(function(doc, html, url) { var widget = doc.createElement("div"); widget.innerHTML = html; var script = doc.currentScript; // e = a.currentScript; if (!script) { var scripts = doc.scripts; for (var i = 0; i < scripts.length; ++i) { script = scripts[i]; if (script.src && script.src.indexOf(url) != -1) break; } } script.parentElement.replaceChild(widget, script); }(document, '

Are polysemous words harder to learn?

What is it about?

Words of low polysemy could be preferred as they reduce the disambiguation effort for the listener. However, such preference could be a side-effect of another bias: the preference of children for nouns in combination with the lower polysemy of nouns with respect to other syntactic categories, such as verbs.

Why is it important?

We have shown that the mean polysemy of words increases over time for children markedly, but this effect is not observed in adults interacting with them and thus cannot be attributed to Child Directed Speech.

Read more on Kudos…
The following have contributed to this page:
Neus Català
' ,"url"));