think that this phase is something that occurs for many years and is something that children, maybe even early teens, must learn through experience. To me, semantic transparency is the factor that is most commonly seen through kids. For example, I always find myself asking, “what’s that word that means this?” and I will use compound words to explain what word I am trying to find. I think that children can quickly and effectively learn how to advance with their vocabulary and use conventional adult words through experience, asking questions, and immersing themselves in language filled environments (i.e. school, home).

Although Clark and Hecht talk more about the English language, from personal experience, I believe that semantic transparency and conventionality is evident in other languages. Growing up speaking Cantonese, there were always times where I would use multiple compound words to try and explain one word and my relatives would laugh (not in an insulting way) at how hard and complex I was making a sentence; however, they knew the difficulty in learning and knowing new words so they would say, “do you mean this word?” and correct/teach me the conventional adult word that I was trying to say. This again proves that children acquire language not through explicit teaching, but through reinforcement and exposure to new words.