Investigating wordʼs semantic component with qualitative analysis

Present study investigates word’s semantic component with qualitative analysis. Materials of the dictionary of associative reactions of schoolchildren 7—18 years old were used as data for analysis (Goldin et al., 2011). Associative circles of ten words-stimuli were analyzed, five with positive connotations and five with a negative one. Associate circle of each word-stimulus had different dimensions of semantic components of a word: knowledge about the world, abiyt the language and affective connotations of the word. Using the frequency of usage of these semantic elements of the word we analyzed statistic significance of differences between positivity and negativity and between different age groups. Several statistically significant differences were found. Positive stimuli more often caused the reaction of refusal, and less often — synonymous reaction. The percentage of refusal, the frequency of associations, which are grammatical modifications of words-stimuli and frequency of “consonant” associations, both diminish with age; the frequency of synonymous associations increases. The developmental dynamics of these four indexes was described for each word-stimulus

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