Learning Argument Structure in English and Tamil
English-learning children learn much about the meaning of verbs from the syntactic
frames and argument structures that the verbs are used with (e.g., Gleitman, 1990; Naigles, 1990)
and from the specific lexical items used in those patterns (e.g, Lieven, et al., 1997; Childers &
Tomasello, 2001). These two kinds of information provide English learners with highly reliable
cues; for example, transitive verbs in English are often followed by “it.” However, different
languages present learners with different regularities. Languages in which explicitly-mentioned
arguments are used to a lesser extent, such as Tamil, present a different learning task for learning
verbs than does English.
English-speaking three-year-olds in the US and Tamil-speaking three-year-olds in
Chennai, India were tested. With ambiguous and novel forms available as props, the children
were asked to demonstrate Intransitive (blink, cough, laugh, yawn) and Transitive (cut, fix, push,
tie, do, get, have, want) verbs in English and Tamil. Verbs were presented in either the BareVerb (“Show me cutting!”) or Pronoun condition (“Show me cutting it!”). Enactments were
coded for whether the children’s demonstrations used an object or not.
When no pronoun was mentioned, English-speaking children enacted Intransitive verbs
predominantly without an object (73% of enactments) but enacted Transitive verbs sometimes
with (30%) and sometimes without an object (38%; no response-32%). Tamil-speaking children
also enacted Intransitive verbs most often without an object (58%; with an object-8%; no
response-34%). However, they enacted Transitive verbs most often with an object (60%; no
object-24%; no response-16%). The verb by itself seems to provide good information about
transitivity for Tamil-speaking children.
When the verb was presented with a pronoun, both groups enacted Transitive verbs most
often with an object, with English speakers doing so at a higher rate (English-76%; Tamil-63%).
Additionally, both groups used an object in their enactments of Intransitive verbs to a greater
extent than in the Bare Verb condition (English-40%; Tamil-35%). These results suggest that the
overt mention of an object influences the interpretation of the verb in both languages. However,
crucially, whereas English learners enacted Transitive verbs with an object when the verb was
followed by “it”, Tamil learners did so for Transitive verbs in both conditions.
These results suggest that English-speaking children may require an explicitly mentioned
direct object in order to relate the action to an object, whereas Tamil-learning children may
interpret a verb by itself as conveying information about the objects involved in the relation. We
suggest that the relationship between argument structure and verb meaning may be different in
different languages, where argument structure may be more important to verb meaning (and to
learning verb meanings) in some languages more than others. It is the case that in English,
information from argument structure helps children learn verb meaning; however, it could be that
in other languages, such as Tamil, argument structure plays a lesser role, and moreover, that
perhaps in these languages, knowledge of verbs may help drive knowledge of argument structure.
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