Speakers' Knowledge of Word Meanings: Stable and Perfect?

Abstract

This study explored whether the actual state of speakers' knowledge of word meanings is as stable and perfect as Chomsky has claimed. 73 speakers of Japanese (11 men and 62 women, M age = 20.6 yr.) each engaged in two tasks, one of defining the meanings of function words and content words and the other of creating a short sentence involving one of these words. Some speakers did a meaning-definition task first and then a sentence-creation task, while others did these tasks in reverse order. Use-dependent definition as an index of insufficient knowledge of word meanings was examined. Findings showed this type of definition occurred more often for the function words than for the content words and that it also occurred more often when the speakers performed the sentence-creation task before the meaning-definition task. The findings suggest that the actual state of speakers' knowledge of word meanings is not as stable not as perfect as Chomsky has claimed.