Assessing semantic-syntactic features of verbs from thirteen verb subsets

There are three major classes of verbs: intransitive, transitive, and linking. These three types of verbs can be divided into 13 semantic-syntactic subsets. Verbs within each subset give rise to sentences that have similar syntactic form, albeit a form distinct from that of sentences associated with other subsets. Preliminary research found that more than 90% of sentences written by children or for children contain verbs from 1 of the 13 verb subsets. The sentence form associated with each verb subset might be viewed as a "sentence template" that operationally defines a fixed set of 13 underlying semantic-syntactic relationships essential to communication. A strategy for assessing a child's knowledge of verbs from each subset is described.     

Novel noun and verb learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children

When can children speaking Japanese, English, or Chinese map and extend novel nouns and verbs? Across 6 studies, 3‐ and 5‐year‐old children in all 3 languages map and extend novel nouns more readily than novel verbs. This finding prevails even in languages like Chinese and Japanese that are assumed to be verb‐friendly languages (e.g., T. Tardif, 1996 ). The results also suggest that the input language uniquely shapes verb learning such that English‐speaking children require grammatical support to learn verbs, whereas Chinese children require pragmatic as well as grammatical support. This research bears on how universally shared cognitive factors and language‐specific linguistic factors interact in lexical development.     

Mapping novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events: are verb meanings easier to learn than noun meanings for Japanese children?

The present research examined how 3- and 5-year-old Japanese children map novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events and generalize them to new instances. Studies 1 to 3 demonstrated that although both 3- and 5-year-olds were able to map novel nouns onto novel objects, only 5-year-olds could generalize verbs solely on the basis of the sameness of the action. Study 4 showed that the difficulty young children experience in learning verbs lies mainly in mapping the appropriate element to a verb rather than in encoding and remembering an action itself. The results of this research are related to a long-debated issue of whether noun learning is privileged over verb learning.     

名词动用现象的认知机制研究

名词动用这一语言现象是指把名词临时用作动词,执行动词的句法功能。文章试图从认知语义学关注的几种认知操作模式(转喻、隐喻和概念整合)入手,建立统一的认知机制分析框架,揭示这几种认知操作模式的相互作用在名词动用产生和理解过程中的运作规律。     

Three- to Four-Year-Old Children Rapidly Adapt Their Predictions and Use Them to Learn Novel Word Meanings

Adults create and update predictions about what speakers will say next. This study asks whether prediction can drive language acquisition, by testing whether 3- to 4-year-old children (n = 45) adapt to recent information when learning novel words. The study used a syntactic context which can precede both nouns and verbs to manipulate children's predictions about what syntactic category will follow. Children for whom the syntactic context predicted verbs were more likely to infer that a novel word appearing in this context referred to an action, than children for whom it predicted nouns. This suggests that children make rapid changes to their predictions, and use this information to learn novel information, supporting the role of prediction in language acquisition.     

动词内隐性否定的语义层次和溢出条件

本文通过考察"防止、避免、差、欠、拒绝、否认、小心、后悔、责怪、怀疑"等类动词的语义结构和句法表现,分别讨论其所含的隐性否定的语义层次(断言、推论、预设);用动词内隐性否定的语义溢出来解释相关句子中冗余性的多重否定,着重于确定动词内隐性否定的语义溢出和词汇实现的句法语义条件;并且,尝试用动词内隐性否定的语义溢出和语义倒灌等隐喻性概念,揭示动词"怀疑"有意义相反的两个义项("不相信"vs."相信、猜测")及其在分布上呈现出互补状态的句法语义机制。     

Attention to novel objects during verb learning

Three experiments provided evidence that 3.5- to 4-year-old English-speaking children (N = 72) attend to the appearances of novel objects, not only when they hear a novel noun, but also when they hear a novel verb. Children learning nouns in the context of novel, moving objects attended exclusively to the appearances of objects, even though nouns were also related to the motions of those objects. Children learning verbs attended equally to the appearances of objects and their motions. The latter result contrasted with the results from adults (N = 20), who focused more strongly on motions than on the appearances of objects when learning verbs. When familiar objects were instead employed, child verb learners attended more to motions than to the appearances of objects. Children may attend to novel objects during verb learning because knowledge of an object may be prerequisite to understanding what a verb means in the context of that object.     

Spelling of derivational and inflectional suffixes by Greek-speaking children with and without dyslexia

We investigated the spelling of derivational and inflectional suffixes by 10–13-year-old Greek children. Twenty children with dyslexia (DYS), 20 spelling-level-matched (SA) and 20 age-matched (CA) children spelled adjectives, nouns, and verbs in dictated word pairs and sentences. Children spelled nouns and verbs more accurately than adjectives and inflections more accurately than derivational suffixes. DYS children performed worse than CA in all cases and worse than SA in verb inflections, but similar to SA in all the remaining cases, consistent with a delayed rather than deviant performance pattern. Qualitative analysis showed that uncommon vowel graphemes were often replaced by more common patterns. Children with dyslexia may have weaknesses in grasping morphological information and/or in applying this knowledge to spell word suffixes.     

汉语里非动词谓语句及其英译

在汉语句子中,除了动词以外,形容词、名词、数量词和象声词都可以充当谓语,这类句子称为非动词谓语句。研究表明,非动词谓语句中实际上存在着隐性动词。将其翻译成相应的英语时,其中的谓语动词必不可少,这与汉语的隐性特征和英语的显性特征是一致的。     

苍南瓯语程度副词“棺材”研究

苍南瓯语中,"棺材"作为程度副词,能与一般性质形容词、部分绝对性质形容词、程度磨损后的状态形容词、心理动词、能愿动词、部分动词词组、具有"异质感"的名词、复合方位名词结构等进行搭配,但不能修饰形容词的重叠式结构、动作动词、动词重叠式结构等,且较少用于否定句,不能用于比较句。"棺材"具有增强表达程度和强调语义特征的作用。     

The Role of Semantic Context and Memory in the Acquisition of Novel Nouns

Three studies assessed the ability of 2-year-olds to use semantic context to infer the meanings of novel nouns and to retain those meanings a day later. In the first experiment, 24 2-year-olds heard novel nouns in sentences that contained semantically constraining verbs (e.g., "Mommy feeds the ferret"). They chose from a set of four novel object pictures to indicate the referent. Children learned a majority of the novel words. However, they occasionally failed to choose the correct object even when they understood the verb. Experiment 2 examined whether this was due to an inability to identify some of the pictures of novel objects. Experiment 3 tested 24 2-year-olds' memory for the newly learned nouns following a 24 hr delay and found significant retention. Results are discussed in terms of learning mechanisms that facilitate vocabulary acquisition in young children.     

维吾尔语句法分析方面存在的一些问题

本文在语言学理论的基础上分析维吾尔语句法分析中由于只注重名词的格和动词的静词形式,轻视句中词的句法联系、结构层次、语义关系、词组在句中的作用而引发的一些问题。     

Syntactic Cues Help Disambiguate Objects Referred to With Count Nouns: Illustration With Malay Children

Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N = 67), a numeral classifier language, can use syntactic cues to perform even finer-grained disambiguation–between count nouns. The manipulation of congruence between lexical and syntactic cues reveals a clear developmental trajectory: while 5-year-olds use predominantly lexical cues, older children increasingly rely on syntactic cues, such that by 7 years of age, they disambiguate between objects referred to with count nouns using syntactic rather than lexical cues.     

侗语上坎话动词语义角色研究

侗语动词的语义角色分为强制性语义角色和非强制性语义角色两类。其中,侗语动词所能关联的强制性语义角色根据它们在句法、语义上的不同又可以分为主事、客事和与事三大类;而非强制性语义角色有工具、材料、处所、方式等。     

汉英零价动词的不对称及其原因探析

关于汉语是否存在零价动词存在着争议,本文将原零价动词分为两类:天气类和灾难类,在配价语义范畴性质的基础上,通过句法和语义过滤认定天气类动词是词组而非动词;通过语义蕴含测试和论证处所成分的价语成分资格,认定灾难类动词需要有强制性语义成分,并通过VP的转指论证灾难类动词是一价动词;并对汉语和英语在零价动词上的差异和深层原因进行了探讨,认为AGR(一致关系)特征和动词与配价成分融合是英汉零价动词差异的深层原因和直接原因,得出汉语并没有真正意义的零价动词的结论,我们还把灾难类动词和相关的一价动词在句法上和语义上的异同进行了比较.     

Adjacency,animacy, and intensionality as cues to oral and written sentence comprehension

Subjects of verbs in English sentences may be indicated by any one of a number of cues. In some cases, the subject of the verb is determined by semantic constraints, as when the verb requires an animate noun phrase as subject; in other cases the subject is determined by syntactic factors, as in the case of third person singular verb markers; and, as is commonly the case in informal language, the most immediately preceding noun phrase is the subject of the verb. These three types of cues, semantic (here described as extensional), syntactic (here labeled intensional), and adjacency are investigated in a series of tests of sentence comprehension using university undergraduates as subjects.The results of these experiments show that when the adjacency strategy does not apply, even these highly literate native speakers have great difficulty in correctly comprehending subject-verb correspondences.These results are discussed in the context of the relationship between intensional linguistic processing and literacy.     

论《金瓶梅词话》的复合名词

《金瓶梅词话》的复合名词，其结构关系有联合式、偏正式、主谓式、动宾式、综合式和其他等六大类，其中联合、偏正二式是其主要形式，联合式则是最能产的；从其词素的词性来看，有名词、动词、形容词、数词等，名词词素是构成复合名词的主体；其词义基本上是依其词素间的语法关系而产生或衍生的。由此可窥该书复合名词之全豹及其在汉语发展史上的传承纽带作用。     

Putting the "Noun Bias" in Context: A Comparison of English and Mandarin

Recently, researchers have been debating whether children exhibit a universal "noun bias" when learning a first language. The present study compares the proportions of nouns and verbs in the early vocabularies of 24 English- and 24 Mandarin-speaking toddlers ( M age = 20 months) and their mothers. Three different methods were used to measure the proportion of noun types, relative to verb types: controlled observations in three contexts (book reading, mechanical toy play, regular toy play), identical across languages; a vocabulary checklist (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory); and mothers' reporting of their children's "first words." Across all measures, Mandarin-speaking children were found to have relatively fewer nouns and more verbs than English-speaking children. However, context itself played an important role in the proportions of nouns found in children's vocabularies, such that, regardless of the language spoken, children's vocabularies appeared dominated by nouns when they were engaged in book reading, but not when they were playing with toys. Mothers' speech to children showed the same language differences (relatively more verbs in Mandarin), although both Mandarin- and English-speaking mothers produced relatively more verbs than their children. In sum, whether or not language-learning toddlers demonstrate a "noun bias" depends on a variety of factors, including the methods by which their vocabularies are sampled and the contexts in which observations occur.     

普通高中课程标准动词初探

对普通高中课程标准各学科"内容要求"中所使用的动词进行初步统计分析。给出一个动词采集原则;对14个学科"内容要求"的3528个有效动词(目标)语句及使用的364个动词分布作以分析,并对总体上使用次数最多的动词和每个学科使用次数最多的动词、各学科课程标准所采用的语句数和动词数作了说明;指出课程标准的这364个动词基本上涵盖了布卢姆教育目标分类学所采用的动词;提出了进一步研究的问题。     

谈汉语里非动词谓语句及其英译

汉语中，尤其是古汉语和口语中，存在着大量的非动词谓语句。除了动词以外，形容词、名词、数量词和象声词都可以充当谓语，这类句子称为非动词谓语句。将其翻译成相应的英语时，其中的谓语动词必不可少，这与汉语的隐性特征和英语的显性特征是一致的。