Later Lexical Development and Word Formation

Abstract

Words are indispensable. Without words, speakers are tongue-tied. Without them, they can't exemplify syntactic patterns, morphological structure, or even the sound patterns of their language. Words, in short, offer the primary linguistic means for conveying meaning. English-speaking adults, for example, make use of a production lexicon of anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 wordforms; their comprehension lexicon is even larger. Learning words, then, is a major part of learning language, and it is inextricably linked to the acquisition of syntax, of morphology, and of phonology. By age two, children may be able to produce anywhere from 50 to 500 or 600 words. They add steadily to this stock at a rate estimated at around ten words a day, to reach a vocabulary of some 14,000 by age six. From then on, children average at least 3,000 new words a year through age 17. It has also been estimated that, from about age ten on, schoolchildren are exposed to about 10,000 new words a year; so by age 15, they have been exposed to some 85,000 word roots and as many as 100,000 distinct word meanings in school texts alone.

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