They have a lot of trouble remembering new words and making links to words in their lexicon. They may present with poor word and world knowledge and have difficulty expressingtheir thoughts because of lack of flexibility in using words. Homonyms: words that have the same name but different spelling and meaning example, son-sun.Ĭhildren with language disorder generally have a vocabulary that is poor in comparisonto children of the same age.Antonyms: words which have opposite meanings example, hot-cold.Synonyms: words which have a similar meaning example, laugh-giggle.

Content words: the different forms of words used in sentences to expand language such as.

Word knowledge, world knowledge and experiences.

Concept words (categories): an individual's sense of what a house is, centred on.

It's worth looking at some semantic building blocks in a little more detail. In the school years, children learn most new words from books, both story books and expository texts. Very young children learn new words and word meanings from conversation with others - mostly parents, family members, peers, and television programs. They are able to understand the links and differences between semantic concepts such as synonyms,antonyms, homonyms and categories. Children with normally developing language naturally build up layers of meaning for the new words they learn. Semantic knowledge, or word and world knowledge is a key area of vocabulary growth. But it's of little use if you don't understand what the words mean, or how they are related to other words.

It's great if you have a large store (lexicon) of words that can be selected and used in conversation. Semantics is all about depth of understanding of known words. Though the two concepts are related, semantics and vocabulary are in fact quite different.

Ultimate vocabulary 2013