Semantics and Language Acquisition - Essay Example

A) Semantics acquisition Introduction Meaning is not only a mental picture in one’s mind, but also a shared mental representation by a speech community (Gleason & Ratner 2009); therefore, meaning is socially constructed (De Villiers 1978). Young children acquire the meaning of words in a rapid and accurate rate (Gleason & Ratner 2009). It has been discovered that young children are able to express different semantic relations (nonverbally and verbally) in their early speech (Reich 1975). These semantic relations included agent-action-object, locative, possessor-possessed, etc. (De Villiers 1978, p.121). Usually, young children refer to the objects or people that they are familiar with in their early speech (Barrett 1995). It is interesting that most of the children follow the same process of lexicon acquisition (De Villiers 1978). The process can be divided into five different stages (De Villiers 1978). First, children learn proper names in the first stage as proper names only have one referent for each word (De Villiers 1978). Then, common nouns are acquired soon after the first stage (De Villiers 1978). This is because the structures of common nouns are more complex and children need time to master the application of these words (Barrett 1995). The third stage is acquiring simple verbs and adjectives (De Villiers 1978). These two categories share a similar complexity and similar properties (Barrett 1995). In order to study the verbs and simple adjectives, young children need to master the correlation and interaction between their perceptual development and lexical development (De Villiers 1978). The fourth stage is the acquisition of relational words (De Villiers 1978). These words have more complex meanings (Barrett 1995). It is somewhat difficult for young children to understand the concept of relational words since a comparison for the described object and the context is required (De Villiers 1978). The final stage is the acquisition of deictic expression (De Villiers 1978). Words in this category express the most complex idea of comparison (De Villiers 1978). Nelson (1973) has suggested that there are significant individual differences in the types of words that young children acquire in stage I (Katherine Nelson (1973) in De Villiers 1978, p. 124). Two kinds of children can be found in the early lexicon development of children (De Villiers 1978). They are identified as “referential children” and “expressive children”, respectively (De Villiers 1978). Referential children can be defined as those children who acquire and use words of the objects’ names (De Villiers 1978). They focus more on objects and their properties (De Villiers 1978). Usually, children within this type can employ more vocabularies, especially nouns with adjectives, than the group of expressive children (Reich 1975). A higher proportion of pronouns are used by referential children as well (De Villiers 1978). In spite of the “referential children”, Nelson has suggested another group of children exists called “expressive children” (De Villiers 1978, p,124). “Expressive children” refers to those children whose early vocabularies are used to express personal desires or to indicate social aspects (De Villiers 1978). For instance, “bye-bye”, “need”, “want”, etc. (De Villiers 1978). This group of young children is found to be more familiar with using possessives instead of adjectives (Barrett 1995). In this paper, a young girl called Sally is analysed for her semantic development. In the first part, Sally’s semantics inventory is listed out in grids. Sally has been found to be able to produce five categories of semantic relations, i.e. nouns, verbs and simple adjectives, spatial adjectives, possessive verbs as well as deictic expressions. The second part will address the theories that Sally has used in her lexical development. Three theories that are related to Sally’s data will be discussed, i.e. semantic feature theory, the prototype theory and the event representation theory will be discussed. In the third part, Sally’s principle of new word creation will be discussed. In part four, Sally’s characteristics in acquiring the five semantic relations, such as over-extension in nouns, will be discussed. The Semantic feature theory is suggested to be inadequate in explaining all the semantic characteristics. On top of that, The Event representation theory has found to be more significant in Sally’s semantics acquisition. The paper will conclude with a brief review on the data analysis and Sally’s semantic development. Part I: Data Analysis—Inventory From the data, it has been found that Sally can produce five major types of semantics: relations, nouns, verb and simple adjectives, spatial adjectives, possessive verbs as well as deictic expressions (Barrett 1995). Other minor relations, such as articles and pronouns can also be found (Barrett 1995). Here are the lists of semantics inventories that Sally can produce: Part II: Sally’s strategies to acquire new words As we have discussed, young children’s lexical development starts from the simplest referential uses of proper and common nouns to the complex relation expressions (De Villiers 1978). These words serve many functions (Barrett 1995). For example, they can be used in comparison as well as indicating a shift in viewpoints (De Villiers 1978). However, how can young children acquire new words? What strategies do they use in following the semantic acquisition process? What strategies does Sally use in her lexical development? Three theories have been suggested by linguists in order to explain the early lexical developments of young children (De Villiers 1978). The first one is Semantic feature theory (SFT) suggested by Clark in 1973 (Clark 1973). This is the most well known and critical theory by linguists (Gopnik & Meltzoff 1983). According to this theory, the meanings of words consist of smaller units called “semantic features” (Barrett 1995, p. 116). These features are treated as the criteria for using the word (Barrett 1995). These semantics features vary with their level of generality (Barrett 1995). Semantic features are acquired from general to specific (De Villiers 1978). That means that young children identify the meaning of a word with only one or a few of an adult’s meaning components in their speech. This theory assumes that the first acquires semantic features of children is processed through a non-linguistics perceptual mechanism (Reich 1975). Word meaning develops as the first one, additional feature will be associated with the word by the child (Reich 1975). Clark (1973) has used this theory to explain overextension (Eilers et al 1974). On top of generality, Clark has also explained the concept of the polarity nature in words (De Villiers 1978). He believes that children acquire unmarked words (i.e. positive words) before acquiring the marked words (i.e. negative words). However, SFT has been challenged in different ways (Eilers et al 1974). Some people argue that this theory is insufficient to explain all types of extensions in children’s early lexical development (Reich 1975). A couple of reasons can be used to explain this argument. For one thing, people argue that overextension is not a common phenomenon as the semantic feature predicts (De Villiers 1978). As shown in the Sally data, no evidence can be found to indicate that Sally has employed SFT in her language acquisition. Sally has already acquired many words with specific meanings, e.g. hammer, nails, salt, sugar, etc. There are not enough evidences to show that Sally acquired her vocabularies according to the generality of the words. For another thing, it is impossible to identify the relevant sets of semantic features that are said to be embedded in the vast majority of words (Reich 1975). Different people can perceive different semantic features within a particular word (De Villiers 1978). Therefore, it is hard to standardize the semantic features that make up the words (Reich 1975). Moreover, there is a “critical problem concerning the acquisition of ht meaning of referential words” (Barret 1977, p.207). Researchers argue against the prediction about polar features being acquired prior to dimensionality (Bartlett 1975). Many experiments have shown that there is no direct relationship between acquiring [+pol] words and [-pol] words (Barret 1977). The second theory that Sally has employed in her semantic development is Lexical contrast theory (Barrett 1995). Lexical contrast theory can be defined as the situation that the child assumes that new word, which is encountered, must contrast in its meaning with other words that are already known to the child (Barrett 1995, p. 127). This theory predicts that young children generalize the word to the referent (which has been acquired with the meaning initially), on the concept that they share some common features (Barrett 1995). The meanings of the new acquired words are usually more peripheral (Barrett 1995). In the Sally data, she associated the word “buckaroo” with the noun “dog” (L1108). As “buckaroo” has a more complex meaning to a young child and this word is not common in usage, Sally must refer the word “buckaroo” to the initial referent “dog”. One of the possible reasons is that Buckaroo always has a dog with him in the cartoon. Therefore, Sally can associate “buckaroo” and refer to the noun “dog” when she responds to her father’s question. However, there are some critiques of the prototype theory. It is argued against by some people as there are no precise definitions of “prototype” (Barrett 1995). Moreover, prototype theory does not exist in early lexical development (De Villiers 1978). Last but not least, Sally has mainly employed the Event Representation Theory in her language acquisition (Gleason & Ratner 2009). In Sally’s data, she has a large inventory of context-bound and social-pragmatic words. it is predicted that young children have built up a knowledge of the social interactions that recur in their everyday environments (Barrett 1995). Fast mapping usually occurs in young children development processes (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Words are embedded within event representation (Gleason & Ratner 2009). These concepts of words can be used to derive new concepts of other words (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Referring back to Sally’s data, in L913, Sally’s mother was trying to recall Sally’s memory about the day of the broken glass. Sally did not seem to remember the reasons of breaking the glass. However, she could recall that someone, i.e. “the man”, could come and fix the window. This part of conversation can be used to explain that some words had embedded in Sally’s mind on the day of the glass breaking or some other day. For example, she may have heard the utterance of her parents, (i.e. social context (Gleason & Ratner 2009)) which talked about “the man from O’Brian’s”. Therefore, she could recall the words and derive them to the new words she encountered now, i.e. the glass man. Part III: How does Sally create new words? Apart from the three theories aforementioned, Sally acquires and creates new words through copying words or imitating utterances from her parents (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Here are some evidences that show that Sally was copying her mother’s utterances: (1) L382-384 M: Have we got enough cups and saucers for everybody? C: evibo-isee (2) L924-925 M: He’s from O’Brian’s C: iz fom bwains The above examples show that Sally was imitating her mother’s speech and trying to figure out the meanings of these new words. For the second sentence, Sally not only imitated one word but the whole utterance. It has been suggested that young children sometimes imitate caregiver’s utterances containing new words before they use the new words in their own speech (Barret 1977). The first use of the new words she just acquired may be used in a different semantic or grammatical roles in her future speech (Gleason & Ratner 2009). On the other hand, Sally creates new words by using the principle of simplicity (Gleason & Ratner 2009). In L219, “I’ll a pats ((I will do the pants)), Sally has created a new expression, “a pat”, which shares the same meaning as “do the pants” (Gleason & Ratner 2009). She has simplified the expression by adding the article “a” to the word she already learned (Gleason & Ratner 2009). This process of inventing new words is called “Simplicity” (Gleason & Ratner 2009). There are two other principles of word creation by young children, including semantic transparency and productivity (Gleason & Ratner 2009). However, there are no evidences showing that Sally creates new words by these two principles. Part VI: Sally’s semantic acquisition features To begin with, Sally has a large inventory of nouns. As aforementioned, young children acquire proper nouns before acquiring common nouns (De Villiers 1978). As shown in Part I, Sally is able to produce both proper nouns and common nouns. In her inventory of proper nouns, her main targets are her parents, i.e. mammy and daddy. This can be accounted for the process of semantic acquisition that young children first learn proper names that are referred to only a single object (De Villiers 1978). Moreover, according to the Event Representation Theory, children are sensitive to the event in their environment (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Young children tend to acquire the information that specifies the people around them (Barrett 1995). Young children sometimes utilize grammatical features of speech in their early stages of development in order to determine if the word is a common noun or proper noun (De Villiers 1978). For example, Sally has produced both “a man” and “the man” in her speech regarding the glass man. Apparently, she was trying to determine if there is a proper noun to refer to the man who fixes the glass for them. She was trying to focus on different uses of the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ in order to distinguish between two nouns (De Villiers 1978). Linguists believe that there are four common relationships between the referential coverage of the young children’s lexicon and that of the adults, especially their caregiver (Reich 1975). They include overextension, underextension, overlapping and identity (Bartlett 1975). Overextension sometimes happens in young children’s speech (Barret 1977). Barrett (1995) states that children usually over-extend their first nouns or objects that are outside the normal range of application for adults (De Villiers 1978). Over-extension can be explained by the semantic features theory (Barrett 1995). SFT suggests that young children do not understand the full meaning of the words they first begin to produce (Reich 1975). They identify that meaning of the new word with some subset of the features or components that appear in adult’s meaning and lead to the consequence of over-extension (Reich 1975). Clark (1973) suggested that all the referents of a particular word share one more defining feature (De Villiers 1978). Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that it is incorrect for the theory prediction that children always use their first noun as systematically as the theory maintains (De Villiers 1978). Many words that children acquire in the early stage are complex in nature (Reich 1975). Over-extension can be accounted for another reason (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Psychologists believe that children want to draw adults’ attention in most of the interactions (Gleason & Ratner 2009). They appear to use the word in his inventory that most likely fits the object concerned (Gleason & Ratner 2009), even though they know that they are incorrect (Gleason & Ratner 2009). In Sally’s data, there are only a few evidences to show that Sally made the error in her speech. (1) L726 S: take of a bath, dis egg shell is da bath yay! (2) L783 M: What do you like to have in your bath? S: now dey aw kijin, now dey aw kjin ((now they all clean)). In the first example, Sally has overextended the word “egg shell”. She might have referred to something to have an egg shell shape in the bathroom. However, evidences are not enough for this example as we did not know what actually happened at that time during the recording. On the other hand, there is a great difference between overextension in comprehension and overextension in production (Gleason & Ratner 2009). It has been suggested that young children usually overextend in their early word production instead of comprehension (De Villiers 1978). Nevertheless, in example (2), some clues show that Sally had over-extended her mother’s question and therefore she responded with an irrelevant answer. Second, early word development not only overextends but also underextends (De Villiers 1978). The learning of nouns consists of the acquisition of features of an object (Gleason & Ratner 2009). In some cases, meanings of the words are narrowed down gradually by the child (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Acquisition of terms of reference consists of narrowed-down meaning in early lexical development (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Sometimes, children only learn the names of objects that are closely related to the concept they mastered in the first place (Gleason & Ratner 2009). There is inadequate control of the range of meaning of the word that leads to misuse of words (Barrett 1995). Overlapping also occurs in early lexical development (Bartlett 1975). Usually, underextension or overextension exists concurrently for a given level of generality (Bartlett 1975). This process is called overlapping (Bartlett 1975). Linguists suggest that the areas of overextension are probably also the area of underextension (Bartlett 1975). For example, in Sally’s data, L652, Sally said “da detail box” ((the detailed box)). There may be overextension for the word “detailed” as a proper noun. On the contrary, Sally may have underextended the word detail with some specific meaning she mastered before. The last relation is identity, which refers to the prediction that the meaning of proper names does generalize (Bartlett 1975). However, there are no evidences showing that Sally performed this relation. After discussing the nouns, simple verbs and simple adjectives are introduced. Young children usually acquire verbs with the objects they play with (Gleason & Ratner 2009). The action word is usually the prototypical referent for a word (De Villiers 1978). Children extract a set of attributes from the actions that they encounter in their interaction with adults and then extend it to other actions in order to share these attributes (De Villiers 1978). For adjectives, children acquire colour words in the first stage (De Villiers 1978). They usually respond to the same focal colour as adults, such as blue, yellow, black, etc. (De Villiers 1978). Sally has acquired all of these focal colours and she is able to use them correctly. This ability of acquiring colours are specified by the nature of the human perpetual system (De Villiers 1978). However, she is somehow confused by a more complex colour, the rainbow, and did not use it in a correct way. On the other hand, spatial adjectives are also significant in early lexical development (De Villiers 1978). Adjectives attribute to size, such as big, little, or evaluative descriptions are called spatial adjectives (De Villiers 1978). They have invariant properties, therefore it is difficult for young children to master this concept (De Villiers 1978). It has been found that children are able to acquire all of these complexities only until the age of four or even older (Eilers et al 1974). It takes time for children to master the standard of some relational adjective pair, e.g. big and small (Eilers et al 1974). They have to shift from egocentric standards at two-years-old to a context sensitive standard at four-years-old (De Villiers 1978). Usually, younger children make interesting errors and substitutions in learning this full set of adjectives during semantic acquisition (De Villiers 1978). There is a specific acquisition order for spatial adjectives. Big and small are usually the first contrastive pairs that are acquired by children (Eilers et al 1974). Sally can use the word “big” in her speech; however, she sometimes becomes confused with using the comparative word “bigger”. (1) L790-792 S: take these things on the bigger! S: take this see on the big one She needs more time to master the standard of this dimensional adjective. Children tend to use the general adjectives referring to height, length and width at the ages of four to five (Eilers et al 1974). Apart from the three relations, verbs of possession are also important in the early semantic development (Eilers et al 1974). A set of relational words are linked together by common components of meaning (Eilers et al 1974). Children usually start from mastering the words with the least complexity and then to the words with the most complex concept (Eilers et al 1974). It is very Important for children to acquire the semantic feature of “transfer of possession” and the direction of transfer before they combine with the concept of obligation (De Villiers 1978). Here, Sally already acquired the possessive verbs, take, put, etc. However, there are not enough data to show whether Sally can really produce these possessive verbs in a correct manner. Last but not least, deictic expressions are extremely complex concepts for young children (Eilers et al 1974). Children must understand the speaker’s viewpoint relative to their own distance (Eilers et al 1974). Although it has been proven that spatial deictic expressions appear in early childhood speech, it is very difficult for children to determine and acquire the full meaning of these relational verbs (Eilers et al 1974). Sally can produce the expression, such as “dere you go” ((there you go)) correctly. This may be due to the reason that it is easier for children to make the contrast between my/your (Eilers et al 1974). Moreover, parents usually accompany these complex expressions with gestures. Thus, it is uncertain to determine if the child can actually produce these verbs correctly (Eilers et al 1974). Part V: Conclusion In conclusion, Sally has a large inventory in her vocabularies. She may have already acquired far more new words than a boy her age. This is because girls usually have a faster and more accurate semantics acquisition process (Gleason & Ratner 2009). This may be due to their correct use of strategies for semantics acquisition (Gleason & Ratner 2009). Sally can produce the five major semantic inventories, i.e. noun, verb and simple adjective, spatial adjective, possessive verbs and deictic expressions in her speech. Besides, she acquires two other minor semantic inventories, pronouns and articles. She has employed three theories to acquire new words, which are semantic feature theory (which is found to be inadequate to some extent), and prototype theory and event representation theory (which is Sally’s major strategy in semantic acquisition). New words are created through imitating and by the principle of simplicity. Sally has also performed some errors, i.e. overextension, underextension, etc. in acquiring new meanings of words to some extent. In general, Sally can be said as having a rapid and accurate language acquisition process. References Barrett, M.D., 1977. Lexical Development and Overextension in Child Language. Journal of Child Language (5), pp. 205-219. Barrett, M., 1995. Early Lexical Development: The handbook of child language, Blackwell. Bartlett, E.J., 1975. Sizing Things Up: The Acquisition of the Meaning of Dimensional Adjectives, Journal of Child Language (3), pp. 205-219. Clark E., 1973. What’s in a word? On the child’s acquisition of semantics in his first language. Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, Academic Press. De Villiers, Jill G., 1978. The Development of Word Meaning: Language acquisition, Harvard University Press. Eilers, R.E., Oller, D.K. & Ellington, J., 1974. The Acquisition of Word-Meaning for Dimensional Adjectives: The Long and Short of It. Journal of Child Language (1) pp.195-204. Gleason, J.B. & Ratner, N.B., 2009. The Development of Language, 7th ed., Pearson. Gopnik, A. & Meltzoff, A.N., 1983. Semantic and Cognitive Development in 15-to-21-month-old children. Journal of Child Language (2) pp. 495-513. Landau, B., Smith, L.B. & and Jones, S.S., 1988. The Importance of Shape in Early Lexical Learning. Cognitive Development (3), pp. 299-321. McKeown, M.G., 1985. The Acquisition of Word Meaning From Context By Children of High and Low Ability. Reading Research Quarterly (20)4, pp. 482-496. Reich, P.A., 1975. The Early Acquisition of Word Meaning. Journal of Child Language (3), pp. 117-123. Read More