Action Meets Word How Children Learn Verbs

by Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Michnick Golinkoff, Roberta

• ISBN13: 9780195170009
• ISBN10: 0195170008
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Words are the building blocks of language. An understanding of how words are learned is thus central to any theory of language acquisition. Although there has been a surge in our understanding of children's vocabulary growth, theories of word learning focus primarily on object nouns. Word learning theories must explain not only the learning of object nouns, but also the learning of other, major classes of words - verbs and adjectives. Verbs form the hub of the sentence because they determine the sentence's argument structure. Researchers throughout the world recognize how our understanding of language acquisition can be at best partial if we cannot comprehend how verbs are learned. This volume enters the relatively uncharted waters of early verb learning, focusing on the universal, conceptual foundations for verb learning, and how these foundations intersect with the burgeoning language system.

Author Biography

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is Stanley and Deborah Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology and Director of the Infant Language Laboratory at Temple University.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff is H. Rodney Sharp Professor in the School of Education and Departments of Psychology and Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware

Table of Contents

Contributors	xiii
Introduction: Progress on the Verb Learning Front	3	(28)
Roberta Michnick Golinkoffand
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Part I Prerequisites to Verb Learning: Finding the Verb
Finding the Verbs: Distributional Cues to Categories Available to Young Learners	31	(33)
Toben H. Mintz
Finding Verb Forms Within the Continuous Speech Stream	64	(24)
Thierry Nazzi
Derek Houston
Discovering Verbs Through Multiple-Cue Integration	88	(23)
Morten H. Christiansen
Padraic Monaghan
Part II Prerequisites to Verb Learning: Finding Actions in Events
Actions Organize the Infant's World	111	(23)
Jean M. Mandler
Conceptual Foundations for Verb Learning: Celebrating the Event	134	(26)
Rachel Pulverman
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Roberta M. Golinkoff
Shannon Pruden
SaraJ. Salkind
Precursors to Verb Learning: Infants' Understanding of Motion Events	160	(31)
Marianella Casasola
Jui Bhagwat
Kim T. Ferguson
Preverbal Spatial Cognition and Language-Specific Input: Categories of Containment and Support	191	(17)
Soonja Choi
The Roots of Verbs in Prelinguistic Action Knowledge	208	(20)
Jennifer Sootsman Buresh
Amanda Woodward
Camille W. Brune
When Is a Grasp a Grasp? Characterizing Some Basic Components of Human Action Processing	228	(34)
Jeffrey T. Loucks
Dare Baldwin
Word, Intention, and Action: A Two-Tiered Model of Action Word Learning	262	(24)
Diane Poulin-Dubois
James N. Forbes
Verbs, Actions, and Intentions	286	(25)
Douglas A. Behrend
Jason Scofield
Part III When Action Meets Word: Children Learn Their First Verbs
Are Nouns Easier to Learn Than Verbs? Three Experimental Studies	311	(25)
Jane B. Childers
Michael Tomasello
Verbs at the Very Beginning: Parallels Between Comprehension and Input	336	(28)
Letitia R. Naigles
Erika Hoff
A Unified Theory of Word Learning: Putting Verb Acquisition in Context	364	(28)
MandyJ. Maguire
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Who's the Subject? Sentence Structure and Verb Meaning	392	(37)
Cynthia Fisher
Hyun-joo Song
Part IV How Language Influences Verb Learning: Cross-Linguistic Evidence
Verb Learning as a Probe Into Children's Grammars	429	(21)
Jeffrey Lidz
Revisiting the Noun-Verb Debate: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Novel Noun and Verb Learning in English-, Japanese-, and Chinese-Speaking Children	450	(27)
Mutsumi Imai
Etsuko Haryu
Hiroyuki Okada
Li Lianjing
Jun Shigematsu
But Are They Really Verbs? Chinese Words for Action	477	(22)
Twila Tardif
Influences of Object Knowledge on the Acquisition of Verbs in English and Japanese	499	(26)
Alan W. Kersten
Linda B. Smith
Hanako Yoshida
East and West: A Role for Culture in the Acquisition of Nouns and Verbs	525	(19)
Tracy A. Lavin
D. Geoffrey Hall
Sandra R. Waxman
Why Verbs Are Hard to Learn	544	(21)
Dedre Gentner
Author Index	565	(12)
Subject Index	577