title: Quantifying Semantic Linguistic Maturity in Children.
abstract: We propose a method to quantify semantic linguistic maturity (SELMA) based on a high dimensional semantic representation of words created from the co-occurrence of words in a large text corpus. The method was applied to oral narratives from 108 children aged 4;0-12;10. By comparing the SELMA measure with maturity ratings made by human raters we found that SELMA predicted the rating of semantic maturity made by human raters over and above the prediction made using a child's age and number of words produced. We conclude that the semantic content of narratives changes in a predictable pattern with children's age and argue that SELMA is a measure quantifying semantic linguistic maturity. The study opens up the possibility of using quantitative measures for studying the development of semantic representation in children's narratives, and emphasizes the importance of word co-occurrences for understanding the development of meaning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund, Logopedics, Phoniatrics and Audiology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. kristina.hansson@med.lu.se.
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hansson
authors.affiliation: Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Rasmus
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bååth
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Löhndorf
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund, Logopedics, Phoniatrics and Audiology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Birgitta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sahlén
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Sverker
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sikström
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods*; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Child language; Narratives; Semantic development; Semantic linguistic maturity; Semantic representation