On the Semantic Content of Subcategorization Frames

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This paper investigates the relations between the meanings of verbs and the syntactic structures in which they appear. The investigation is motivated by the puzzle of how children discover verb meanings. Well-known problems with unconstrained induction of word meanings from observations of world circumstances suggest that additional constraints or sources of information are required. Five experiments are presented which investigate the hypothesis that the closer any two verbs are in their meaning, the greater their overlap should be in their licensed syntactic structures.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSentence First, Arguments Afterward
Subtitle of host publicationEssays in Language and Learning
PublisherOxford University Press
Pages380-428
Number of pages49
ISBN (Electronic)9780197510438
ISBN (Print)9780199828098
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2020

Keywords

  • Argument structure
  • Language acquisition
  • Syntactic bootstrapping
  • Verb learning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Psychology

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