Toddlers Default to Canonical Surface-to-Meaning Mapping When Learning Verbs
Year: 2013
Type: article
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.
Source: Child Development
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12164
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, École Normale Supérieure - PSL, Maternité Port Royal, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Université Paris Descartes, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, University of California, Berkeley, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2107314968