properties over time for the definition task. They also provided more semantic, functional and
contextual properties over time on the story generation task. Separate analysis for each group
demonstrated that the above findings were significant for the definition group. On the other
hand, they provided less descriptive properties over time in their justifications for the
association task. The above findings demonstrate that the children benefited from the
repeated exposure to various contexts over time, since they provided more properties over
time, gaining a full understanding of the word’s meaning.
C. Children ,s word learning varies by their prior knowledge of the target words
Experiment 2 demonstrated that children’s word learning performance varied by their prior
knowledge of the target words. Particularly, it was found that if the children had a partial
representation for the target words, then children were better able to Ieam their name (naming
task), to define them (definition task) and to classify them in a category (world knowledge
questions) than if they had not any prior knowledge for them.
Children’s success on the above tasks could be related with the three different aspects of the
word’s meaning -reference, denotation and sense- (Lyons, 1977). The above findings suggest
that when the children have already acquired the denotation or part of the denotation of a
word’s meaning (success in the multiple choice task for the partially represented words) they
can then easier extend the acquisition of the denotation of the word (success on the naming
task) and acquire the also the sense of the word’s meaning (success on the definition and
short questions task). This is not the case when the words are totally unknown for the
children.
Thus, a theory of word learning needs to take into account the three aspects of the words’
meaning (reference, denotation, sense) since knowledge of one of them can support the
acquisition of any of others. The above suggestion is also in accordance and extend Dockrell
and CampbelTs (1986) proposal that the three aspects of the word’s meaning -reference,
denotation and sense- can provide a framework for the study of the word’s meaning
acquisition.
294
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