Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ma, Weiyi
• Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick
• Song, Lulu
• Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy

Titel

Using Verb Extension to Gauge Children's Verb Meaning Construals: The Case of Chinese

Ist Teil von

• Frontiers in psychology, 2021-02, Vol.11, p.572198-572198

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: Frontiers Research Foundation

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB-FREE-00999 freely available EZB journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Verb extension is a crucial gauge of the acquisition of verb meaning. In English, studies suggest that young children show conservative extension. An important test of whether an early conservative extension is a general phenomenon or a function of the input language is made possible by Chinese, a language in which verbs are more frequent and acquired earlier. This study tested whether 3-year-old Chinese children extended a group of familiar verbs that specify various ways to objects. Shown videos that portrayed typical, mid-typical, or atypical carrying actions (as verified by Chinese adults), children were asked to judge whether they were examples of specific Chinese carry verbs. Children's verb extensions were mostly limited to typical exemplars, suggesting that an early conservative extension may be universal. Furthermore, extension breadth was related to the onset of verb production: verbs acquired earlier elicited more extension judgments than those acquired later.