Announcement and Programme - Session on Lexical Bootstrapping - GCLA conference

Mon Sep 18 14:42:41 UTC 2006

Dear all, 

Please find below the announcement and programme of our special session on 
Lexical Bootstrapping in child language development, to be held at the 2nd 
GCLA International Conference. 

LEXICAL BOOTSTRAPPING IN CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND CHILD CONCEPTUAL 
DEVELOPMENT 

Theme session to be held at the
SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE GERMAN COGNITIVE
LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION, Munich, 5-7 October 2006 

ORGANISATORS:
Susanna Bartsch and Dagmar Bittner
Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals Research, Berlin 

**DESCRIPTION** 

Apart from some few exceptions (Brown 1958, Nelson 1973), the research on 
child lexical development did not receive much attention from students of 
child language in the 1960s and 1970s. In opposition to some statements 
found in the more recent literature (e.g., Rothweiler & Meibauer 1999), this 
fact is not really surprising when one considers the very influential role 
then played by formal linguistics with its primacy of syntactic structures 
and the view of lexicon and semantics as something rather epiphenomenal. 

 From the 1980s on, this state of affairs has changed dramatically. A huge 
body of research, much of which has been done within 
functionalist-cognitivist frameworks and focussed on within- and 
cross-domain correlations in language development (Bates et al.'s 1988
correlational method), seems to allow for the formulation of a Lexical 
Bootstrapping Hypothesis (LBH) (some more recent examples: Dale et al. 2000; 
Dionne et al. 2003; Bassano et al. 2004). LBH is the assumption that early 
lexical development, as mapping of words to referents or their 
conceptualisations, and even to whole propositions, is not only
prior to, but also pre-requisite for the emergence of morpho-syntactic 
constructions. Such assumption on the fundamental role of early lexical 
acquisition for later language development as a whole challenges the view 
about the primacy of syntax over lexicon and semantics that has been 
postulated in these 50 years of formal linguistics. 

In our theme session, we aim at an exploratory discussion about the role of 
Lexical Bootstrapping in children's linguistic and conceptual development. 

Bassano, D., Laaha, S., Maillochon, I., & Dressler, W. U. (2004). Early 
acquisition of verb grammar and lexical development: Evidence from 
periphrastic constructions in French and Austrian German. First Language, 
24(1), pp. 33–70. 

Bates, E., Bretherton, I., & Snyder, L. 1988. From First Words to Grammar. 
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. 

Brown, R. 1958. Words and things. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. 

Dale, P. S., Dionne, G., Eley, T. C., & Plomin, R. 2000. Lexical and 
grammatical development: A behavioural genetic perspective. Journal of Child 
Language, 27/3, 619-642. 

Dionne, G., Dale, P. S., Boivin, M., & Plomin R. 2003. Genetic evidence for 
bidirectional effects of early lexical and grammatical development. Child 
Development, 74, 394-412. 

Nelson, K. 1973. Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Chicago: Univ. 
Press. 

Rothweiler, M. & Meibauer, J. (eds.) 1999. Das Lexikon im Spracherwerb: Ein 
Überblick. In: Meibauer, J., & Rothweiler, M. (eds.). 1999. Das Lexikon im 
Spracherwerb. UTB für Wissenschaft; Mittlere Reihe, 2039. Tübingen: Francke. 

**PROGRAMME** 

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5TH, 2006 

11.15-11.45
Introducing the Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis (LBH)
Susanna Bartsch (Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals 
Research, Berlin) 

11.45-12.15
The Interrelation Between Lexical and Grammatical Abilities in Early 
Language Acquisition
Christina Kauschke (Universität Potsdam) 

12.15-12.45
Implications of Noun/Verb Asynchrony for Children's Lexical and Cognitive
Development: A Developmental Perspective from Turkisch
Feyza Turkay (Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Lyon, France) 

15.30-16.00
The Very Emergence of Words: Methodological and Theoretical Issues in its 
Description
Alexandra Karousou, Demetra Katis, and Chrisoula Stambouliadou (University 
of Athens) 

16.00-16.30
The "Lexical Bootstrapping" Hypothesis and Bilingual First Language 
Acquisition (Using Data from a Longitudinal Study of a 
German-Russian-Speaking Child)
Elena Dieser (University of Tübingen) 

16.30-17.00
Discussion Round 

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6th, 2006 

10.15-10.45
Acquisition of Verbs and Development of Sentence Structure in German 
Impaired and Unimpaired Children
Dagmar Bittner (Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals 
Research, Berlin)
Julia Siegmüller (Universität Potsdam) 

10.45-11.15
Pre-Language Cognition, Motion Event Semantics, and the Transition from 
Single Words to First Sentences
Lorraine McCune, Ellen Herr-Israel (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ) 

11.45-12.15
Syntactic Constructions and the Emergence of Event Types: A Computational 
Analysis of Verb Learning
Alessandro Lenci (Università di Pisa) 

12.15-12.45
Bootstrapping-Mechanismen: das Lexikon als Zentrum des Zusammenspiels 
sprachlicher Aufgabenbereiche - netzwerktheoretische Erklärungen zum 
kindlichen Erstspracherwerb
Karin Schlipphak (München) 

15.15-15.45
Does Number of Action Labels Predict an Early Acquisition of the 
Conventional Meaning of Verbs?
Ping Chen (Peking University)
Lauren Tonietto, Maria-Alice Parente (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do 
Sul, Porto
Alegre)
Karine Duvignau, Bruno Gaume (Université Toulouse III) 

15.45-16.15
Final Discussion 

For the abstracts, please point your browser to http://www.kognitive-
sprachforschung.lmu.de/event/programme.html 

Also see the related event ELeGi 2006: International Conference "Exploring 
the Lexis-Grammar Interface", Hanover, October 5-7, 2006 (at the same time 
as our session).
http://www.elegi-2006.com/ELeGI%20preliminary%20conference%20programme%20040 
906.pdf 

Best regards,
Susanna 

Susanna Bartsch
Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und 
Universalienforschung (ZaS)
Centre for General Linguistics, Typology, and Universals Research
Jägerstr. 10-11
10117 Berlin

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