During the initial stage of language development, nouns corresponding to "object categories" are known to be acquired earlier than other parts of speech, including verbs. However, it is unclear whether the semantic content of words is the same for toddlers who have just begun to learn them and adult speakers. This preliminary study experimentally investigated the theoretical hypothesis of Werner and Kaplan, which posited that the initial meanings of noun-like words do not differentiate into specific categories of objects themselves but rather refer to holistic event categories. Toddlers aged 19-35 months (N = 36) were prompted to select one of two juxtaposed video stimuli (e.g., "putting shoes on" vs. "rubbing two baskets" in the match condition, "putting baskets on" vs. "rubbing shoes" in the mismatch condition) using questions about noun-like words (e.g., "Which is shoes?"). Statistical modeling demonstrated that the meanings of noun-like words for toddlers under 21 months of age or with a vocabulary size of less than 140 words were deeply influenced by conventional actions related to the objects (e.g., "putting shoes on"), whereas they subsequently differentiated into specific object categories (e.g., "shoes" alone), becoming "true nouns." These findings support Werner and Kaplan's hypothesis and provide the first experimental evidence for the theoretical and observational assumptions that early words are not easily classified into parts of speech only by their vocables (e.g., nouns, verbs). We discuss the flexibility of vocable-meaning connections during early language development by proposing the "semantic pluripotency hypothesis."

中文翻译：

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初始名词的含义不会区分为宾语类别：Werner和Kaplan假设的一种实验方法。

在语言发展的最初阶段，已知与“对象类别”相对应的名词比其他词（包括动词）更早地被习得。但是，尚不清楚刚开始学习它们的幼儿和成人发音者的单词语义内容是否相同。这项初步研究通过实验研究了Werner和Kaplan的理论假设，该假设认为类名词词的初始含义不会区分为对象本身的特定类别，而是指整体事件类别。提示年龄在19-35个月（N = 36）的幼儿从两个并置的视频刺激中选择一个（例如，在比赛条件下“穿鞋”与“摩擦两个篮子”，“穿篮”与“摩擦”）鞋子” 在不匹配条件下），使用有关名词性单词的问题（例如“鞋子是哪个？”）。统计模型表明，对于21个月以下或词汇量小于140个单词的幼儿，类似于名词的单词的含义受到与对象相关的常规动作（例如“穿鞋”）的深远影响，而它们随后分为特定的对象类别（例如，单独的“鞋子”），成为“真实名词”。这些发现支持Werner和Kaplan的假设，并为理论上和观察上的假设提供了第一个实验证据，即早期单词不容易仅通过其可发音物（例如名词，动词）分类为词性。