The functions of children\u27s novel word compounds

The study of children\u27s use of invented words gives some insight into the forces motivating the acquisition of word meaning and word structure. It has been traditionally accepted that children\u27s novel word compounds are communicatively motivated. In this study, the communicative and conceptual forces underlying normally-developing children\u27s and adults\u27 use of novel noun-noun compounds were explored. Twenty-eight five-year-old children and 16 adults participated in a referential communication task (wherein communicative demands were maximized) and a nonreferential task (wherein communicative demands were minimized) in which exemplars of novel compounds were elicited. In these tasks, the children were exposed to two conceptually different referent types: those in which elements of the referent were permanently related and those in which referent elements were temporarily related. The results of the study indicated that both children and adults produced significantly more compounds for permanent than for temporary referents. However, there was no significant difference in the percentage of compounds produced in the referential and nonreferential tasks. These results suggest that the traditional assumption that children\u27s novel compounds serve to increase their communicative precision should be questioned more closely