A Semantic Analysis of 2-and 3-Year-Old Korean Children's Sentences -Semantic Units, Semantic Roles, and Semantic Relations

Kim, Young-Tae

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 1998;3(1): 20-35.

Young-Tae Kim^`

김영태(Young-Tae Kim)

ABSTRACT

This study was design ed t o s emantically analy ze 2- to 3- y ear - old Kor ean childr en s spont aneou s utt er an ces . A t ot al of 78 childr en s lan gu age samples wer e collect ed an d analy zed. Fir st , the number of s emantic unit s which is a measur e of utterance len gth wa s calculat ed in thr ee way s : th e mean , th e max imum, an d the mode. Secondly , th e s emantic roles an d r elation s fr equently u s ed wer e an aly zed in terms of the fr equ ency of occurr en ce and per cent age of childr en . T he r esult s showed that the mean an d th e max imum number of semantic unit s ar e significantly differ ent amon g 4 ag e group s (2- , 2½- , 3- , 3½) an d ar e highly corr elat ed with th e corr espon ding mean length of utt er an ce in words (MLU-W). T he semantic roles of object , entity , agent , action , st at ement , attribute, locativ e, and n egation wer e the most fr equ ently u sed. Mor e than 90 % of the childr en u sed them. In th e cas e of two- unit s emantic r elation s , object - action , entity - statement , and background action wer e found to be most fr equent . More than 80% of th e childr en u s ed th em. T h e thr ee- unit s emantic r elation s which wer e most fr equently u sed wer e th e ext ention of the alr eady acquired two- unit s emantic r elation s . T he two t ables in the paper show th e hierarchy of th e s emantic roles and th e 2- t o 4- unit semanticr lations .