Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:41:01.473Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘This man's father is my father's son’: a study of the acquisition of English kin terms*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Susan E. Haviland  and
Eve V. Clark
Susan E. Haviland
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Committee on Linguistics, Stanford University
Eve V. Clark
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Committee on Linguistics, Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Clark's (1973) hypothesis about the acquisition of semantics proposed that young children learn the meanings of words component by component, and that, within any given semantic field, they acquire the full adult meanings for the semantically simpler terms before they acquire the semantically more complex ones. The semantic field investigated in the present study was that of kinship terms. A new analysis of kin terms, employing relational components, was used to predict the relative order of acquisition of the terms. Definitions of 15 kin terms were elicited from children aged 3;5–8;10. The data showed that semantic complexity played an important role in determining the order of acquisition, and thus provided support for both the relational analysis of kin terms and the semantic acquisition hypothesis.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 1974 , pp. 23 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Kinship Semantics, sponsored by the Mathematical Social Sciences Board, and organized by Hugh Gladwin and David B. Kronenfeld, at Riverside, California, on 18–20 December 1972. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (GS-30040) and in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (MH-20021). We would like to thank Herbert H. Clark and Michelle Z. Rosaldo for their comments on an earlier version of this paper, and we are grateful to Pamela Frydman for her assistance with some of the data analysis.

References

REFERENCES

Bierwisch, M. (1967). Some semantic universals of German adjectivals. FL 3. 1–36.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, M. (1970). Semantics. In Lyons, J. (ed.), New horizons in linguistics. Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1972). On the child's acquisition of antonyms in two semantic fields. JVLVB ii. 750–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Danziger, K. (1957). The child's understanding of kinship terms: a study in the development of relational concepts. JGenPsych 91. 213–32.Google ScholarPubMed
Elkind, D. (1962). Children's conceptions of brother and sister: Piaget replication study V. JGenPsych 100. 129–36.Google ScholarPubMed
Fillenbaum, S. & Rapaport, A. (1971). Structures in the subjective lexicon. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Flavell, J. H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodenough, W. H. (1956). Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Lg 32. 195–216.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. H. (1949). The logical analysis of kinship. Philosophy of Science 16. 58–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, J. H. (1966). Language universals. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Haviland, S. E. (1972). Multidimensional scaling of kin terms with and without a reference point. Unpublished ms.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1972). Hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Papers from the Eighth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society. 183–228.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1928). Judgment and reasoning in the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Rips, L. J., Shoben, E. J. & Smith, E. E. (1973). Semantic distance and the verification of semantic relations. JVLVB 12. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romney, K. & D'Andrade, R. G. (1964). Cognitive aspects of English kin terms. AmA 66. 146–70.Google Scholar
Tyler, S. A. (1969). The myth of P: epistemology and formal analysis. AmA 71. 71–9.Google Scholar
Wallace, A. F. C. & Atkins, J. (1960). The meaning of kinship terms. AmA 62. 58–79.Google Scholar