Acquisition Of Verbs Research Articles

The Acquisition of Noun and Verb Categories by Bootstrapping From a Few Known Words: A Computational Model.

While many studies have shown that toddlers are able to detect syntactic regularities in speech, the learning mechanism allowing them to do this is still largely unclear. In this article, we use computational modeling to assess the plausibility of a context-based learning mechanism for the acquisition of nouns and verbs. We hypothesize that infants can assign basic semantic features, such as “is-an-object” and/or “is-an-action,” to the very first words they learn, then use these words, the semantic seed, to ground proto-categories of nouns and verbs. The contexts in which these words occur, would then be exploited to bootstrap the noun and verb categories: unknown words are attributed to the class that has been observed most frequently in the corresponding context. To test our hypothesis, we designed a series of computational experiments which used French corpora of child-directed speech and different sizes of semantic seed. We partitioned these corpora in training and test sets: the model extracted the two-word contexts of the seed from the training sets, then used them to predict the syntactic category of content words from the test sets. This very simple algorithm demonstrated to be highly efficient in a categorization task: even the smallest semantic seed (only 8 nouns and 1 verb known) yields a very high precision (~90% of new nouns; ~80% of new verbs). Recall, in contrast, was low for small seeds, and increased with the seed size. Interestingly, we observed that the contexts used most often by the model featured function words, which is in line with what we know about infants' language development. Crucially, for the learning method we evaluated here, all initialization hypotheses are plausible and fit the developmental literature (semantic seed and ability to analyse contexts). While this experiment cannot prove that this learning mechanism is indeed used by infants, it demonstrates the feasibility of a realistic learning hypothesis, by using an algorithm that relies on very little computational and memory resources. Altogether, this supports the idea that a probabilistic, context-based mechanism can be very efficient for the acquisition of syntactic categories in infants.

The influence of language-specific and universal factors on acquisition of motion verbs

This study explores children’s encoding of novel verbs referring to motion events, and finds influence of both language-specific and universal constraints on meaning. Motion verbs fall into two categories—manner verbs encode how a movement happens (run, swim), and path verbs encode the starting and ending point of a motion (enter, fall). Some languages express path more frequently in the verb (Spanish, Hebrew), and others manner more frequently (English, German). Our study expands on this previous work demonstrating sensitivity to these language-specific distributions, as well as expanding to test environmental factors representing a predictable universal distribution. We find that children are sensitive to both the language-specific factors as well as the universal factors in motion verb acquisition.

On Context and Second Language Acquisition: The Rural Urban Dichotomy in Cameroon

The complexity of the linguistic environment in Cameroon raises the question of context and its role in the acquisition of another language. This paper draws a dichotomy between learners in such contexts considered rural and those regarded as urban or cosmopolitan2. Using the irregular verb as a yardstick, an evaluation of the acquisition of irregular verb patterns by 80 final year primary school learners from 2contexts in the Northwest Region of Cameroon was done. Oral and written tests were administered to check learners’ acquisition of verb inflectional categories, verb tenses and general written and oral productions. The findings reveal similar trends in the acquisition of inflectional categories and verb tenses by learners in both contexts and divergent trends in general oral and written productions. For instance, learners in both contexts had similar challenges using the Vs, Ved and Ven inflections with a very low average frequency of 26% and with a high frequency of 67.2 % for the Ving and Vo inflections. Though learners in the urban centres had higher degrees of efficiency in oral productions, their counterparts in the rural areas had more challenges in verbal as against written productions. The paper concludes that second language acquisition is not a consequence of a unilateral context but a result of a plethora of other factors both within and without the learning environment with evident pedagogic implications for stakeholders in the second language acquisition industry.

On the acquisition of potential verbs and conjugation types of verbs in Japanese

Abstract It is well-known that children whose native language is Japanese first begin vocalizing potential verbs at about the age of 2 years and continue to utter ungrammatical forms which are not used in adults’ speech as well as correct ones until approximately at the age of 5 years when their acquisition of potential verbs completes, with virtually no erroneous uses observed. Interestingly enough, the process of the acquisition of potential verbs proceeds in a manner parallel with that of causative/inchoative alternation. In this study, based on children’s natural speech data reported in previous research, we argue that the approach put forth in Fuji, Hashimoto, and Murasugi (2008a. “A VP-shell analysis for the undergeneration and the overgeneration in the acquisition of Japanese causatives and potentials.” Nanzan Linguistics 4: 21–41; 2008b. “VP-shell analysis for the acquisition of Japanese potentials.” Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3(2): 65–102) is not empirically valid in that it cannot correctly predict changes in morphological patterns of potential verbs uttered by children along the period of language acquisition. Moreover, in the course of our discussion, it is shown that the acquisition process of the potential morpheme e by children can be identified as that of (in)transitive morpheme e which forms the class of mono-grade vowel-ending verbs.

Foreword

The winter issue of Volume 11 presents a selection of seven different research articles on Japanese, Tetun Dili, Sylheti Bangla, Pahari, and Saraiki language. The rise of the Covid-19 pandemic, of which continuation unfortunately still allows many to collect data for research, has prompted us to publish several other interesting studies. This compilation brings to the readers the following topics.
 This issue opens with Saki AMANO’s paper “Polysemy of ‘Common Language’ and the Modern Japanese Nation: The Universalization of a ‘Standard Language’ to correct ‘Dialects’?”. The author examines the term futsūgo (common language) over two periods and explains the shift from the populace’s everyday commonplace language to a unified national language.
 In the next paper “From Native-speaker Likeness to Self-representation in Language: Views from the Acquisition of Japanese Transitive and Intransitive Verbs”, ITO Hideaki considers the degree to which a language user’s own will is recognized in language education. The author demonstrates that the usage-centric acquisition process can create opportunities for language users to make expressive choices focused on what they wish to say.
 The third article is Nastja PAHOR’s paper “Corpus analysis of the collocations of the transitive verbs owaru and oeru”, in which the author approaches the transitivity of Japanese verbs from the corpus perspective. Semantical analysis of collocations in combination with the morphological analysis of co-occurring verbs reveals some interesting findings.
 After the first three papers that focus on Japanese, the fourth one brings some new insights into Tetun Dili. Andrei A. AVRAM in his paper “Contact-induced variation in Tetun Dili phonology” analyzes Portuguese influence on Tetun Dili phonology, and demonstrates that the intricacies of inter-speaker variation cannot be merely reduced to variation between more Portuguese-like phonology and a more Tetun-Dili-like one. 
 Arpita GOSWAMI’s paper “Marked Geminates as Evidence of Sonorants in Sylheti Bangla: An Optimality Account” analyzes the universal concept that sonorants are marked geminates in the gemination process of Sylheti Bangla, and proposes a hierarchy of the constraints for analyzing the gemination processes in SHB. Besides, the author illustrates some additional constraints found to be necessary.
 The following article “Stop Voicing and F0 Perturbation in Pahari” presents the findings of Nazia RASHID, Abdul Qadir KHAN, Ayesha SOHAIL, and Bilal Ahmed ABBASI. The authors investigate the perturbation effect of the voicing of initial stops on the fundamental frequency of the following vowels in Pahari. 
 Last but not least, “Word Stress system of the Saraiki language” is an article by Firdos ATTA, who presents an Optimality-Theoretic analysis of Saraiki word stress. The author concludes that Saraiki has a trochaic stress system and falls in the category of quantity-sensitive languages. This paper also indicates further research work on word stress at the sentence level.
 Editors and Editorial board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration, and a rise of new research ideas inspired by these papers.

From Native-speaker Likeness to Self-representation in Language: Views from the Acquisition of Japanese Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

This study considers the degree to which a language user’s own will is recognized in language education. It also looks at the use of Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs to reexamine the differentiation between language use that is native-like, and language use that is representative of the learner’s self. The reexamination indicates that shifting previous approach to a more usage-centric acquisition process can create opportunities for language users to make expressive choices focused on what they wish to say. This shift may be accomplished by introducing backward design and critical pragmatics into teaching practices, thereby enabling the pursuit of self-representing language use, and prompting individuality in each learner without binding the learner solely to linguistic rules.

Verb Acquisition in English and Other Languages

Massive researches and experiments are attempting to explore the exact process of verb acquisition of child learners at an early age (1 to 3 years old). Therefore, the “syntactic bootstrapping method” is introduced and explicated in this paper, trying to illuminate whether children used syntax to learn verbs in English. Apart from English, other languages with totally different grammatical structures are also being discussed as well: regarding massive ellipsis of noun arguments (NPs) in Mandarin, researches and experiments on the acquisition of verbs in Mandarin ought to be carried out more in the near future. The purpose of this article is to give a brief introduction of word acquisition, especially verb acquisition with linguistic syntactic information; moreover, some practical hints of verb acquisition are also presented within the paper.

Seeing and Believing: The Relationship between Perception and Mental Verbs in Acquisition

ABSTRACT Perception verbs and mental verbs have significant overlap in their syntax and semantics; both reference mental representations when taking embedded clauses, as in I see that Maria was here and I think that Maria was here. Some have suggested that perception is more accessible for young children than mental states, raising the question of whether perception verbs could serve as a semantic model for the acquisition of mental verbs via their shared syntax. Since embedded clauses are key to referencing mental states for both verb classes, we examine the developmental trajectory of perception vs. mental verbs in these constructions and others. Using a sample of 5,884 child-produced utterances and 8,313 parent-produced utterances from the Brown and Gleason corpora of CHILDES, we analyze children’s production of perception and mental verbs in their syntactic frames, as well as that of their parents. We find that children begin to produce embedded frames for both perception and mental verbs around the same time, but produce embedded frames with mental verbs more often, especially as they get older, despite greater use of perception verbs overall. These patterns do not reflect parental input: parents produce both verb types with similar frequency and use embedded frames more often than their children. These findings suggest that perception verbs are unlikely to serve as a model for mental verbs, and instead that mental verbs and their regular occurrence with embedded frames may provide a model for perception verbs when the latter reference mental states. We propose a semantic updating account for children’s acquisition of perception verbs, arguing that children’s early knowledge of perception verbs may not include mental state representations as a component of their meaning, and that this may only develop later as children learn the propositional syntax that is shared by and regularly occurs with mental verbs.

Space Oddities: The Acquisition of Agreement Verbs by L2 Learners of Sign Language of the Netherlands

AbstractThis article reports the results of the first longitudinal study that systematically investigates the acquisition of verb agreement by hearing learners of a sign language. During a 2‐year period, 14 novel learners of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) with a spoken language background performed an elicitation task 15 times. Seven deaf native signers and NGT teachers performed the same task to serve as a benchmark group. The results obtained show that for some learners, the verb agreement system of NGT was difficult to master, despite numerous examples in the input. As compared to the benchmark group, learners tended to omit agreement markers on verbs that could be modified, did not always correctly use established locations associated with discourse referents, and made characteristic errors with respect to properties that are important in the expression of agreement (movement and orientation). The outcomes of the study are of value to practitioners in the field, as they are informative with regard to the nature of the learning process during the first stages of learning a sign language.

Frequency, acceptability, and selection: A case study of clause-embedding

We investigate the relationship between the frequency with which verbs are found in particular subcategorization frames and the acceptability of those verbs in those frames, focusing in particular on subordinate clause-taking verbs, such as think, want, and tell. We show that verbs’ subcategorization frame frequency distributions are poor predictors of their acceptability in those frames—explaining, at best, less than ⅓ of the total information about acceptability across the lexicon—and, further, that common matrix factorization techniques used to model the acquisition of verbs’ acceptability in subcategorization frames fare only marginally better.

An Experimental Study of L2 Acquisition of Mandarin Unaccusative Verbs by English-Speaking Learners

The present study investigates the acquisition of Chinese Mandarin unacussative verbs by English-speaking L2 leaners of Chinese, in light of Universal Grammar and Interlanguage (IL) phenomenon. The results of the experiment show that there is no strong evidence for the overpassivization of Mandarin unaccusative verbs, which calls into question the claim that the overpassivization phenomenon of unaccusative verbs is universal in second language acquisition (SLA). The L2 learners in our experiment performed better with non-alternating unaccusative verbs than alternating unaccusative verbs, which might suggest that learners were probably treating the alternating unaccusative verbs in our experiment as underlyingly transitive and thus accepted the ungrammatical passivized unaccusative verbs in the Grammaticality Judgement task. This phenomenon is consistent with child’s L1 development. We attribute the overpassivization of the Chinese unaccusative verbs in our experiment to the hypothesis of non-target lexical causativization as in L2 acquisition of English.

Acquisition of multi-verb predicates in Nungon

Studies of the acquisition of verbs tend to focus on one-verb predicates of the prevalent English type. But in hundreds of languages around the world, multi-verb predicates like serial verb constructions are widely used. It could be reasoned that children should begin producing simple, single-verb predicates before they are able to produce multi-verb predicates. But alternatively, many multi-verb predicates are idiomatic and could, as chunks, lend themselves to holophrastic acquisition by small children. This article examines early productions of multi-verb predicates in the speech of three children (aged 1;1–2;4, 2;1–3;3, and 2;10–3;3) acquiring the Papuan language Nungon, comparing patterns there with productions in the child-directed speech of their parents, and with the children’s productions of simple, one-verb predicates. The study’s youngest child never produces multi-verb predicates in the study period, but the child studied for the widest age range produces them from age 2;4, when she has still not acquired productive use of all verbal inflections, and both older children show proportionally increasing trends in multi-verb predicate use. Semantically, the earliest multi-verb predicates can be analyzed as describing multidimensional unitary events, with this expanding to events that can be divided into multiple distinct components at later ages. Delays in production of certain other multi-verb predicate types that are robustly present in parental input at all ages cannot be linked to a single factor, but likely relate to a combination of increased phonological or morphological complexity and increased conceptual difficulty.

Semantic and Syntactic Ambiguities in the Acquisition of Chinese Modal Verbs: Based on Intralingual and Interlingual Differences

Semantic and Syntactic Ambiguities in the Acquisition of Chinese Modal Verbs: Based on Intralingual and Interlingual Differences

Second Language Acquisition of English Unaccusative Verbs: A Theoretical Critique and Prospects for Future Studies

Unaccusative verbs are a focus of second language acquisition research. Taking the second language acquisition of English unaccusative verbs as an example, this study first reviews the Unaccusative Hierarchy Hypothesis, the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis and the Semantic Verb Class Hypothesis, which are exclusively concerned with the acquisition of unaccusative verbs. Then it examines the Entrenchment Hypothesis and the Interface Hypothesis, which address language acquisition in general, but shed light on the second language acquisition of English unaccusative verbs. This study maintains that these five hypothesis help to provide a panoramic view of second language acquisition of English unaccusative verbs. But it also points out that these hypotheses need to be further tested. It advises future studies to take a usage-based theoretical approach. It also calls for more attention to the possible between-verb variations, the possible influence of L1 transfer and the online processing of English unaccusative verbs

Are the Mental State Verbs Important For Roma Children’s Understanding of False Belief Task

Objectives. The aim of the paper is to analyze the process of acquisition of mental state verbs in Romani and in Bulgarian langauges simultaneously by bilingual Roma children. The mental state verbs help the children to understand the Fals Belief Tasks, which predict the Theory of Mind. The theory of mind from other side is important for understanding the intentions, desires, jokes, motivations of others and what are the factors influencing the development of theory of mind
 Research methods and techniques. Two Roma children from Bulgaria (1 boy and 1 girl) aged 1;0 – 3;0 years were audiorecorded longitudinally in their natural home environment. According to M. Taumoepeau and T. Ruffman (2006), the mental state verbs can be grouped in different categories, showing different states: mental states, physical states, emotions, perception and cognition. The acquired verbs are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
 Results. The data shows that some mental state verbs are acquired in Romani and others in Bulgarian. The factors influencing the acquisition of part of the verbs in Romani and the other part in Bulgarian are analyzed. Mental state verbs are important for the cognitive development of the children. The results show that the the boy uses 100% Romani mental state verbs: very high number of verbs are related to (1) mental states, e.g.: mangav (want), dehav (love), arakhav (care about), džanav (know); (2) emotions: xavxoli (angry), khanile (feeling bad); (3) physical state, e.g.: dukhal (hurt), rovav (cry); (4) sense, such as: dikh (look). The girl uses 89.0% mental state verbs in Romani and 19.0% in Bulgarian language. The learned verbs by her are related to mental state from Romani: mangav (want), džanav (know), darav (be afraid) and from Bulgarian: obicham (love), znam (know), iskam (want). The other verbs from the field of emotions, physical state and sense are from Romani.
 Conclusions. The resreach although limited has shown that sentences with mental state verbs in a combination with a noun phrase in a simple sentence are acquired around the age of 1;6. The more complex sentences with mental state verb and complementizer phrase are acquired around the age of 2;6 years old.

Finite complements trigger reality responses in attitude verb acquisition… but so do non-finite complements

The syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis was developed to explain how children learn verbs whose meanings are opaque, e.g. attitude verbs, which refer to the mental state of the subject of the sentence. Belief verbs (like think) take finite complements, while desire verbs (like want) take non-finite complements. Children differentiate these subclasses by three: they are lured by reality when there is a mismatch between the subject’s belief and reality when interpreting think, but not with want. Previous work also shows that when interpreting a less common attitude verb, hope, children are influenced by syntactic frame, supporting view that syntax guides children’s acquisition of attitude verbs. The current study investigates when syntax becomes useful to the learner. Children are presented with sentences including a novel verb with either a finite or a non-finite complement. Children are not influenced by syntax when interpreting a novel attitude verb, suggesting that syntactic complements only become useful for hypothesizing meaning once the learner has some experience with a specific attitude verb.

日本語複合動詞「～出す」の習得:―ベトナム人日本語学習者を調査対象に―

日本語複合動詞「～出す」の習得:―ベトナム人日本語学習者を調査対象に―

The Review and Prospect of the Acquisition and Teaching Methods of Phrasal Verbs

The phrasal verb (PV) plays an important role in the English output, but the English learners’ acquisition and usage situation of PVs is not so optimistic. Thus, phrasal verb has always been the hot research topic for the recent years. The previous researches mainly include the current English learners’ usage situation or the avoidance of the phrasal verbs, the factors affecting the acquisition of the phrasal verbs like the social and subjective factors and the linguistic rules, and the different teaching methods of phrasal verbs like the different input and output ways and the combination of input and output ways. All of these aspects are deserved to be studied and concluded to find out more effective methods for phrasal verbs acquisition and teaching. And the combination of cognitive linguistic method and the task-based output method maybe deserved to be tested for the potential advantages of both ways and the research gap.

Preliminary Study on Verb Acquisition Status and Related Factors in Children with Down Syndrome

Preliminary Study on Verb Acquisition Status and Related Factors in Children with Down Syndrome

TÜRK ÇOCUKLARININ KONUŞMALARINDAKI FIIL YAPILARI: BIR ENINE KESIT ÇALIŞMASI

In light of the previous research on verb acquisition of children, this study aims to follow Tomasello’s (1992) age ranges and find out the differences between the quantities of verb constructions used by monolingual Turkish children who are 24, 30 and 36 months old. The study also aimed to recognize the most frequently used verb construction types used by these monolingual Turkish children. Within a cross-sectional design of the study, free speeches of 24, 30, and 36-month-old 6 Turkish girls (2 girls in each age range) were recorded while they were playing at a nursery school, and each took nearly. Transcription of the interviews that took 40 minutes for each participant was made, and the results were analyzed according to the structures and types of verbs. The results provided that although the participants use more verb constructions in their speeches as they grow up, the ratio of the verbs uttered by these children decrease in percentage. In addition, the study illustrated that as the children grow up, they begin to use various and more verb construction types. While the participants at the age of 24 months generally use witnessed past and present continuous tense verb constructions, the participants at the age of 30 months mostly used simple present and witnessed past tense, and the participants at the age of 36 months most frequently use witnessed and nonwitnessed past tense in their speeches.