When toddlers view an event while hearing a novel verb, the verb's syntactic context has been shown to help them identify its meaning. The current work takes this finding one step further to reveal that even in the absence of an accompanying event, syntactic information supports toddlers' identification of verb meaning. Two-year-olds were first introduced to dialogues incorporating novel verbs ...

Syntactic bootstrapping and semantic bootstrapping are often seen as rival hypotheses for learning the meaning of verbs. While both theories have different starting points, both credit the child with sensitivity to syntactic information in the input. Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (1997) conducted experiments to examine whether young children are capable of exploiting the syntactic frames in which t...

The distinction of simple event nominals (SENs) and complex event nominals (CENs) will be ignored: as has been shown (see A. Alexiadou 2001, 2004), the former, as well as the latter, also have aspectual structure; Russian deverbal nominals derived from transitive verbs, from intransitive ones and underived situation-denoting nominals share a lot of properties, and behaviour under negation is on...

This study examines the neural correlates of processing verbal entries with multiple argument structures using fMRI. We compared brain activation in response to 'alternating transitivity' verbs, corresponding to two different verbal alternates - one transitive and one intransitive - and simple verbs, with only one, intransitive, thematic grid. Fourteen young healthy participants performed a lex...

Dayak Ngaju is one of the many Indonesian languages ​​originating from Austronesian family. language used by speakers Central Kalimantan. This study aims to determine continuous directed verbal constructions in based on a typology and then compare it with Balinese. type research descriptive qualitative. Methods data collection using interview method are also considered. The typological approach...

The Malay-Tolitoli (BMTLI) language is unique, especially in the field of morphology. This study aims to determine prefix and its application (BMTLI). research was conducted using a generative morphology with model developed by Halle, namely IP (Item Process), data derived from interviews observations native speakers. results this indicate that language, there derivation process use "Ba-" where...

Many experiments have shown that listeners actively build expectations about up-coming words, rather than simply waiting for information to accumulate. The online construction of a syntactic structure is one of the cues that listeners may use to construct strong expectations about the possible words they will be exposed to. For example, speakers of verb-final languages use pre-verbal arguments ...

This paper analyzes the argument structure of Yucatec Mayan. In line with traditional assumptions but in contrast to more recent proposals, we show that Yucatec has ergative morphology but not a split-ergative system. For intransitive verbs there is a strict correlation between aspect and the type of linker: they take ergative clitics in the imperfect, but nominative suffixes in the perfect. Mo...

The aim of this paper is to show the alternation pattern of verbs in Hindi. The work is guided by Beth Levin’s work on English verb classes and alternations where English verbs are classified semantically according to their argument structure [1]. There is a strong belief that the semantic nature of verbs is largely dependent on its argument structure. The nature of the Hindi verbs shows that a...

Lexical sets contain the words filling an argument slot of a verb, and are in part determined by selectional preferences. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the properties of lexical sets through distributional semantics. We investigate 1) whether lexical set behave as prototypical categories with a centre and a periphery; 2) whether they are polymorphic, i.e. composed by subcategories; 3)...