LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:11 November 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Concrete Nouns in Kannada:
How Distinct Are their Semantic Features?

Prarthana.S., MASLP., Ph.D. Candidate and Prema K.S. Rao., Ph.D.

Abstract

Understanding the representation of meaning of words in the mental lexicon has received considerable attention in research studies on Psycholinguistics, Speech language sciences, Cognitive linguistics and Neurolinguistics. Studies carried out in this regard have used semantic features as a key to understand the underlying processes of storage and organization. The meaning of words, which in turn denote concepts are assumed to vary depending on their distinctive features as well as shared features. Distinctive features are those that are unique to a small set of concepts whereas the shared features are present in abundance. In the field of Speech Language Pathology semantic features have been targeted in therapy techniques to decrease the semantic deficits in persons with aphasia and semantic dementia. Owing to the significance of semantic features in our understanding of semantic processing, the present study was conducted to examine the nature of distribution of distinctive features of words in Kannada language. The study describes distinctive features generated for 60 concrete nouns of Kannada (30-living thing; 30- non living things) by 60 native adult speakers. The responses are analyzed using custom software and computer programs developed and written for this purpose. The results offer empirical evidence for the differences in the distribution of distinctive features of living and non living things. Implications of the results for treatment of semantic deficits have been discussed.

Key words: Semantic features, Distinctive features, Semantic representation, Semantic deficits.

Meaningful Utterances

Understanding and producing meaningful utterances forms the basis of any communication. Language being the primary mode of communication serves as a medium to exchange thoughts and ideas. Words stored in the mental lexicon of individuals form the basic component of a language and word meaning provides the core information upon which all communication is built (Vinson, 2009). Among the different types of words, nouns being the largest group of content words in a language carry most of the linguistic information followed by verbs.

Each word stored in the linguistic repertoire of individual is presumed to represent a concept of the world. These concepts are acquired by individuals from infancy on employing active and passive learning from the environment and real world experiences. It consists of vast amount of knowledge about living and non living things gathered from seeing them, using them, observing others use them, talking and reading about them (Cree & McRae, 2003). This knowledge is assumed to be represented and processed in the semantic memory of individuals.

Research in the area of semantic memory has been focusing on studying how information about objects and entities are represented, organized and processed. Several models and theories have been proposed in order to gain insight about the structure and processes influencing semantic memory (Smith, Shoben, & Rips, 1974; Collins & Loftus, 1975).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Prarthana.S. MASLP., Ph.D. Candidate
Junior Research fellow
Department of Speech Language Sciences
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Mysore 570006
Karnataka
India
prarthanas84@gmail.com

Dr. Prema.K.S. Rao, Ph.D.
Professor of Language Pathology
Department of Speech Language Sciences
All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
Mysore 570006
Karnataka
India
rao.prema@gmail.com
prema_rao@yahoo.com

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