Verb argument structure acquisition in young children: defining a role for discourse.
Two-, three- and four-year-old English learners enacted sentences that were missing a direct object (e.g. *The zebra brings.). Previous work has indicated that preschoolers faced with such ungrammatical sentences consistently alter the usual meaning of the verb to fit the syntactic frame (enacting 'zebra comes'); older children are more likely to repair the syntax to fit the meaning of the verb (enacting 'zebra brings something'; Naigles, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1993). We investigated whether young children performed more repairs if an informative context preceded the ungrammatical sentences. Test sentences were preceded by short vignettes that created a relationship between three characters. Children repaired more sentences than had been found previously; however, older preschoolers also repaired significantly more frequently than younger preschoolers. Discourse context thus seems relevant to the acquisition of verb argument structure, but is not the sole source of information.
University of Connecticut.
Letitia R
LR
Naigles
University of Connecticut.
Ashley
A
Maltempo
D000367:Age Factors; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014706:Verbal Learning