Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-mzsfj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-16T03:03:34.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children use syntax to learn verb meanings*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Letitia Naigles
Letitia Naigles*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Department of Psychology, Box 11A Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520-7447, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Verb learning is clearly a function of observation of real-world contingencies; however, it is argued that such observational information is insufficient to account fully for vocabulary acquisition. This paper provides an experimental validation of Landau & Gleitman's (1985) syntactic bootstrapping procedure; namely, that children may use syntactic information to learn new verbs. Pairs of actions were presented simultaneously with a nonsense verb in one of two syntactic structures. The actions were subsequently separated, and the children (MA = 2;1) were asked to select which action was the referent for the verb. The children's choice of referent was found to be a function of the syntactic structure in which the verb had appeared.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 357 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the American Association of University Women to the author while at the University of Pennsylvania. I am grateful to Lila Gleitman for directing this research, to the Temple University Infant Language Lab, directed by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, which provided laboratory facilities and equipment, and to H. Gleitman for help with Fig. 2. Thanks also go to Richard Gerrig, Roberta Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Steve Reznick and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Aksu-Koç, A. & Slobin, D. (1985). The acquisition of Turkish. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition. Volume 1: The data. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Aronoff, M. (1976). Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Borer, H. & Wexler, K. (1987). The maturation of syntax. In Roeper, T. and Williams, E. (eds.), Parameters and linguistic theory. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1974). Learning the structure of causative verbs: a study in the relationship of cognitive, semantic, and syntactic development, PRCLD 8. 142–78.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1977) The acquisition of rules governing ‘possible lexical items’: evidence from spontaneous speech errors. PRCLD 13. 148–56.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1983). Evaluating competing linguistic models with language acquisition data: implications of developmental errors with causative verbs, Quaderni di Semantica 3. 5–66.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Some concepts and consequences of the theory of government and binding. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1987). The principle of contrast: a constraint on language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition: the 20th annual Carnegie symposium on cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. (1968). Lexical entries for verbs. Foundations of Language 4. 373–93.Google Scholar
Fisher, C., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. R. (1989). Relations between verb syntax and verb semantics. I. On the semantic content of subcategorization frames. Cognitive Psychology, in press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language development, Vol 2. Language, thought and culture. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. R., Gleitman, H., Landau, B. & Wanner, E. (1987). Where learning begins: initial representations for language learning. In Newmeyer, F. (ed.), The Cambridge linguistic survey Vol. 3. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R., Bailey, L., Wenger, N. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1989). Conceptualizing constraints: why and how many? Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Cauley, K. & Gordon, L. (1987). The eyes have it: lexical and syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm. Journal of Child Language 14. 23–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimshaw, J. (1983). Subcategorization and grammatical relations. In Zaenen, A. (ed.), Subjects and other subjects. Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Gropen, J., Pinker, S., Hollander, M. & Goldberg, R. (1989). Learning locative verbs: how linking rules constrain productivity. Language, in press.Google Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R., deGaspe-Beaubien, F., Fletcher, A. & Cauley, K. (1985). In the beginning: one-word speakers comprehend word order. Paper presented at Boston University Child Language Conference.Google Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Naigles, L., Golinkoff, R., Gleitman, L. R. & Gleitman, H. (1988). Syntactic bootstrapping: evidence from comprehension. Paper presented at the Boston University Child Language Conference.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1985). Multiple subcategorization and the theta-criterion: the case of climb. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3. 271–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, R. & Bresnan, J. (1982). Lexical-functional grammar: a formal system for grammatical representation. In Bresnan, J., The mental representation of grammatical relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Landau, B. & Gleitman, L. (1985). Language and experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, B. (1985). Lexical semantics in review: an introduction. In Levin, B. (ed.). Lexical semantics in review. Lexicon Project Working Papers, 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Cognitive Science.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M., Gudeman, R., Gerard-Ngo, P. & DeHart, G. (1987). A study in novel word learning: the productivity of the causative. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition: the 2Oth annual Carnegie symposium on cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Markman, E. (1987). How children constrain the possible meanings of words. In Neisser, U. (ed.), Concepts and conceptual development: ecological and intellectual factors in categorization. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Naigles, L., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. R. (1989). Syntactic bootstrapping in verb acquisition: evidence from comprehension. In Drom, E. (ed.), Language and cognition: a developmental perspective. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. In press.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, D. M. (1978). Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 4.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1989). Resolving a learnability paradox: the acquisition of the verb lexicon. In Rice, M. L. & Schiefelbusch, R. L. (eds), The teachability of language. Baltimore: Paul Brookes.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (1985). Identifying language delay at age 2. Paper presented to the Society for Research in Child Development.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. (1976). Infants' intermodal perception of events. Cognitive Psychology 8, 553–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L. (1975). Semantics and syntax of motion. In Kimball, J., (ed.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 4. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1980). Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In Shopen, T. et al. (eds), Language typology and syntactic description. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, M. & Gelman, S. (1988). Adjectives and nouns: children's strateg, is for learning new words. Child Development 59. 411–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V. (1986). Syntactic categories in the speech of young children. Developmental Psychology 22. 562–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar