Semantic development Flashcards
what does semantic acquisition occur along side?
lexical acquisition
Rescorla, 1980 &
Clark, 2009 (R&C)
studied the ways children attribute meaning to words, and make connections with other words to understand its context
R&C: Overextension
when a child extends the use of a word beyond the scope of its specific meaning e.g. all men are ‘daddy’
R&C: Categorical Overextension
- a child labels all objects in the same category one name
- e.g. all clothes ‘dresses’ or all fruit ‘apple’,
- usually when children have confused/not yet learnt hypernyms and only knowledge of hyponyms
R&C: Analogical overextension
- tries to make links between different objects because they have similar functions / features
- e.g. child might refer to a scar as ‘cat’ because it is soft
- least common of the two, only found in 15% of Rescorla’s cases
- usually in holophrastic stage
R&C: Rescorla’s predicate statements
- child makes deep semantic / contextual link with idem and label
- child may point to empty pond and say ‘duck’
- accounted for 25% of Rescorla’s overextension cases
R&C: underextension
when a child has learnt a world in a very specific context and will only apply it to a specific context, almost ‘semantic narrowing’ of a word e.g. only will use the word ‘banana’ for a physical banana nut not for a banana image in a book
Jean Aitchison, 1987: First stage
- labeling
- children associate sounds with objects
Jean Aitchison, 1987: second stage
- packaging
- children start to explore extent of the label (context)
- begin to assess word meaning
- often stage where overextension and underextensions occur most frequently
Jean Aitchison, 1987: third stage
- network building
- start to make connections between labels they have acquired
- begin to understand opposites and similarities
- become aware of patterns in language
