Define is a task that requires awareness and meta-linguistic competence (Benelli et al., 2006) as it consists in a series of inter-related activities: a) activate the underlying semantic representation (i.e., pertinent conceptual knowledge); b) assume that the interlocutor may not have the same knowledge available; c) select the words that allow to make explicit the semantic content of a word; d) organize words according to grammatical/morpho-syntactic rules proper of a given language; and e) adapt those grammatical rules to formal rules of a typical definition, necessary to pursue ‘semantic equivalence’ between the term to be defined and the linguistic expression/sentence containing the most relevant conceptual information about that term.

The canonical definition must accomplish five requisites: four formal (i.e., paraphrase, periphrastic form, phrasal authonomy and correct morpho-syntactic structure, and copula definitoria) and one content-related (semantic equivalence).

Children’s ability to improve the quality of the definitions they produce is a function of age; younger children (5-6 years old) usually build-up mostly descriptions of objects, using the has structure (e.g., ‘a dog has four legs’) when answering questions such as ‘What does (stimulus word) mean?’. On the other hand, older children (aged 7 onward) tend to add a superordinate categorical term, producing the isa structure (e.g., ‘a strawberry is a red and juicy fruit’), with the canonical aristotelian formula of definition “per genus proximum et differentiam specificam”.

Learning to define is not a simple process and is largely influenced by formal instruction and schooling. In addition, definitional skills are closely related to school achievement in general, and to literacy, in particular (e.g., Marinellie, 2010; Snow et al., 1989). Currently, there is a debate on the direction of the relationship between schooling and definitional skills; in general, school experience and practicing formal definitions in classroom do positively influence children’s definitional skills. However, the inverse relationship was also supported; indeed, definitional skills positively impact school achievement in children.

We run two experiments to investigate the role of definitional skills in determining primary school achievement, from third to fifth grade. In particular, the second experiment was a three-year longitudinal study aimed at exploring the direction of the relation between definitional skills and school achievement.

Here, children were administered the task devised by Belacchi and Benelli (2007; 2021). They were individually interviewed and asked to answer the following question: “What does the word X mean?”. Their definitions were verbatim transcribed, and the same responses were judged on a 6-levels scale, the ‘Formal definition scale’, that emphasizes different aspects of the same general definitional ability. The more syntactically articulated, organized and correct a participant’s sentence was, the higher its definitional level was considered. Content was not irrelevant; indeed, the responses allow for an increasingly detailed account of semantic content, which ranges from the simple expression of spatial-perceptual relations among objects, through identification of their categorical membership, to viewing them within more general conceptual framework. See an example of definitional levels in table 1.

Table 1. Definitional levels, prototypical answers and scores for the definition of the word “Donkey”.

Note

Level I: Pre-definition. Linguistic answers are produced at this level, but in very simple forms: the stimulus item is followed by only one word-answers which are linked to the item by phonetic similarity or rhymes or mostly associations (e.g., ‘dog: tail’).

Level II: Nearly-definition. These definitions are an initial expansion and articulation of sentences with incorrect, not autonomous forms (e.g., ‘dog: when it barks’).

Level III: Narrative-Descriptive definition. This third level shows formally correct and autonomous sentences, with narrative/descriptive content (e.g., ‘dog: my father love dogs’ (narrative), or ‘dog barks’ (descriptive)).

Level IV: Simple categorical definition. These definitions are formally correct and autonomous sentences with categorical/synonym format and are introduced by a copula (e.g., ‘dog is an animal’).

Level V: Partial formal definition (or, Categorical definition with incorrect or incomplete specifications). At this last level, definitions have complete formal correctness without semantic equivalence (e.g., ‘dog is an animal which eats’).

Level VI: Formal definition. At this level, definitions have complete and formal correctness and semantic equivalence (e.g., ‘dog is an animal which barks’).

In a three-year longitudinal study, to ascertain the relative influence of the most significant school marks in definition task, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted, with school marks in Italian, English, Math and Science of the previous year as predictors of definitional skill on one year-later. Findings in Table 2 showed that Science school mark (p < .001) was the most significant predictor in definitional skill followed followed by mark in Math (p = .013).

Table 2. Hierachical regression steps: The role of previous-year age, and previous-year school marks on next-year definitional skill.

 Note. P: previous-year

Our main finding was that good marks in scientific school-subjects are strongly predictive of future definitional competence. Therefore, the direction from school achievement towards definitional skills emerges more clearly and especially referred to scientific subjects, where knowledge is usually more organized, structured and only secondarily can also be expressed in a conventional linguistic format.

The opposite direction, i.e., how definitional skills are predictive of school achievement is not supported from our data. Indeed, here, the school mark looks more clear-cutting in determining future scholastic achievements.

Overall, we believe that definitional skills represent a bridge towards school achievement as they promote good marks in all disciplines. At school, children not only acquire concepts and scientific knowledge via learning of specific formal definitions but also they refine general linguistic skills in a metalinguistic way, via the study of the linguistic code, and via reflection on its lexical, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic components that in turn allow awareness and efficacy of linguistic communication. It is therefore of primary importance in school education to promote interaction-integration between these two developmental patterns.

References

Belacchi, C.; Benelli, B. (2007). La Competenza Definitoria Nello Sviluppo Tipico e Atipico [Definitional Skills in Typical and Atypical Development]. Il mulino: Bologna, Italy.

Belacchi, C.; Benelli, B. (2021). Valutare la competenza definitoria. In La Scala Co. De. in Ambito Clinico e Nello Sviluppo Tipico [Assessment of Definitional Skill: The Scale Co.De. in Clinical and Typical Development]. Carocci Editore: Roma, Italy.

Benelli, B.; Belacchi, C.; Gini, G.; Lucangeli, D. (2006). ‘To define means to say what you know about things’: The development of definitional skills as metalinguistic acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 33, 71–97.

Marinellie, S. A. (2010). Improving children’s formal word definitions: A feasibility study. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 26(1), 23-37.

Snow, C. E., Cancino, H., Gonzalez, P. & Shriberg, E. (1989). Giving formal definitions: an oral language correlate of school literacy. In D. Bloome (ed.), Classroom and literacy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su14010286