L'asimmetria nominale del primo lessico come tappa iniziale di una conoscenza linguistica softly assembled

Abstract

The target of this article is to focus some crucial points related to the problem of the acquisition and organization of lexicon in children. One of the main part of reflection on language is represented by the investigation on words as genuine operational units of our language. It follows that a specific notion of lexicon influences the way in which the various linguistic phenomena are analyzed and, accordingly, influences the specific phenomenon that will be the subject of this article: the organization of the early vocabulary in children. We will analyze the process of language acquisition in order to show how, within a specific stage of this process, termed as ‘first burst’ (18-21 months), the structure of language and representations about it depend directly on the action of different lexical classes and the relationships between them, their elements and perception. Namely, we will show how a early unit of linguistic knowledge emerges from the acquisition of a particular set of terms, within the lexical set of nouns, enabling children to move from a one-word stage to a multi-word stage of language learning process