Kaitlyn Harrigan
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 778837 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Kaitlyn Harrigan |
| NOMBRES | Kaitlyn |
| APELLIDO | Harrigan |
| FIRMA | HARRIGAN K |
| AFILIACIONES | William & Mary |
| ORCID | 0009-0005-7848-5751 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 15 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 13 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 15 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2010 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 1 |
Visual ambiguity predicts adjective ordering preferences in referential contexts
Recent work proposes subjectivity as a possible underlying mechanism for English’s canonical adjective order, predicting that ordering adjectives with respect to decreasing subjectivity maximizes communicative success between interlocutors. The present studies aim to contribute to our understanding of the underlying factors guiding adjective order, using two sentence judgment tasks to gather speakers’ intuitions about how visual traits might infl…
Event context influences motion verb mapping
Motion verbs refer to a figure’s path and manner of motion. Previous work on the acquisition of motion verbs has demonstrated that learners are sensitive to their language’s distribution of motion verbs: learners that are acquiring languages which are more likely to encode the path of motion default to mapping path of motion for novel verbs; learners acquiring languages that are more likely to encode the manner of motion default to mapping manner…
Pattern deduction in linguistically attested and unattested grammars
A popular hypothesis in linguistics posits that language learners are biologically predisposed to learn structures attested in human language – for example, a hierarchically nested phrase structure, while eschewing hypotheses for linguistically unattested structures – for example, one consisting of non-consecutive, linearly alternating “constituents”. The current study explores the robustness of such a predisposition within a controlled artificia…
An exploration of principled mappings between English adjective order and subjectivity
Adjective order in English is both very strict and largely intuitive. Recent research proposes subjectivity as an underlying mechanism for adjective order. The present studies aim to examine whether subjectivity is a productive cue for adjective ordering through two separate grammaticality judgment tasks. In the first task, participants rated grammatical and ungrammatical sentences containing color (typically closer to the noun) and size (typical…
A UG-based exploration of children’s use of the
English-learning-children have been shown to use “the” in a non-adult-like manner, to refer not only to discourse-old referents but also to discourse-new ones in many contexts. Here, we explore a novel semantic hypothesis for this acquisition observation, whereby the distribution of “the” in children’s speech is a result of their semantic representation for this item being identical to bare nominals in so-called article-less languages. This hypot…
Bootstrapping where? Location changes disrupt intransitive verb mapping
Children utilize a range of cues in verb learning. The current studies explore children’s weighting of two different cues for verb-meaning: number of syntactic arguments and event location. Naigles (1990) demonstrated that children use syntactic bootstrapping in mapping transitive and intransitive verbs—they hypothesize that intransitive verbs refer to one-participant events and transitive verbs refer to two-participant events. Previous work also…
Sensitivity to finiteness in attitude verb interpretation
Children are sensitive to syntactic structure when learning new verbs (Gleitman 1990). This has been shown in tracking transitivity (Naigles 1990), as well as in hypothesizing meanings for attitude verbs (Harrigan et al 2019). In English, desire and belief subcategories of attitude verbs have different finiteness properties; desire verbs occur with finite complements and belief verbs occur with non-finite complements. The current study explores a…
Swimming in the desert? The role of environment in motion verb acquisition
Any event includes countless components, giving the learner many possible options in mapping verb meanings. Previous research demonstrates that children are sensitive to the distribution of motion verbs in their language, mapping ambiguous verb-event pairings to manner if their language has more manner verbs, like English, and path if their language has more path verbs, like Spanish. Previous work also demonstrates that children have some sensiti…
The development of vowel length as a subphonemic cue
Previous research has shown that English speakers use vowel length (VL) as a subphonemic cue to obstruent voicing. Many studies have demonstrated adults’ ability to make a voicing judgment based upon VL but studies with children have provided mixed results. In the present study, we sought to first determine whether adults would exhibit varying sensitivity to VL based upon whether it could serve as a strong subphonemic cue. Second, we sought to be…
Furthering student engagement
This article describes a pedagogical innovation implemented in our introductory linguistics course. We supplement classic theory building with a series of labs, deployed through a co-requisite ‘lab’ course that meets weekly. This builds on two previously established teaching strategies: the implementation of hands-on activities in linguistics classrooms, and the lab sections traditionally utilized in the natural sciences. The labs aim to fulfill …
Furthering student engagement
ABSENCE POLICY: Attendance is expected at every lab meeting.If you are unable to attend, email your section's TA (not your professor) for instructions on the make-up work (which is often in addition to what students attending the workshop have to turn in).You must turn in the make-up work by the start time of the next week's workshop to receive credit.You may do this up to two times with no penalty.If you will need to be absent from the workshop …
The influence of language-specific and universal factors on acquisition of motion verbs
This study explores children’s encoding of novel verbs referring to motion events, and finds influence of both language-specific and universal constraints on meaning. Motion verbs fall into two categories—manner verbs encode how a movement happens (run, swim), and path verbs encode the starting and ending point of a motion (enter, fall). Some languages express path more frequently in the verb (Spanish, Hebrew), and others manner more frequently (…
Finite complements trigger reality responses in attitude verb acquisition… but so do non-finite complements
The syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis was developed to explain how children learn verbs whose meanings are opaque, e.g. attitude verbs, which refer to the mental state of the subject of the sentence. Belief verbs (like think) take finite complements, while desire verbs (like want) take non-finite complements. Children differentiate these subclasses by three: they are lured by reality when there is a mismatch between the subject’s belief and real…
Hope for syntactic bootstrapping
We explore children's use of syntactic distribution in the acquisition of attitude verbs, such as think, want , and hope. Because attitude verbs refer to concepts that are opaque to observation but have syntactic distributions predictive of semantic properties, we hypothesize that syntax may serve as an important cue to learning their meanings. Using a novel methodology, we replicate previous literature showing an asymmetry between acquisition of…
Asymmetries in the acquisition of definite and indefinite NPs
Asymmetries in the acquisition of definite and indefinite NPs
Hope for syntactic bootstrapping
We explore children's use of syntactic distribution in the acquisition of attitude verbs, such as think, want , and hope. Because attitude verbs refer to concepts that are opaque to observation but have syntactic distributions predictive of semantic properties, we hypothesize that syntax may serve as an important cue to learning their meanings. Using a novel methodology, we replicate previous literature showing an asymmetry between acquisition of…
Finite complements trigger reality responses in attitude verb acquisition… but so do non-finite complements
The syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis was developed to explain how children learn verbs whose meanings are opaque, e.g. attitude verbs, which refer to the mental state of the subject of the sentence. Belief verbs (like think) take finite complements, while desire verbs (like want) take non-finite complements. Children differentiate these subclasses by three: they are lured by reality when there is a mismatch between the subject’s belief and real…
The influence of language-specific and universal factors on acquisition of motion verbs
This study explores children’s encoding of novel verbs referring to motion events, and finds influence of both language-specific and universal constraints on meaning. Motion verbs fall into two categories—manner verbs encode how a movement happens (run, swim), and path verbs encode the starting and ending point of a motion (enter, fall). Some languages express path more frequently in the verb (Spanish, Hebrew), and others manner more frequently (…
The development of vowel length as a subphonemic cue
Previous research has shown that English speakers use vowel length (VL) as a subphonemic cue to obstruent voicing. Many studies have demonstrated adults’ ability to make a voicing judgment based upon VL but studies with children have provided mixed results. In the present study, we sought to first determine whether adults would exhibit varying sensitivity to VL based upon whether it could serve as a strong subphonemic cue. Second, we sought to be…
Furthering student engagement
This article describes a pedagogical innovation implemented in our introductory linguistics course. We supplement classic theory building with a series of labs, deployed through a co-requisite ‘lab’ course that meets weekly. This builds on two previously established teaching strategies: the implementation of hands-on activities in linguistics classrooms, and the lab sections traditionally utilized in the natural sciences. The labs aim to fulfill …
Furthering student engagement
ABSENCE POLICY: Attendance is expected at every lab meeting.If you are unable to attend, email your section's TA (not your professor) for instructions on the make-up work (which is often in addition to what students attending the workshop have to turn in).You must turn in the make-up work by the start time of the next week's workshop to receive credit.You may do this up to two times with no penalty.If you will need to be absent from the workshop …
Bootstrapping where? Location changes disrupt intransitive verb mapping
Children utilize a range of cues in verb learning. The current studies explore children’s weighting of two different cues for verb-meaning: number of syntactic arguments and event location. Naigles (1990) demonstrated that children use syntactic bootstrapping in mapping transitive and intransitive verbs—they hypothesize that intransitive verbs refer to one-participant events and transitive verbs refer to two-participant events. Previous work also…
Sensitivity to finiteness in attitude verb interpretation
Children are sensitive to syntactic structure when learning new verbs (Gleitman 1990). This has been shown in tracking transitivity (Naigles 1990), as well as in hypothesizing meanings for attitude verbs (Harrigan et al 2019). In English, desire and belief subcategories of attitude verbs have different finiteness properties; desire verbs occur with finite complements and belief verbs occur with non-finite complements. The current study explores a…
Swimming in the desert? The role of environment in motion verb acquisition
Any event includes countless components, giving the learner many possible options in mapping verb meanings. Previous research demonstrates that children are sensitive to the distribution of motion verbs in their language, mapping ambiguous verb-event pairings to manner if their language has more manner verbs, like English, and path if their language has more path verbs, like Spanish. Previous work also demonstrates that children have some sensiti…
A UG-based exploration of children’s use of the
English-learning-children have been shown to use “the” in a non-adult-like manner, to refer not only to discourse-old referents but also to discourse-new ones in many contexts. Here, we explore a novel semantic hypothesis for this acquisition observation, whereby the distribution of “the” in children’s speech is a result of their semantic representation for this item being identical to bare nominals in so-called article-less languages. This hypot…
Pattern deduction in linguistically attested and unattested grammars
A popular hypothesis in linguistics posits that language learners are biologically predisposed to learn structures attested in human language – for example, a hierarchically nested phrase structure, while eschewing hypotheses for linguistically unattested structures – for example, one consisting of non-consecutive, linearly alternating “constituents”. The current study explores the robustness of such a predisposition within a controlled artificia…
An exploration of principled mappings between English adjective order and subjectivity
Adjective order in English is both very strict and largely intuitive. Recent research proposes subjectivity as an underlying mechanism for adjective order. The present studies aim to examine whether subjectivity is a productive cue for adjective ordering through two separate grammaticality judgment tasks. In the first task, participants rated grammatical and ungrammatical sentences containing color (typically closer to the noun) and size (typical…
Visual ambiguity predicts adjective ordering preferences in referential contexts
Recent work proposes subjectivity as a possible underlying mechanism for English’s canonical adjective order, predicting that ordering adjectives with respect to decreasing subjectivity maximizes communicative success between interlocutors. The present studies aim to contribute to our understanding of the underlying factors guiding adjective order, using two sentence judgment tasks to gather speakers’ intuitions about how visual traits might infl…
Event context influences motion verb mapping
Motion verbs refer to a figure’s path and manner of motion. Previous work on the acquisition of motion verbs has demonstrated that learners are sensitive to their language’s distribution of motion verbs: learners that are acquiring languages which are more likely to encode the path of motion default to mapping path of motion for novel verbs; learners acquiring languages that are more likely to encode the manner of motion default to mapping manner…
Linguistics (12 obras) · Computer Science (11 obras) · Psychology (11 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Verb (7 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (6 obras) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (6 obras) · Modal verb (6 obras) · Categorization, perception, and language (5 obras) · Mathematics (5 obras)