Syntactic bootstrapping from start to finish with special reference to Down syndrome.

Number 1224
Year 1995
Drawer 23
Entry Date 08/28/2001
Authors Naigles, L. G. Fowler, A.E. , Helm, A.
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Publication In : Tomasello, M. & Merriman, W. E.(Eds.) Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs. pp. 299-330. Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
url http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1224.pdf
Abstract (Introduction from the chapter) Discussions of the close relation between verbs and syntactic structures are not new to either linguistics or psychology. Linguists from very different traditions (e.g., Chafe, 1970; Chomsky, 1965; Fillmore, 1968) have relied on distinctions between verbs to illustrate and in some cases to motivate critical syntactic distinctions ( for more recent work, see Grimshaw, 1990; Wierzbicka, 1988). Likewise, in psychology, models of language processing have exploited verb differences to demonstrate and explain differences in the retention and processing so syntax (e.g., Fodor, Garrett, & Bever, 1968; Wanner, 1974; more recently, Carlson & Tanenhaus, 1988; Shapiro, Zurif, & Grimshaw, 1987). Finally, in the field of language acquisition, the verb-syntax correspondence has been implicated in the acquisition of syntax (Bloom, 1970, 1981; Pinker, 1984, 1989; Tomasello, 1992). With few exceptions, this research involving verb-syntax relations has been uni-directional, focusing on what verbs and verb meanings reveal about syntax and syntactic acquisition (but see Bowerman, 1974, 1982; Jackendoff, 1983, 1990). Our work joins a recent reversal of this direction of focus (e.g., Gleitman, 1990; Gleitman & Gleitman, 1992); we study what syntax reveals about the acquisition and development of the verb lexicon.
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