Learning Words and Rules

Gertner, Yael; Fisher, Cynthia; Eisengart, Julie B.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01767.x

Cited by 226 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(28 reference statements)

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“…the duck and bunny each performing an action with no causal interaction between the two). However, when children hear “The duck and bunny are gorping,” the children no longer preferentially direct their attention to the causal event (Naigles, 1990; see also Gertner, Fisher, & Eisengart, 2006). Similarly, when learning the meaning of a new word, children have a strong expectation for grammatical subjects (but not other grammatical positions) to be intentional, animate actors (Childers & Echols, 2004).…”

Section: Thematic Rolesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind

et al. 2014

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Three studies provided evidence that syntax influences intentionality judgments. In Experiment 1, participants made either speeded or unspeeded intentionality judgments about ambiguously intentional subjects or objects. Participants were more likely to judge grammatical subjects as acting intentionally in the speeded relative to the reflective condition (thus showing an intentionality bias), but grammatical objects revealed the opposite pattern of results (thus showing an unintentionality bias). In Experiment 2, participants made an intentionality judgment about one of the two actors in a partially symmetric sentence (e.g., “John exchanged products with Susan”). The results revealed a tendency to treat the grammatical subject as acting more intentionally than the grammatical object. In Experiment 3 participants were encouraged to think about the events that such sentences typically refer to, and the tendency was significantly reduced. These results suggest a privileged relationship between language and central theory-of-mind concepts. More specifically, there may be two ways of determining intentionality judgments: (1) an automatic verbal bias to treat grammatical subjects (but not objects) as intentional (2) a deeper, more careful consideration of the events typically described by a sentence.

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Section: Thematic Rolesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind

et al. 2014

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“…In these studies, toddlers hear a sentence such as “ The duck is gorping the bunny, ” and use the syntax of the sentence to guide their interpretation of the novel verb (measured via looking behavior; Naigles, 1990). In addition to using syntax to map a novel verb to an action, toddlers can also use syntactic structure to glean information about other semantic properties of a novel verb, such as the subjects and objects it selects for (e.g., Gertner et al, 2006). Importantly, there is also evidence that this semantic information is encoded and can be used for later comprehension and learning (e.g., Yuan & Fisher, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Toddlers encode similarities among novel words from meaningful sentences

Wojcik

Saffran

2015

Cognition

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Toddlers can learn about the meanings of individual words from the structure and semantics of the sentences in which they are embedded. However, it remains unknown whether toddlers encode similarities amongst novel words based on their positions within sentences. In three experiments, two-year-olds listened to novel words embedded in familiar sentence frames. Some novel words consistently occurred in the subject position across sentences, and others in the object position across sentences. An auditory semantic task was used to test whether toddlers encoded similarities based on sentential position, for (a) pairs of novel words that occurred within the same sentence, and (b) pairs of novel words that occurred in the same position across sentences. The results suggest that while toddlers readily encoded similarity based on within-sentence occurrences, only toddlers with more advanced grammatical knowledge encoded the positional similarities of novel words across sentences. Moreover, the encoding of these cross-sentential relationships only occurred if the exposure sentences included a familiar verb. These studies suggest that the types of lexical relationships that toddlers learn depend on the child’s current level of language development, as well as the structure and meaning of the sentences surrounding the novel words.

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“…To take a few examples, the number of noun phrases (henceforth, NP’s) in a clause tends to line up with the number of participants in a perceived event; the type of complement licensed by a verb reflects mind-internal properties of meaning (e.g., mental and causal verbs license sentential complements); and NP structural position reflects thematic role assignment (Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Gleitman, 1990). Over the years, syntactic bootstrapping as a general approach has enjoyed considerable experimental support (e.g., Fisher, 1996; Fisher, 2002; Fisher, Gleitman, & Gleitman, 1991; Gleitman, Cassidy, Nappa, Papafragou, & Trueswell, 2005; Gertner & Fisher, 2012; Gertner, Fisher, & Eisengart, 2006; Göksun, Küntay & Naigles, 2008; Hirsch-Pasek, Golinkoff, & Naigles, 1996; Lidz, Gleitman, & Gleitman, 2003; Lee & Naigles, 2008; Naigles, 1990; 1996; Naigles & Hoff-Ginsberg, 1995; Nappa, Wessell, McEldoon, Gleitman, & Trueswell, 2009; Papafragou, Cassidy, & Gleitman, 2007; Trueswell, Kaufman, Hafri, & Lidz, 2012; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic Ambiguity and Syntactic Bootstrapping: The Case of Conjoined-Subject Intransitive Sentences

Pozzan

Gleitman

Trueswell

2015

Language Learning and Development

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When learning verb meanings, learners capitalize on universal linguistic correspondences between syntactic and semantic structure. For instance, upon hearing the transitive sentence “the boy is glorping the girl” two-year olds prefer a two-participant event (e.g., a boy making a girl spin) over two simultaneous one-participant events (a boy and a girl separately spinning). However, two- and three-year-olds do not consistently show the opposite preference when hearing conjoined-subject intransitive sentences (“the boy and the girl are glorping”). We hypothesized that such difficulties arise in part from the indeterminacy of the mapping between intransitive syntax and events in the world: a conjoined-subject intransitive sentence can be matched by the one-participant event (if “glorp” means “spin”), both events (“play”), or even the two-participant event (“fight”). A preferential looking study provided evidence for this hypothesis: sentences that plausibly block most non-target interpretations for novel verbs (“the boy and the umbrella are glorping”) eliminated the asymmetric difficulty associated with conjoined-subject intransitives. Thus, while conjoined-subject intransitives clearly pose some special challenges for syntax-guided word learning (“syntactic bootstrapping”) by novices (Gertner & Fisher, 2012), children’s difficulties with this sentence type also reflect expected performance in situations of semantic ambiguity. In discussion, we consider the interacting effects of syntactic- and message-level indeterminacy.

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Learning Words and Rules

Cited by 226 publications

References 29 publications

Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind

Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind

Toddlers encode similarities among novel words from meaningful sentences

Semantic Ambiguity and Syntactic Bootstrapping: The Case of Conjoined-Subject Intransitive Sentences

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