Semantic Knowledge, Domains of Meaning and Conceptual Spaces

Abstract

The main thesis of this chapter is that children do not learn single new words but rather new words that belong to the same domain. For example, once they learn a word for a color, other color words will be learned soon after. The chapter presents a model of such domain-oriented language learning. Conceptual spaces are used as a framework for modeling the semantic processes involved in language acquisition. The author illustrates the model with some of the semantic domains that a child acquires during the first formative years of life. Linguistic data is also presented in support of the hypothesis that semantics knowledge is organized into domains.