Levels of Semantic Knowledge in Children’s Use of Connectives

Abstract

This paper deals with children’s knowledge of some simple relational terms in Dutch and Italian. The words in question are mainly the common connectives used to introduce clauses of reason or cause, of purpose, of result, and of time. Acquisition of the meaning of these words was studied here in several different experimental contexts. On the basis of the results, it will be argued that different strata of semantic competence exist, and that access to some levels of this knowledge emerges earlier than to others. However, we will not attempt to examine or explain the ontogeny of the child’s notions of the conceptual relations which are expressed through these words. This problem goes far beyond the limits of the present paper. Although semantic knowledge for the connectives studied and awareness of the usual relations implied by these words may well be interdependent, our primary interest here was children’s increasing access to the words’ meaning. As Vygotsky (1962, p. 46) observed, “the child may operate with subordinate clauses, with words like because, if,when, and but,long before he really grasps causal, conditional or temporal relations themselves.”