A cognitive approach to semantic approximations in monolingual English-speaking children

Abstract

This paper represents a foray into the largely unexplored territory of the cognition of semantic approximations in first language acquisition. Current advances on cognitive modelling are applied to a corpus of 500 semantic approximations produced by 20 children between 1;06 and 5;00 years old. The results reveal that a large number of those semantic approximations are the output of a set of cognitive operations including those of comparison and correlation (i.e. metaphorical projections), domain expansion and reduction (i.e. metonymic mappings), and mitigation and strengthening (i.e. scalar operations). Far for being an impediment to communication, most semantic approximations in our data are found to help children capitalize on their incomplete lexical pool, maximizing its communicative potential. The set of cognitive strategies involved is available from an early age, underlying the use of language throughout our lifespan, and adapting its functions to diverse communicative needs in different stages of our lives.