Transitivity of Sentences and Scenes in Early Language Development

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Children acquire their first language within a few years, and without explicit deliberation. Their task is extremely complex. They must come to perceive countless gestures or sounds as having the structure of sentences, with subjects, verbs, and so on. At the same time, they must come to understand how these sentences depict the world around them, as it is lived and portrayed by their caretakers and peers. How do they do this? Answering this question requires understanding how they experience both the language and the world around them, at each stage of their development. This research aims at one central part of the problem: how do infants learn the meanings of transitive verbs, those with a subject and object? This project approaches the problem from two directions. First, can children younger than 2 correctly perceive the category of 'transitive verb'? This may be difficult, because such verbs may occur in a variety of contexts that obscure their category, such as questions where the direct object occurs at the start of the sentence: "What did Mary see?" Second, how do children at this age tend to represent the events around them? Which aspects of an event are or are not salient to them? With some answers to both questions, the project moves on to asking what expectations children have about the connection between the syntax of transitive verbs and their meanings, expectations that might help them learn. This research will deepen our understanding of the relation between linguistic and nonlinguistic representations, and how these change in the early stages of language development. Moreover, this work employs methods not previously used in research on the acquisition of syntax, expanding the range of methods available for others. Significant effort will also be directed towards outreach events in which graduate and undergraduate students working on the project will engage with high school and middle school students about the importance of linguistic research in general, and about the broader societal lessons that can be drawn from research on infant language learners.