To define means to say what you know about things": The development of definitional skills as metalinguistic acquisition

Some authors suggest that definitional skills include metalinguistic components (Watson, 1985; Snow, 1990; McGhee-Bidlack, 1991). In this paper we empirically investigated the relations between the ability to define words and the level of metalinguistic awareness in Italian children of different age-levels, from kindergarten to middle school, and in two groups of adults with low and high rate of school attendance. The study aimed at demonstrating that metalinguistic ability can positively predict the formal quality of definitions of different kinds of verbal stimuli (nouns, verbs and adjectives). Furthermore, it aimed at identifying different aspects of metalinguistic ability that can be directly related with definitional skills. Results confirmed the important role of metalinguistic ability in the process of producing formally good definitions.