Question 1
What are the facts of over-extension? Why is it sometimes
difficult to say what counts as an over-extension? What does over-extension
have to do with lexical gaps?

-Over-extensions are done by the child by extending a category in different
ways. 

-Over-extensions in comprehension. By the example of the child who had
misnamed "sheep" for "dog" it was concluded that there were no
over-extensions in comprehension. But the child had been given a choice of
two items only "a dog" and "a sheep"  from which he/she had to pick out a
dog, which he/she did. What would have happened if the range of the "animal"
category had been wider? 
This comprehension tasks are usually carried out by either looking at diary
reports or in laboratories. Therefore, over-extensions cannot be measured
very accurately. 

-Over-extensions can be confused with other things. E. Clark gives examples.
For instance, when the child called "hat" to the basket that the kid's
father had put over his head. 

-Complexive over-extensions: are they so common? The example of the moon
seems to be the most repeated in most papers. They consist of over-extending
the same word but only taking one aspect that the two objects have in
common. Lakoff  writes about this similarly but calls it "radio categories".
(Why does roundness attract so much the kids' attention more than any other
shape? Probably because this shape is more easily recognized by the child
than other shapes like squares.)

Question 2
What does the way a particular child learns form have to do with
the way s/he learns meaning? Why do we need to know something about the
acquisition of phonology in order to study the meanings of a child's first
words?

-It is important to talk about how children acquire meanings but meanings
have to be mapped onto forms and these forms need to be studied, too. The
phonology of early aged children does not look usually like what adults
produce phonologically. E. Clark says that there are two kinds of kinds as
far as production is concerned. There are some children who produce chain of
sounds that are unlikely to be segmented whereas there are some others whose
production is clearly segmented into words.  It is important to see into
this aspect of the acquisition by children since it is going to affect the
way the children will produce and figure out meanings. 

- Vocabulary spurts: is it only, as stated by E. Clark in her book, a matter
of articulatory control? Some authors do not agree on this. However, in
bilingual children it has been proved that while in the phase of mixing
their first and second languages, having to choose between one same word in
either language, they will pick the word that is easier to articulate in
their mouths. Some authors have stated that children start working out the
phonology at a much earlier stage of their life than it is usually thought.  

Question 3
How might syntactic categories such as Noun, Verb, and Adjective
be related to the acquisition of the meanings of words?

-What comes first the chicken or the egg? That is to say, what relationship
is there between the acquisition of meanings and the acquisition of
categories such as nouns, adjective and verbs? Pinker says exactly the
reverse of the Bootstrapping Hypothesis. Children have to look for "verbs"
themselves and differentiate them from the rest of the categories. According
to him, children use semantics to get into the syntax. 

-It is believed that the child enters the world knowing before hand that
there is an ontology formed in the world for him/her. By learning a language
it can create one's own syntax, semantics and ontology.
Semi-conclusion: -Why does it have to be one or the other? Semantics and
syntax influence one another, they operate in conjunction when the child has
to assign meanings to words and use them syntactically correct.

Question 4  In what ways are actions/events similar to and different from
objects and what might the implications be for acquisition?

-Constraints of nouns and verbs: E. Clark focuses on the similarities more
than the differences between the constraints of nouns and the constraints of
verbs. 

-The Whole Object assumption: what's part of an action? Subactions,
arguments (the participants that an action involves. But, how do children
decide the number of participants to include or exclude in an action?

-If we apply the Whole Object constraint to actions we would end up with no
verbs at all. So how do children distinguish between nouns and verbs?
Semi-conclusion: the linguistic context helps the child decide on this. Also
this issue can get solved by saying that the child understand it
perceptually. However, it could be that the child  learnt about it
conceptually (i.e. number of arguments, etc.).
Taxonomy: are there any basic-level actions?

-Verbs are more difficult to define than nouns.

-Languages across the world differ more in verbs than in nouns.