Structure and meaning in the verb lexicon: Input for a syntax-aided verb learning procedure

Abstract

How might children learn the meanings of new verbs? Well-known problems with unconstrained induction of word meanings from world observations suggest that additional sources of information are required. This paper presents an investigation of the availability of syntactic cues to verb meaning. If there exist strong and reliable parallels between verbs' structural and semantic properties, then each verb's linguistic context could provide valuable evidence about its meaning. In Experiments 1–3, adult subjects' judgements of verbs' semantic similarity were compared with other adults' judgements about the syntactic properties of the same verbs. In Experiment 4, subjects paraphrased sentences formed by pairing verbs with unaccustomed sentence frames (e.g. John thought the book to Mary). The findings from these investigations provide new and detailed support for the view that the syntax of verbs is a regular projection from their semantics, and therefore that there is considerable information about a verb's meaning to be gained by attending to its sentence contexts.