Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Early verb learning in 20-month-old Japanese-speaking children |
| Author: | Yuriko Oshima-Takane |
| Institution: | McGill University |
| Author: | Junko Ariyama |
| Institution: | McGill University |
| Author: | Tessei Kobayashi |
| Institution: | Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation |
| Author: | Marina Katerelos |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Author: | Diane Poulin-Dubois |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Linguistic Field: | Cognitive Science; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics |
| Subject Language: |
Japanese
|
| Abstract: | The present study investigated whether children's representations of morphosyntactic information are abstract enough to guide early verb learning. Using an infant-controlled habituation paradigm with a switch design, Japanese-speaking children aged 1 ; 8 were habituated to two different events in which an object was engaging in an action. Each event was paired with a novel word embedded in a single intransitive verb sentence frame. The results indicated that only 40% of the children were able to map a novel verb onto the action when the mapping task was complex. However, by simplifying the mapping task, 88% of the children succeeded in verb–action mapping. There were no differences in perceptual salience between the agent and action switches in the task. These results provide strong evidence that Japanese-speaking children aged 1 ; 8 are able to use an intransitive verb sentence frame to guide early verb learning unless the mapping task consumes too much of their cognitive resources. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Journal of Child Language Vol. 38, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
