Adult performance in naming spatial dimensions of objects

Most work on acquisition of lexical meaning in developmental psycholinguistics is based on the idea of the relevance of the adult model, which is generally described in relation to certain theoretical semantic analyses. Up to the present, adult behavior itself has not been examined and its validity as a model for children has been taken for granted. This paper analyzes the knowledge of spatial terms, namely dimensional terms, shown by a group of 20 adults. The results show that the adult subjects used in our study--supposedly linguistically competent--committed errors, significantly varying their strategies for naming dimensions from one case to another, and showing a lack of consistency between them. The results are discussed in terms of assumed theoretical validity with regard to theoretical semantic analysis, as well as the methods of research about the acquisition of lexical meaning.