Thematic relations as a cue to verb class: 2-year-olds distinguish unaccusatives from unergatives

Ann Bunger, University of Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Lidz, University of Maryland

Abstract

Previous work shows that children use syntactic information to guide their hypotheses about verb meaning. Bunger & Lidz 2004 demonstrated that 2-year-olds map novel unaccusative verbs onto just the result subevent of a complex causative event and novel transitive verbs onto the entire causative event. We present data from a new preferential looking study demonstrating that 2-year-olds map novel unergative verbs onto the means subevent of a causative. We conclude that the interpretation of novel verbs is driven not only by the number of arguments in a given syntactic frame, but also by the semantic roles played by those arguments.

Recommended Citation

Bunger, Ann and Lidz, Jeffrey (2008) "Thematic relations as a cue to verb class: 2-year-olds distinguish unaccusatives from unergatives," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 14: Iss. 1, Article 4.
Available at: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol14/iss1/4