Syntactic bootstrapping allows children to
A) determine the meaning of words through the use of syntax.
B) learn new words by eliminating items that already have labels.
C) learn the meaning of words through gesture.
D) guess whether a label refers to a whole object or to a part of that object.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Syntactic bootstrapping is the process by which children use the grammatical structure of sentences to learn the meaning of new words. They infer the meaning of a word based on its position in a sentence and the grammatical rules that govern its use. For example, when a child hears the sentence "The rabbit is gorping the duck," they can infer that "gorping" means something like "hitting" or "attacking," because it is the verb in the sentence and is acting on the object "duck." Through this process, children are able to rapidly acquire a vast vocabulary despite only being exposed to a relatively small number of words.

Syntactic Bootstrapping Allows Children to