NVESTIGATING LEXICAL ACQUISITION PATTERNS: CONTEXT AND COGNITION

lay eggs, but unlike many birds they swim underwater and cannot fly ( Lakoff, 1987;
Eysenck & Keane, 1990).

According to Rosch et. al. (1976) the majority of everyday concepts can be organized into
hierarchical classification schemes. Rosch (1978) considers the category system as having
both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension involves the level of
inclusiveness of the category, for example the way in which the categories of collie, dog,
and mammal differ. The horizontal dimension involves the differentiation of categories
at the same level of inclusiveness, for example what differentiates dog, car, bar.

Rosch et. al. (1976) suggested that there are three levels of categorization: the basic,
superordinate, and subordinate level. Basic level of categorization is the level at which
there is a large gain of distinctiveness relative to the category above, but only a small loss
relative to the category below. The level above is called superordinate and the level below
subordinate. For example, animal belongs to the superordinate category, dog belong to
basic level and collie to the subordinate level.

During the last twenty years, various attempts have been made to explain object word
meaning acquisition in terms of prototype- based denotation (Anglin, 1977; Barrett, 1982,
1986; Greenberg and Kuczaj, 1982; Kuczaj, 1982, 1986; Tager-Flusberg, 1986). It has
been demonstrated experimentally that children in certain tasks choose more prototypic
Objectsbefore Iessprototypicones (Kuczaj, 1982; Tager-Flusberg, 1986). Although, the
notion of some prototype-based representational system for object word denotation seems
justified by the data, the precise nature of the prototype representational system, has not
yet been specified.

A more radical principle of mental representation, which is also consistent with fuzzy
categories is the exemplar view (Leddo, Abelson, Gross, 1984; Nokofsky, 1988; Smith
& Medin, 1981). The exemplar view denies that there is a single summary representation
and instead claims that categories are represented by means of examples.

However, it can be argued that both prototype and exemplar theories rely on roughly the
same similarity principle. That is, category membership is determined by whether some

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