D. Children ^,s word learning varies by the semantic domain the target words belong to
Experiment 2 demonstrated that word learning varies by the semantic domain the target
words belong to. Particularly, the qualitative analysis of the association, definition and story
generation tasks demonstrated that the children focused on perceptual∕descriptive, functional
and contextual properties for the target words describing animals, whereas, they focused
mostly on semantic properties for the target words describing artifacts. On the other hand, no
significant differences by semantic domain were found for the multiple choice, categorisation
questions and contrast task.

A possible interpretation for the above findings may be that the children are sensitive to
semantic domain differences (Sainsbury, 1991). It is likely that the artifacts domain has more
clear-cut boundaries than the animal domain, therefore the children are able to focus on the
semantic properties of the items from that domain. On the other hand, the animal domain may
not have clear-cut boundaries, therefore the children cannot focus on their semantic
properties. Instead they focus on the perceptual∕descriptive and contextual properties. Focus
on such properties is also related with the experience the children already have with them
from everyday life.

Differences in word learning by the semantic domain were also found in the naming task.
Particularly, it was revealed that the children produced accurately more words describing
animals than artifacts. A possible explanation for the above performance may be that the
semantic domain for animals was more well-established, so it was easier for the children to
accommodate the new animal words. That explanation is also supported by the statistical
analysis, which showed that children’s prior lexical knowledge for animals was significantly
correlated with accurate naming of the target words describing animals across testing. The
above findings imply that a theory of word learning from context needs to take into account
the semantic domain the target words belong, since children’s focus and the information they
acquire varies according to the semantic domain.

E. Children ^,s word learning varies by their prior lexical knowledge

Experiment 2 revealed that children’s performance on the word learning tasks differed by
their prior lexical knowledge. Particularly, it was found that children with high expressive
prior lexical knowledge performed significantly better than children with low expressive

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