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Who is ‘Daddy’ revisited: the status of two-year-olds' over-extended words in use and comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Jean R. Thomson  and
Robin S. Chapman
Jean R. Thomson
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Robin S. Chapman
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Abstract

Diary observations of two-year-olds' over-extended word use have been interpreted as arising from the word's underlying semantic feature structure, retrieval error, or limited vocabulary. The first interpretation was tested by analysing whether the same few features systematically characterized most over-extensions of a word (picture-naming task), and whether the same word was over-extended in comprehension (picture-pointing task). Four instances of over-extended use were studied in each of 5 children aged 1; 9 to 2; 3. A semantic feature interpretation is rejected, as is the view that overextensions are used by the child deliberately, to refer to objects which he knows are not properly named by the words. The need to construct models of early word meaning which reflect the early instability of conceptual organization, the probability of retrieval error in recall tasks, and the developmental history of individual words – particularly parental acceptance or rejection of use – is discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , October 1977 , pp. 359 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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