Lecture 18

Learning Syntax and Semantics

The puzzle…

Children's syntactic errors with certain verbs…

"She filled the glass with water."
*"She filled water into the glass." (regularly produced by 3-5 year olds)

How do children learn

(a) meanings of verbs
(b) syntactic structures that verbs appear in

Learning Word Meanings

[This section draws largely on recent work by the psycholinguists Jean Gillette, Lila Gleitman and their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania.]

Intuitive explanation: Word meanings are learned by observing what is going on in the world when a word is uttered.

e.g. some words (typically referring to objects) may be easy to learn from observation
"kitty"
"juice"
"socks"

But some others may be much harder to learn from observation alone

"run"
"hope"
"give"
"think"

Difficulties of Learning from Observation

a. General/specialized meanings

"go" vs. "walk" vs. "creep"

Because every instance of "walking" or "creeping" is also an instance of "going", if a child were to think that the more specific verbs "walk" or "creep" actually have the more general meaning "go", then they will never see any evidence to disconfirm that. Therefore, they need to avoid making this kind of mistake ... because it will be hard to recover from.

b. Reversible pairs

"chase" vs. "flee", "buy" vs. "sell"

Whenever there's a chasing event, there's also likely to be a fleeing event (they're often just two ways of talking about the same action); similarly for "buying" and "selling". Therefore, by just observing real world contexts in which these words are used, it will be hard or impossible to distinguish these pairs of verbs.

c. Non-observables

"hope", "know", "wonder"

What does "hoping", "knowing" and "wondering" look like in the world?

d. Imperatives

"eat your peas!"

Imperatives are typically uttered when something is not happening in the world ... so there would be nothing to be gained from just observing the world.

Conclusion: learning word meanings just from observing the world is far from easy

Learning verb meanings from linguistic context

Sentences from parental speech to a single child, with verbs replaced by "VVVVV".

Verb 1

Uhmm # I VVVV it's in the party supplies.
Yeah # I VVVV she's just on T.
How did you VVVV of that present?
VVVV again.
Let me VVVV a minute.
I VVVV one little boy is coming over.
I VVVV they're bad.
What is it do you VVVV?
I VVVV it's going to make it.
I want to VVVV about that.

Verb 2

You're just VVVV away from me.
Just kept VVVV in a circle # I see.
But it VVVV real fast.
Who VVVV the computer?
That's the cows VVVV around in the sky.
My buddy Lando VVVV this place.
The ones where you VVVV up the wall?
We'd VVVV away.
They are VVVV backwards # right.
It's a tiger # VVVV.

Verb 1 is "think", verb 2 is "run". You should find that it was fairly easy to figure out these verbs, without any knowledge of the context or what was going on in the world at the time that these sentences were uttered. Therefore, linguistic context may aid in the learning of verb meanings.

Mental Verbs

Verbs which take an S' argument are typically mental verbs.

"I think [that the coffee is ready]."
"I know [that the coffee is ready]."
"I hope [that the coffee is ready]."
"I wonder [whether the coffee is ready]."

Syntax-Semantics Linking Rule

[VP V S'] --> mental verb meaning

If a child knows the linking rule above, and hears a sentence containing an unknown verb with an S' argument, then this could be a useful clue to the child that the verb has a mental meaning.

 

Learning Verb Syntax

"Chase" vs. "flee"

a. The cop chased the robber.
b. *The cop chased.
c. *The cop chased the robber, and the dog did so the cat.

chase: VP --> V NP

a. The robber fled the cop.
b. The robber fled.
c. *The robber fled the cop, and the cat did so the dog.

flee: VP --> V, VP --> V NP

"Spread" vs. "dance"

a. Wallace spread the marmalade on the table.
b. Wallace spread the marmalade.
c. *Wallace spread the marmalade on the table, and Gromit did so on the couch.

spread: VP --> V NP, VP --> V NP PP

[Note: of the students in the class, many found example (c) above bad, but a number also found example (c) to be fine ... for those people, the PP [on the table] is treated as an adjunct, and therefore "spread" is just a simple transitive verb, which allows the VP rule VP --> V NP.]

a. Wallace danced a jig on the table.
b. Wallace danced a jig.
c. Wallace danced a jig on the table, and Gromit did so on the couch.

dance: VP --> V NP

Problems for the learner

Locative Verbs

"Pour"-class

(1)a. John poured water into the glass.
b. *John poured the glass with water.
also: "dribble", "spill", "slop", "ladle", "stand", "wind" etc.

"Fill"-class

(2)a. *John filled water into the glass.
b. John filled the glass with water.
also: "cover", "decorate", "soak", "bandage", "blanket", "litter" etc.

Alternating verbs

(3)a. John stuffed feathers into the pillow.
b. John stuffed the pillow with feathers.
also: "paint", "wrap", "stuff", "spray", "load", "sow", "brush", "inject", "shower"

Problem: how to figure out which verbs allow which structures.

Non-Solutions

A. Say anything, see if parent/teacher provides correction

But…
"She filled water into the glass."
Children are not systematically corrected.

B. Only use a verb in a syntactic structure that you have heard it used in.

But…
Productivity: "stipple", "festoon"
Wallace stippled/festooned the wall with paint.
*Wallace stippled/festooned the paint onto the wall.
Would be easy to change the grammar of English
Children are not so cautious!
"She filled the water into the glass."

A Possible Solution

Verbs with similar meanings have similar syntactic possibilities.

"Pour"-class

(1)a. John poured water into the glass.
b. *John poured the glass with water.
also: "dribble", "spill", "slop", "ladle", "stand", "wind" etc.

Meaning: manner-of-motion

"Fill"-class

(2)a. *John filled water into the glass.
b. John filled the glass with water.
also: "cover", "decorate", "soak", "bandage", "blanket", "litter" etc.

Meaning: change-of-state

Alternating verbs

(3)a. John stuffed feathers into the pillow.
b. John stuffed the pillow with feathers.
also: "paint", "wrap", "stuff", "spray", "load", "sow", "brush", "inject", "shower"

Meaning: both manner of motion and change of state

Linking Rules for Locative Verbs

Suggestion: linking rules may be part of innate universal grammar

Evidence that children use these rules: Gropen et al. 1991 taught children novel verbs with change-of-state or manner-of-motion meanings. Children used appropriate syntactic structures with these verbs.

How Syntax and Semantics Help One Another

Why do Children make errors with "fill"?

Possibility I: children who make errors have misunderstood the meaning of "fill"

"She filled the water into the glass."
i.e. "fill" means "fill-by-pouring"

But…

Identical errors made when children describing scene which involves filling but no pouring.

Linking Rules Across Languages

Syntactic pattern of "fill"-class verb in Korean: Alternators (these verbs only allow "fill X with Y" in English)

(5)a. Yumi-ka mul-ul cep-e chaywu-ess-ta
Nom water-Acc cup-Loc fill-past-Decl
'*Yumi filled water into the container.'
b.Yumi-ka cep-ul mul-lo chaywu-ess-ta
Nom cup-Acc water-with fill-past-Decl
'Yumi filled the container with water.'

Syntactic pattern of "pile"-class verb in Korean: non-alternators (these verbs allow both syntactic constructions in English)

(6)a. Yumi-ka chaek-ul chaeksang-ey ssa-ass-ta
Nom book-Acc table-Loc pile-past-Decl
'Yumi piled the books on the table.'
b. *Yumi-ka chaeksang-ul chaek-elo ssa-ass-ta
Nom table-Acc book-with pile-past-Decl
'Yumi piled the table with the books.'

Linking rules are different in Korean and English.

Possibility II: children who make errors have not yet figured out the linking rules for English.

Conclusions

a. Learning verb semantics and verb syntax are potentially very difficult problems for a child.

b. Syntactic knowledge can support the learning of semantics

c. Semantic knowledge can support the learning of syntax

d. Errors like "she filled the water into the glass" may be due to either

--misunderstanding of the semantics of "fill"

--misunderstanding of the syntax-semantics linking rules for English

Last updated 11/10/98 by Colin Phillips