The document discusses semantic development in children. It explains that children first understand words through context before understanding the words themselves. The acquisition of word meanings is gradual, with children using different strategies as their language skills develop. Early words tend to be nouns referring to concrete objects. Later, children learn more complex concepts and semantic relationships between words. Semantic development is influenced by children's cognitive and linguistic maturation as well as input from adults. It is a lifelong process of building vocabulary and understanding language at deeper levels.

1. SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT:
LEARNING THE MEANING
OF WORDS
Brando B. Sayson
PHDL-510

2. HOW IS MEANING ACQUIRED
AND WHEN?
Very young children understand the
pragmatic intent of adult’s utterances
before they can understand the words
themselves. This earliest comprehension is
at the emotional, social, and contextual
level.

3. HOW IS MEANING ACQUIRED
AND WHEN?
The acquisition of words and their meanings, and
the links between them does not happen all at once.
During the course of this process, which is usually
called semantic development, children’s strategies
for learning word meanings and relating them to
one another change as their internal representation
of language constantly grows and becomes
organized.

4. WHAT IS IN STORE FOR
THIS TOPIC?
•Describe the relationship between
words and their referents;
•Describe the theories that attempt to
explain how children acquire and
represent meaning;

5. WHAT IS IN STORE FOR THIS TOPIC?
•Address what is known about early words and
the ways in which contemporary researchers
have attempted to interpret the data on
children’s early words and word meanings; and
•Present research on later semantic
development, specifically on semantic
networks.

6. WHAT IS IN STORE FOR THIS TOPIC?
•Explain metalinguistic development.

7. SEMANTICS DEFINED

8. SEMANTICS
Is a system that includes our
mental dictionary or lexicon.
This pertains to vocabulary
acquisition or acquiring
meanings of words, beginning
with simple vocabulary, to
complex, to abstract knowledge.

9. 1. WORDS AND REFERENTS
•The word is a sign that signifies a referent, but
the referent is not necessarily the meaning of
the word.
•Word (toy)
•Referent(s): ball, doll, cooking set, luthang,
takyan, toy gun, etc.

10. 1. WORDS AND REFERENTS
•Meaning is a cognitive construct,
and it resides in the speakers of a
common language following
particular social conventions.

11. RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS
AND REFERENTS
• ARBITRARY RELATION between the word and the
referent
• It is by social convention in a particular language
that speakers agree to call a toy, for example, by a
particular word (Morris, 1946).
• Toy, being the word, for example, may have
different referents depending on the speakers of a
particular language.

12. THIS ARBITRARY RELATION IS SYMBOLIC. THERE IS NO
OBVIOUS CONNECTION BETWEEN
THE WORD AND THE REFERENT.

13. RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS
AND REFERENTS
•Meaning between the referent and the word,
for a few words, is NOT ARBITRARY.
•Word “thud” resembles the sound “thud”.
•bird “cuckoo” resembles its sound “cuckoo”.

14. Many of children’s earliest words or protowords
have a less-than-arbitrary relation to their
referents:
1. jeepney- pip-pip
2. cat- meow-meow
3. dog- arf-arf

15. •It is probably easier for children to learn a
word that is obviously related to its referent
than one that is totally arbitrary and symbolic,
and as some research has shown, young
children believe that the name and the
referent are intrinsically related.

16. RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS
AND REFERENTS
•INTRINSIC RELATION
•Children believer that one cannot change the
name of something without changing its nature as
well.
• Cow and moo
• Cat and meow
•Children believe that if cows do not moo and cats
do not meow, they must be something else.

17. INTRINSIC RELATION
• ETYMOLOGICAL RELATION
• Through careful etymology, the essential nature of words could be revealed (Bloomfield,
1933)
• For example, blackberry is so called because it is a berry that is black. Bedroom is so
named because it is a room containing a bed.
• These words and where they are coming from are intrinsically related.
• FOLK ETYMOLOGICAL RELATION
• “Friday” is so named because….
• “Handkerchief” is so named because…

18. RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS
AND REFERENTS
• Meaning is a MENTAL REPRESENTATION or CONCEPT but
not a MENTAL PICTURE. Although many are able to
visualize words, many words do not have “picturable”
referents.
• Picturable: The word dog may evoke a mental picture
of a black poodle.
• Non-picturable: The word love or jealousy do not have
picturable referents, but we know their meaning.

19. RELATIONS BETWEEN WORDS
AND REFERENTS
• CONCEPTS AND THEIR CATEGORIES
• One of the child’s primary tasks is to acquire CATEGORICAL
CONCEPTS.
• THEORIES ON CHILDREN’S CATEGORICAL CONCEPT ACQUISITION:
• Children acquire categories by learning the essential semantic
features of the category.
• Children first learn prototypical examples of a category.
• Children use a probabilistic strategy in assigning category
membership.

20. Children acquire categories by learning the essential
semantic features of the category.

21. PROTOTYPE THEORY
• Children first learn prototypical examples of a category.

22. PROBABILISTIC THEORY

23. 2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• LEARNING THEORY predicts that repeated exposure to a
stimulus will result in the child associating the sound of the
word with the actual object.
• ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING THEORY (behaviorist)
• When word and concrete referent are repeatedly associated
with each other, meaning is acquired.
• Kitty (word) repeatedly associated with the actual concrete family cat
(referent) in a particular experience

24. 2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES
• Consider semantic development within the wider context of the
child’s unfolding social, cognitive, and linguistic skills. Children
learn the meaning of words by drawing on skills in multiple
domains.
• By the time they start learning language, all children have
developed a set of ontological categories (concepts about how the
world is organized), which include objects, actions, events,
relations, states, and properties (basic categories in all languages
that speakers refer to when they use language).

25. 2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES attempt to explain:
• how the child acquires first words;
• why the scope of reference of children’s early words may not
match that of adults; and
• how children’s semantic systems become more adult-like over
time.
• Word mapping is an early skill even infants start to learn in order
to acquire words and meaning. Associative learning is one good
vehicle for this skill.

26. 2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• FAST MAPPING. Despite the challenges of word mapping, children 18
months old or even younger can make an initial word-referent
mapping after only a few exposures to a new word even without
explicit instruction by an adult.
• An experiment with 3 and 4 year old kids provided with exposure to
unfamiliar words in the course of classroom activities.
• Color words are mapped fast.
• Through ostension (that is, when objects are explicitly labeled), nouns
may be learned fast by children two and older.

27. 2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON
SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• LEXICAL PRINCIPLES: There are default assumptions
that children may use as working hypotheses in fast
mapping.
• Words refer to objects.
• Words refer to whole objects.
• New words can be extended to other members of the
same category (taxonomic principle; classifications)

28. LEXICAL PRINCIPLES
•Each object can only have one name
(principle of mutual exclusivity)
•New words refer to categories that do not have
a name yet (novel name-nameless category
principle).
•No two words have exactly the same meaning
(principle of contrast).

29. 3. EARLY WORDS
•Children begin to produce their own words as early
as when they are two years old by relating the
meanings of these words to what is intellectually
and socially meaningful to them.
•Common early words: daddy, doggie, mommy,
kitty

30. FACTORS INFLUENCING EARLY
PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARIES AMONG
CHILDREN
•Phonological composition
•Words that are easier for children to pronounce
are more likely to be included in their early
productive words.

31. FACTORS INFLUENCING EARLY PRODUCTIVE
VOCABULARIES AMONG CHILDREN
•Input from adults
•Most of these vocabularies consist of
NOUNS. WHY NOUNS? (clearer and
more concrete than verbs; less complex;
generally have concrete referents)

32. FACTORS INFLUENCING EARLY PRODUCTIVE
VOCABULARIES AMONG CHILDREN
• Unconventional Word/Meaning Mappings
• Overextension is said to occur when a child uses a word in a context or manner that is
inconsistent with, but in some way related to, the adult meaning of the word. It derives
from a fact that the child is extending the term beyond the ault word concept.
• When a dog is called kitty
• Cotton ball (snow)
• Visitors greeted with a hearty bye-bye!
• Underextension
• Duck for birds that swim
• Birds for those that fly
• Chicken for those that do not fly

33. FACTORS INFLUENCING EARLY PRODUCTIVE
VOCABULARIES AMONG CHILDREN
•Invented vs. conventional words
•Bee-house for bee-hive
•Pourer for cup
•Plant-man for gardener

34. HOW ADULT SPEECH INFLUENCES
CHILDREN’S SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• Adult’s labeling and gaze behaviors serve to focus
children’s attention to objects which they initially label-
map.
• Adults engage children in naming games.
• Adults sometimes mislabel objects when speaking to vey
young children.
• When teaching basic level terms, mothers use ostension.
For superordinates, they use inclusion.

35. 4. LATER SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
•Complex Concepts and Terms
•Color terms (colors should be distinguished
from objects)
•Deictic terms are challenging because their
referents change depending on who the
speaker is or on the speaker’s perspective.

36. 4. LATER SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
•Semantic Networks
•Walk, walks, walking
•Cat, cats
•Compete, win, lose
•Pain, pane

37. 4. LATER SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
•Metalinguistic development (going
beyond the literal meaning)
•Segmentation
•Phonological awareness
•Correct pauses in speech streams

38. 4. LATER SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
•Humor, metaphor, and Irony
•Word Definitions
•A Lifelong Enterprise