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Verb argument structure acquisition in young children: defining a role for discourse*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2010

LETITIA R. NAIGLES  and
ASHLEY MALTEMPO
LETITIA R. NAIGLES*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
ASHLEY MALTEMPO
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
*
Address for correspondence: Letitia R. Naigles, Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1020. e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , June 2011 , pp. 662 - 674
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by the University Scholar Program at the University of Connecticut, and by the NICHD (R01 HD048662). We are grateful to Megan Kravitz, Rebecca Richardson and Amanda Tchernotzkas for their assistance in data collection, and to Dr Ji-Young Kim for helpful commentary.

References

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