奎因难题与儿童词汇习得理论

Quinean conundrum and theories of child word learning

奎因于1960年提出了一个哲学难题,后人称之为指称的不确定性。当前的词汇习得理论大体可以依据是否把奎因难题作为基本假设分门别类。制约理论和联想学习理论认同奎因难题,并提出了一些制约原则或者注意机制以引导词汇习得;社会-语用理论则认为在实际的人际交往当中奎因难题根本不存在;浮现汇流模型吸取了上述三种理论的一些观点,提出了一个动态的词汇习得模型。最后,文章探讨了上述理论对儿童词汇习得现象的解释力,并展望了未来儿童语言习得研究的发展方向。

In 1960 Quine introduced a philosophical conundrum which is usually called the indeterminacy of reference.Current theories of word learning can largely be defined by whether they embrace or reject the Quinean conundrum as a foundational assumption.Constraints views and associative views embrace the Quinean conundrum,and propose constraining principles or attention mechanisms to guide word learning.Social-pragmatic views consider the Quinean conundrum irrelevant to word learning.The emergentist coalition model combines aspects of the three prior theories and proposes a developmental account of the word learning process.At the end of the paper,points of view as to whether or not word learning theories can explain the process of word learning and the future development of child language research are presented.