Semantic development in textual contexts during the school years: noun scale analyses

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• The nominal lexicon is crucial for linguistic knowledge and usage.
• Understanding noun category distribution across development, modality, and genre offers insights into language acquisition.
• Later language acquisition, particularly in adolescence, presents a unique lens for examining linguistic development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the distribution of ten semantic noun categories (the Noun Scale) in Hebrew speakers across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
• To investigate how nominal density and noun abstractness evolve with age, schooling, and text genre/modality.
• To provide a psycholinguistically and cognitively grounded understanding of nominal lexicon development.

Main Methods:

• A study involving 80 Hebrew-speaking children, adolescents, and adults.
• Collection of 320 texts (spoken/written narratives and expository texts).
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis of all lexical noun tokens using the Noun Scale.

Main Results:

• Nominal density significantly increases from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, influencing syntactic architecture.
• Nouns become more categorical and abstract with age and schooling, particularly in adolescence.
• School-aged children's nominal lexicon differs from younger children's, with fewer concrete nouns, primarily in narrative texts. Written expository texts favor abstract nouns early on.

Conclusions:

• The nominal lexicon undergoes fundamental changes influenced by linguistic, cognitive, and social development.
• Text genre and modality play significant roles in shaping noun usage and abstractness.
• Adolescence is a critical period for the development of abstract and categorical noun usage in language acquisition.