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Syntax and semantics in the acquisition of locative verbs*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Jess Gropen ,
Steven Pinker ,
Michelle Hollander  and
Richard Goldberg
Jess Gropen*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Steven Pinker
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michelle Hollander
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Richard Goldberg
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
*
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
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Abstract

Children between the ages of three and seven occasionally make errors with locative verbs like pour and fill, such as * I filled water into the glass and * I poured the glass with water (Bowerman, 1982). To account for this pattern of errors, and for how they are eventually unlearned, we propose that children use a universal linking rule called OBJECT AFFECTEDNESS: the direct object corresponds to the argument that is specified as ‘affected’ in some particular way in the semantic representation of a verb. However, children must learn which verbs specify which of their arguments as being affected; specifically, whether it is the argument whose referent is undergoing a change of location, such as the content argument of pour, or the argument whose referent is undergoing a change of state, such as the container argument of fill. This predicts that syntactic errors should be associated with specific kinds of misinterpretations of verb meaning. Two experiments were performed on the ability of children and adults to understand and produce locative verbs. The results confirm that children tend to make syntactic errors with sentences containing fill and empty, encoding the content argument as direct object (e.g. fill the water). As predicted, children also misinterpreted the meanings of fill and empty as requiring not only that the container be brought into a full or empty state, but also that the content move in some specific manner (by pouring, or by dumping). Furthermore, children who misinterpreted the verbs' meanings were more likely to make syntactic errors with them. These findings support the hypothesis that verb meaning and syntax are linked in precise ways in the lexicons of language learners.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , February 1991 , pp. 115 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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Footnotes

*

We thank Kay Bock, Susan Carey, Eve Clark, Ken Wexler and Carol Tenny for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to the directors, parents and especially children of the following centres: Bowen After School Care Program, Inc., Cambridge Nursery School, Central School, Children's Village, Inc., Creative Development Center, KLH Center, Needham Children's Community Center, Newton Community Service Center, Plowshares Child Care Program, Recreation Place, Rosary Academy Learning Center, Temple Beth Shalom, and the Zervas Program. The research reported here is part of the first author's doctoral dissertation. Experiment I was presented at the Twelfth Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. This research was supported by NIH grant HD 18381 to the second author, and by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to the MIT Center for Cognitive Science.

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