Abstract
Decades of research have documented that young word learners have more difficulty learning verbs than nouns. Nonetheless, recent evidence has uncovered conditions under which children as young as 24 months succeed. Here, we focus in on the kind of linguistic information that undergirds 24-month-olds' success. We introduced 24-month-olds to novel words (either nouns or verbs) as they watched dynamic scenes (e.g., a man waving a balloon); the novel words were presented in semantic contexts that were either rich (e.g., The man is pilking a balloon) or more sparse (e.g., He's pilking it). Toddlers successfully learned nouns in both the semantically rich and sparse contexts but learned verbs only in the rich context. This documents that to learn the meaning of a novel verb, English-acquiring toddlers take advantage of the semantically rich information provided in lexicalized noun phrases. Implications for cross-linguistic theories of acquisition are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 169-184 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Language Learning and Development |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 1 2011 |
Fingerprint
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language
Cite this
Grammatical Form and Semantic Context in Verb Learning. / Arunachalam, Sudha; Waxman, Sandra R.
In: Language Learning and Development, Vol. 7, No. 3, 01.07.2011, p. 169-184.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Grammatical Form and Semantic Context in Verb Learning
AU - Arunachalam, Sudha
AU - Waxman, Sandra R.
PY - 2011/7/1
Y1 - 2011/7/1
N2 - Decades of research have documented that young word learners have more difficulty learning verbs than nouns. Nonetheless, recent evidence has uncovered conditions under which children as young as 24 months succeed. Here, we focus in on the kind of linguistic information that undergirds 24-month-olds' success. We introduced 24-month-olds to novel words (either nouns or verbs) as they watched dynamic scenes (e.g., a man waving a balloon); the novel words were presented in semantic contexts that were either rich (e.g., The man is pilking a balloon) or more sparse (e.g., He's pilking it). Toddlers successfully learned nouns in both the semantically rich and sparse contexts but learned verbs only in the rich context. This documents that to learn the meaning of a novel verb, English-acquiring toddlers take advantage of the semantically rich information provided in lexicalized noun phrases. Implications for cross-linguistic theories of acquisition are discussed.
AB - Decades of research have documented that young word learners have more difficulty learning verbs than nouns. Nonetheless, recent evidence has uncovered conditions under which children as young as 24 months succeed. Here, we focus in on the kind of linguistic information that undergirds 24-month-olds' success. We introduced 24-month-olds to novel words (either nouns or verbs) as they watched dynamic scenes (e.g., a man waving a balloon); the novel words were presented in semantic contexts that were either rich (e.g., The man is pilking a balloon) or more sparse (e.g., He's pilking it). Toddlers successfully learned nouns in both the semantically rich and sparse contexts but learned verbs only in the rich context. This documents that to learn the meaning of a novel verb, English-acquiring toddlers take advantage of the semantically rich information provided in lexicalized noun phrases. Implications for cross-linguistic theories of acquisition are discussed.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79960541813&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79960541813&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15475441.2011.573760
DO - 10.1080/15475441.2011.573760
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79960541813
VL - 7
SP - 169
EP - 184
JO - Language Learning and Development
JF - Language Learning and Development
SN - 1547-5441
IS - 3
ER -