Why Verbs Are Hard to Learn
Top Cited Papers
- 27 April 2006
- book chapter
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP)
Abstract
This chapter argues that words connect to the world in very different ways, that (concrete) nouns do so more transparently than verbs, and that verb meanings are more linguistically shaped than (concrete) noun meanings. Although many factors at all levels contribute to determining what is learned early by children, these semantic-conceptual factors are certainly among the core influences on how words connect to the world.Keywords
This publication has 48 references indexed in Scilit:
- Mapping Novel Nouns and Verbs Onto Dynamic Action Events: Are Verb Meanings Easier to Learn Than Noun Meanings for Japanese Children?Child Development, 2005
- Cross‐Linguistic Analysis of Vocabulary in Young Children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American EnglishChild Development, 2004
- Two-year-olds learn novel nouns, verbs, and conventional actions from massed or distributed exposures.Developmental Psychology, 2002
- Object Shape, Object Function, and Object NameJournal of Memory and Language, 1998
- Children’s first verbs in Tzeltal: evidence for an early verb categoryLinguistics, 1998
- GETTING ‘EASY’ VERBS WRONG AT THE ADVANCED LEVELInternational Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 1996
- Episodic memory in 16- and 20-month-old children: Specifics are generalized but not forgotten.Developmental Psychology, 1994
- Constraints children place on word meaningsCognitive Science, 1990
- Early word meanings: The case of object namesCognitive Psychology, 1987
- General Principles of Classification and Nomenclature in Folk BiologyAmerican Anthropologist, 1973