Lecture 3 _ Lexical-semantic

development

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 I. The study of the vocabulary

- The oldest way to study child language acquisition is to list the

words acquired by the child: Hippolyte Taine (1877), Charles Darwin
(1877) or William Stern (1907 their own children provided the
information (language diaries).

- Madora Smith, (1926): in the pre-school period (age 2:6 and 4:6
years) children learn between 2 & 4 words/day; Radford et al,
(2000:211): 10 words/day.

- Importance of the study of vocabulary: 1) social and psychologic

implications vocabulary helps children learn more about the social
environment and participate more actively in social life; 2) the use of
words is a good indicator about the structure and activity of
childrens minds.
- Interesting finding: childrens initial productive vocabularies are quite
similar.
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 II. Factors that influence early vocabulary

Phonological structure of words: childrens first words

in the active vocabulary are easy to pronounce, the
favoured sounds being different from child to child.
Cognitive development: Some words appear
simultaneously with certain cognitive processes. Thus,
once the child becomes aware of the permanence of
objects, s/he starts expressing their disappearance by
words/phrases such as: gone, allgone, no more (E) -nu-i
(R); childrens early productive vocabulary can designate
meanings which are related to specific cognitive
problems.

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 III. Features of adult speech which influence childrens
semantic development
- Adult model naming games, (imply adult-child
interaction). But the words that adults use when
addressing infants are not always the same they use
with older children or with other adults; they employ
words which are faulty according to adult standards.
- study by Mervis & Mervis (1982): focus on how 10
mothers named some toys in their conversations with
13-month old children; incorrect/wrong labels - e.g. a
toy leopard was frequently called a kitty-cat, while a toy
truck was called a car.
Q: What makes adults adopt this strategy?

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A: the signals sent by children indicate the way in which
they classify objects;
Objects that differ in minor ways, but are of the same
category, share names!
-The names/words used by mothers = basic level
categories) (Rosch, 1976) > the childs level.
Principle 1: similarities within categories are emphasized
rather than similarities between categories.
- leopards - closer to cats that other animals.

Principle 2: basic level is the most general level at which

objects are similar due to their shapes, functions or
movements.
- Christmas ornament grouped with balls (both round and
can be rolled).

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-Mothers naming strategies influence the childrens acquisition of the
hierarchical nature of language:
- Basic level terms vs. hyperonyms (superodrinate terms)
(e.g. ball) (e.g. toy).

ostension inclusion
(pointing+ This is a ball) (mentioning of both b.l. term and the
superordinate one: A ball, a truck, and
a XXX are all toys)
Superordinates difficult to learn; mothers provide additional info.
- Mother speech influences the way in which children come to
comprehend and use vocabulary relating to their own inner states.
Study in UK carried out by Dunn, Bretherton & Munn (1987) - in
their conversations with the children, mothers named a variety of
childrens inner states, including quality of consciousness (bored),
emotional states (happy, sad) . At the age of 2, children used many
of these inner state words themselves, particularly those relating to
sleep, fever, pain, and pleasure. Intriguing finding: this happens
more with the girls.

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 IV. Analysis of the first words and of their meanings.
-from the very beginning, childrens vocabulary contains
words belonging to all lexical classes; the first 50 words
cover all lexical classes encountered in adult speech.
-1973, Katherine Nelson: studied 18 children whose
vocabulary reached the level of 50 words (after this
stage, children start combining words into sentences) >
important similarities and interesting differences among
childrens lexicons. Similarities: relative proportion of
the type of words: common nouns: (doggie), names
(Mommy, Fido), verbs (give), determiners (dirty, mine),
prepositions (for, on).
Q: Why more nouns than verbs?
A. concepts referred to by nouns are clearer, more
concrete, easier to identify than those of verbs; nouns
are easier to learn when kids dont remember the verbs
(drive > car); verbs are linguistically more complex.
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Nelson two principles appear to affect
which words are included in early
vocabularies and which not:
1) - names of referents with which the child
interacts and of referents that change are
likely candidates for inclusion (words for
toys, food, articles of clothing).
2) Words for immovable objects and or
object children act less on are rare
inclusions (wall, table, window).
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 V. Early word comprehension
To understand the meaning of a proper noun is to realize
that it refers to a particular person, animal or object.
Comprehension of other types of words requires the
realization that a set of related referents can be indicated
by a single word. When children first use a word, this has
an extremely limited referential scope.
- Some children use one word to refer to an object only
when it is located in a certain place.
At age 2, a word may designate a set of referents (Oviatt,
1983). Oviatt (1982) - experiment in which children aged
between 10 and 19 months were shown a live hamster
and a rabbit and were taught what they were called.
Later, children were given photos with other animals and
required to name the hamster and the rabbit. They
included other referents, too > overgeneralization .
- The growth of inferential ability may contribute to
vocabulary development (B-G. 1989).
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 VI. Production (use) of early words
- Productive (active) vocabulary lags behind the receptive
(passive) one. The difference between the two
(receptive vs. expressive) does not involve only rate of
acquisition, but also strategies. Nelson (1977)
stages in acquisition of vocabulary:
1) Between 10 & 13 months: children correlate adult
words with pre-existent concepts (in comprehension)
2) Between 11 & 15 months: children acquire a small
number of words in production; these are used in
limited contexts, or in combination with the action-
function component of the concept they are related to;
3) Between 16 & 20 months: infants acquire new
productive words for old concepts, form new concepts
to match novel words, and begin to use words to
categorize new instances.

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E. Clark (1978): children between 18 & 24 months
overextend the meaning of words in production: e.g. kitty
used for all felines; in baie este noapte (Ilinca).
- Infants have different bases for judging similarities: e.g.
child 1 doggie for all furry objects; child 2 doggie =
all four-legged animals.

-Clark's conclusion: overextension is not the result of an

immature or non-adult word concept, but is rather a
deliberate attempt to communicate concepts for which
the appropriated word cannot be remembered.
- Overextensions of words more common in production
than in comprehension; it is a short-term phenomenon in
the acquisition of vocabulary.

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 Differences between comprehension and production of words.
- The two systems (comprehension and production) do not
overlap perfectly: there are instances of childrens using a
word quite accurately in production but not comprehending
it when others have used it.
- Nelson (1977): first words uttered by children usually
accompany action, while comprehension of first words
triggers actions
- To produce a word in a range of contexts, the child has
first to isolate it from the context to which it has first been
attached. Once this is accomplished, the child can use
the word as a symbol for its referent.

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 VII. Transition from one-word utterances to longer
utterances.
-one-word utterances - is there linguistic
development?
- Holzman (1997) studied the interaction between
4 children, Allen, Joel, Jean & Carol and their
mothers. Focus on the first 4 utterances that
followed the word uttered by children. Holzman
classifies these utterances as follows:
a) Replies by means of which the mother teaches
the child;
b) Conversational utterances;
c) Utterances that are not linked to the topic of
conversation.

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Analysis restricted to the teaching replies (type (a) above).
There are 4 sub-types of utterances:
(a)-1: says again mothers utterance is exactly the word
uttered by the child, but maybe with a different intonation.
(a)-2: frames: mothers utterance includes the word
uttered by the child in a syntactic context (frame); the
frame provides the child with information related to the
syntactic and semantic nature of the word
(a)-3: positive feed-back;
(a)-4: needs clarification.
Example:
Jean: Daddy Says again
Mother: Daddy
Do you hear Daddy? Framing

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Q: how do children progress from one-word
utterances to multi-word utterances?
A. Holzman: this happens in the childrens
dialogues with their mothers.
The transition form is represented by vertical
constructions: a vertical construction is made
up by words uttered one after the other, with
distinct intonational contours.
Vertical constructions can be: very simple or very
complex.

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 Classification of vertical constructions

(5) Imitation of the last word uttered by the

mother as the second word in the vertical
construction.
C: door
M: yes, thats the door

(5) Vertical imitation, but not the last word.

C. baby
M: baby is in the photo
C: baby
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Constructii verticale

(5) vertical repetition; mothers utterance

does not include the childs word; mothers
utterance is between the childs words.
C: shampoo
M: yes
C. Shampoo

(5) Vertical repetition

C: daddy
C: daddy
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(4) Vertical construction in which the child imitates
one word in his mothers utterance.
C: baby
M: is baby taking a bath?
C: bath

(3) Vertical construction in which the childs

second word answers mothers question.
C: granny
M: wheres granny?
C: down

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(3) Vertical construction with mothers utterance between
childs words.
C: bye
M: yes, daddy went bye
C: doggy.

(3) Vertical construction:

C: ball
C: bye/gone

(2) Horizontal construction

C. My shoe (E)/ pupu meu (R)

(1) Horizontal construction, sentence - the most advanced

construction.
C: N-aie coad (n-are coad) / All gone appu juice!
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Horizontal constructions - when a child
combines two words to express concepts, he
combines them on the basis of their meaning.
Words are organized in the mental lexicon, they
are not arbitrary sequences.
- Veneziano et al (1990) (quoted in Holzman,
1997:105) the child performs 2 distinct tasks:
Links/chains words, i.e. he pronounces words one
after the other;
Relates words, i.e. he organizes the meaning of
the string of words.

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Example: Carol, on of the children studied by Holzman,
uses bye as some kind of verb:
A) C: bug
bye
bye
M: Yes
That bug went bye
Right
C: bug

B) C: brush - (after his mom put the brush in its place)

bye

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Horizontal constructions classified in:
- Horizontal constructions proper: my kitty;
- Pre-fabricated horizontal constructions
contain verbs employed in a prefabricated
way (i.e. these are not employed in a
specific context, but have been learned by
heart from the mothers utterances and are
used quite frequently).
e.g. (R) face baie, face tai, mai v(r )ei (mai
vreau), v(r )ei b(r)ase (vreau in brate);
(E) in there, all gone, no more

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 VIII. Studies related to the semantic development
Acquisition strategies
- In comprehension of words, children employ semantic,
syntactic and pragmatic information provided by the
contexts in which these words appear and apply certain
cognitive (non-linguistic) strategies

The semantic feature hypothesis

- Put forward by Eve Clark (1973) and based on the nature
of adults word meanings and on the ways children
acquire those meanings over time. Adults word
meanings consist of smaller units of meaning, called
semantic features.
- Children start using the words knowing only a partial set
of their semantic features.
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Bipolar adjectives (e.g. hot cold)
Clark (1973) predicted that in the acquisition of
the meanings of polar adjectives (1) positive
terms would be acquired first; (2) the meanings
of the two terms might be confused until the
polarity values were acquired.

Because the positive member of polar adjective

pair is also more common in usage, its earlier
acquisition might be due to greater exposure
rather than internal processes.

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 Kinship terms
- Cases in which a words meaning is subsumed by that of
another would result in confusion until the child acquired
the additional, more specific features that distinguish the
two words from each other. Kinship terms exemplify this
situation since many of them, such as mother and father,
share all but one feature.

Haviland and Clark (1974) tested this hypothesis by asking

children of the ages 3 and 8 to define kinship terms:
What is an uncle? What is a grandfather?
Findings of the study: the 15 kinship terms are acquired in
the order of their semantic complexity: father > aunt.
Haviland & Clark have shown that the order of
acquisition can be accounted for in terms of addition of
semantic features 4 stages;

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Stage 1: the word does not have any of the
corresponding semantic features:
Q: Whats a cousin?
A: I have a cousin, Daniel.
Q: Are cousins big or little?
A: No.

Stage 2: the child describes some features of the

term but not the relational ones, as in the
example below (from a child of 5; 10)
Q: Whats a father?
A: A father is somebody who goes to work every
day except Saturday and Sunday and earns
money.
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Stage 3: relational terms start being used, but they
are not yet reciprocal: (child aged 6:6)
Q: Whats a mother?
A: Its a mommy. I have a mommy. Its somebody
in your family.
Stage 4: the child knows that the term is both
relational and reciprocal. (child aged 7);
Q: Whats a niece?
A: A niece is like a mother had a sister, and Id be
her niece.

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 Invented words
- between 2 and 6 years of age, children tend to
invent new words to fill the gaps in their
vocabularies. These gaps appear when the
children have forgotten the word or dont know
the usual word.
e.g. (E) pourer = cup, plant-man = gardener; (R) a
limbai =. a linge, a se nzdrnni = a se sparge,
volanist = ofer
- Childrens lexical innovations follow regular
patterns, according to principles of productivity,
semantic transparency, and regularization.
- E.g. plantman > policeman, garbage man

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