Cognitive and linguistic factors in the development of word definitions

Abstract

Three studies were carried out in order to account for development of word definitions. Study 1 was aimed at analysing the role of class inclusion skills and age (5-and 7-year-olds and adults) in production of definitions containing superordinate categorical terms. No differences were found between 7-year-olds who had passed a class inclusion task and those who had not passed it as regards number of definitions containing superordinates, while differences were found between younger and older children and between children and adults. Study 2 was aimed at obtaining some normative criteria on the 'goodness' of definitions provided in Study 1, by using adult judges. It was found that the best definitions are those which contain both categorical terms and specific information about the to-be-defined object. It was also found that adults may adjust their standard definitional criteria to the kind of interlocutor (i.e. a child or a Martian). Study 3 confirms that younger children's definitions fall far short of the adult informativeness and completeness criteria while, by the age of ten, such criteria are met. Overall results were interpreted as conforming to a progressive conventionalization of children's strategies for defining objects.

An Analysis of Noun Definition in Cantonese

“…For example, "An apple is to eat" (Litowitz, 1977). This early inclination towards functional responses has also been observed in other studies (e.g., Benelli et al, 1988;Nelson, 1978;Wehren et al, 1981). Wehren et al (1981) studied the definitional responses produced by 80 English-speaking preprimary and primary school children and 20 adults and reported that the youngest children tended to provide functional responses, while the older children were more likely to include descriptions of external appearance or perceptual characteristics of the reference (e.g., "A plane is white in colour").…”

“…Benelli, Arcuri, and Marchesini (1988) found that the primitive definition form occurring in their young Italian preschoolers usually consisted of a list of associated objects or exemplars as an extension of the definition (e.g., Question: "What is a plane?" Answer: "In the airport" or "A ship").…”

Modularity and Developmental Disorders

“…First, the task of defi ning animals was indeed hard for the individuals with WS, particularly at the more sophisticated levels expected of older individuals (cf. Benelli et al, 1988). Second, as assessed by the sorting task, individuals with WS have poorer lexical semantic knowledge than expected given their level of receptive vocabulary, a skill for which this population is noted.…”

Early foreign language education and metalinguistic development

“…The ability to formulate these relationships by means of language requires cognitive maturity and semantic knowledge as well as familiarity with a conventional syntactic form for definitions. It is for this reason that word-definition tasks have long been used by test makers and researchers to measure and investigate different aspects of an individual's cognitive, linguistic and metalinguistic development (Al-Issa, 1969;Benelli, Arcuri, & Marchesini, 1988;Bialystok & Majumder, 1998;Kikas, 1993;Litowitz, 1977;Markowitz & Franz, 1983McGhee-Bidlack, 1991;Nippold, 1995;Skwarchuk & Anglin, 1997;Snow, 1990;Watson, 1985Watson, , 1995Wilson, 1975). Consequently, a number of coding systems have been employed to help researchers analyze the word-definition data.…”