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《Young Chinese-speaking Children’s Understanding of the Correspondence Between Verb Meaning and Argument Structure》由会员上传分享,免费在线阅读,更多相关内容在学术论文-天天文库。
1、YoungChinese-speakingchildren’sunderstandingofthecorrespondencebetweenverbmeaningandargumentstructureLuJiang1andEtsukoHaryu11UniversityofTokyoAccordingtothesyntacticbootstrappingtheory,thesentencestructureinwhichaverbappearsisausefulcuetoinferringitsmeaning(Gleitman,1990),becauseargumentstructuresro
2、ughlycorrespondtothetypesofverbmeaning.Forexample,averbthatappearsinasentencewithasingleargument(e.g.,“Shecame”)typicallydescribesanon-causativeevent,whileaverbthatappearsinasentencewithtwoarguments(e.g.,“Shepushedhim”)islikelytorefertoacausativeevent.Previousresearchhasreportedthatevenyoungchildren
3、usethisknowledgeaboutsyntax-semanticscorrespondencetoinferverbmeanings.Thatis,youngchildrenmapaverbthatappearsinasentencewithtwoargumentstoacausativeeventaswellastheymapaverbinasentencewithoneargumenttoanon-causativeevent(e.g.,Naigles,1990;Naigles&Lehrer,2002;Lidz,Gleitman,&Gleitman,2003).Isthisbeca
4、usechildrenarebornwiththisabstractknowledge?Ordochildrenacquirethisknowledgebyobservingthatverbswithsimilarmeaningsarelikelytoappearinsimilarconstructions?ItisdifficulttodeterminewhichisthecaseifweconsideronlydatafromEnglish-speakingchildren.BecauseEnglishdoesnotallowargument-dropping,childrenlearni
5、ngEnglishobservethataverbthatappearsinasentencewithoneargumentusuallydenotesanon-causativeeventandthataverbthatappearsinasentencewithtwoargumentstypicallydescribesacausativeevent.Thus,evenifEnglish-speakingchildrenaresensitivetothecorrespondencebetweenverbmeaningandargumentstructurefromveryearlyon,w
6、ecannottellwhethertheyarebornwithsuchknowledgeortheyhavelearneditbyobservingthelanguageinput.ThesetwopossibilitiesmaybebetterinvestigatedbyexaminingwhetherChinese-speakingchildrenunderstandthissyntax-semanticcorrespondence.Chineseallowsargument-dropping:Subjectsorobjects,orevenboth,arefrequentlydrop
7、pedinutterances.Indescribingthecausativeeventinwhichaboypushesagirl,forexample,itisequallygrammaticaltosay“Theboypushed”(droppingtheobject),“Pushedthegirl”(droppingthesubject),or“Pushed”(droppingthebo