Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:59:37.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The syntactic and semantic features of two-year-olds’ verb vocabularies: a comparison of typically developing children and late talkers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2019

Sabrina HORVATH ,
Leslie RESCORLA  and
Sudha ARUNACHALAM
Sabrina HORVATH*
Affiliation:
Boston University, USA
Leslie RESCORLA
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College, USA
Sudha ARUNACHALAM
Affiliation:
New York University, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences; Boston, MA 02215, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children with language disorders have particular difficulty with verbs, but when this difficulty emerges is unknown. We examined syntactic (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive) and semantic (manner, result) features of two-year-olds’ verb vocabularies, contrasting late talkers and typically developing children to look for early differences in verb vocabulary. We conducted a retrospective analysis of parent-reported expressive vocabulary from the Language Development Survey (N = 564, N(LT) = 62) (Rescorla, 1989). Verbs were coded for the presence or absence of each syntactic and semantic feature. Binomial mixed-effects regressions revealed the effect of feature on children's knowledge and whether feature interacted with group classification. Our results revealed mostly similarities between late talkers and typically developing children. All children's vocabularies showed a bias against verbs that occur in ditransitive frames. One feature showed a difference between groups: late talkers showed a bias against manner verbs that typically developing children did not.

Keywords

late talkersverbsvocabulary
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 409 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbot-Smith, K., Imai, M., Durrant, S., & Nurmsoo, E. (2017). The role of timing and prototypical causality on how preschoolers fast-map novel verb meanings. First Language, 37(2), 186–204.Google Scholar
Arunachalam, S., Escovar, E., Hansen, M. A., & Waxman, S. R. (2013). Out of sight but not out of mind: 21-month-olds use syntactic information to learn verbs even in the absence of a corresponding event. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28, 417–25.Google Scholar
Bavin, E. L., & Bretherton, L. (2013). The early language in Victoria study: late talkers, predictors and outcomes. In Rescorla, L. & Dale, P. S. (Eds.), Late talkers: language development, interventions, and outcomes (pp. 3–22). Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing.Google Scholar
Beavers, J., & Koontz-Garboden, A. (2012). Manner and result in the roots of verbal meaning. Linguistic Inquiry, 43(3), 331–69.Google Scholar
Beckage, N., Smith, L., & Hills, T. (2011). Small worlds and semantic network growth in typical and late talkers. PLoS ONE, 6(5). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019348Google Scholar
Behrend, D. A. (1990). The development of verb concepts: children's use of verbs to label familiar and novel events. Child Development, 61(3), 681–96.Google Scholar
Behrend, D. A., Harris, L., & Cartwright, K. (1995). Morphological cues to verb meaning: verb inflections and the initial mapping of verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 22(1), 89–106.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V., Snowling, M. J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh, T., & CATALISE-2 consortium (2016). CATALISE: a multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development. Phase 2. Terminology. PeerJ Preprints, 4, e2484v1. 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2484v1Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., Cote, L. R., Maital, S., Painter, K., Park, S.-Y., Pascual, L., … Vyt, A. (2004). Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English. Child Development, 75(4), 1115–39.Google Scholar
Brooks, P., Maouene, J., Sailor, K., & Seiger-Gardner, L. (2017). Modeling the semantic networks of school-age children with specific language impairment and their typical peers. In LaMendola, M. & Scott, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 114–27). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Carr, L., & Johnston, J. (2001). Morphological cues to verb meaning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22(4), 601–18.Google Scholar
Casasola, M., & Cohen, L. B. (2000). Infants’ association of linguistic labels with causal actions. Developmental Psychology, 36, 155–68.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1995). The lexicon in acquisition. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E., Carpenter, K., & Deutsch, W. (1995). Reference states and reversals: undoing actions with verbs. Journal of Child Language, 22(3), 633–52.Google Scholar
Colunga, E., & Sims, C. E. (2017). Not only size matters: early-talker and late-talker vocabularies support different word-learning biases in babies and networks. Cognitive Science, 41, 73–95.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Desmarais, C., Sylvestre, A., Meyer, F., Bairati, I., & Rouleau, N. (2008). Systematic review of the literature on characteristics of late-talking toddlers. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 43(4), 361–89.Google Scholar
Ebbels, S. H., Dockrell, J. E., & van der Lely, H. K. J. (2012). Production of change-of-state, change-of-location and alternating verbs: a comparison of children with specific language impairment and typically developing children. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27(9), 1312–33.Google Scholar
Ellis Weismer, S., & Evans, J. (2002). The role of processing limitations in early identification of specific language impairment. Topics in Language Disorders, 22(3), 15–29.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D. J., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., & Bates, E. (2007). MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: user's guide and technical manual, 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Fernald, A., & Marchman, V. A. (2012). Individual differences in lexical processing at 18 months predict vocabulary growth in typically developing and late-talking toddlers. Child Development, 83(1), 203–22.Google Scholar
Fisher, C. (1996). Structural limits on verb mapping: the role of analogy in children's interpretations of sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 41–81.Google Scholar
Fisher, C. (2002). Structural limits on verb mapping: the role of abstract structure in 2.5-year-olds’ interpretations of novel verbs. Developmental Science, 5(1), 55–64.Google Scholar
Frank, M. C., Braginsky, M., Yurovsky, D., & Marchman, V. A. (2016). Wordbank: an open repository for developmental vocabulary data. Journal of Child Language, 44(3), 677–94.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1978). On relational meaning: the acquisition of verb meaning. Child Development, 49(4), 988–98.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In Kuczaj, S. (Ed.), Language development: language, thought, and culture, Vol. 2 (pp. 301–34). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Girolametto, L., Wiigs, M., Smyth, R., Weitzman, E., & Pearce, P. (2001). Children with a history of expressive vocabulary delay. Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 10, 358–69.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. R. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3–55.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. R., Cassidy, K., Nappa, R., Papafragou, A., & Trueswell, J. C. (2005). Hard words. Language Learning and Development, 1(1), 23–64.Google Scholar
Goodman, J. C., Dale, P. S., & Li, P. (2008). Does frequency count? Parental input and the acquisition of vocabulary. Journal of Child Language, 35(3), 515–31.Google Scholar
Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. (1986). Relations between semantic and cognitive development in the one-word stage: the specificity hypothesis. Child Development, 57(4), 1040–53.Google Scholar
Gray, S. (2003). Word-learning by preschoolers with specific language impairment: What predicts success? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 56–67.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P., & Smith, J. (1976). The structure of communication in early language development. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gropen, J., Pinker, S., Hollander, M., & Goldberg, R. (1991). Affectedness and direct objects: the role of lexical semantics in the acquisition of verb argument structure. Cognition, 41(1/3), 153–95.Google Scholar
Hadley, P. A. (2006). Assessing the emergence of grammar in toddlers at risk for specific language impairment. Seminars in Speech and Language, 27(3), 173–86.Google Scholar
Hadley, P. A., Rispoli, M., & Hsu, N. (2016). Toddlers’ verb lexicon diversity and grammatical outcomes. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 47(1), 44–58.Google Scholar
He, A. X., & Arunachalam, S. (2017). Word learning mechanisms. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, e1435. doi:10.1002/wcs.1435Google Scholar
Horvath, S., Rescorla, L., & Arunachalam, S. (2018). Acquiring a verb lexicon: semantic features of toddlers’ early vocabularies. In Syrett, K. & Arunachalam, S. (Eds.), Semantics in acquisition (Trends in Language Acquisition Research) (pp. 68–92). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Husband, E. M. (2011). Rescuing manner/result complementary from certain death. Proceedings of the 47th annual Chicago Linguistics Society. CLS. Retrieved from <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.455.4523&rep=rep1&type=pdf>..>Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Smiley, P., & Charney, R. (1983). Emergence of action categories in the child: evidence from verb meanings. Psychological Review, 90(1), 72–93.Google Scholar
Ingham, R., Fletcher, P., Schelletter, C., & Sinka, I. (1998). Resultative VPs and specific language impairment. Language Acquisition, 7(2), 87–111.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jin, K., & Fisher, C. (2014). Early evidence for syntactic bootstrapping: 15-month-olds use sentence structure in verb learning. In Orman, W. & Valleau, M. J. (Eds.), BUCLD 38 Online Proceedings Supplement. Online <http://www.bu.edu/bucld/supplementvol38/>..>Google Scholar
Kelly, D., & Rice, M. (1994). Preferences for verb interpretation in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 37(1), 182–93.Google Scholar
Kipper, K., Korhonen, A., Ryant, N., & Palmer, M. (2006). Extending VerbNet with novel verb classes. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation – LREC'06. Genoa, Italy. Retrieved from <https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~alk23/lrec06.pdf>. The database can be accessed by using the link in this citation <http://verbs.colorado.edu/verb-index/index.php>..+The+database+can+be+accessed+by+using+the+link+in+this+citation+.>Google Scholar
Landau, B., & Gleitman, L. (1985). Language and experience: evidence from the blind child. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
de Lemos, C. (1981). Interactional processes in the child's construction of languages. In Deutsch, W. (Ed.), The child's construction of language (pp. 57–76). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. (2014). Children with specific language impairment, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levin, B., & Rappaport Hovav, M. R. (1991). Wiping the slate clean: a lexical semantic exploration. Cognition, 41(1), 123–51.Google Scholar
Levin, B., and Rappaport Hovav, M. R. (1995). Unaccusativity: at the syntax–lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levin, B., & Rappaport Hovav, M. R. (2013). Lexicalized meaning and manner/result complementarity. In Arsenijević, B., Gehrke, B., & Marín, R. (Eds.), Subatomic semantics of event predicates (pp. 49–70). Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Li, P. (2001). The CHILDES Parental Corpus. Retrieved from <https://childes.talkbank.org/derived/parentfreq.cdc>..>Google Scholar
Li, P., & Shirai, Y. (2000). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
MacRoy-Higgins, M., Shafer, V. L., Fahey, K. J., and Kaden, E. R. (2016). Vocabulary of toddlers who are late talkers. Journal of Early Intervention, 38, 118–29.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project, 3rd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Naigles, L. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17(2), 357–74.Google Scholar
Naigles, L. G., & Kako, E. T. (1993). First contact in verb acquisition: defining a role for syntax. Child Development, 64(6), 1665–87.Google Scholar
Oetting, J. (1999). Children with SLI use argument structure cues to learn verbs. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42(5), 1261–74.Google Scholar
O'Hara, M., & Johnston, J. (1997). Syntactic bootstrapping in children with specific language impairment. European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 32, 189–205.Google Scholar
Olswang, L., Long, S., & Fletcher, P. (1997). Verbs in the emergence of word combinations in young children with specific expressive language impairment. European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 32, 15–33.Google Scholar
Paul, R. (1991). Profiles of toddlers with slow expressive language development. Topics in Language Disorders, 11, 1–13.Google Scholar
Penner, Z. V. I., Schulz, P., & Wymann, K. (2003). Learning the meaning of verbs: What distinguishes language-impaired from normally developing children? Linguistics, 41(2), 289–319.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Preston, J., Frost, S., Mencl, W., Fulbright, R., Landi, N., Grigorenko, E., Jacobsen, L., & Pugh, K. (2010). Early and late talkers: school-age language, literacy and neurolinguistic differences. Brain, 133(8), 2185–95.Google Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, M., & Levin, B. (2010). Reflections on manner/result complementarity. In Rappaport Hovav, M., Doron, E., & Sichel, I. (Eds.), Lexical semantics, syntax, and event structure (pp. 21–37). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (1989). The Language Development Survey: a screening tool for delayed language in toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 587–99.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (2005). Age 13 language and reading outcomes in late-talking toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, 459–72.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (2009). Age 17 language and reading outcomes in late-talking toddlers: support for a dimensional perspective on language delay. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52, 16–30.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L., & Achenbach, T. M. (2002). Use of the language development survey (LDS) in a national probability sample of children 18 to 35 months old. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45(2), 733–43.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L., & Alley, A. (2001). Validation of the Language Development Survey (LDS): a parent report tool for identifying language delay in toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 434–55.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L., Alley, A., & Christine, J. B. (2001). Word frequencies in toddlers’ lexicons. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 598–609.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L., Bernstein Ratner, N., Jusczyk, P., & Jusczyk, A. M. (2005). Concurrent validity of the Language Development Survey: associations with the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Sentences. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14(2), 156–63.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. A., & Dale, P. S. (Eds.) (2013). Late talkers: language development, interventions, and outcomes. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L., Taylor, C. L., & Zubrick, S. R. (2008). Language outcomes of 7-year-old children with or without a history of late language emergence at 24 months. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51(2), 394–407.Google Scholar
Rissman, L. (2015). Cinderella broke and broke: object deletion and manner–result complementarity. Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society, 51, 425–39.Google Scholar
Shaffer, J. P. (1995). Multiple hypothesis testing. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 561–84.Google Scholar
Schulz, P. (2018). Acquisition of telicity. In Syrett, K. & Arunachalam, S. (Eds.), Semantics in acquisition (Trends in Language Acquisition Research). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Schulz, P., Wymann, K., & Penner, Z. (2001). The early acquisition of verb meaning in German by normally developing and language-impaired children. Brain and Language, 77(3), 407–18.Google Scholar
Sheng, L., & McGregor, K. (2010). Lexical-semantic organization in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53(1), 146–59.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (1981). The origins of grammatical encoding of events. In Deutsch, W. (Ed.), The child's construction of language (pp. 185–99). London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Smith, C. S. (1991). The parameter of aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Syrett, K., Arunachalam, S., & Waxman, S. R. (2014). Slowly but surely: adverbs support verb learning in 2-year-olds. Language Learning and Development, 10, 263–78.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: a usage-based approach to language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Valleau, M. J., Konishi, H., Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Arunachalam, S. (2018). An eye-tracking study of receptive verb knowledge in toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research [Advance online publication], 1–17. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-17-0363.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K. (1994). Canonical linking rules: forward versus reverse linking in normally developing and specifically language-impaired children. Cognition, 51(1), 29–72.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K. (1996). Specifically Language-Impaired and normally developing children: verbal passive versus adjectival passive sentence interpretation. Lingua, 98, 243–72.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K., & Harris, M. (1990). Comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 55(1), 101–17.Google Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1957). Verbs and times. Philosophical Review, 66(2), 143–60.Google Scholar
Wagner, L. (2006). Aspectual bootstrapping in language acquisition: telicity and transitivity. Language Learning and Development, 2(1), 51–76.Google Scholar
Wagner, L., Swensen, L., & Naigles, L. (2009). Children's early productivity with verbal morphology. Cognitive Development, 24(3), 223–39.Google Scholar
Waxman, S., Fu, X., Arunachalam, S., Leddon, E., Geraghty, K., & Song, H. (2013). Are nouns learned before verbs? Infants provide insight into a long-standing debate. Child Development Perspectives, 7(3), 155–59.Google Scholar
Yuan, S., Fisher, C., & Snedeker, J. (2012). Counting the nouns: simple structural cues to verb meaning. Child Development, 83(4), 1382–99.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Horvath et al. supplementary material

Horvath et al. supplementary material 1

Download Horvath et al. supplementary material(File)
File 116.8 KB