SEMANTIC DISABILITY

Semantics is derived from Ancient Greek word :sēmantikós. In linguistics,

semantics is the subfield that studies meaning.Semantics can address meaning at
the levels of words, phrases, sentences, or larger units of discourse. Two of the
fundamental issues in the field of semantics are that of compositional semantics
(which pertains on how smaller parts, like words, combine and interact to form
the meaning of larger expressions such as sentences) and lexical semantics (the
nature of the meaning of words).

The development of semantic knowledge in children consists of building up the

lexicons until their words match that of an adult. Children start using a word in
a restricted setting, eventually use it in a larger semantic network and ultimately
learn to detach it from the situation in which they gained the knowledge.
Semantic development studies the relationship between language and
individual’s perception of the world, including the things and actions within it.
(Robert, 2008) 

When this component of language is affected then it is termed as ‘SEMANTIC

DISABILITY’.

There are broadly two different ways that meaning has been studied in language
development: one branch of study is known as Lexical Semantics, the second
branch is semantic relations.

LEXICAL SEMANTICS :

The aspect of semantics which first springs to mind is the study of the meaning
of words in a language. The words that comprise in a language are known
collectively as the lexicon and hence the branch of semantics concerned with
word meaning is called lexical semantics.

It is not concerned with which word a child knows and uses (i.e. vocabulary)
but with the way that children use their vocabulary to refer to things. So during
the acquisition of lexical semantics, child can produce 2 types of errors 

•OVEREXTENSION 

•UNDEREXTENSION

OVEREXTENSION: It occurs when a categorical term (a word use to

describe a group of things) is used in language to represent more categories
than it actually does.
Eg: To all animals as “doggie”

       To all women as “mommy”

Two types of over extension are seen:

•Chain associations

E.g. ‘drink’ initially for milk then for milk bottle, milk man etc…

•Holistic association

Eg. Bus to all vehicles

Two traditional theories attempt to extension errors:

First, the semantic feature hypothesis (Clark, 1973) states that children
classify and organize referents in terms of perceptual features such as size,
shape, texture, etc. This phenomenon explains overextensions in which a child
generalizes a word based on perceptual similarities (eg: ball – moon).

Second, the functional core hypothesis (Nelson, 1974), states that words are
overextended because of the actions or function performed using objects rather
than the perceptual features of the referents. The concept of doll consists of
many objects. You play with a doll, feed it etc. Objects are looked at for the
function not by perceptual features.

A common assumption underlying the semantic feature and the functional core
hypotheses of lexical development is that attributes abstracted from the
referents of a word are sufficient to determine the extension of that word.

UNDEREXTENSION:It means that the word is applied in an over-restricted

or narrow way .

For e.g : A child may refer to only a specific animal as dog

               A child may refer to only a specific vehicle as car 

NO-OVERLAP:The child’s usage of lexemes has no relation at all to the

adult’s usage 

E.g.: usage of bottle for umbrella.

SEMANTIC RELATIONS:

The second branch of semantics which has been applied to the study of child
language development is called semantic relations. This concerns the
relationship between words at the level of the sentence and how this affects
their meaning. The meaning of a sentence in adult language is derived from its
grammar as well as on the meanings of individual words.Semantic relations
are the meanings intended by the child’s verbal expression during two word
combination stage

TYPES OF SEMANTIC RELATION:

SYNONYMS:

Synonyms are words that are identical or almost identical meanings.

Synonyms and semantics are inter-lexical sense relations.

E.g.: amazing – astounding, stunning 

HYPONYMS :

It is a relation between two words, one of which is more specific than others.
They are usually logically related through an inclusion.

An expression of A is a hyponym of another expression B if and only if the

denotation of A is a proper subset of entities denoted by B.

E.g.: queen and women, Queen is a hyponym of women since queen is

necessarily a woman.
A term that denotes a subcategory of a more general class

“Chair” and “table” are hyponyms of “furniture”

HYPERNYMS:

Hypernym/ super ordinate are a word with broad meaning constituting a

category into which words with more specific meanings fall. 

E.g.: color is a hypernym of types of red.

ANTONYMS:

These are any pair of words with opposite meanings or just the contrary.

It expresses a kind of relation that exists between words that are mutually
exclusive.

E.g.: Hot and cold.

TYPES OF ANTONYMS:

Relational Antonyms: These are the sets of word pairs which are responsible
for showing the relationship between two opposites such as there can’t be a
child without a parent or it’s either all or nothing. Relational Antonyms
wouldn’t exist without the other.  E.g. Uncle-Aunty

Graded Antonyms:  A gradable antonym is one of a pair of the words with

opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum.
Temperature is such a continuous spectrum so hot and cold, two meanings on
opposite ends of the spectrum.

Complimentary Antonyms: These are the sets of word pairs that have no
degree of meaning. There is only availability of two opposite in a possible
manner. For E.g.: Dead- Alive

HOMONYMS:

These are words with distinct semantic representations, but identical

pronunciation and spellings. 

There are two types of homonym:

HOMOPHONES:

These are forms with identical pronunciations but different spellings.

E.g. bear and bare

HOMOGRAPHS:

Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings,
whether they're pronounced the same or not. These are words where the
ambiguity is confined to the spelling only but where the meanings are
represented by distinct spoken forms.
Example: Minute- 60 seconds and extremely tiny

POLYSEMY:

It is derived from a Greek word poly (many) and semi (related to meaning).

Since word in a language will have a number of distinct but more or less
closely related sense.These are words with different sense of expression but
they are distinct and related.

E.g.: The word hand;

NOUN: Part of the body

Verb: Denoting the action of transferring one object from one person to
another person.

TYPES OF SEMANTIC DISABILITY:

There are certain types of pattern that seems to emerge, which can identify
semantic abnormality and difficulty encountered in a clinical situation:

Some of those forms are:

• Lexical delay

• Lexical deviance

• Semantic delay

• Semantic deviance

LEXICAL DELAY:

A person is said to have lexical delay if:

1.Vocabulary consisting of social/ relational/ stereotypic lexemes (or) lack of

specific lexemes

2.Individuals who are within the specific lexemes and fails to use the later
semantic fields 
3.Individual who under/over extend the vocabulary beyond the developmental
peak period.

4.Inability to use more advanced semantic feature contrast to develop and

extend their vocabulary.

5.Who fail to develop sense relations such as hyponyms, opposites.

6.Who fail to develop expected range of the collocational relations

The clearest case of semantic delay would be when an individual’s lexicon, in

terms of no. of lexemes, lexeme meaning and interrelationship is same as that
of the juniors.

The possibility of different delay patterns in comprehension and production

must also be recognized.