Glossary L

Glossary L

Lexical constraints refer to constraints that facilitate word learning in young children by limiting the possible interpretations that an utterance is likely to have. Please see Whole-object assumption, Taxonomic assumption, and Mutual exclusivity assumption. Also see Lexical principles.

Lexical contrast constraint is the notion that young children make inferences about word meanings by contrasting new words with words they already know.

Lexical decision task is a task in which an experimental subject is presented with letter strings and asked to judge, as quickly as possible, if the strings form words; deciding as quickly as possible whether a string of letters is a real word or not. Moreover, Lexical decision task is an experimental task in which a subject sees a string of letters and must rapidly decide whether the string is a word.

Lexical insertion rules refer to rule that governs how lexical entries are inserted into a tree structure during the derivation of a sentence.

Lexical organization is the way in which the mental lexicon represents the relation between words and meanings.

Lexical principles refer to assumptions about how the lexicon works that are attributed to the child in order to explain how word learning is so successful and rapid.

Lexical processes are used to identify letters and words

Lexical selection refers to the phenomenon in which children's early vocabularies are restricted to words that use only those sounds that the child can produce.