The structure of the English lexicon. The simplest hypothesis.

Abstract

The following hypotheses were tested: (1) that the several meanings of a single word are stored and recalled for use in a fixed order; (2) that persons agree in the order; (3) that for each person the order remains constant over time; (4) that the order observed in subjects agrees with that available from semantic frequency counts; (5) that the order in which adults recall meanings is the order in which they learned them. The data support these hypotheses, however, only insofar as they relate to the first meaning recalled. Subjects' performance sharply indicated that in normal discourse context powerfully facilitates recall of meaning. The data throw some light on the acquisition of vocabulary and they indicate that at the age of five, all the essential features of adult lexical structure are already present. The body of information is however much more limited in the child.