Cross-Situational Observation and the Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis

This paper addresses these concerns by conducting new analyses of the data from Snedeker, Gleitman, & Brent (1999). Section 4 examines the learning curves and patterns of convergence to evaluate whether the noun-verb difference is likely to hold up as the number of learning trials increases. Section 5 looks more closely at the incorrect responses. When the extralinguistic context fails to allow subjects to identify the word, does it provide partial information that could guide semantic bootstrapping? 1 Extralinguistic context is also the primary information source for word learning in the theories of many modern day empiricists and social interactionists. The problems that the Human Simulations raise for these proposals are laid out in Snedeker & Gleitman (in press