Languages vary in the mapping of relational terms onto events. For instance, English motion descriptions favor manner (how something moves) verbs over path (where something move) verbs, whereas those of other languages, like Spanish, show the opposite pattern. While these lexicalization biases are malleable, adopting a novel lexicalization pattern can be slow for second language learners. One potential mechanism for learning non-native verb mappings is cross-situational statistical learning (CSSL). However, the application of CSSL to verbs is limited and does not explicitly examine how lexicalization biases may complicate adults’ ability to resolve the referential uncertainty of multiple referents. We ask English-speaking monolingual adults to learn the mappings of ten verbs via CSSL. Verbs mapped onto either manner or path of motion, with the other event component held constant. Adults in both conditions demonstrated successful learning of novel verbs, with adults learning the manner verbs showing more consistent performance across accepting correct referents and rejecting incorrect ones. Our results are the first to demonstrate adults’ use of CSSL to acquire verb meanings that both align with and cut against native lexicalization biases and suggest a limited influence of lexicalization biases on adults’ learning in idealized CSSL conditions.

This article explores semantic and syntactic properties of a set of Romance deadjectival verbs sharing comparable derivational morphology. I note: (i) asymmetries between languages where the choice of verbalizer does not become a significant variable; (ii) languages where the use of the verbalizer is associated with distinct syntactic and semantic properties. In Italian, the verbalizer defines a maximal structural contrast in a nontrivial derivation. Italian and Catalan verbs pattern as statives. Yet lack of eventivity and scalarity in Italian defines an empirically relevant distinction between stative types reflected by syntax (unergative behaviour correlated with lack of affected theme/change-of-state denotation). This differentiates Italian from Spanish or Catalan forms in not showing two key properties: (i) unaccusativity/transitivity; (ii) change-along-scale entailment. A continuum from minimally to maximally different aspectual and syntactic configurations obtains. Although the focus is set on deadjectival verbs and the unusual properties of Italian -ggiare, the results are extendable to further data.

The ‘root infinitive’ phenomenon in child speech is known from major languages such as Dutch. In this case study, a child acquiring the Papuan language Nungon in a remote village setting in Papua New Guinea uses two different non-finite verb forms as predicates of main clauses (‘root’ contexts) between ages 2;3 and 3;3. The first root non-finite form is an apparent innovation of the child, unacceptable in adult-to-adult speech, which must be learned from a special auxiliary construction in child-directed speech. The second root non-finite form functions like attested adult main clause use of the same form. During the study period, the first root non-finite form increases sharply to function as a default verb form, then decreases to nil by 3;2. The second increases gradually to near-adult levels. Both forms are non-finite and have similar proportions in the input. Thus, factors other than finiteness and frequency must explain their distributions.

Children with language disorders have particular difficulty with verbs, but when this difficulty emerges is unknown. We examined syntactic (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive) and semantic (manner, result) features of two-year-olds’ verb vocabularies, contrasting late talkers and typically developing children to look for early differences in verb vocabulary. We conducted a retrospective analysis of parent-reported expressive vocabulary from the Language Development Survey (N = 564, N(LT) = 62) (Rescorla, 1989). Verbs were coded for the presence or absence of each syntactic and semantic feature. Binomial mixed-effects regressions revealed the effect of feature on children's knowledge and whether feature interacted with group classification. Our results revealed mostly similarities between late talkers and typically developing children. All children's vocabularies showed a bias against verbs that occur in ditransitive frames. One feature showed a difference between groups: late talkers showed a bias against manner verbs that typically developing children did not.

This study examined how native speakers of Spanish formulated sentences in English as a second language (L2) when randomly ordered words were orally presented. Participants included 206 adult literacy students (70 native Spanish speakers and 136 native English speakers) whose word reading equivalency was at third- through fifth-grade levels. The Word Ordering subtest of the Test of Language Development-3 was administered. Although they showed a similar pattern of performance in the sentence type (i.e., declarative, interrogative, or imperative sentence), the two groups showed a different pattern in the misuse of syntactic features. Pertaining to grammatical features, verbs were the most difficult item for the native speakers of Spanish. The findings of this study were explained through the intricate nature of English verbs as well as unique lexicalization patterns resulting from the typological difference between Spanish and English.

Prior work on argument structure development has shown connections between abstract verb meaning and argument structure; neuroimaging and behavioral studies have shown connections between verb meaning and body effectors. Here we examine the contingencies between verbs, their most likely body region pairing, and argument structure. We ask whether the verbs used in six common syntactic frames are specifically linked to one of three main regions of the body: head, arm, leg. The speech of 20-month-olds (N = 67), 28-month-olds (N = 27), and their mothers (N = 54) (CHILDES: MacWhinney, 2000) was examined for the use of early-learned verbs (MCDI: Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal, & Pethick, 1994). In total, 89 verb types in 3321 utterances were coded for their associations with the head, arm, and leg body regions (associations taken from Maouene, Hidaka, & Smith, 2008). Significant non-random relations are found both overall and for each age group in analyses using multiple chi-square tests of independence and goodness-of-fit. These results are discussed in terms of their relevance for both argument structure development and embodied cognition, as evidence supporting a developmental path that has not been previously examined, in which the infant can use early and concrete perception-action information to learn later abstract syntactic achievements.

Adult speakers use verbs in syntactically appropriate ways. For example, they know implicitly that the boy hit at the fence is acceptable but the boy broke at the fence is not. We suggest that this knowledge is lexically encoded in semantic decompositions. The decomposition for break verbs (e.g. crack, smash) is hypothesized to be more complex than that for hit verbs (e.g. kick, kiss). Specifically, the decomposition of a break verb denotes that “an entity changes state as the result of some external force” whereas the decomposition for a hit verb denotes only that “an entity potentially comes in contact with another entity.” In this article, verbs of the two types were compared in a lexical decision experiment—Experiment 1—and they were compared in sentence comprehension experiments with transitive sentences (e.g. the car hit the bicycle and the car broke the bicycle)—Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 1, processing times were shorter for the hit than the break verbs and in Experiments 2 and 3, processing times were shorter for the hit sentences than the break sentences, results that are in accord with the complexities of the postulated semantic decompositions.

Action (verb) fluency is a newly developed verbal fluency task that requires the examinee to rapidly generate as many verbs (i.e., “things that people do”) as possible within 1 min. Existing literature indicates that action fluency may be more sensitive to frontal–basal ganglia loop pathophysiology than traditional noun fluency tasks (e.g., animal fluency), which is consistent with the hypothesized neural dissociation between noun and verb retrieval. In the current study, a series of analyses were undertaken to examine the psychometric properties of action fluency in a sample of 174 younger healthy participants. The first set of analyses describes the development of demographically adjusted normative data for action fluency. Next, a group of hypothesis-driven correlational analyses reveals significant associations between action fluency and putative tests of executive functions, verbal working memory, verbal fluency, and information processing speed, but not between action fluency and tests of learning or constructional praxis. The final set of analyses demonstrates the test–retest stability of the action fluency test and provides standards for determining statistically reliable changes in performance. In sum, this study enhances the potential clinical applicability of action fluency by providing demographically adjusted normative data and demonstrating evidence for its reliability and construct validity. (JINS, 2005, 11, 408–415.)

We investigated whether verbs and nouns evoke comparable behavioral and N400 effects in a primed lexical decision task. Twenty-nine students were tested, 13 in a pilot study in which only response times and error rates were collected and 16 in a study in which ERPs were recorded from 124 scalp electrodes. Stimuli were noun–noun and verb–verb pairs with the targets bearing either a strong, a moderate, or no semantic association to the prime or being a pseudoword. Behavioral data revealed comparable priming effects for both word categories. These proved to be independent from the SOA (250 and 800 ms) and they followed the well-known pattern of decreasing response times and error rates with increasing relatedness between target and prime. ERPs revealed pronounced N400 effects for both word categories with a larger amplitude for noun than for verb pairs. A systematic analysis of topographic differences between noun- and verb-evoked ERPs and N400 effects, respectively, gave no convincing support to the hypothesis that the two word categories activate distinct neuronal networks.