In my earlier years, I did a great deal of reading about vocabulary
and cognitive psychology. As a teacher of English teachers, I was
interested in breaking the profession of its fondness for assigning
20 unrelated words per week, with a test on Friday and total reliance
on dictionary definitions. I urged teachers at least to group words
in some way, such as by the word parts they had in common.

Many colleagues recommended that teachers instead find their
vocabulary lists in whatever their students were reading so that
students could see the words in genuine contexts. However, the
implausibility of students being able to pick up new vocabulary from
a single usage, even when combined with the dictionary definition,
led me to a modification of that idea. I suggested that teachers look
for semantic clusters such as nautical words in a novel involving
sailing or farming techniques in a story that involved farms. Such
words were generally used several times and were related to each
other. This is sort of like the network model. To demonstrate the
need for a much richer view of a new word, I constructed a matrix of
the many possible facets of a word's meaning. I got the matrix from
somewhere in my reading of cognitive psychology. I would point out
the need for multiple exposures in multiple contexts if students were
to make new words their own.

I would like to tell you that students agreed with the plausibility
of these ideas and adopted them for use in their own classes, but I
doubt it. They would go out to student teach and would encounter the
traditional methods that they remembered from their own school days.
It was so easy to do things that way. Besides, they didn't have
enough background in language; they hadn't even taken Latin in high
school.

Sigh.

Bill


>Network models have been under development in theoretical
>linguistics for about two decades now. They are found in both
>cognitive/functional (anti-Chomsky) and formal (Chomskyan)
>linguistic theories. Scholars in the former are Dick Hudson, Ron
>Langacker, and Joan Bybee, and in the latter folks like Steve Pinker
>(see his book "Words and Rules").
>
>I'll speak with regard to vocabulary only for the moment. The idea
>is that our mental stock of roots, suffixes, prefixes, and other
>memorized items is arranged in a huge network in our minds. Each
>item consists of, first of all, a connection between its
>pronunciation and its meaning. Then, each item is also connected to
>many other items by virtue of similarities in form, meaning, or the
>fact that the concepts occur together in experience. Both its
>meaning and its pronunciation are connected to other items. So you
>have a big network of items (like nodes in a network, or knots in a
>net) connected to each other somehow (as rope in a net reaches from
>knot to knot).
>
>Let's take an example: "ring", the jewelry item. We know how it is
>pronounced; we also know it is a noun. Its basic meaning is the
>round metal band worn on a finger, but this meaning is embedded in
>something much richer: first, numerous kinds of rings (engagement,
>friendship, papal, wedding, signet, etc.), and then, the contexts in
>which these different types appear. Hearing the term "wedding ring"
>can cause us, depending on the context, to call up rich information
>about weddings and / or marriage. Hearing "papal ring" calls up a
>very different domain of knowledge, probably including rituals like
>kissing the Pope's ring, etc.
>
>You can think of the meaning of a single word as having layers: the
>simplest layer is the characteristics that carry across most items
>in the class (most rings, in this case). As we "zoom in" on the
>category, we have the different types of rings. In order to
>understand these types, we have to have rich "background" knowledge
>of each domain: weddings, friendship, Popes (I put "background" in
>quotes because many network theorists believe that the rich detail
>of this knowledge is what defines the word; it is not merely
>background).
>
>"Ring" shares its pronunciation with another word: the verb "to
>ring", as what a bell does. Jewelry "ring" and bell "ring" are very
>likely connected to each other because of this sameness. Various
>studies show that people activate or subconsciously "notice"
>ambiguous words, even when the context resolves the ambiguity. They
>wouldn't do this unless the word they hear activates both meanings.
>Another bit of evidence is a certain type of speech error: the
>speaker retrieves, not the intended word, but a word from the same
>meaning domain. Thus someone might say "aunt" instead of "cousin",
>or "moose" instead of "caribou". People also often choose the word
>from the wrong end of the scale they are talking about -- saying
>"hot" for "cold" or "low" for "high".
>
>Speech errors would be random if there weren't psychological
>connections between the intended words and the actual words. The
>errors aren't random. People are not very likely to say "winesap"
>when they mean "caribou".
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
>English Department, California Polytechnic State University
>One Grand Avenue  * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>Tel. (805)-756-2184  *  Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone.  756-2596
>* E-mail: [log in to unmask] *      Home page:
>http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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