LINGUIST List 17.2507
Thu Sep 07 2006
Diss: Lang Acquisition/Semantics/Syntax: Bunger: 'How We Learn to T...'
Editor for this issue: Hannah Morales
<hannahlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Ann
Bunger,
How We Learn to Talk About Events: Linguistic and conceptual constraints on verb learning
Message 1: How We Learn to Talk About Events: Linguistic and conceptual constraints on verb learning
Date: 07-Sep-2006
From: Ann Bunger <annbungergmail.com>
Subject: How We Learn to Talk About Events: Linguistic and conceptual constraints on verb learning
Institution: Northwestern University
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Ann Bunger
Dissertation Title: How We Learn to Talk About Events: Linguistic and conceptual constraints on verb learning
Linguistic Field(s):
Language Acquisition
Semantics
Syntax
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
Dissertation Director:
Chris Kennedy
Jeffrey L. Lidz
Sandra R. Waxman
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation investigates the mapping between linguistic andconceptual event representations and the implications of this mapping forthe acquisition of verbs labeling causative events. From infancy, werepresent causative events as being composed of a set of subeventsassociated in a hierarchical structure that reflects their partonomic andtaxonomic relationships to one another. Our linguistic representations ofevents are intimately tied to our conceptual representations, and languagesreflect this complex internal structure in the grammar of the causativeconstruction. The studies reported here offer a clearer picture of therange of meanings that language learners are willing to encode in singleverbs associated with causative events and how the hypotheses theypostulate about the meanings of novel verbs are constrained by conceptualand linguistic factors.
I present results from four preferential looking studies investigating thelimits that 2-year-old children and adults place on their hypotheses aboutthe meanings of novel verbs associated with causative events. Experiments1&2 demonstrate that 2-year-old children have access to the same complexrepresentations for causative events that adults do and that both groupscan use verb-specific subcategorization information to identify and labelthe subparts of these events. Specifically, both groups mapped novel verbsin unaccusative intransitive syntactic frames onto the result of acausative event and novel verbs in unergative intransitive frames onto theagent's activity. For novel verbs presented in transitive frames,2-year-olds demonstrated a bias to interpret them as labels for a causativeevent, whereas adults tended to map them onto the agent's activity.Experiments 3&4 reveal that as long as structural constraints on themapping between verb syntax and semantics are satisfied, 2-year-olds can beflexible in the specificity of the semantic content they assign to theirrepresentation of a causative.
Taken together, these results provide support to the argument thatchildren's early verb representations are abstract in nature. They suggest,moreover, that adults and 2-year-olds face word-learning situations withdifferent resources and that they bring different strategies to the task oflearning new words that stem from differences in their experience with thetarget language and the world.
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