How we conceptualize the ends of events (and what it might mean for verb acquisition)

To acquire verbs, must infants attend to the ends of the events they denote? In English, change-of-state verbs entail that the change of state is achieved, but in many languages, event culmination is only implicated (e.g., Ikegami, 1981). Do infants conceptualize culmination as a critical event component, or do they initially “neglect” culmination until they learn how their language instantiates it (Wittek, 2002)?

We asked whether adults’ and 14-month-olds’ non-linguistic event conceptualizations reflect attention to culmination. They viewed pairs of events: one depicting a naturally expected result (e.g., dumping blocks out of a truck), the other a partially achieved version (e.g., lifting the truck bed so the blocks slide but do not fall out). Adults rated the similarity between the events; infants were habituated to one and tested for dishabituation to the other. If participants are sensitive to culmination, they should be more surprised if the events occur in the order complete-then-partial (because the latter fails to achieve the expected culmination) than in partial-then-complete order (viewing the partially completed event first should allow them to imagine what the fully completed version might look like).

As expected, adults (N = 23) rated events in the complete-then-partial order as less similar than both partial-then-complete order (t(44) = 7.27, p < 0.001). Six of nine infants (data collection in progress) mirror this pattern; though we do not yet have power to detect effects, infants looked longer at the second event in the complete-then-partial condition but did not dishabituate given partial-then-complete order.

For adults, and possibly infants, event culmination is a critical event component. If this pattern holds, it will indicate that infants do not initially neglect endstates (cf. Wittek, 2002), and that they are poised to acquire change-of-state verbs that entail the achievement of particular endstates.