The level of development of hyponymy in the language of junior elementary-school students

Abstract

The ability to establish lexical relations of hyponymy is one of the most relevant indicators of lexical-semantic development, i.e. language development in general. Bearing this in mind, the aim of our research was to examine to what extent hyponymy is developed in the language of junior elementary-school age students. The research was conducted in three elementary schools in Belgrade during 2013/14 academic year. The sample was adequate and comprised 431 second and third grade students. The subtest Hyponymy of the Lexical-Semantic Test was used in the research (author: Z. Kasić). The results showed that the mentioned relation of meaning was, to the greatest extent, established in the area of hyponymic polisemy, then in the use of conkrete nouns, and then in the use of abstract nouns. The findings indicate the relation between acquisition of hyponymy and academic attainment, while gender differences were not found. The results lead to the conclusion that various lexical excercises should be practiced at early school age continously and intensively, bearing in mind that lexical-semantic development, cognitive development and (un)succesful mastering of curricular contents are linked interdependently.

Keywords

• hyponymy
• paradigmatic lexical relations
• semantic/linguistic development
• students
• junior elementary-school age