Where actions meet words :

1. Where actions meet words: The paradox of early verb learning Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Roberta Golinkoff Temple UniversityUniversity of Delaware

2. With support from many students, graduate and undergraduate, and NSF Mandy Maguire Beth Hennon Shannon Pruden Meredith Meyer Carolyn Fenter Jennifer Sootsman Rachel Pulverman Sara Salkind Khara Pence Dede Addy Natalie Hansell

3. Beginning at the beginning… Language- what’s the big deal? Language can start wars ruin marriages allow a colloquium presentation

4. Language allows us to label objects….. But more importantly….

5. Language is about relations The power of language is not in learning the word “cabbage” and the word “Jim” but in learning how to express relations between these words. “Jim ate the cabbage” “The cabbage attacked Jim” “Jim, don’t sit the babies in the cabbage!”

7. And relations are encoded in…(among other things…) VERBS

8. Verbs form the architectural centerpiece of the sentence. You just can’t learn language without learning verbs!

9. In this talk… We begin to explore the new frontiers of verb acquisition by studying how children learn their first action words. We will thus use the term “verb” loosely to refer to action words. With this caveat in mind…….

10. We offer a talk in 4 parts: • The Paradox:Verbs are HARD to learn • But children have them in their earliest vocabularies • Theories of verb learning • Building verbs: A developmental account • Explaining the paradox: A beginning

11. Part 1: Verbs are hard to learn

12. Act I: Demonstration through a typical motion event

13. What did you see? • How would you describe it?

14. What nouns did you use? • Sliding board? Child? Apartment building? • Ground? Grass? • What verbs did you use?

15. You might have used verbs like… approach ascend bend climb descend go grab hit leave lift pull push run sit slide stand step straighten swing tuck

16. The “verb” problem • A verb encodes only part of what is happening in a motion event including (from Talmy, 1985): • Manner – the way an action is carried out • Path – the trajectory of an action with respect to some reference point

17. Cross-Linguistic Differences • Languages differ in terms of the relative frequencies of different types of verbs • Path and Motion • e.g., Spanish, Turkish, Greek • La mujer salió de la casa (corriendo) ‘The woman exited the house (running)’ • Manner and Motion • e.g., English, Indonesian, Chinese • The woman ran out of the house

18. Sliding Event approachascendbendclimb descendgograbhit leaveliftpullpush runsitslidestand stepstraightenswingtuck PATH MANNER

19. Gentner (1992, 2001,2003) suggests verbs are harder to learn than nouns because… • Verbs more polysemous than nouns • e.g., “run” - 53 entries!; “ball” - 2 entries • Label relations as compared to perceptual • similarity or function • Harder to individuate actions than objects and to • to form categories of actions than objects • ( What is the invariant in “running” when performed by • Carl Lewis or your grandmother?) • Ephemeral events: not concrete • e.g., running vs. cup

20. Act II: Verbs are really hard A demonstration from Japanese and English

21. The rationale Some have argued that a noun bias is a product of learning English. In Asian, “verb final” languages, children have a higher proportion of verbs in their early vocabularies relative to nouns. Thus, verbs might be as easy to learn as nouns in these languages. (Tardiff 1996, Gopnik & Choi)

22. Standard Scene “見て! Xっている” “Look! (She is) X-ing a)” a) ‘Ｘ-ing’ is a novel verb.

23. Two Test Scenes “Xっているのはどっち?” “In which (movie) is (she) X-ing?” same object, different action same action, different object

24. The facts • Participants: • 41, 3-year-olds (M=3;6) • 40, 5-year-olds (M=5.0) • Task: Pointing to one of two scenes on video

25. Japanese Results

26. A replication in English(Meyer, Hirsh-Pasek,Golinkoff, Imai, Haryu) • Same tapes used in Japanese • Same ages: 3 (N=55) and 5 yrs. (N=59) • 3 language conditions: - Noun (“Find the blick!”) - Bare verb (“Blicking!” Where’s blicking?”) - Rich syntax: Agent/Obj/Verb (“Where is she blicking?” “Look at her. She is blicking it.”)

27. English Results

28. Act III: Verbs are really, really hard So we simplified the design. Asked children to learn and extend only one novel action, no novel object present. And they still couldn’t do it by age 3 years

29. THE BOTTOM LINE? We got a headache! PARADOX

30. THE PARADOX: Verbs are really, really, really hard to learn… BUT… They appear in children’s earliest vocabularies * Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Choi, 1998 * Brown ;Bowerman, deLeon & Choi, 1995 *Fenson et al., 1994; Tardif, 1996, 1999

31. Part II:Addressing the paradox Three theories of verb learning

32. Three theories • The “Universal Concepts” theories • The “Language-specific” theories • The “Hybrid” theories

33. Universal Concepts Theories Universal concepts Language • PATH • MANNER • CONTAINMENT • CAUSALITY maps onto concepts “The central problem is how do children, from an initially equivalent base, end up controlling often very differently structured languages.” Bowerman & Levinson (2001)

34. Evidence for Universal Concepts Theories? • Languages around the world draw on the same set of concepts (Talmy, Langacker, etc.) • Perceptually salient (concrete, individuated) information will be coded first. • Developmental data: Bowerman (1974) “ He falled it.” and Clark (2001) (“y” for inherent properties (he is short) and “ed” for temporary (he is tired).

35. Language-Specific Theories Language Concepts • PATH • MANNER • CONTAINMENT • CAUSALITY

36. Evidence for language-specific theories? • Words are invitations to form categories (Brown, Balaban & Waxman; Maguire, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff ). • The terms, “pour” vs “spill” invite listeners to find distinctions between these concepts. • Verbs learned one at a time, then generalized via common syntax (Tomasello’s Verb Island Hypothesis). • Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Akhtar & Tomasello, 1997); Schlyter, (1990 on • bilingual development in French and German); • GO used with separate senses (Theakston et al.,2002)

37. Hybrid theories Universal concepts Language input Together determine Verb meaning

38. Hybrid Theories • Natural partitions hypothesis (Gentner & Boroditsky’s, 2001; Gentner, 2003): Abstract universal concepts that are easily individuated across multiple instances. • Slobin (2001): Both conceptual primitives and language input work jointly in the child’s construction of verb meaning. • Gleitman et al, 1991, Fisher et al., 2002; Naigles: Syntax of language critical to “zooming in” on verb meaning. • Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff (forthcoming), Emergentist Coalition Model: children start with universal perceptual/conceptual foundation using syntactic and social cues to prune language-specific verb meaning.

39. The Emergent Coalition Model Linguistic and social cues sculpt universal concepts in ways consistent with the native language Linguistic Universal perceptual/conceptual Social 2nd and 3rd year of life

40. Predictions • Infants should be able to discriminate and categorize universal concepts (e.g., path, manner) • When action meets words, children should assume that the word labels the most perceptually salient universal relational concept (e.g., path over manner) • Embedding the verb in rich syntax, allows children to map the verb to the action in language-specific ways • Attuned to speaker social intent, children should map a verb to an action in language-specific ways (in progress)

41. To investigate this we need… • To find universally available concepts used differently across languages • Enter PATH and MANNER • To find methodologies that can assess verb comprehension in young children of different ages • Enter Habituation, Preferential Looking (IPLP), Preferential Pointing Paradigms (PPP)

42. Part 3: Building verbs: A developmental account

43. What does it take to learn a verb? A 3-pronged approach:

44. Nonlinguistic conceptions of actions in events(finding action; processing actions in ways relevant to language; forming categories of actions.) • 2. What happens when action meets word? • What does it take for a baby to learn a verb? What factors influence early verb learning? • How is children’s verb learning influenced by the syntax of the target language and by an understanding of speaker social intent?

45. Nonlinguistic conceptions of action

46. Study: Can infants discriminate proposed universal concepts in nonlinguistic events? Method: Habituation Participants: 18, 7 month-olds : 40, 14-17 months Vocabulary for older children: Half above mean; half below (on MacArthur) Question: Can infants dishabituate to new events that change the MANNER and/or the PATH of an event? (Pulverman, Sootsman, Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2002)

47. Enter Starry

48. The Habituation study…..(Pulverman)

49. Stimuli 9 computer-animated motion events 3 Manners flapping spinning bending 3 Paths over under past NO LANGUAGE ACCOMPANIED THESE EVENTS

50. Procedure and design • Habituated to one of 9 stimulus events • Trials ended after 2-second look away or 30 seconds, whichever came first • Within subjects design • IV= test conditions DV= looking time