Abstract

Educated adults know some 100,000 distinct words, and they encounter and create new words all the time. They learn words from instances of words as they are produced by different speakers and in different contexts. The words they know in turn provide the foundation for generalisations about words, supporting lexical productivity.

In this talk, I will review several projects that shed light on what and how people learn words and word formation patterns. These projects use a diverse methodology, bring together data from lab experiments, on-line experiments that resemble computer games, and analysis of large corpora. Results indicate that lexical representations are both phonologically abstract and phonetically detailed. They include socio-indexical information. Statistical patterns matter, but sometimes in surprising ways: more is not always better or more productive. Competition within the lexicon, social factors, and individual differences all play a role in shaping lexical generalisations. I conclude by drawing some connections to historical change.