word production and comprehension

[K Nelson]

Kasumi,
The question of comprehension before production is complex.  Are you
interested in early words or later acquisitions?  Word-forms or word
meanings?

In general children acquire large comprehension vocabularies before
productions, but the composition of each tends to differ - see Benedict
(1979):

 Benedict, H. (1979). Early lexical development: Comprehension and
production. Journal of Child Language, 6, 183-200.

Children may also acquire word forms whose meaning is under-extended
(Barrett), over-extended (Rescorla) of over-lapping (Anglin):

 Anglin, J. (1977). Word, object and conceptual development. New York:
Norton.

 Barrett, M. D. (1985). Early semantic representations and early word-usage.
In I. S. A. Kuczaj & M. D. Barrett (Eds.), The development of word meaning:
Progress in cognitive development research (pp. 39-68). New York:
Springer-Verlag.

 Rescorla, L. A. (1980). Overextension in early language development.
Journal of child language, 7, 321-335.

Also:
 Nelson, K., Hampson, J., & Kessler Shaw, L. (1993). Nouns in early
lexicons: Evidence, explanations, and implications. Journal of Child
Language, 20, 61-84.

If you are wondering about the relation of comprehension to production in
later word acquisition, see:

 Levy, E., & Nelson, K. (1994). Words in discourse: a dialectical approach
to the acquisition of meaning and use. Journal of child language, 21,
367-390.

 Nelson, K., & Shaw, L. K. (2002). Developing a socially shared symbolic
system. In E. Amsel & J. Byrnes (Eds.), Language, literacy and cognitive
development (pp. 27-58). Mahwah NJ: Erlbaum.

These latter references provide examples of children's acquisition and use
of forms in production that they do not yet comprehend except in the sense
of appropriate discourse use.  Earlier studies of temporal terms by Eve
Clark, quantifiers (more, less), and deictic terms were studied in terms of
"incomplete meaning" (see Carey for review).  So it's critical what you mean
by "comprehension."

 Carey, S. (1982). Semantic development: the state of the art. In E. Wanner
& L. R. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquistion: The state of the art (pp.
347-389). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Katherine Nelson



----- Original Message -----
From: "Kasumi Yamamoto" <kasumi at adelphia.net>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 9:02 AM
Subject: word production and comprehension


> Dear all,
>
> I am looking for references for young children's word production and
> comprehension.  In particular, I am interested in the cases that word
> production precedes comprehension.  Majority of research support that
> comprehension is ahead of production, but does anyone know the opposite
> case?
>
> Thank you very much in advance for your help.
>
> Kasumi Yamamoto
> Williams College
>