Korean and English verb learning in transitive frames

Children can use linguistic context to learn verbs. The properties of linguistic contexts, such as word order and argument drop, vary cross-linguistically. English has SVO order and rarely permits argument drop; Korean has SOV order and allows argument drop. We examined how these factors affect verb learning. In two verb learning experiments with English-speaking and Korean-speaking 2- to 5-year-olds, we found no difference between English and Korean learners in verb learning from transitive sentences (SVO in English, SOV in Korean), but we did find that Korean learners performed better with an overt subject that a dropped subject. The results suggest that more informative contexts may be better than less informative contexts for verb learning.