The semantic specificity as a determining factor in the acquisition of verbs

Authors

  • Lauren Tonietto UFRGS
  • Aline Villavicencio UFRGS
  • Maity Siqueira UFRGS
  • Maria Alice de Mattos Pimenta Parente UFRGS
  • Tania Mara Sperb UFRGS

Keywords:

Especificidade semântica, aquisição de verbos, desenvolvimento lexical, categorização

Abstract

Miller and Fellbaum (1991) propose that generic verbs are more basic and of earlier occurrence than specific ones. This study verified the specificity as a determining factor in the acquisition of verbs in Brazilian children. The corpus of 146 answers of 2:0 to 5:11 year-old children and 75 undergraduate students, emitted to each of the 17 short films which compose the Actions Naming Task, was analyzed regarding the verbs validity and specificity. The number of valid answers and specific verbs increased significantly with age, confirming that age and gender are predicting factors of the use of specific verbs. The results suggest that the lexical development of Brazilian children is related to their categorization capacity, as they use firstly generic verbs for different situations. With experience and exposition to the linguistic input, they acquire more complex semantic characteristics which lead the usage of more specific verbs. Keywords: Semantic specificity; verb acquisition; lexical development; categorization.

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Published

2008-11-26

How to Cite

Tonietto, L., Villavicencio, A., Siqueira, M., de Mattos Pimenta Parente, M. A., & Sperb, T. M. (2008). The semantic specificity as a determining factor in the acquisition of verbs. Psico, 39(3). Retrieved from https://pucrs.emnuvens.com.br/revistapsico/article/view/3910

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 3 (2008)

Section

Articles

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