Chapter 20 - Semantic Categories in Acquisition

Abstract

Both universal and language-specific meanings play a role as children map semantic categories onto linguistic forms in a first language. Child-directed speech is critical in helping children construct and shape their lexical semantic categories apart from their conceptual categories. Child-directed speech is the initial source of the conventions for each language, and this interacts with any conceptual structures already built as children become sensitive to the uses of each term within the language being used around them. In learning a language, children learn particular conventions for the available lexical forms used to convey semantic categories. The conventions of each language, dialect, community, or even subgroup within a community, can differ in subtle ways. So speakers typically learn many sets of conventions and move with varying skill from one to another, depending on which community their interlocutor belongs to. But these semantic categories are not isomorphic with conceptual categories. The extent to which people rely on language in such tasks depends on the precise goal on each occasion. As children, we build up both conceptual and semantic categories. Then, as adults, we can draw on either category, depending on the task and goal at hand.