Chapter 1:
THE IMPORTANCE OF LEXICAL ACQUISITION
1.1 Introduction
The aim of the present research is to give some insight into the parameters related to the
acquisition of new words from context. Its significance is in eliciting important
parameters for lexical acquisition. The parameters to be investigated are child based
factors, the nature of the lexicon as well as the nature of the input. Moreover,
methodologically, the present research aims to demonstrate word learning through various
lexical tasks which were devised particularly for the purposes of the present study.
In that way, the present research relates to some of the current theoretical models for
lexical acquisition such as Stemberg and Powell’s theory (1983) of word learning from
context and Nelson’s (1990) interactive functional model and aims to develop new key
issues for word learning from listening to stories under the framework of the current
models.
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