Using Verb Extension to Gauge Children’s Verb Meaning Construals: The Case of Chinese

Autor: Weiyi Ma, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Lulu Song, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 11 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1664-1078
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.572198
Popis: Verb extension is a crucial gauge of the acquisition of verb meaning. In English, studies suggest that young children show conservative extension. An important test of whether an early conservative extension is a general phenomenon or a function of the input language is made possible by Chinese, a language in which verbs are more frequent and acquired earlier. This study tested whether 3-year-old Chinese children extended a group of familiar verbs that specify various ways to carry objects. Shown videos that portrayed typical, mid-typical, or atypical carrying actions (as verified by Chinese adults), children were asked to judge whether they were examples of specific Chinese carry verbs. Children’s verb extensions were mostly limited to typical exemplars, suggesting that an early conservative extension may be universal. Furthermore, extension breadth was related to the onset of verb production: verbs acquired earlier elicited more extension judgments than those acquired later.
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