A Hypothesis for Semantic Development in a Second Language

A comparative investigation of semantic structure among adult native English speakers and speakers of English as a second language and the suggested course of semantic development among children support a hypothesis for semantic development in a second language.Second language learners are seen to conceptualize semantic relations in the domain of address terms with respect to salient perceptually-based dimensions and less salient abstract dimensions relevant to their native cultural orientation rather than the orientation of the second language. Among children too, the progression from perceptual to abstract representation is suggested to occur as a function of the learner's growing knowledge and experience of the world. Since semantic development occurs as a continuing process through adulthood, especially for adult second language learners, second language semantic development is hypothesized to occur as a process of transition from native to second language semantic structures and a function of the changing cultural orientation of the learner. The transition is initially marked by the learners' salient reliance upon perceptually-based dimensions and later by increasingly salient reliance upon abstract culturally relative dimensions in the second language

Cognitive psychology · First language · Linguistics · Perception · Salient · Artificial Intelligence · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Multisensory perception and integration · Psychology

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• On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories11this Research Was Supported in Part by a Grant to the Author (Under Her Former Name, Eleanor Rosch Heider) From the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry # G67-392, in Part by Funds Made Available to the Child Study Center of Brown University From the Grant Foundation and From the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, National Collaborative Project (Ph-43-68-13), and in Part by Research Funds Made Available by the University of California at Berkeley (220 Grant #K9pf-429). I Wish to Thank Karl G. Heider for His Help in the Field in West Irian (Indonesian New Guinea), Dr. Robert Olton for Assistance in Carrying Out Experiment 3, and Keith Burton, Randy Street, and Peter Lewitt Who Assisted With Experiment 4. Experiment 4 Was Performed With Dr. Richard Millward While the Author Was a Research Associate at Brown University.

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