What infants learn about a verb depends on its subject

Angela Xiaoxue HE; Jeffrey  Lidz

What infants learn about a verb depends on its subject

Angela Xiaoxue HE^*, Jeffrey Lidz

^*Corresponding author for this work

Academy of Language and Culture

Research output: Contribution to conference › Conference paper › peer-review

Abstract

In this paper, we show 22-month-olds are able to extend a novel intransitive verb to the same event type with a different participant, and their ability in doing so is affected by the type of subject with which the verb is introduced: successful extension happens when the verb is introduced with a pronominal it or a non-contentful NP subject like that thing, but not with a contentful NP subject such as the flower. We discuss that the difference is to be explained by the subject’s lexical content, but not its syntactic complexity, since performances with that thing patterns with it.

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - 7 Jan 2016
Event	2016 The 90th annual meeting of Linguistic Society of America (LSA) - Washington, DC, United States Duration: 7 Jan 2016 → 10 Jan 2016 https://www.lsadc.org/files/LSA%202016%20Annual%20Meeting%20Handbook.pdf

Conference

Conference	2016 The 90th annual meeting of Linguistic Society of America (LSA)
Country/Territory	United States
City	Washington, DC
Period	7/01/16 → 10/01/16
Internet address	https://www.lsadc.org/files/LSA%202016%20Annual%20Meeting%20Handbook.pdf

Cite this

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AU - Lidz, Jeffrey

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N2 - In this paper, we show 22-month-olds are able to extend a novel intransitive verb to the same event type with a different participant, and their ability in doing so is affected by the type of subject with which the verb is introduced: successful extension happens when the verb is introduced with a pronominal it or a non-contentful NP subject like that thing, but not with a contentful NP subject such as the flower. We discuss that the difference is to be explained by the subject’s lexical content, but not its syntactic complexity, since performances with that thing patterns with it.

AB - In this paper, we show 22-month-olds are able to extend a novel intransitive verb to the same event type with a different participant, and their ability in doing so is affected by the type of subject with which the verb is introduced: successful extension happens when the verb is introduced with a pronominal it or a non-contentful NP subject like that thing, but not with a contentful NP subject such as the flower. We discuss that the difference is to be explained by the subject’s lexical content, but not its syntactic complexity, since performances with that thing patterns with it.

M3 - Conference paper

T2 - 2016 The 90th annual meeting of Linguistic Society of America (LSA)

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ER -

What infants learn about a verb depends on its subject

Abstract

Conference

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Cite this