Watson R
Department of Educational Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
J Child Lang. 1995 Feb;22(1):211-22. doi: 10.1017/s0305000900009703.
The study examined whether the use of superordinate terms in children's definitions was predicted by relevance theory. Two hundred and six children aged five to ten years gave definitions for 16 basic-level words and four superordinate words from natural kind and artefact semantic domains. Superordinate terms were used more frequently when they supported more inferences. This was evidenced by their more frequent use in natural kind than in artefact domains, and more frequent use when the superordinate was itself defined by a semantically complex expression. When used, superordinates also usually occurred at the beginning of the definitional expression. It is argued that these findings reflect the speaker's intention to achieve optimal relevance, that is, to achieve maximum contextual effects with the least processing effort.
该研究考察了关联理论是否能预测儿童定义中上位词的使用情况。206名5至10岁的儿童对来自自然类和人造物语义领域的16个基本层次词汇和4个上位词进行了定义。当上位词能支持更多推理时，其使用频率更高。这一点在自然类领域比在人造物领域的使用频率更高以及当上位词本身由语义复杂的表达来界定时使用频率更高上得到了证明。当使用上位词时，它们通常也出现在定义表达的开头。有人认为，这些发现反映了说话者实现最佳关联的意图，也就是说，用最少的处理努力实现最大的语境效果。
