The Structural Sources of Verb Meanings

1990/01/01 by Lila R. Gleitman · 7 citations
Computer Science · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Language and cultural evolution #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

paper · doi:10.1207/s15327817la0101_2

openalex publication_date 1990/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

If we will observe how children learn languages, we will find that, to make them understand what the names of simple ideas or substances stand for, people ordinarily show them the thing whereof they would have them have the idea; and then repeat to them the name that stands for it, as 'white', 'sweet', 'milk', 'sugar', 'cat', 'dog'.

Citations

• Children use canonical sentence schemas: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections
• Basic objects in natural categories
• The eyes have it: lexical and syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm
• Children use syntax to learn verb meanings

Cited by

• The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective
• A unified model of early word learning: Integrating statistical and social cues
• The Emergence of Words: Attentional Learning in Form and Meaning
• A Probabilistic Computational Model of Cross‐Situational Word Learning
• On the give and take between event apprehension and utterance formulation
• The faculty of language: what's special about it?
• Cognitive science [wikipedia]