Polysemy and frequency in word knowledge acquisition

Using comprehension, production and definition measures, the research reported in this dissertation investigated the acquisition of object, situation and state words. Previous research (Ollila, Lloyd & Chamberlain, 1979; Gentner, 1978) has demonstrated that although object situation and state words are all present in the early vocabulary of the child, object words are predominant.; Object, situation and state words differ from one another in several ways. Objects are stable and can be directly perceived. Situation words are transient, need objects to be perceived, and involve motion. Finally, state words are transient and need objects to be perceived. In addition, object, situation and state words differ in three ways which are not intrinisic to their conceptual domains. Object words are more frequent in adult speech to children (Mervis, 1983), object words are more concrete (Gentner, 1978), and object words have fewer meanings (Gentner, 1978).; The variables of frequency, concreteness and number of meanings have all been shown to affect language processing in adults and children (c.f. Brown, 1958; Anglin 1977, Jastrezembski, 1981; Cramer, 1983; Saxby & Anglin, 1983; Hall, Scholnick & Hughes, 1987). The observed differences in object, situation and state word acquisition may therefore be due to the variables of frequency, number of meanings and concreteness, or to the conceptual differences which exist between the three domains. The research described in this dissertation was designed to answer this question.; Specifically, the experiments investigated the effects of frequency of occurrence and number of meanings on concrete object, situation and state words. In order to manipulate the frequency and number of meanings the stimuli were created words. It was hypothesized that increased frequency would increase acquisition, while an increased number of meanings would decrease acquisition.; Twenty-two subjects ranging in age from 4 years 2 months to 29 years 7 months took part in this research. Mixed model analysis of variance of the three measures reveals that frequency and number of meanings are not an adequate explanation for acquisition differences. The results suggest that the observed differences in the acquisition of object, situation and state words are due to conceptual differences between the three word domains.