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Ma, Weiyi; Luo, Rufan; Golinkoff, Roberta; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy – Language Learning and Development, 2023
Verbs serve as the architectural centerpiece of sentences, making verb learning pivotal for language acquisition. Verb learning requires both the formation of a verb-action mapping and the abstraction of relations between an object and its action. Two competing positions have been proposed to explain the process of verb learning: (a) seeing a…
Descriptors: Verbs, Language Acquisition, English, Cognitive Mapping
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Ozturk, Ozge; Papafragou, Anna – Language Learning and Development, 2015
Three experiments investigated the acquisition of English epistemic modal verbs (e.g., "may", "have to"). Semantically, these verbs encode possibility or necessity with respect to available evidence. Pragmatically, the use of weak epistemic modals often gives rise to scalar conversational inferences (e.g., "The toy may be…
Descriptors: Epistemology, Pragmatics, Inferences, Semantics
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Skordos, Dimitrios; Papafragou, Anna – Developmental Psychology, 2014
We report a study that explored the mechanisms used in hypothesizing meanings for novel motion predicates (verbs and prepositions) cross-linguistically. Motion stimuli were presented to English- and Greek-speaking adults and preschoolers accompanied by (a) a novel intransitive verb, (b) a novel transitive verb, (c) a novel transitive preposition,…
Descriptors: Syntax, Semantics, Language Acquisition, Verbs
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Papafragou, Anna; Selimis, Stathis – Language and Cognitive Processes, 2010
It is well known that languages differ in how they encode motion. Languages such as English use verbs that communicate the manner of motion (e.g., "slide", "skip"), while languages such as Greek regularly encode motion paths in verbs (e.g., "enter", "ascend"). Here we ask how such cross-linguistic encoding…
Descriptors: Verbs, Linguistics, Motion, English