Date Thesis Awarded
5-2022
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Linguistics
Advisor
Kate Harrigan
Committee Members
Talbot Taylor
Jack Martin
Brian Rabinovitz
Abstract
Verbs are organized into classes based on some aspect of their semantics or argument structure. Motion verbs, one of those classes, are broken down further into categories that include both Path (a figure’s trajectory) and Manner (how a figure moves), among others. Many studies have shown that English-speaking children more readily encode Manner verbs than Path verbs, as English has relatively more verbs of that type. These studies aimed to discover what role the factor of Environment (background) plays in adult perception of motion verbs, as well as how it affects children’s encoding of novel verbs. Additionally, we hoped to replicate previous work showing that children are stronger at learning novel Manner verbs than novel Path ones. In Study I (N = 35) and Study II (N = 64), adult participants were asked to rate familiar actions or objects in terms of how well they matched the participant’s conception of their meaning. We find that noun meaning does not rely on background, while verb meaning may. We also find that when it comes to verbs, people’s responses are sensitive to background in two ways: some verbs in particular are more sensitive to background, and some backgrounds are particularly salient in influencing verb meaning. Study III was performed with 25 children (age 3;11 - 7;11), who were presented with examples of novel verbs and asked to identify them in a forced-choice task. We find that children are better at learning Manner verbs than Path verbs overall, though in the case of a highly salient background, they are around chance for both verb types. We also find that the influence of background differs across different levels of background salience—specifically, children are less likely to be influenced by background for the low-salience background items than for the high-salience background items. This reinforces past literature by providing evidence that English-speaking children are stronger at mapping Manner verbs, and it also suggests that children may be lured by an Environment cue, especially when the background is highly salient.
Recommended Citation
Benjamin, Alice, "The Role of Environment in Children's Acquisition of Motion Verbs" (2022). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 1850.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1850
