Children's developing awareness of the complex meanings of the "sleep verbs"

S. Koren

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This study aimed at examining the semantic acquisition of two sets of converse verbs associated with
'sleep': sleep-get up, fall asleep-wake up by Hebrew speaking children aged 2-12. It was hypothesized that the
order of acquisition is as above, determined by the semantic features of markedness and positivity, and that the
child has to be at an advanced stage of cognitive development in order to be able to fully understand the
semantic features of these verbs. The results showed that the order of acquisition is different from the one
predicted, since wake up (which is "negative") is evidently acquired before fall asleep (a "positive" action).
Hence positivity does not play as great a role in the order of acquisition of those verbs as predicted. Instead, the
frequency of the verb was found to have a larger role in acquisition. The order of acquisition of the various
semantic features of the 'sleep' verbs was postulated as well, and explained by some semantic theories. The study
revealed interesting findings about children's understanding of different concepts. It was found that young
children do not understand the difference between ability and permission, place an important role on
functionality, and do not fully understand sleep's essentiality to life. It was also shown that correct answers do
not always reflect understanding, and that children tend to answer yes/no questions positively, even if they do
not know the answer. Children's experience in life and their intellectual-cognitive maturity determine the rate of
their acquisition of complex features. This conclusion, demonstrated by the feature acquisition of the 'sleep'
verbs, coincides with the other hypothesis of the study.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)81-109
Number of pages29
JournalNovitas-ROYAL
Volume6
Issue number1
StatePublished - 2012

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