NVESTIGATING LEXICAL ACQUISITION PATTERNS: CONTEXT AND COGNITION

The sense relationship is said to hold between the words or expressions of a language
(Lyons, 1977). For example, “Unicom” has meaning, not because of its denotation, but
because of its relationship with other elements in a particular semantic field, for example
animals. In other words, sense has to do with the semantic relationship between the words.

Words for objects: Overextension and Underextension errors

Words that denote objects have received the greatest amount of concern from researchers
of word meaning acquisition. Different reasons can explain that interest. Firstly, object
words have been perceived to be very important in the early phases of the development
of lexicon (Tomasello and Merriman, 1995). However, recent research (Tardif, 1996) has
demonstrated that the above finding is not evident across languages. Tardif (1996) found
that verbs or action words were more prevalent in Mandarin speaking children. Secondly,
it is relatively easy for the researchers to assess the denotation that a child has granted an
object word than an abstract word or a verb.

The early phases of word meaning acquisition demonstrate that children’s initial guesses
about the denotation of words are often partial. A child may attach an overly broad
denotation to a word. For example, a child may use a word like dog to denote dogs, cows,
sheeps, and bears. Such a mistake is called an overextension error. On the other hand, a
child may attach too narrow a denotation to a word, and so restrict a word. For example,
a child may use a word like “man” only to his/her father. This is known as an
underextension error.

These sorts of errors illustrate the fact that children must constantly refine the meanings
that they attach to words until they determine the appropriate conventional meaning.
Kuczaj (1986) has suggested that young children might learn object words in the
following sequence:(l) The word is underextended; (2) The word is underextended and
overextended (e.g. only some dogs are called dog, but some non-dogs are also called
dog); (3) The word is overextended; (4) The word is used correctly. According to Kuczaj ^,s
(1986) data, sometimes the first and third steps need not occur in the acquisition of every
early object word, but if the steps did occur, the sequence outlined above is sustained.

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