Learning homophones in context: Easy cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages

Learning homophones in context: Easy cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages. Dautriche, I., Fibla, L., Fievet, A., & Christophe, A. Cognitive Psychology, 104:83–105, 2018.

Paper doi abstract bibtex

Even though ambiguous words are common in languages, children ﬁnd it hard to learn homophones, where a single label applies to several distinct meanings (e.g., Mazzocco, 1997). The present work addresses this apparent discrepancy between learning abilities and typological pattern, with respect to homophony in the lexicon. In a series of ﬁve experiments, 20-month-old French children easily learnt a pair of homophones if the two meanings associated with the phonological form belonged to diﬀerent syntactic categories, or to diﬀerent semantic categories. However, toddlers failed to learn homophones when the two meanings were distinguished only by diﬀerent grammatical genders. In parallel, we analyzed the lexicon of four languages, Dutch, English, French and German, and observed that homophones are distributed non-arbitrarily in the lexicon, such that easily learnable homophones are more frequent than hard-to-learn ones: pairs of homophones are preferentially distributed across syntactic and semantic categories, but not across grammatical gender. We show that learning homophones is easier than previously thought, at least when the meanings of the same phonological form are made suﬃciently distinct by their syntactic or semantic context. Following this, we propose that this learnability advantage translates into the overall structure of the lexicon, i.e., the kinds of homophones present in languages exhibit the properties that make them learnable by toddlers, thus allowing them to remain in languages.

@article{dautriche_learning_2018,
	title = {Learning homophones in context: {Easy} cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages},
	volume = {104},
	issn = {00100285},
	shorttitle = {Learning homophones in context},
	url = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028518300136},
	doi = {10.1016/j.cogpsych.2018.04.001},
	abstract = {Even though ambiguous words are common in languages, children ﬁnd it hard to learn homophones, where a single label applies to several distinct meanings (e.g., Mazzocco, 1997). The present work addresses this apparent discrepancy between learning abilities and typological pattern, with respect to homophony in the lexicon. In a series of ﬁve experiments, 20-month-old French children easily learnt a pair of homophones if the two meanings associated with the phonological form belonged to diﬀerent syntactic categories, or to diﬀerent semantic categories. However, toddlers failed to learn homophones when the two meanings were distinguished only by diﬀerent grammatical genders. In parallel, we analyzed the lexicon of four languages, Dutch, English, French and German, and observed that homophones are distributed non-arbitrarily in the lexicon, such that easily learnable homophones are more frequent than hard-to-learn ones: pairs of homophones are preferentially distributed across syntactic and semantic categories, but not across grammatical gender. We show that learning homophones is easier than previously thought, at least when the meanings of the same phonological form are made suﬃciently distinct by their syntactic or semantic context. Following this, we propose that this learnability advantage translates into the overall structure of the lexicon, i.e., the kinds of homophones present in languages exhibit the properties that make them learnable by toddlers, thus allowing them to remain in languages.},
	language = {en},
	urldate = {2025-02-27},
	journal = {Cognitive Psychology},
	author = {Dautriche, Isabelle and Fibla, Laia and Fievet, Anne-Caroline and Christophe, Anne},
	year = {2018},
	pages = {83--105},
}

Downloads: 0

{"_id":"5Lr6xCm9EwN9droMD","bibbaseid":"dautriche-fibla-fievet-christophe-learninghomophonesincontexteasycasesarefavoredinthelexiconofnaturallanguages-2018","author_short":["Dautriche, I.","Fibla, L.","Fievet, A.","Christophe, A."],"bibdata":{"bibtype":"article","type":"article","title":"Learning homophones in context: Easy cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages","volume":"104","issn":"00100285","shorttitle":"Learning homophones in context","url":"https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028518300136","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2018.04.001","abstract":"Even though ambiguous words are common in languages, children ﬁnd it hard to learn homophones, where a single label applies to several distinct meanings (e.g., Mazzocco, 1997). The present work addresses this apparent discrepancy between learning abilities and typological pattern, with respect to homophony in the lexicon. In a series of ﬁve experiments, 20-month-old French children easily learnt a pair of homophones if the two meanings associated with the phonological form belonged to diﬀerent syntactic categories, or to diﬀerent semantic categories. However, toddlers failed to learn homophones when the two meanings were distinguished only by diﬀerent grammatical genders. In parallel, we analyzed the lexicon of four languages, Dutch, English, French and German, and observed that homophones are distributed non-arbitrarily in the lexicon, such that easily learnable homophones are more frequent than hard-to-learn ones: pairs of homophones are preferentially distributed across syntactic and semantic categories, but not across grammatical gender. We show that learning homophones is easier than previously thought, at least when the meanings of the same phonological form are made suﬃciently distinct by their syntactic or semantic context. Following this, we propose that this learnability advantage translates into the overall structure of the lexicon, i.e., the kinds of homophones present in languages exhibit the properties that make them learnable by toddlers, thus allowing them to remain in languages.","language":"en","urldate":"2025-02-27","journal":"Cognitive Psychology","author":[{"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Dautriche"],"firstnames":["Isabelle"],"suffixes":[]},{"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Fibla"],"firstnames":["Laia"],"suffixes":[]},{"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Fievet"],"firstnames":["Anne-Caroline"],"suffixes":[]},{"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Christophe"],"firstnames":["Anne"],"suffixes":[]}],"year":"2018","pages":"83–105","bibtex":"@article{dautriche_learning_2018,\n\ttitle = {Learning homophones in context: {Easy} cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages},\n\tvolume = {104},\n\tissn = {00100285},\n\tshorttitle = {Learning homophones in context},\n\turl = {https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028518300136},\n\tdoi = {10.1016/j.cogpsych.2018.04.001},\n\tabstract = {Even though ambiguous words are common in languages, children ﬁnd it hard to learn homophones, where a single label applies to several distinct meanings (e.g., Mazzocco, 1997). The present work addresses this apparent discrepancy between learning abilities and typological pattern, with respect to homophony in the lexicon. In a series of ﬁve experiments, 20-month-old French children easily learnt a pair of homophones if the two meanings associated with the phonological form belonged to diﬀerent syntactic categories, or to diﬀerent semantic categories. However, toddlers failed to learn homophones when the two meanings were distinguished only by diﬀerent grammatical genders. In parallel, we analyzed the lexicon of four languages, Dutch, English, French and German, and observed that homophones are distributed non-arbitrarily in the lexicon, such that easily learnable homophones are more frequent than hard-to-learn ones: pairs of homophones are preferentially distributed across syntactic and semantic categories, but not across grammatical gender. We show that learning homophones is easier than previously thought, at least when the meanings of the same phonological form are made suﬃciently distinct by their syntactic or semantic context. Following this, we propose that this learnability advantage translates into the overall structure of the lexicon, i.e., the kinds of homophones present in languages exhibit the properties that make them learnable by toddlers, thus allowing them to remain in languages.},\n\tlanguage = {en},\n\turldate = {2025-02-27},\n\tjournal = {Cognitive Psychology},\n\tauthor = {Dautriche, Isabelle and Fibla, Laia and Fievet, Anne-Caroline and Christophe, Anne},\n\tyear = {2018},\n\tpages = {83--105},\n}\n\n","author_short":["Dautriche, I.","Fibla, L.","Fievet, A.","Christophe, A."],"key":"dautriche_learning_2018","id":"dautriche_learning_2018","bibbaseid":"dautriche-fibla-fievet-christophe-learninghomophonesincontexteasycasesarefavoredinthelexiconofnaturallanguages-2018","role":"author","urls":{"Paper":"https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010028518300136"},"metadata":{"authorlinks":{}}},"bibtype":"article","biburl":"https://api.zotero.org/users/1224702/collections/CXMX6TDK/items?key=HgrCnsSbonMeiRIE6voDxAKb&format=bibtex&limit=100","dataSources":["bRfPK5c3yt5wos3he","DzT9oFA6ZgDGz6c4f"],"keywords":[],"search_terms":["learning","homophones","context","easy","cases","favored","lexicon","natural","languages","dautriche","fibla","fievet","christophe"],"title":"Learning homophones in context: Easy cases are favored in the lexicon of natural languages","year":2018}