Tanya (18 months old) is presented with sentence, "The dog is blinking the cat." Tanya knows the words fly and cow, and through her understanding of the grammatical structure points to a picture of a dog that is licking a cat. This illustrates how _______ aids young children in the learning of new words.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Syntactic bootstrapping is the process by which young children use their understanding of the grammatical structure of a sentence to help them learn the meaning of new words. In the example given, Tanya is able to use her understanding of the grammatical structure of the sentence "The dog is blinking the cat" to infer that the word "blinking" must mean something that the dog is doing to the cat. This allows her to point to the picture of the dog that is licking the cat, even though she does not know the meaning of the word "licking."

Tanya (18 Months Old) Is Presented with Sentence, "The Dog