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Learning verb syntax via listening : new evidence from 22-month-olds
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Messenger, Katherine, Yuan, Sylvia and Fisher, Cynthia (2015) Learning verb syntax via listening : new evidence from 22-month-olds. Language Learning and Development, 11 (4). pp. 356-368. doi:10.1080/15475441.2014.978331 ISSN 1547-5441.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2014.978331
Abstract
Children recruit verb syntax to guide verb interpretation.We asked whether 22-montholds spontaneously encode information about a particular novel verb’s syntactic properties through listening to sentences, retain this information in long-term memory over a filled delay, and retrieve it to guide interpretation upon hearing the same novel verb again. Children watched dialogues in which interlocutors discussed unseen events using a novel verb in transitive (e.g., "Anna blicked the baby") or intransitive sentences ("Anna blicked”). Children later heard the verb in isolation ("Find blicking!") while viewing a two-participant causal action and a one-participant action event. Children who had heard transitive dialogues looked longer at the two-participant event than did those who heard intransitive dialogues. This effect disappeared if children heard a different novel verb at test ("Find kradding!"). These findings implicate a role for distributional learning in early verb learning: Syntactic-combinatorial information about otherwise unknown words may pervade the toddler's lexicon, guiding later word interpretation.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | L Education > LB Theory and practice of education | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Verbal learning, Verbal ability in children | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Language Learning and Development | ||||||||
Publisher: | Psychology Press | ||||||||
ISSN: | 1547-5441 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 2015 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 11 | ||||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||||
Number of Pages: | 13 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 356-368 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/15475441.2014.978331 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 29 January 2016 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 29 June 2016 | ||||||||
Funder: | United States. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF) |
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