The acquisition of new meanings through novel word learning

Introduction

We learn new words almost on a daily basis: as adults, a new element is introduced in our vocabulary every other day. With new words, we also learn about new objects and ideas. In most cases, new words are not simply additional labels to be applied to familiar objects; they connote meanings that are unknown to the speaker of a language.

Challenges of Language Acquisition

However, when we experience, as adults, an unfamiliar word, typically its referent is not immediately available in the same context. How then can language, by itself, constitute such a reliable instrument for the acquisition of novel meanings? What do we exploit to induce new meanings on the basis of an unfamiliar sequence of sounds or graphical elements?

Project Overview

BraveNewWord addresses these questions from an innovative multidisciplinary perspective, combining cutting-edge proposals from computational linguistics and empirical investigation techniques from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Sources of Meaning Acquisition

BraveNewWord posits three main sources for lexically-driven meaning acquisition:

1. Linguistic context
2. Word structure
3. Form-meaning mapping

Computational Framework

The project advances a computational framework that models these mechanisms through data-driven, psychologically plausible distributional systems trained on examples of natural language usage.

Empirical Investigation

The quantitative characterizations and algorithmic definitions offered by these models constitute, in turn, the basis for BraveNewWord's large-scale empirical investigation, involving both:

• Behavioral data (reaction times, mouse-tracking trajectories, diachronic language changes)
• Neuroscience data (event-related potentials, neuroimaging)

Contribution to Understanding Language and Thought

With its innovative perspective and advanced computational and empirical approach, BraveNewWord will constitute a non-incremental contribution to understanding how human speakers use new lexical information as a means for enriching their semantic system. It will also provide a ground-breaking perspective on the cognitive processes relating language and thought.