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Verbs and Syntactic Frames in Children’s Elicited Actions: A Comparison of Tamil- and English-Speaking Children

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Abstract

We directly compare children learning argument expressing and argument dropping languages on the use of verb meaning and syntactic cues, by examining enactments of transitive and intransitive verbs given in transitive and intransitive syntactic frames. Our results show similarities in the children’s knowledge: (1) Children were somewhat less likely to perform an action when the core meaning of a verb was in conflict with the frame in which it was presented; (2) Children enacted the core meaning of the verb with considerable accuracy in all conditions; and (3) Children altered their actions to include or not include explicit objects appropriately to the frame. The results suggest that 3-year-olds learning languages that present them with very different structural cues still show similar knowledge about and sensitivity to the core meanings of transitive and intransitive verbs as well as the implications of the frames in which they appear.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn, 4901 Evergreen Rd, 4012 CB, Dearborn, MI, 48128, USA

    Nitya Sethuraman & Aarre Laakso

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Linda B. Smith

Authors
  1. Nitya Sethuraman
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  2. Aarre Laakso
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  3. Linda B. Smith
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Correspondence to Nitya Sethuraman.

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Sethuraman, N., Laakso, A. & Smith, L.B. Verbs and Syntactic Frames in Children’s Elicited Actions: A Comparison of Tamil- and English-Speaking Children. J Psycholinguist Res 40, 241–252 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9166-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9166-2

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