A Comparat ive Study of Verbal Definit ions of Concrete Nouns between Normal Children and Language - Delayed Children

Park, Kyung Ae; Kim, Young-Tae

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2001;5(2): 1-19.

Kyung Ae Park^` , and Young-Tae Kim^`

박경애(Kyung Ae Park)| 김영태(Young-Tae Kim)

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the differences in the Korean verbal definitions of concrete nouns between normal children and the language- delayed children who were vocabulary - age matched. The experimental groups were 17 language- delayed children and 17 normal children . T wenty - one concrete nouns , 3 for each of the 7 classes of words - - animals , transportation, means, foods, tools, clothes, toy s, and electrical appliances - -were used to elicit the children s verbal definitions . Four definitional categories were studied: functional, relational, perceptual, and categorical. T he result s were analyzed with t- test s. T he following conclusions were obtained: (1) significant differ - ences were found between the group of language- delayed children and the normal children , (2) the frequencies of definition were found to be in the order of functional definition , relational definition , perceptual definition, and categorical definition , and (3) the same order of the frequencies ratios of definition for the classes of words was found in the group of language- delayed children as that of the normal children.