title: Toddlers default to canonical surface-to-meaning mapping when learning verbs.
abstract: Previous work has shown that toddlers readily encode each noun in the sentence as a distinct argument of the verb. However, languages allow multiple mappings between form and meaning that do not fit this canonical format. Two experiments examined French 28-month-olds' interpretation of right-dislocated sentences (nouni -verb, nouni) where the presence of clear, language-specific cues should block such a canonical mapping. Toddlers (N = 96) interpreted novel verbs embedded in these sentences as transitive, disregarding prosodic cues to dislocation (Experiment 1) but correctly interpreted right-dislocated sentences containing well-known verbs (Experiment 2). These results suggest that toddlers can integrate multiple cues in ideal conditions, but default to canonical surface-to-meaning mapping when extracting structural information about novel verbs in semantically impoverished conditions.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, EHESS/CNRS/DEC-ENS, Paris, France Maternité Port Royal, Université Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dautriche
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
authors.forename: Alejandrina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cristia
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, EHESS/CNRS/DEC-ENS, Paris, France Maternité Port Royal, Université Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Perrine
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Brusini
authors.affiliation: University of California, Berkeley.
authors.forename: Sylvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
authors.forename: Cynthia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, EHESS/CNRS/DEC-ENS, Paris, France Maternité Port Royal, Université Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Christophe
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics