Word forms and balances

In Clark, we learn how children – and indeed adults – can systematically expand their vocabulary by applying so called "word-forms" to create new works for new concepts. For example, a child might understand the "-er" word form, applied to a verb, as describing someone who does something, and therefore derive the word "drinker" for someone who drinks.

Clark pairs down this argument by providing three principles of how such words, identifiers, are created in the mind. The first principle says that a child will use words that are familiar to him or her, and choose a unique such word for each identifier. Consider the example of "drinker." If a (precocious) child knew the word "imbibe," it would still be likely that the child would use "drinker," a more common and familiar word. Furthermore, the child will most likely not derive "imbiber," thus maintaining a sort of one-to-one mapping within word forms.

The second and third principles can almost be seen as balances to both the first principle and to each other. The second principle states: where children are limited by common, known vocabulary, they compensate for this limitation by always being primed to learn and generalize new word forms from only a few examples. However, according to the third principle, children will nonetheless prefer models for word-forms that are familiar.