Adjective Definitions and the Influence of Word Frequency

marinels{at}ohio.edu

The present investigation is a study of the development of adjective definitions given by participants in Grades 6 and 10 and by young adults, as well as the influence of word frequency on those definitions. A total of 150 participants (50 per age group) wrote definitions for 6 high-frequency and 6 low-frequency adjectives. Adjective definitions were analyzed for use of semantic content and also grammatical form. Findings indicated that content of adjective definitions generally followed a developmental course from concrete and functional to more abstract. Response patterns of certain categories, such as superordinate, have implications for organization of the mental lexicon and suggest that adjective definitions may be less predictable than definitions of other grammatical categories, such as noun. Although conventional syntactic form was highly used in definitions (i.e., adjectival form for a definition of an adjective), verb form was also highly used. Conventional form may be less useful to characterize adjective definitions than other grammatical classes. Findings suggest that word frequency has a robust influence on adjective definitions and that development progresses differently for high- and low-frequency words.

KEY WORDS: adolescents, development, mental lexicon, word definition, word frequency

Submitted on October 21, 2002
Accepted on March 11, 2003

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				S. A. Marinellie The content of children's definitions: The oral-written distinction Child Language Teaching and Therapy, February 1, 2009; 25(1): 89 - 102. [Abstract] [PDF]

				S. A. Marinellie and Y.-L. Chan The effect of word frequency on noun and verb definitions: a developmental study. J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2006; 49(5): 1001 - 1021. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]