More is sometimes less: verb learning by school-aged l2 learners

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines how two aspects of linguistic context, semantic richness and object novelty, impact verb-action mapping. Third-grade Mandarin-speaking children (N = 222) heard exemplars of novel English verbs while observing action scenes under four conditions: a rich semantic context with or without a novel object (e.g. “The cat is terjecking the pig/the doron.”); a sparse semantic context with or without a novel object (e.g. “He is terjecking her.”). The results of a verb extension test indicated that L2 verb learning was inferior in the rich semantic context involving a novel object label, in comparison to the other three contexts. A second experiment revealed that pre-exposure to the novel object’s label did not facilitate subsequent verb learning in the rich semantic context; instead, it impaired performance in the sparse context. Learners’ digit span was related to verb learning performance in the rich semantic context but not in the sparse semantic context. These findings suggest that L2 children can abstract a verb’s meaning regardless of semantic richness and the presence of a novel object. However, verb learning can be disrupted when L2 children are required to process an additional novel word either during or before the verb-action mapping process.