Lexical & Semantic Development

Lexical & Semantic Development

1. Lexical development

   • Child's acquisition of words

2. Semantic development

   • Child's acquisition of meanings associated w/ those words

3. REMEMBER

   • Vocab acquisition does NOT end at certain age
   • We cont hearing & learning new words throughout life

4. Rate of acquisition

   • End of 1st yr
     • Child begins to speak
   • 18 months
     • Vocab of about 50 words
   • 2 yrs
     • Vocab of about 200 words
   • 5 yrs
     • Vocab about 2,000 words
   • 7 yrs
     • Vocab about 4,000 words

5. Understanding

   • Prev figures refer to word use
   • At each stage, no of words understood by child is expected to be higher
   • 18 months - 250 words understood

6. Meanings

   • When a child adds new word to vocab, they are NOT immediately aware of its full range of meanings
   • More time required to acquire this additional knowledge

7. First words

   • Research has shown there are predictable patterns in the words & word classes first acquired by children
   • Entities
   • Properties
   • Actions
   • Personal - social
   • Predictably a large proportion of child's 1st words refer to familiar people, objects & aspects of social interaction

8. Word classes

   • Nouns
   • Verbs
   • Adjectives
   • Concrete nouns
   • 5 - 7 yrs
     • Abstract nouns begin to be used
   • Grammatical function words
     • Noticeably absent in early stages of lexical acquisition

9. Under - Extension

   • Common semantic error made by children
   • Word is given a narrower (under extended) meaning
   • 'Cat' is family pet but NOT other cats

10. Over - Extension

    • Another common semantic error
    • Opposite of under - extension
    • Word is given a broader (more gen) meaning
    • 'Daddy' for all men not just daddy
    • More common then under - extension
    • 50 word vocab
      • 1/3 likely to be over - extended

11. Getting it right

    • Age 2 1/2
      • Marked decrease in no of over - extensions
    • Explanation
      • Child's vocab

12. Understanding

    • Remember
      • Children's understanding of word meanings is ahead of ability to produce corresponding words

13. Aitchinson (1987)

    • 3 stages / processes occur during acquisition of vocab
      • Labelling
      • Packaging
      • Network building