Jamie is listening to his parents talk. His father uses the word "lunatic" while talking about someone who acted erratically and dangerously. Jamie has never heard the word before, but based on the context, he guesses that it could mean something like wild or dangerous. Which of the following concepts is illustrated in this scenario?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Jamie is using syntactic bootstrapping, a process where children use the grammatical structure of whole sentences to infer the meaning of a new word. In this case, Jamie deduces the meaning of "lunatic" from the context in which his father uses it.

Jamie Is Listening to His Parents Talk