A division of labor between nouns and verbs in the representation of motion.

Abstract

This study examines the association of nouns and verbs with 2 different kinds of motion. Extrinsic motion is the motion of 1 object with respect to another object, whereas intrinsic motion is the motion of an object (or its parts) defined with respect to itself. Several experiments are reported that compare the association of these types of motion with novel nouns and verbs. Adult participants demonstrated a bias to associate verbs with extrinsic motion to a greater extent than intrinsic motion and a bias to associate nouns with intrinsic motion to a greater extent than extrinsic motion. These results suggest a division of labor between nouns and verbs, with verbs specialized to convey relational information, whereas nouns are specialized to convey information about individual objects. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motion may be related to the neuroanatomical distinction between the "what" and "where" systems.

Semantic context influences memory for verbs more than memory for nouns

“…In contrast, the participants recognized a noun about equally well regardless of whether or not it was accompanied by the same verb as that presented at encoding. These findings are consistent with the theories of Gentner and Boroditsky (2001), Kersten (1998Kersten ( , 2003, and Kintsch (2001) that the meanings of verbs are more strongly dependent on linguistic context than are the meanings of nouns.…”

“…For example, the vector representing the horse ran is more similar to the vector representing horse than to the vector representing ran, suggesting that ran has changed more than horse. Consistent with the theories of Gentner and Boroditsky (2001) and Kersten (1998Kersten ( , 2003), Kintsch's predication algorithm thus suggests that the meaning of a verb is more strongly influenced by semantic context than is the meaning of a noun.…”

“…In fact, the effects of context might be predicted to be even larger for this new group of participants, because attention would be focused on the context word. If the theories of Gentner and Boroditsky (2001), Kersten (1998Kersten ( , 2003, and Kintsch (2001) are correct, however, the effects of semantic context should be greater for verbs than for nouns, even when the encoding instructions were the same in the two cases.…”

“…We predicted, however, on the basis of the theories of Gentner (1981Gentner ( , 1982Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001), Kersten (1998Kersten ( , 2003, and Kintsch (2001), that memory for verbs would be much more dependent on semantic context than memory for nouns would be. To test this prediction, we presented adult participants with a series of intransitive sentences (e.g., The ball bounced ) and asked them to remember either the noun or the verb from each sentence.…”

“…Because verbs are not so tightly anchored in nonlinguistic categories, their meanings are less stable and more subject to alteration with variations in linguistic context. Kersten (1998Kersten ( , 2003 has also proposed that the meanings of many verbs are dependent on linguistic context-in particular, the nouns that accompany them. Kersten proposed that the role of a manner-of-motion verb in a sentence is to select from a number of manners of motion associated with a noun.…”