NVESTIGATING LEXICAL ACQUISITION PATTERNS: CONTEXT AND COGNITION

the denotative meaning of furry has to do with the hairy properties of certain objects, the
denotative meaning of walk has to do with an activity that certain objects perform, and the
denotative meaning of unicorn has to do with certain fantasy objects (Anderson et al.
1991).

Sense differs from denotation and reference because it does not relate words to entities
(objects, events, speakers, listeners, etc.) that are outside the mental lexicon. Sense
describes the ways in which words are related to one another in the lexicon, for instance
the relation of the word dog to animal.

Dockrell and Campbell (1986) proposed that the distinction between reference, denotation
and sense can provide a framework for the study of the word meaning acquisition. In the
next subsections, each of these aspects is discussed.

Reference

Words are arbitrary conventional symbols (Kuczaj, 1996). They are arbitrary because there
is no inherent relation between a particular sound pattern (word) and its meaning. For
example, the sound pattern elephant carries no necessary relation to the pachyderms
associated with the term. If there were some necessary relation between words and
meanings, all languages would use the same words. Instead different languages use
different sound combinations to refer to the same meaning. The English dog is hund in
German, perro in Spanish, chien in French and skelos in Greek.

Words are conventional because the relation between words and meanings is implicitly
agreed upon by the speakers of a language. Although the relation between the word
elephant and its meaning is arbitrary, speakers of English agree about the relation. It is
this agreement that makes words conventional symbols, and makes communication
possible. Words are symbols because they represent meanings. The word dog represents
dogs, but the word dog is not itself a dog. In general, regardless of their meaning(s) all
words are symbols (Harnad, 1996).

Kuczaj (1988) argues that children recognize the difference between words and objects
from the very beginning of the word meaning acquisition process. This capacity does not

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