Discovering regularity and mechanisms of word sense acquisition in childhood.

Clinical Snapshot

Key Findings

• P Value: Not reported in abstract

• Effect Size: Not specified in abstract

• Primary Outcome: Three hypotheses about word sense acquisition supported: concrete senses emerge before abstract senses, word senses grow incrementally in semantic space, and semantic chaining algorithms recapitulate developmental order

• Nnt Or Sensitivity: Analysis of 1,270 words from 4 million utterances across 19-144 month age range

• Confidence Interval: Not reported in abstract

Clinical Application

Research methodology not directly applicable to clinical practice but findings may inform language development assessment Findings may inform Australian speech pathology practice and early childhood language assessment, though cultural adaptation needed for Australian English patterns Children with typical language development, potentially applicable to speech pathology and developmental assessment

Abstract

How does language use inform the emergence of word meanings in early life? Prior work in developmental psychology and the cognitive sciences typically focuses on studying word acquisition in children without specifying how different senses within a word emerge through time. To shed light on word sense acquisition, we propose a framework grounded in state-of-the-art computational methodologies of contextual word embedding to characterize how different senses of a word unfold as children acquire their lexicon. Our framework identifies word senses automatically by forming semantic clusters through natural language use, and analyzes 1,270 words from approximately 4 million utterances produced by children (19 to 144 mo) and their caretakers. The psychological validity of these senses was assessed based on a combination of dictionaries, human judgment of semantic similarity, and evaluation from a large language model. We then tested three hypotheses motivated by existing work on word sense emergence in language evolution. First, concrete senses of a word tend to emerge earlier than more abstract senses in child language. Second, word senses grow incrementally in semantic space across development. Third, algorithms of semantic chaining-how words spawn new senses by extending from existing senses-recapitulate the order of word senses in development. We find support for all three hypotheses. Our work suggests that the development of word meaning in language acquisition resembles that in language evolution and offers a converging view on the cognitive principles and mechanisms across timescales in the ontogeny and phylogeny of word sense emergence.

References

1. 1.Li, J., Armstrong, B. C., & Xu, Y. (2026). Discovering regularity and mechanisms of word sense acquisition in childhood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2525788123