The semantics of the transitive causative construction
Evidence from a forced-choice pointing study with adults and children
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12197098 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ben Ambridge (0000-0003-2389-8477, 1University of Liverpool, corresponding author), Claire Noble (University of Manchester), Claire H NOBLE (2University of Manchester), Elena Lieven (0000-0002-2270-8910, University of Manchester), Elena V M Lieven (2University of Manchester) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 293-311 |
| Publication date | 2014-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cognitive Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0936-5907 • E-ISSN: 1613-3641 |
| Publisher | De Gruyter Mouton (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/cog-2014-0012 |
| OpenAlex | W2023177942 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 21 |
Adults and children aged 3;0–3;6 were presented with ungrammatical NVN uses of intransitive-only verbs (e.g., * Bob laughed Wendy ) and asked – by means of a forced-choice pointing task – to select either a causal construction-meaning interpretation (e.g., ‘Bob made Wendy laugh’) or a non-causal sentence-repair interpretation (e.g., ‘Bob laughed at Wendy’). Both age groups chose casual construction-meaning interpretations on at least 82% of trials, regardless of (a) verb frequency and (b) the construction used for grammatical control/filler trials (transitive – e.g., Bob moved Wendy – or intransitive – e.g., Wendy moved ). These findings constitute support for cognitive linguistic approaches under which verb argument structure constructions have meanings in and of themselves and – further – suggest that construction meaning is sufficiently powerful as to overrule verb meaning when the two conflict
Animacy · Argument (complex analysis · Casual · Causative · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Modal verb · Semantics (computer science · Sentence · Transitive relation · Verb · Computer Science · Language Development and Disorders · Mathematics · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development
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Understanding how input matters
The Structural Sources of Verb Meanings
Lectures on Government and Binding
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Verb argument structure acquisition in young children
Language-general and language-specific influences on children's acquisition of argument structure
Dealing Out Meaning
Children use verb semantics to retreat from overgeneralization errors
The Origins of Grammar
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Bootstrapping Lexical and Syntactic Acquisition
Young children's productivity with word order and verb morphology
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English filler-gap constructions
Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions
How Children Constrain Their Argument Structure Constructions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |