91Chapter 7
YOGA FOR VOCABULARY AND
LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS
A thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
Lev S. VygotskyIntroduction to vocabulary development
As noted in Chapter 2, infants typically transition from the
intentional prelinguistic stage to the one-word linguistic
stage around the time of their first birthdays. This remarkable
achievement marks the onset of vocabulary development, which
continues throughout the lifespan. Children’s knowledge of the
words that they understand and produce is called the mental
lexicon (Pence Turnbull and Justice 2017). This dictionary in the
mind consists of word meanings—ideas about objects (e.g. chair),
actions (e.g. bend), locations (e.g. next to), directions (e.g. up),
feelings (e.g. happy), and many other notions. In the early stages
of vocabulary development, children’s meanings for the words
they have acquired do not necessarily match the meanings the
words have for adults. For example, children might use a word
too broadly such as calling all furry animals “dog,” or too narrowly
by using the word “dog” to refer to only the family dog but not
others. An important task for children in the semantic domain is
the development of categorical concepts such as the knowledge