The Semantic Structure of Animal Terms: A Developmental Study

Abstract

This study explored the role of semantic structure within the domain of animal terms in children's and adults' spontaneous operations on these terms. Twenty-four subjects at each of six educational levels were given four tasks. Freelisting of animal terms and animal associations to animal words showed similar semantic structures across all educational levels, including doctoral students in zoology, with a few strongly associated terms, and a large group of fairly isolated terms. Sorting of animal terms and ratings of animal pair dissimilarities yielded a dominant dimension of size for grades seven, eleven, and undergraduate groups. The dominant dimension for zoologists, however, was based on food habits. The implications of these results for the development of semantic structures are discussed.