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Experimental evidence for agent–patient categories in child language*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Carl J. Angiolillo  and
Susan Goldin-Meadow
Carl J. Angiolillo
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Susan Goldin-Meadow
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

Evidence provided by contrastive word order for agent and patient semantic categories in young children's spontaneous speech is confounded. Agents (effectors of the action) tend to be animate; patients (entities acted upon) tend to be inanimate. In an experiment designed to circumvent this confounding and to test young children's linguistic sensitivity to the role an entity plays in the action, nine children (2; 4·0–2; 11·5) described actions involving animate and inanimate entities playing both agent and patient roles. Four linguistic measures were observed. On every measure agents were treated differently from patients. For the most part, these agent–patient differences persisted when animate and inanimate entities were examined separately. These results provide evidence for the child's intention to talk about the role an entity plays, independent of its animateness, and also suggest that the child uses role-defined linguistic categories like AGENT and PATIENT to communicate these relational intentions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 1982 , pp. 627 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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Footnotes

[*]

This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant no. BNS 77-05990 to Goldin-Meadow. We thank Merryl Maleska and William Meadow for their help in reading this manuscript and the children, parents and staff of the Chiaravalle Montessori School in Evanston, Illinois, for their co-operation in the study. First author's address: Learning Disabilities Clinic, Children's Hospital Medical Center, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Mass. 02115.

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