We can differentiate these categories as purely lexical, rather than syntactic.
Therefore, word frequency may not be a purely lexical or semantic variable.
They contrast with syntactic representations, which are structured in terms of lexical heads and grammatical functions or relations.
This account of the developmental differences is consistent with other studies of children's lexical and phonological representations.
Therefore, it is possible that homonyms would be responded to more accurately than novel words in a task emphasizing lexical representations, such as picture naming.
Under this account, if children's lexical representations are stored as sub-units, they are then able to access more stable units with increased accuracy.
Thus, changes in known lexical representations may lead to changes in homonym learning but not novel word learning.
It may be that syllable structure may not play a role in the organization of lexical representations, but may influence the organization of phonological representations.
