Molly Flaherty

Biographic Data

ID3592412
NAMEMolly Flaherty
GIVEN NAMESMolly
FAMILY NAMEFlaherty
SIGNATUREFLAHERTY M
AFFILIATIONSDavidson College
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS7
TOTAL CITATIONS4
WORKS AS AUTHOR7
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2019
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX1

  • The Limitations of Large Language Models for Understanding Human Language and Cognition

    Open AccessChristine Cuskley, Robert Woods et al.ARTICLEOpen MIND2024

    Researchers have recently argued that the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) can provide new insights into longstanding debates about the role of learning and/or innateness in the development and evolution of human language. Here, we argue on two grounds that LLMs alone tell us very little about human language and cognition in terms of acquisition and evolution. First, any similarities between human language and the output of LLMs are p…

  • Language emergence can take multiple paths

    Open AccessAsha Sato, Simon Kirby et al.ARTICLEGlossa a journal of general…2022

    Research on emerging sign languages suggests that younger sign languages may make greater use of the z-axis, moving outwards from the body, than more established sign languages when describing the relationships between participants and events (Padden et al. 2010). This has been suggested to reflect a transition from iconicity rooted in the body (Meir et al. 2007) towards a more abstract schematic iconicity. We present the results of an experiment…

  • The Seeds of the Noun-Verb Distinction in the Manual Modality

    Open AccessYasamin Motamedi, Kathryn Montemurro et al.ARTICLELanguages2022References: 60

    The noun-verb distinction has long been considered a fundamental property of human language, and has been found in some form even in the earliest stages of language emergence, including homesign and the early generations of emerging sign languages. We present two experimental studies that use silent gesture to investigate how noun-verb distinctions develop in the manual modality through two key processes: (i) improvising using novel signals by in…

  • Structural biases that children bring to language learning

    Open AccessMolly Flaherty, Dea Hunsicker et al.ARTICLECognition2021

  • The communicative importance of agent-backgrounding

    Open AccessLilia Rissman, Laura Horton et al.ARTICLECognition2020

  • The noun-verb distinction in established and emergent sign systems

    Natasha Abner, Molly Flaherty et al.ARTICLELanguage2019

  • The noun-verb distinction in established and emergent sign systems

    Open AccessNatasha Abner, Molly Flaherty et al.ARTICLELanguage2019Cited by: 4

    In a number of signed languages, the distinction between nouns and verbs is evident in the morphophonology of the signs themselves. Here we use a novel elicitation paradigm to investigate the systematicity, emergence, and development of the noun-verb distinction (qua objects vs. actions) in an established sign language, American Sign Language (ASL), an emerging sign language, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), and in the precursor to NSL, Nicaraguan…