Semantics Flashcards
(28 cards)
What part of the language taxonomy is semantics in?
Content
What is content?
What is semantics?
Content: meaning of language - words used and meaning behind them
Semantics: rules of a language - individual words and word combinations
What is a word?
- Symbol: representation
- Arbitrary: no relation between sound and meaning
- Referent: words stands for their referents
- Conventional: socially shared
development at birth - 6 months
- sounds are represented in all different languages
- universal linguists
development at 8 months
- early sounds ma ma ma and da da da
development at 12 months
babbling consists of sounds only from the language spoken
development at 10-15 months
- approximations of target words
- context bound
what is under extensions?
what is over extensions?
under: very narrow use of word
over: broad use of word
pre-school children
kingergarten
grade 3
Children with small vocabularies (SES background)
> Preschool children: Oral vocab lays the foundation for reading success
vocab size in kindergarten = effective predictor of reading comp
restricted vocab at end of gr 3 declining reading comprehension scores
low SES are:
- greater risk for reading failure
- more likely to have poorer grades in school
- more likely to drop out in high school
what is fast mapping?
fast mapping: how quickly you learn a word
link word to referent and extend word to a category of referents
hear dog one time, see dog, know dog
what is slow mapping
takes time
strengthen knowledge of word and category
words can be known at different levels, what are the stages?
Stage 1: never saw it before
Stage 2: heard it but doesn’t know what it means
Stage 3: recognizes it in context and knows generally what it has to do with
Stage 4: knows it well
What are the levels of word knowledge:
Association: can make association even though don’t understand meaning of word
Comprehension: understands commonly accepted meaning of word
Generation: can use target word in novel contexts (surface level - fast mapping)
what are arguments against direct instruction of vocabulary?
too many words to teach directly AND
words can be learnt easily from context during reading
are there too many words to teach directly?
- what are the 3 tiers
Tiers
- basic words
- words that occur with high frequency in mature language users, found across a variety of contexts
- words whose frequency of use is low and often limited
Why are tier two words best to teach?
more productive
rich knowledge of these words impact verbal abilities
called “goldilocks” words
Learning for context - how easy is it?
- readers do use contexts to learn new words BUT only in small increments (3-16/100)
- this is most problematic for struggling readers because they read less and less successful in deriving meaning from context
what are the 4 context cue categories in regards to context?
- Directive Contexts: lead to correct inferences about word meaning
- General Context: provide enough clues to place word in a general category
- Non Directive: provide little assistance
- Mis-directive context: seem to direct reader to incorrect meaning
What aids in learning?
- frequent exposure
- temporal spacing
- multimodal input
- numerous exemplars
what does text talk develop?
surface level understanding/use (fast mapping)
and
deeper level understanding/use (slower)
what to do prior to reading?
ask about word meaning
guide to develop accurate word meaning
add additional representations
Guidelines to choosing vocab in story books:
- preschool 5-6 words/story
school: 10-15 / story - vocab is most important so allow below-average to acquire above average
- choose word central to understanding plot and interesting words that they haven’t heard
dont use word for instruction if:
- not being able to define the word in terms known to students
- word used to define a target word are alike or unknown to a student
choose words that are:
useful and interesting ones
- able to find uses for in everyday lives
