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Speaking
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Willem J. M. Levelt
Linguistics
"Required reading for anyone w orking in the field."

-- Joseph Paul Sternberger, Contemporary Psychology
In Speaking, Willem "Pim" Levelt, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für

Psycholinguistik, accomplishes the formidable task of covering the entire process
of speech production, from constraints on conversational appropriateness to
articulation and self-monitoring of speech. Speaking is unique in its balanced
Aug 1993 coverage of all major aspects of the production of speech, in the completeness of
its treatment of the entire speech process, and in its strategy of exemplifying
ISBN 0262620898
rather than formalizing theoretical issues.
584 pp.
"[Levelt] synthesizes the state of the art w ith remarkable breadth,
depth, and clarity. In 500 pages of highly readable text and forty
pages of bibliography, he integrates, as no one has done
previously, many lines of research that have often been pursued
in ignorance of one another.... An outstandingly instructive book."
-- Dan Sperber, Times Literary Supplement
"A w ork of massive scholarship and authority."

-- Brian Butterw orth, Times Higher Education Supplement
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknow ledgments
Author's Notes
1 The Speaker as Information Processor
2 The Speaker as Interlocutor
3 The Structure of Messages
4 The Generation of Messages
5 Surface Structure
6 Lexical Entries and Accessing Lemmas
7 The Generation of Surface Structure
8 Phonetic Plans for Words and Connected Speech
9 Generating Phonetic Plans for Words
10 Generating Phonetic Plans for Connected Speech
11 Articulating
12 Self-Monitoring and Self-Repair
Appendix: Symbols From the International Phonetic Alphabet, With Examples
Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index
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) 1- 4. North-Hollanri
Lingua92 ( 1994
Preface
For many years, the topic of lexical acquisition was a stepchild in linguistic
inquiry . While" the acquisition of syntax was acknowledged to be organized
according to a set of deep and highly structured innate principles, word
meanings were assumed to be acquired by a simple and particularistic
associativeprocedure that mapped perceptual experienceonto phonetic entities
. We believe this stance was anomalous from the start, as had been
pointed out eloquently by Plato and, in modem times, by Quine. Not all
words are perceptually based; even those that are map quite abstractly from
' '
perceptual categories; and neither perception nor learning is simple . During
the past decade, it has becomeclear from linguistic inquiry that the lexicon is
more highly structured than heretofore thopght ; moreover, that much of
grammar turns on critical - and universal - links between syntactic and
lexical-semanticphenomena.
Hence the present volume. The papers grew out of a workshop held at the
University of Pennsylvania. Its aim was to bring together psychologists,
computer scientists, and linguists whosejoint concern was the lexicon and its
acquisition; these researchershave typically worked quite separately and on
problems thought to be disparate. The volume is organized in six sections:
1. Nature of the mental lexicon.. The two essaysthat open the collection
are from linguists gleaning general perspectiveson lexical learning from the
linguistic facts themselves. The first , by Edwin Williams , arguesfrom the real
complexity and idiosyncratic nature of the mental lexicon (including lexical
phrases) that innate linguistic and categorization principles are not enough,
that real children require a learning theory more sophisticated than usually
has been supposed. A detailed analysis of English causativealternation verbs
by Levin and Hovav eloquently supports Williams on the complexity of
lexical structure.
2. Discovering the word units.. To acquire a vocabulary, the learner requires
some proceduresfor segmentingthe continuously varying sound wave
into word -sizedpieces. Cutler discusses this problem, presentingevidencethat
a bias toward rhythmic alternation servesas a powerful bootstrap for infants
(and adults , whatever their specific language background) solving this
problem. Kelly and Martin then show that , armed with such blases, learners
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2 Preface
exploit multiple probabilistic cuesto discover the word units: domain-general

learning procedurescan be used to discover many domain-specificfacts about
language.
'
3. Categorizing the world: The word meaning culled from children s
interaction with the world ultimately depends on how they represent their
'
observations. A first question is whether children s mental representations
(categories, and the theories that bind them) are the same, no matter the age
'
of the learner. In her article, Carey makes a strong casefor a ' discontinuity
theory, in which the very basis of inference from observation onto meaning-
identification changesover developmental time. Keil , in contrast, argues that
the mentalities of children and adults hardly differ. For both , his view is that
concept and word acquisition involves both the discovery of multiple probabilistic
surface factors (reminiscent of Kelly and Martin ) and some theory-
driven generalizations.
4. Categories, words, and language: A further set of articles again documents
'
how the child usesthe evidenceof observation to decide on a word s
meaning. But theseemphasizethe role ~f linguistic principles as an additional
determining factor. Thus Markman points out that the learner is biased
'
toward a ' whole object assumption - a new word probably namesthe whole
animal rather than one of its parts or properties. But then how could a child
learn ' nose' or ' white' ? She provides evidence for a linguistic principle
' '
( mutual exclusivity ) that leads children to avoid two labels for the same
object. Waxman shows experimentally that such blases, even in the toddler ,
are specifically related to the characteristic semantic properties typical of
lexical classes- nouns name objects but adjectives name properties. Landau
' ' ' '
shows how the separation and respectivestructures of the what and where
systems(as documentedby neuropsychologists) are related, in learning, to the
child ' s acquisition of object namesvs. place expressions. All thesearticles are
neutral concerning the direction of the causal links here: the extent to which
the perceptual- conceptual facts determine lexical class assignment, or the
other way round. Bloom takes a stronger view in discussingthe acquisition of
nominal subtypes (count vs. mass noun, noun phrase) : He holds that very
early in life children consider syntactic form classas relevant to determining a
novel word ' s meaning.
5. The caseof verbs: The papers mentioned thus far make a strong case
that the form -meaning linkages that typify language design are exploited by
children acquiring the vocabulary of their native tongue. Grimshaw ( 1981)
and Pinker ( 1984) emphasized, on the basis of these linkages, that children
could derive lexical class assignment from experience-based learning of the
Preface
word ' s meaning; Pinker showed further that such a procedure would be
'
marvelously useful for the construction of phrase structure ( semantic boots-
' . Landau and Gleitman 1985
trapping ) ( ) emphasized that learning might
sometimes, even usually, be the other way round ; specifically, that syntactic
structure plays a necessary role in narrowing the search space for verb
' '
meanings ( syntactic bootstrapping ) . The three articles in this section hotly
debate how the semantics-syntax links (specifically, the relation betweenverb
argument structures and subcategorization structures) are implicated in the
learning processfor verbs. Fisher, Hall , Rakowitz , and Gleitman emphasize
the role of syntax in narrowing the range of interpretations made available by
experience; Pinker argues that logically the child must work from experience
to determine the syntax in the first place; and Grimshaw stalwartly proposes
a reconciliation of these two views.
6. Proceduresfor verb learning: The positions just described, even if
correct, can suggestonly some boundary conditions on a learning theory for
verbs. Fisher et al., asjust described, assertthat some rudiments of syntax are
necessaryfor learning the verb meanings. But as Pinker points out , the
question then would be: How did the child acquire the syntax if not by
exploiting the word meanings themselves? Brent, in the best tradition of
computer science, offers a discovery procedure for verb subcategorization
that usesstring-local surface cues only , and does surprisingly well. The final
article in the volume, from Steedman, was designedas a specific commentary
on Brent' s work . But this short article is much more general than that. It
strikes a number of sane cautionary notes about current theories of verb
learning, of which the most important is that real acquisition is bound to be a
messybusiness, with syntactic, semantic, and prosodic cues recruited by the
child more or less catch-as-catch-can. Steedmanalso points out , in what we
find an appropriately laudatory comment, that it is only in the presenceof
'
explicit computational models such as Brent s that the bootstrapping theories
can ever be developedand seriously evaluated.
It is the hope of the editors that this compendium of topics and views on
lexical learning will be of particular use to the linguists who constitute the
Lingua audience, in two ways. First , we suppose it will be useful to see the
kinds of methodological and substantive contributions that scientific psychology
can make to the question of languagelearning - and henceto the theory
of language. Second- as we have emphasizedearlier - becausesyntactic and
lexical structure are so closely entwined, we expect that the various articles
will be informative as to how theselinkages enter into the learning procedure
for vocabulary.
Preface
We thank Lingua for the opportunity to air theseworks in this Special

Issue, and we particularlythank the LinguaChief Editor, Teun Hoekstra, for
this continuingaid and supportof this project. We thank also the National
ScienceFoundation which, through an STC grant to the University of
Pennsylvania Institutefor Researchin Cognitivescience , madethe Workshop
possible. In that regard, we areespeciallygratefulto the staffof IRCS (Trisha
Yanuzziand Chris Sandy) and to Carol Miller, Kimberly Cassidy , and Sally
Davis (graduatestudentsin the Departmentof Psychology ) who ran the
Workshop with verve, efficiency
, and considerablegood humor. Finally, we
thank Stevenand Marcia Roth for a grant to Lila Gleitmanwhichaidedus in
the preparationof the Volume.
, June1993
Philadelphia Lila Gleitman
Barbara Landau
Acknowledgments
This book emergedin the stimulating circle of the Max -Planck-lnstitut fiir
'
Psycholinguistik and Nijmegen University . Numerous colleagues can t
give up educating me in matters linguistic and psycholinguistic, and I
would be at a losswithout them. Also , many distinguishedvisitors from all
over the world have given me help and advice. I am sincerelygrateful to all
of them.
Some, from within and without this circle, have taken the effort to read
drafts of chapters and to formulate comments, either orally or in writing .
Before mentioning them, I must say that each of theseefforts has deeply
touched me. Time and again I experiencedit asa great privilege to be taken
so seriously and with so much friendship. In alphabetical order, these
angelswere Manfred Bierwisch, Melissa Bowerman, Herbert Clark , Anne
Cutler , Jane Edwards, Lyn Frazier, Merrill Garrett , Gerard Kempen,
Wolfgang Klein , Aditi Lahiri , and John Marshall . I would also like to
thank Gerard van Galen, who gave me a specialtutorial on psychomotor
theory.
Though I typed the manuscript myself with two index fingers on a
terminal , finishing toucheshave beenmade by Uschi de Pagter and Edith
Sjoerdsma, especiallyin completing the bibliography . Our librarian , Karin
Kastens, also helped me on countlessoccasions. Many thanks to all three
of them.
The graphic work was done by Wil Maas during three months of ideal
cooperation.
NiJmegen
. February 29, 1988
Author ' s Notes
On Pronominalization
I will contribute to the present chaos of person pronominalization in

English by adhering to the following conventions : Speakers, whether male ,
female , or generic , will receive masculine pronominalization . Hearers or
addressees will be treated as female . When there are two or more interlocutors
(i .e., speakers/ hearers) , the first one will be male , the second one
female , and so on in alternation . General use of these conventions in
psycholinguistics will , given the bias for language - comprehension research,
make most person reference female .
On Tr ~ ription
I will follow the transcription conventions of the International Phonetic

Alphabet . The phonetic symbols used are listed in the appendix .
) 7- 34. North-Holland
Lingua92 ( 1994
Remarks on lexical knowledge
EdwinWilliams
CognitiveScienceLaboratory, Princeton University, 221 NassauStreet, Princeton, NJ08540, USA
' '
The abstractnessof lexical knowledge, and its independencefrom the words of a language, are
generally underestimated . Abstract idioms demonstrate that the lexicon is the repository not only
of fixed expressions, but of abstract language-particular phrase- and word-patterns as well.
-
Paradigmsare language-particular patternings dimensionedand structured in languageparticular
ways, with - of
languageparticular patterns syncretism . The learning burden of these two abstract
but learned features of lexical knowledge falls ouside of what current thinking about language
learning would allow.
1. Introduction
I will survey two aspects of lexical knowledge which I feel pose special
problems for learning. In both casesthe remarks will tend to emphasizethe
extensivenessabstractness , and at the sametime the language-particularity of
lexical knowledge, and will consequentlymagnify the learning problem. One
conclusion that could be drawn from these observations is that intricate
structures can be learned, and this learning is not adequately modelled by
.
either parameter setting or list learning.
I t is useful to distinguish two notions of lexicon, one Bloomfieldian and the
other grammatical. The Bloomfieldian lexicon is the repository of all of a
'
languages idiosyncracies. The grammatical 'lexicon is the linguist' s theory of
'
the category of linguistic object we call a word . These are quite different
conceptions, but have come to be identified in modern times. The result is a
picture of grammar in which we have a clean streamlined syntax, where
syntax is the theory of phrase, and a notion of word that entails that words
are idiosyncratic and irregular at heart, with partial regularities expressedas
' '
redundancy rules whose name implies low level generalizationswhere exception
is the rule.
I think that this picture is wrong. A more correct picture is I think given in
Disciullo and Williams ( 1986) . In that view, both the word formation and the
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E. Williams / Remarkson lexical knowledge
' '
syntactic system are clean streamlined systems, independent of the lexicon.
The lexicon is the repository of forms about which something specialmust be
learned. This certainly includes, for example, all the monomorphemic words,
but it also includes composed units of both syntax and word formation ,
composed units whose properties do not all follow from the rules which
compose them. This would include a great deal of words, but also a great
deal of phrases. In fact, I now think there are more lexical phrasesthan there
are lexical words, but this re~ ains a speculation.
In addition , I think that lexical knowledge includes knowledge of complex
abstract.structures that cannot be arrived at through parameter setting, and
which must be learned from the data in a strong sense. I will discusstwo of
these: ' abstract idioms' in section 2, and paradigms in section 3. If my view of
theseis correct, the rich structure each exhibits results not from a rich innate
predefined linguistic structure, but rather from a richly structured learning
strategy.
If nothing else, then, the remarks that follow draw attention to the learning
problems that might arise if first , more ~f linguistic knowledge is lexical than
has been thought, and second, if acquired lexical knowledge is more abstract
and structured in language-particular ways than has been thought . I think
that the sort of structure that is found in each case reveals the hand of the
learning strategy.
2. Idioms
The phrasesin the lexicon are called ' idioms' . We generally think of idioms
as ' frozen' expressions. I will use the term idiom to refer to any defined unit
whose definition does not predict all of its properties. This will include the
phrase kick the bucket, a phrase, whose idiomatic meaning is die, but also
transmission, which unpredictably means ' such and such car part ' . We don' t
think of transmissionas an idiom , but it will be useful and I believecorrect to
include it .
It has been commonly assumedthat idioms are well-formed structures, but
I think lately this view has been questioned. To say that an idiom is well
formed is to say simply that it conforms to the rules of formation for the type
that it is. Of course, the idiom does not conform to all of the rules, else it
would not be an idiom . What rules do idioms obey? It is useful to consider
the rules of ' form ' apart from the rules of interpretation . We find idioms
violating both types of rules.
E. Williams I Remarks on lexical knowledge
The idioms that do not obey the rules of interpretation are deviant in
meaning. The rules of argument structure are not obeyed in some cases, and
in others, the rules of referenceare not obeyed. We might refer to both these
' '
types of idioms as semantic idioms.
It is perhaps misleading for me to say that there are idioms which do not
obey the rules of form , for it is an overwhelming fact that idioms obey the
basic rules of fonn it) a language. For example, all idioms in English obey the
' head-initial '
setting of the head position parameter. On the other hand, there
are unpredictable, language-particular exploitations of the formal possibilities
'
in a language; we might call theseidioms ' formal idioms.
A widely shared set of assumptionsabout idioms is the following :
( 1) usual assumptions:
idioms are listed
idioms are well-formed phrases
idioms have empty parts :
The cat has Xs tongue
relation of idioms to syntax:
insert the idiom , then fill in the parts
'
So, for example, The cat has got X s tongue is an idiomatic phrase, fully
consistent with the laws of English syntax, which is inserted in a phrase
marker for an S position ; further substitution of a referential NP for the
position of X will yield an English sentence.
These assumptions, though common, lead to some surprising conclusions,
or at least some surprising conclusions, or at least some surprising questions.
.
In particular , they lead to the view that a great deal of what we have called
' rule' in ' '
syntax might really be idiom . To give an example, consider the fact
that embeddedquestions in English must begin with a WH word. It is well
known that this is not to be describedby making WH movement obligatory
in English. What kind of information is it then that [ Wh-phraseS ] is a
(potential) embeddedquestion in English? It COULD be that this form is an
idiom :
' '
(2) [[ Wh-phraseS ]. , : embeddedquestion
Under this conception, (2) could be listed in the lexicon, awaiting insertion
into some embedded S position, where it is an embedded question (as the
-
slogan after the colon above indicates) . Further substitution of some wh
E. Williams I Remarkson lexical knowledge
phrase for the wh-phrase position in (2) and of an S for the S position in (2)
will complete the sentence, exactly parallel to The cat has got X 's tongue.
One does not ordinarily think of this as idiomatic information , even
though it is languageparticular ; rather, one thinks of this feature of English
as one of the ' parametric' possibilities. (2) is not the ordinary way to encode
this information .
Example (2) may seem sufficiently different from The cat has got your
tongue that it would never be misidentified as an idiom in the same sense.
However, I intend to supply enough examplesof casesintermediate between
the two ' that I cannot see how it cannot be questioned whether (2) is the
correct description or not.
2.1. Idioms are instances of we//- formed structures
The view that I am presentingherewould have large numbersof objects of a

sometimesquite abstract character stored in the idiom lexicon of language.
This view might then be seenas convergi.ng with severalrecent proposals that
. there are 'constructions' in language, a backlash against the principles and
parameters model. There is, though, a fundamental difference between the
proposal here and those proposals - specifically, I hold that idioms are well
formed, and that the rules of well-formednessare simple ' parameterized' rules.
2.1.1. Filmore's examples

For example: C. Filmore (p.c.) has sugg~sted to me that while most
prepositions in English are prepositions , some are not , and consequentlythe
notion that there is a uniform head position in English is not correct ; the
most ,:>ne can say is that there are a number of constructions in which the
head is leftmost, and some others in which it is not. His candidates for
postposition in English are notwithstandingand ago:
(3a) John notwithstanding, we will go there tomorrow .

(3b) John left 3 days ago.
I believe that neither of these is a preposition, and that the notion that
English is head initial can be maintained in a strong form .
Notwithstandingcan be assimilated to the following constructions:
(4a) John aside, ...

That noted, ...
E. Williams on.lexical
/ Remarks knowledge
which are clearly small clauseconstructionsof somekind. The difference

betweennotwithstanding and asideis that asidecan appearin other small
clauseconstructions, whereas notwithstandingis restrictedto the context
indicated:
(Sa) put that aside,

(Sb) * notwithstanding
.
We may ~xpress this restriction on notwithstanding by not listing it in the

' '
lexicon on its own , but only as a part of the following idiom :
' '
]sc S]s: evenwith NP, S
(6) [[NP notwithstanding
Importantly, (6) is an instanceof a structurewhich is well fonnedin English

independently , namelythe structureof (4) :
- AP]- S > >

(7) rNP
' '
[ NPnotwithstandingS: even
'
I will usethe doublecarat sign' > > ' to mean' hasa well-formedinstance.
I think ago as well has a better analysisthan the postpositionalone.
Consider:
(8a) long ago

(8b) 5 minutes in the past
(8c) a few days before the party
It appears that time prepositions in general can take some sort of extent
specification; however, this specification in general precedesthe time preposition
, as we might expect specifiers to. (8c, d) shows clearly that the extent
specification is not a part of the complement structure, as the prepositions in
and before have complements to their right . Now , ago differs from these in
two ways. First , it cannot have a complement to the right . This however
shows nothing except that ago is intransitive. Secondly, in the caseof ago, the
extent specification is obligatory . Here, if we think that extent specification is
ordinarily outside of the subcategorizational reach of a head, we might
appeal to an idiom to capture this exceptional feature of ago:
E. Williams/ Remarkson lexicalknowledge
' I complements right , specs left ' > >

assign
[(Extent-spec) P (NP)]pp> >
[Extent-specago]pp
Here, the idiom is a well-formed subinstanceof prepositional phrase, which

itself is a ' subinstance' of all the structures that fall under the parametric
specializationsof English.
In sum then, although the notion of idiom we are employing is quite
general, it is at the same time quite restrictive, in that all idioms conform to
more abstract (though perhaps parameterizedlanguageparticular) principles.
2.1.2. What rules.do idioms obey?

Idioms basically obey the (rules determining the) phrase structure of the
language, but not the rules of reference; so for example, kick the bucket is a
well-formed VP, but no referenceto any bucket is made. These two observations
set someouter bounds. I think a more interestingprobe is theta structure,
where it turns out in fact that idioms diff ~r in the extent of their conformity .
. It is well known that idioms differ in their syntactic ' transparency' - ' kick
the bucket' does not passivize, whereas' cross that bridge when we come to it '
does. Fiengo ( 1974) connected this difference to a further difference, namely,
a difference in whether the object can be quantified :
( l Oa) * They kicked the buckets (as an idiom )

( lOb) We will cross those bridges when we get to them.
In (b), ' bridges' refers to ' problems' , and (b) says that we are talking about
more than one problem. In (a) on the other hand, it is impossible to refer to
more than one death.
Is this an arbitrary difference? I do not think so; I think it follows from the
fact that the meaning of ' kick the bucket' is intransitive. This intransitivity of
meaning meansthat there can not be a correspondencebetweenthe syntactic
and semanticargument structures, sincesyntax is transitive here. In (b) on the
other hand, the verb cross can be assigneda transitive theta structure, and
one of its theta roles can be assignedto bridges. So what is wrong with the
meaning of (b) is simply the reference, not the theta structure: cross refers to
. solve and bridges refers. to problems. But in (a), it is not just reference, but
theta structure itself, which is idiosyncratic.
If this is so, then (b) has a transitive theta structure, and its passivizability
is no surprise, if passiveis an operation on theta structures, as I believe it is.
E. Wi/Iiams / Remarkson lexical knowledge
And the fact (a) is not passivizableis no surprise either, sincethere is no theta
relation betweenthe direct object and the rest of the sentence.
If this account is correct, then theta structure is not necessarilyrespectedin
idioms, though it may be. A child learning an idiom will aggressivelyassignit
as much structure as possible according to its rules. If it can assign it a
semanticargument structure basedon its syntactic argument structure, it will ,
but if not , then the idiom will lack argument structure.
2.2. Abstractidioms
2.2.1. Idioms with instances

If we begin with the idea that an idiom is a phrase, and that it can contain
empty parts, then we immediately face the question, how empty can an idiom
be? Can it , for example, be mostly empty? The question arisessharply for an
example like the English noun pants. This noun, as is well known , is an
' '
arbitrary plural ; a shirt , for example, of the same genus topologically (at
least when the fly of the pants is unzipped) is singular. This is a trivial piece
of .idiomatic , that is unpredictable, information about this noun, that it must
be plural. Strikingly , though, this is not true of this noun alone, but in fact of
every word that has the meaning that pants has: something worn on the legs
in such and such a way :
( 11) pants jeans shorts cutoffs culottes bermudas ...
New, made-up terms for lower trunk wear must conform as well. One
exception, bathing -suit , is an exception only in that it does not specifically
refer to lower - trunk wear, but rather means whatever one wears to bathe
in ; it is an accidental fact of current fashion that this refers to lower -trunk
wear.
Now , what sort of information is this? It is information about a general
restriction on form that follows from meaning; specifically, if a noun is going
to have such and such a meaning, then it must be plural ;
' '
( 12) Ns +- : lower trunk wear
I .have drawn the arrow from right to left to mean, if an item is going to have
the meaning on the right , then it MUST have the form on the left. This is a
different sort of idiomatic information from knowing that kick the bucket
CAN mean die, and so the different notation.
E. Williams / Remarkson lexical knowledgE
Another example like pants is fish . Fish names , with some exceptions , are
all unmarked plurals or have that as an option : trout , bass, perch , bream ,
yellow tail , mahimahi . The exceptions are not really fish , by and large :
whale , guppy , minnow . Other animal families are untouched by this idio -
syncracy : bee, wasp , ant . As far as I can tell , this is an unpredictable , but
' '
very general fact about English , and counts as idiomatic information
about the language .
A further case of the same sort is the language - particular patterns of
lexicalization identified by Talmy ( 1985) . He found that languages systematically
differed in the kinds of verb meanings they allowed . For example ,
English allows verbs of motion to indicate a means of motion . Float can be
used as a directional verb , but at the same time , it indicates the manner of
motion : John floated under the bridge can mean that John moved under the
bridge by Boating . Spanish and French lack entirely verbs of this kind . F/otter
in French and flotar in Spanish ( float ) can mean only to float stationarily ,
and the restriction is apparently a hard and fast one. Similarly , verbs of
posture ( sit , kneel , lie , etc.) differ systematically from language to language ,
in whether the stative , inchoative , or causative is the basic or underived form ;
English , Japanese, and Spanish systematically differ in this choice - see Talmy
( 1985) for details .
Again , we have language -particular variation of a quite general sort .
' '
Again , the information is idiomatic , but the question remains , how to
' '
represent it . We might again represent it as an idiom with a hole in it :
( 13a) [inchoative)v +- : posture verb (Japane~

where V is atomic.
( 13b) [motion verb]v +- : manner (English )
Now , the representation here I think is not so important as the question of
what this sort of information is, and especiallyhow it is acquired. I think that
language-particular patterns of the kind that havejust been discussed- pants
in English, the motion verbs in Romance, the posture verbs, etc. - fall outside
of the ' parametric' core, and yet, they are quite general, and basically
exceptionless. This means some sort of general induction , the kind that is
meant to extract ' lexical reduncancyrules' , must be capable of acquiring from
the data the ' exceptionlessness ' of the rule. Some substitute for
negative
evidence, such as counting, and statisticking, is required. And somelimitation
on the spaceof searches must hold , in order for the induction to remain in
the realm of possibility .
The most surprising casesare the casesthat achieveexceptionlessness . The

' ' idiom is
pants exceptionless, in that any noun that means the right thing
must participate in the idiom . The presentparticiple is another case: there are
no present participles that do not end in -ing whereaspast tense forms, as is
well known , are quite varied. The learner learns more than that there are no
exceptions; he learns that there can be no exceptions. We will discuss such
cases further in sec~ion 4. For the moment, we note that the formalism
proposed suffices to express exceptionlessness , though it at the same time
hides the learning problem implied by them.
2.2.2. Formal idioms: Exploited and unexploitedavenues

The pants phenomenon just examined is I think more widespread. Formally
'
, the grammar permits singular nouns to have the meaning such and
'
such a type of legwear , but this avenue is unexploited in English, thanks to
' '
( 12) . By unexploited avenues I mean possibilities that the formal system
would seemto allow , but which it does not use. In identifying such casesone
always risks missing the formal explana~ion for the missing possibility,
though a case like pants I think clearly shows that there will not always be
one.
As one example, consider compound terms in English and French. Both
languageshave meansof putting together words from further words, or kind -
denoting terms. In French, the syntactic system is exploited; so, one has
compound terms of the following kind :
' ' '

VP > > V > > V -
( 14 ) NP N > > essuie glace wipe window , windshield
'
-
wipers
' '
VP > > V PP > > V P N > > laisse - - conte left for count
pour ,
' '
abandoned one
Here, the double carat means ' has as an instance' . So, compound terms in
French are instancesof syntactic constructions. As word level items they have
their own limitations (e.g., no referential material may occur in them, and so,
for example, no determiners are allowed) , but they are neverthelesswell-
formed syntactic objects.
English , on the other hand , exploits a different system to form its
compound terms :
( 15) [ X Y] y > > [ NN] N

E. WUliamsI Remarkson lexical knowledge
The system exploited here is the affixation system in the lexicon, which is
right -headed
'
. Ordinarily , Y is a suffix, forming the head of a word. English
lets Y be a full noun, giving us compounds.
Importantly , both languageshave both resources- English has the same
(left -headed) syntax as French, and French has the same right -headedaffixation
systemas English; however, they each exploit a different one of thesefor
their compound terms. I assumethat this is ' idiomatic ' - that is, language-
' '
particular , but perhaps not parametric .
2.3. Syntacticidioms
English embeddedquestions must begin with a wh-phrase. This is not to

say that Wh-movement is obligatory in English, as it clearly is not ; not only
do matrix questions not necessarilyundergo Wh -movement, but even a wh-
word in an embeddedquestion need not move, when, for example, another
has moved, or the complementizeris already wh, like whether:
( 16) Who wonderswhetherGeorge saw who ?
The correct generalization is as stated: a Wh -word must appear at the

beginning of an embeddedQuestion. What sort of information is that ? We
might describeit as an idiom , in the sensedevelopedherein:
( 17) [wh-phraseS +- : embeddedquestion
That is, a sentencewith a Wh-phrase at the beginning is a question, and

nothing else is. The arrow goes backwards, as any embeddedquestion must
have this form .
'
Idiom ( 17) is a good candidate for a ' parameter , in that there is a small
number of ways that question words can be dealt with : ( I ) moved to front ;
(2) moved to verb (as in Hungarian); or (3) left in situ. However, I think
there is good evidencethat idioms just like ( 17) must be countenanced, ones
that are not reducible to parametersof variation .
One caseis the ' amount' relatives. These have the following form :
(18a
) [wh-phraseS]
'
> >
[what N S] : Little (amount relatives)
18b
( ) gave
I him what food I had.
19
( ) give
I him what I had.
( 18b) has an implication that ( 19) does not have, namely, that there was little
food in question.
Now , where does this implication come from ? It does not come from what,
which does not have this implication in general, not even in free relatives,
exceptin the context in ( 18b) . Furthermore, it does not inhere in free relatives
in general. In fact, it occurs only in the structure in ( 18), it is idiosyncratic to
that structure. Assuming that there is no parameter to set here, then this is a
learned fact about this structure.
What is interesting is how formally similar ( 18) is to ( 17) . The only
difference is that the semantics of ( 18) is very particular, and therefore
plausibly idiomatic , whereas the semantics of ( 17) is very general. But the
formal means may be the same in the two cases: a feature of meaning and
form are connected in an idiomatic entry in the lexicon. If a learner can
induce ( 18), it would seem that ( 19) would be accessible to the same
mechanism.
A related sort of case arises from Subject Aux Inversion in English; the
following is an idiom of English:
(20) [ V S]. +- : matrix yes/no question
This is comparable to ( 17) - an obligatory idiom (that is, of the pants variety)
has the effect of forcing syntactic rules to apply. More interesting are the
casesof inversion which receivea conditional interpretation :
(2Ia ) Had I been there, this would not have happened

(21b) S > > [ V S]s: conditional
> > [ had...]s
> > [were...]vp
The rule of inversion gives a large number of forms which are ungrammatical
in this context :
*
(22) Could I write poetry, I would not be a linguist .
In fact, inversion in the conditional context works only for the auxiliaries had
a~d were. What sort of infonnation is this? Importantly , the casesallowed in
the construction are a subset of the casesallowed in general; hence, what is
learned is that not all the formally allowed possibilities are realized. We will
adopt the following convention for representingthis situation :
(23) Instanceprinciple :
If a fonn to which a meaning is assignedhas listed subinstances, then
those subinstancesare exhaustive.
2.4. Idiom families
At one end of the language-particular information that a learner must

acquire are the completely fixed expressions; at the other end are the broad
'
typologiCalparameters
0 . I have suggestedthat there are intermediate ' abstract
idioms _ pants and amount relatives, for example, which link theseendpoints
with a graded continuum. In compensation for this more complicated situation
, and the more complex learning problem that it poses, I have suggested
that each level of ' abstractness' must conform to the level above it ; thus we
' '
do not have a wholesale theory of constructions , but still a broadly
-
parametric model. This says that a construction - say, passive must
conform to the typo logical pattern that is determined by some parameter
but leaves open the possibility 0that not all features of the passive
.settings,
construction will be determined by this conformation .
As further evidence of this view, I will discuss here some idiom families,
that is, language-particular idiom patterns. Each idiom pattern has a number
of idioms as instances. The principle reason for recognizing the existenceof
the idiom family is that somelanguageswill have idioms of a certain sort, and
others will lack them altogether, apparently in a way not related to the
parametric typology of the languages, though of course one could always be
wrong about that for any particular case.
The most interesting sort of case I know of was pointed out to me by
Martin Everaert (pic.) ; the idioms are of the form :
(24) NyPNy
by side
The two Ns are meant to be identical tokens of the samenoun, as in side by

side. French, English, and Dutch have these idioms, Japaneselacks them
' '
entirely. For this reason, we would want to call (24) itself an abstract idiom
of the sort discussedin previous sections.
Idiom (24) probably has as its most imniediate instantiations not actual
idioms, but further , more concrete, idiom families, one for each P that
participates:
(25) Nx P Nx > >

Nx by Nx
Nx to Nx
Nx on Nx
Nx for Nx
Nx fromNx
Someof the manyexamplesof instancesin thesesubfamiliesare:
(26) N to.N
> > hour minute second year
window door station
head hand cheek
NbyN
> > minute, hour , etc. ;
layer house cave
N for N
> > dollar for dollar
N from N
> > limb from limb
Non N
> > layer on layer
If these are idioms, then we expect them to be instances of well-formed

structures in the language. One is at first hard-pressed to identify what
structures these are well-formed instances of , but I think the most likely
"candidate is the
compound prepositional phrases, asfrom . .. to:
(27) John went [from a to b]
The compound prepositions generally require both prepositions to be

overtly present, but this is not always so, as in the following :
(28) I do not know what he is doing [one day to the next] .
T1')us the compound prepositions are somewhat like conjunctions, where we

find both simple (and) and compound (both ... and) varieties. It so happens
that the idiom family so productive in English is a subspeciesof compound
prepositional phraseswhere the first preposition is not present. In French, on
E. .Williams I Remarkson lexical know/ed~E
the other hand, both prepositions must be present: depart en part (' limb from
limb ' ) ( V. Deprez, p .c. ., T . Hoekstra has pointed out to me the existenceof
heurepar heure and cote a cote) .
The various subcasesof (24) do not have a common element of meaning.
So, for example, cheekto cheekrefers to the pressingtogether of two cheeks,
as in dancing; but minute to minute and day by day refers to a seriesof days
in sequence . Even the instancessharing a common proposition do not have a
completely shared element of meaning, as the two instanceswith to just cited
show. Therefore, these forms are not compositional, despite clear patterns in
the meaning.
On the other hand, from the fact that they are so prevalent in one
language, and absent altogether in another, we know that they are present as
a group in some sense. It seemsunlikely that there is a parameter for this
property alone; perhaps it follows from some other parameters, though it is
hard to seehow.
An alternative is that the structure in (25)-( 27) is induced from the data of
the language. How could this happen? Supposethat at a certain point in the
.
course of acquisition, some number of forms with the shape NxPNx have
been learned. As a class, they conform to the shapeof left headedcompound
prepositional phrases, and so do not fall outside of the language altogether.
On the other hand, their properties are not entirely explicable in terms of the
general principles of the grammar; in particular, the use of bare singular
count Ns as the objects of prepositions is not a general feature of prepositional
phrases in English. So these remain idiomatic ; however, they are
idiomatic as a class, not as individuals.
Another family of idioms is illustrated in the following :
(29) John hunts bear

snares rabbit
traps monkey
(a) *John huntsbook

* 1 am
, goingto gradepaper
(b) *Johncountsmonkey
(c) * hunt sleepyelephant
What is special about this case is the use of the bare singular as object.
Normally , this is not allowed for English count nouns, but is allowed here.
So, we have an abstract idiom , of the following form :
(30) [V N] vp
+ HUNT + ANIMAL
The form in (30) is a special case of the general form of VP (and so, for
' ' ' '
example, is V N and not N V ), and thus conforms to our overall claim that
abstract idioms are always instancesof more generalpatterns of the language.
The limits of this idiom are somewhat roughly indicated by (b) and (c) - the
verb must be a verb of hunting, and the object must be an animald ) shows
a further restriction - not only are determiners excluded, but adjectives as
'
well (unless"sleepy is a kind of elephant) .
One might conclude from this the observation that this construction was
' '
in fact a lexically compound verb - to hunt monkey then would be
syntactically intransitive . I doubt this, since English in general disallows
compound verbs, and particularly disallows left -headed compound verbs;
but even if the conjecture were correct , then the problem posed by these
examples is not solved, but simply delivered to the lexicon, with fee still
unpaid.
I . assume that it is not at all predictable that English would have this
pattern ; and in fact, inspection of (b) and (c) might lead one to not expect
this pattern . I conclude therefore, that learning ( 30) entails generalizing over
exampleslike those in (29), and the limits of the generalization must follow
in some way from the actual mechanism of generalization.
The existence of these idioms of intermediate abstractness argues that
learning languagedoes not reduce to (a) learning parameter settings, and (b)
learning the properties of particular lexical items. Rather, there are structures
between these two extremes, what I have called abstract idioms , which
.can
only be learned as language-particular generalizations of particular
forms.
3. Paradigms
A paradigm is a multidimensional array of linguistic forms - for example, a

verb conjugation, or a Latin noun declension. A paradigm is not just a
convenient way to display linguistic information ; rather, it is a basic form of
-
linguistic knowledge. It interests here becauseit is highly languageparticular ,
and at the same time, quite abstract in structure. Paradigmatic structure is
also pervasive.
Example (a) below is a slice of the Latin verbal conjugation :
(31) Latin :
(a) + - finite + - indicative (b) amo amamus
+ - passive + - perfective amas amatis
presjimperfjfut amat amant
+ - plural Ij2j3person
The Latin verbal conjugation is 8-dimensional, with the dimensions listed on

the left.
It is not possibleto say in a general way how many dimensionsa paradigm
will have, nor how many points on a given dimension, nor what the
dimensionswill ' mean' , or what syntactic or semanticcategoriesthe points on
a dimension will be taken as signifying.
There are severallevels of abstraction involved in paradigms. At the lowest
level, we have word -paradigms, such as in (31b). At a slightly higher level of
abstraction, we have paradigms in the traditional sense, roughly speaking,
setsof endings:
( 32) - 0 -mus
- as - atis
-t - ant
At a slightly greater level of abstraction, one might regard a paradigm as a set

of rules which, when applied to a stem, derive a word paradigm, by, for
example, adding endings. So there is a rule for forming the past tense, a rule
for forming the third person present tense, etc. In fact, though, I believe that
a paradigm is even more abstract than that - a paradigm is a patterning
which is more abstract than any set of forms, any set of endings, or any set of
rules for filling the slots in a paradigm.
That the paradigm is a real object, and not the epiphenomenalproduct of
various rules, is shown by the phenomenaof blocking, syncretism, suppletion,
and paradigm defectiveness , as argued in Halle ( 1973) .
To consider only the first of these: if there are two rules for filling a slot
in a paradigm, ' only one may be used; thus, we have bit , not bited, and in
general, only a single past tense form for a given verb , despite multiple
ways to form past tenses. This reveals that there is a target slot to fill ,
which .is independent of the rules for filling it , and that slot is given by the
paradigm .
3.1. Extensiveness
We tend to think of paradigms as a means of displaying inflectional

information about the parts of speech. But in fact, the notion of paradigm is
much broader than this. To begin with , paradigms must include syntactic
items, or phrases, as well as words. To seethis, we need only examine a slice
of the Latin verb paradigm:
(33) active passive

present amo amor
perfect amavi amatus sum
Here the forms are all 1st singular, present-perfective crossed with active-
passive. One comer of this square contains a phrase, amatus sum, while the
other three comers contain words. This shows that phrases form an inextricable
part of paradigmatic information . If we removed the perfective passive
form , we would have destroyed the symmetry of the paradigm, which is
otherwise perfectly symmetrical.
We can see the same thing in an English paradigm, the comparative
paradigm:
(34) A COMP SUPER

long longer longest
compact morecompact most compact
good better best
The rule is, if an adjective is mono- (or nearly) syllabic, then form the
comparative with -er ; if not , then the comparative and superlative are formed
'
phrasally. The existenceof this paradigm is what pennits us to speak of the
' of an
comparative adjective, even though there are two ways of forming
.
comparatives Many languageslack any way at all to fonn the comparative;
English has two ways, one morphological, the other syntactic.
Paradigms include not just inflectional dimensions, but what have been
called ' derivational' processes as well. I am sure that there is no distinction
be~ween derivational and inflectional morphology , but if there is, then
paradigms are found in both morphologies.
3.2. The abstractness of paradigm structure
In general, there is not a one-to- one relation between the slots in a

paradigm and the rules for creating the fonDSwhich fill the paradigm. In one
circumstance, there are more slots than rules, and therefore, severalslots will
be filled with the same form - this is the phenomenon of syncretism. The
pattern of syncretism that is found reveals the method of assigningforms to
slots. The method consistsof the following :
.
( I ) Hierarchalize the dimensionsof the paradigm.
Assign forms to nodes in the hierarchy.
For example, the English verbal paradigm is 4-dimensional (personX number

X present-past X finite), and there are 4 distinct forms. We may hierarchize
the tree and assignthe forms to it as follows :
(35) V'
.
I
I I
finite infinitive
I I
I I I I
pres past. perf* infinitive
sg I
m
m
2 3*
rfl
I 2 3
rfl
rfl
1 2 3
rfl
123
rfl
rfl
pi I 2 3 I 2 3 1 2 3 I 2 3
V * = run *
past = ran 3 * = runs perf * = run
The tenninal nodes are the actual cells of the paradigm. The starred nodes
are the nodes to which actual forms are assigned. By convention, a cell is
filled by the nearestspecifiedform above it . The identity of the forms and the
points in the tree at which they are mapped are given in (35) . The assignment
'
shown is the most economical, as each form is assignedonce.
We might call the starred nodes entry points' - these are the points at
'
which concrete forms are specified. The tree along with the starred nodes we
' '
might call the pattern of syncretism . This is a pattern which is independent
of the rules for creating the forms in the pattern. It is a part of the formal
structure of the paradigm. Strikingly , the pattern of syncretism holds generally
in a category, not just for particular verbs, as we will see.
If we look at the pattern of syncretism for a variety of English verbs, a
startling pattern emerges:
(36) V$
I
I I
finite perf * infinitive
~
I I r +- , r +- ,
pres pastS I 2 3 I 2 3
r +- , r +- , ~ m
* IA 2 JA I 2 3 1 2 3
sg IA 2 3
r +- , r +- ,
.
pI I 2 3 I 2 J
Entry points :
$ modals
$* regular; go-went
$*" be
have, says, does - irregular in 3prsg: * haves
Here, marked on the same tree, are the entry points for severalcategoriesof
verbs, including irregular verbs. As can be seen, the sets of entry points form
a nested set; the verb be shows the most distinctions, and consequently has
the most entry points, but all other verbs, including all irregulars, have some
subset of the entry points of be. It is far from obvious that such a relation
should exist - if a verb is going to be irregular, why should it not be irregular
in having a different pattern of syncretism, a different set of entry points ? But
this does not happen, even irregular verbs respectthe pattern of the language
as a whole. In fact, even suppletive verbs, the limiting case of irregularity ,
respectsthe pattern of syncretism; the verb go has went as its past tenseform .
Things could have been different: went could have been the third past plural
form , with goed (or something else) for all the other forms ; but then, go-went
would have violated the language-wide pattern of syncretism.
E. Williams / Remarks on lexical knowledge
Hence, the pattern of syncretism is a quite abstract structure, standing

above particular words, particular rules, particular suppletive relationships.
We can see this further in the noun declensions of Latin . Latin has 5
declensions, each with its own set of endings (we ignore here the genitive and
the vocative) :
Latin declension structure :
< 1>
1 .
" s
~
I
-;Il 1
I p -a -aeas
N
direct indirect direct indirect . Ac - am
r- l -, -
r - L- , r--l --w r~ D - ae -IS
-a .
- IS
nom acc abl dat nom acc abl dat Ab
I -pi
I I
< 2> s
~
, I N -us -i
direct indirect . direct indirect . Ac -urn - os
, . J--, r-- - L- , r=
:
L - ,
-
r - L- , D -0 - is
nom acc abl dat nom acc abl dat Ab -0 - is
< 2n >
~ ____~ - -- ,
-;I1 I
I p etc.
direct indirect . direct . indirect .
r -- L- , r- L- , -
r - L- , -
r - L- ,
nom acc abl dat nom acc abl dat
1 -pi
I 1
< 3> s
~
. I
direct indirect direct indirect .
r-- L- , r-- L- ,
-
r - L- , r - L- ,
< 4>
I
s
~
I
-;Il I
I p
direct indirect direct indirect .
r-- L, r - Li r ~ -
r - L- ,
E. WilliamsI Remarkson lexicalknowledge
< 4> s -pII

~
, , 1 1
direct indirect
r- l - , r-- L- ,
principle syncretisms:
1st decl: pl . indirect (-is)
2nd decl:pl . indirect (is), sg. indirect (-0)
neuter: above + direct sg. (-urn). pl . direct (-a)
3rd decl. :pl . indirect(-ibus)
4th decl. :pl . direct (-es) pl . indirect(-ibus)
neuter: sg. (direct = indirect) (-0), pl . indirect, pl . direct
Here, the nominative and accusativehave beengrouped together as ' direct' ,

and the ablative and dative as ' indirect ' . The reason for this is that this
reflects the patterns of syncretism: nominative and accusative fall together
sometimes, and dative and ablative do as well.
A striking thread that runs through the entire set of declensionsis the
indirect plural syncretism. In the singular, there is an indirect entry point for
2nd and 4th neuter; the plural syncretism holds across the board. Importantly
, this generalization is independent of the rules for forming the indirect
forms, for in fact there are two different rules for that : in the first and second,
-is is affixed; whereasin the 3rd and 5th, -;bus is affixed. Hence, the pattern is
more abstract than the rules or affixes. I would suggest that a pattern is
abstracted that applies to all the declensions, essentially the tree structure in
-< I > . Other declensionswill make further syncretisms, but this one will hold
for all.
A general conclusion we may draw is that when there are multiple related
paradigms, there will be one instantiated paradigm, and all others will have
its syncretic structure, and perhaps some more. But no other related paradigm
will have a contrary syncretic structure, making distinctions where that
one does not. We will call that one paradigm the basic paradigm.
For the Latin nominal declension, the first declension is the basic paradigm
. For English verbs, the verb to be is the basic paradigm.
L,et us now consider Latin verbs. Every finite Latin verb form has a
different form , so there is no syncretism at this level. But at the level of stem,
there is a paradigm structure with a limited number of entry points. Below is
a chart of the stem forms for various classesof Latin verbs:
(37) Latin verbstemsuppletion

..
Vx
I
I I I
. .
perf * partic
I
I I I
A
pres imperfect future .
I
I I
sg plur
------ ---- - - - ------"
, +- , r 1 ,
1 Z' 3
'
I 2' 3
Entry points for stem :

* A' esse edo
,
* A' volo
*A
regularized volo
* A do
*
regulars , including fero feri Tull latus
x amo
The asterisked positions represent the entry points for the regular verbs of
all four conjugations. This alone is striking , for again, there are different
rules in the different conjugations for yielding the forms at these entry
' '
points . The first and second conjugation form the future by suffixing -b- ,
whereas the third suffixes nothing , but switches the conjugational class of
the basic stem. Neverthess, that the future is an entry point is common to all
the conjugations.
The verb essehas the most entry points, and every other verb uses some
subset of those entry points. Thus the conjugation of esse is the basic
conjugation, to which all the others are related.
'
As a final example, we consider Anderson s ( 1984) description of Georgian
'
verb conjugation. The system is quite complex; Anderson s account uses
blocks of rules, both conjunctively and disjunctively ordered. It is my
contention that such a systemwill fail to capture the most abstract patterning
of a paradigm, which, as we have seen, is generally independent of affixes or
rules. Someindicationthat this is so can be derivedfrom the following table

of affixes(or, to useAnderson's accountmore directly, of rules for adding
affixes) for presentand past:
(38) present past

-en 3pl subj -es 3pl subj
-t pi -t pi
-s 3rd subjects 3rd subject
' '
The rules are.quite similar, and Anderson s remark This -es rule has the same
status as the -en rule in this block , and also takes precedenceof the -s and the
-1 rules ...' ( 1984: 8) shows I believe that an abstract structure is being
replicated in different parts of the paradigm, thus underscoring the independence
of that structure from actual rules or affixes.
3.3. Learning paradigm structure
We ask at this point , why are these patte .rns of syncretism in language ?
Why is a pattern of syncretism replicated accross different modes of realizing
paradigm cells?
I speculate that it is the acquisition of paradigm structurethat is respon -
sible for this arrangement.
Pinker has demonstrated how the blocking principle will give rise to the
developmentof paradigm structure in the languagelearner. The basic idea is
that wheneverthe languagelearner has been forced to posit two items to fill a
single cell, he is then motivated to split the paradigm (really, to double it ) so
as to avoid violating the blocking principle :
(39)
The paradigm now has a new dimension, and a whole new set of cells; the
' '
language learner now must learn the significance of the dimension, and fill
in the rest of the cells.
I think that this algorithm for building paradigms, combined with the
notion of paradigm structure I have just outlined, will predict some of the
patterns we have observed.
E. WilliamsI Remarkson lexicalknow/edgE
There are two sorts of splitting than can take place - intraand interparadigm
' '
splitting . Given a present tense paradigm for some verb, see, for
' ' ' '
example, the recognition that saw , like see, can be used for the 1st person
' '
singular, leads to a postulation of a past tenseplane, in which to locate saw .
This is intraparadigm splitting . The other kind of splitting might be called
' declensional'
splitting : given a set of endings, say the endings for the 1st
declensionin Latin (-a, -am, -De, -a, etc.), the recognition that the ending -us
can signify nominative singular, just as -a does, triggers the splitting of the
nouns into (at least) two declensions. The differencebetweenthis and the first
caseis that in the first case, a given word will have forms in every cell of the
new and old plane, but in the second, a word will have forms in only a single
declension. We may neverthelessconsider the splitting to be formally the
same in the two cases, and this is supported by the observation that
syncretism patterns the samein the two cases.
An example of a ' declensional' split is the comparative paradigm in
English; the paradigm is a linear three-point paradigm: adjective, comparative
, superlative. But there are two modes of forming members, as we have
. seen- one for monosyllabics and Simple disyllabics, and another for everything
.else. A telling point which showsthat we are dealing with a declensional
split here is that the same criterion that is used to determine whether the
' '
comparative is A -er or more A is used to determine whether the superlative
' '
is A -est or most A . This criterion is not therefore a part of the rules
themselves , but is rather a general criterion of membership in the two
declensions; much as ' feminine' is a criterion for membershipin the Latin 1st
declension.
Now , supposethat a learner has learned a piece of paradigm structure, and
has learned not only the labels for the dimensions, but has also learned the
positioning of the entry points, which I have called the pattern of syncretism.
Supposefurther that when the paradigm is split, that this abstract pattern of
syncretismis replicated along with the cells themselves:
(40)
0
If this is done, then we will expect to seepatterns of syncretismrecurring. The
following prediction is made: whatever paradigm is learned first will embody
the most distinctions. This is becausecells which are designated identical by

the pattern of syncretism of the first pattern will remain identical in latter
versions. There may be fewer distinctions in later folds , but not more.
Thus for example when the learner learns the first declension, with its
indirect plural syncretism, and then learns that there is a second declension,
that same indirect plural syncretism will show up in the second declension
as well , copied as a part of the abstract structure of the first declension.
4. Learning .words
4.1. Learning morphemes
The notion of an abstract paradigm, the blocking principle , and paradigm

splitting may account for how a paradigm is elaborated, but what accounts
for the identification of a (potential) paradigm in the first place? One
ordinarily thinks of verbal paradigms, re.alizing person, number, tense
reference, etc., as the typical par~digm, but in fact languages have novel
paradigms that it is unlikely coul.d be specifically anticipated in UG .
Supposethat one component of the learner is a device that usesextra cycles
in the child ' s computational life to track down statistical correlations among
various properties of its thus far stored linguistic units. What the set of
properties is will not detain us here. The child learning English, for example,
will discover a correlation betweenwords ending in -yand adjectivehood:
(4Ia) fishy, lumpy, lucky, speedy

, etc.
(41b) dainty , pretty , happy , etc .
Many adjectives do not end in -y , and many words ending in -yare not
adjectives, but the probability that a word is an adjective increasesonce one
knows that it ends in -yo
Note that this is true for a large class of adjectives where the -y does not
serve as a suffix (the second group) . Even excluding the caseswhere -y is an
affix, there is a correlation.
A battery of such correlations could serve the next step: to identify
m~rphemes, and assign them properties. In the case of -y - + A , there are
sufficient casesto warrant postulating a suffix with the category adjective,
and assign it wherever possible - that is, wherever an independent stem
exists.
Even where the analysis into morphemesdoes not hold , the information of
the correlation has been noted; it seemsunlikely that this information is
forgotten once the morpheme has been established.
Another example in English of a no- go morpheme is the suffixtude ; most
of the 50 or so membersdo not admit an analysis into morphemes:
(42) altitudeattitudeplatitude,
And yet, this suffix so strongly marks nounhood that there is not a single
verb or -adjective with this ending.
The number of examples it takes to establish a correlation between two
properties is quite small. For example, the English noun-deriving suffix -af
has fewer than 20 instances; and yet, the correlation between suffix and
category seemsfirmly established for all speakers, as well as the restriction
that the stem must be stressfinal , a separatelearned correlation :
(43) betrothal, avowal, approval, removal ...
The confidenceof theseidentifications is surprising given the small number of

casesinvolved.
S6, there are two levels of analysis so far ; first , the identification of
correlating properties, and second, the postulation of analysisthat arisesfrom
this. Units will be postulated that account for the correlation.
There is a further level of analysis, I believe. In somecases, it is detennined
by the learner not just that two properties correlate, but that one of the
properties is uniquely correlated with the other property . We might suppose
that children are built to look for this especially.
Severalexampleshave been examined in this paper. One is the idiom Ns :
' wear on the ' ' '
legs ; the property of meaning wear them on your legs is
' '
uniquely correlated with nouns that end in s . Another is the progressive,
which is uniquely corellated with V + ing.
I believe that the uniqueness has special salience. It is what we might
consider the ' ideal' case, and so the first sought and most readily accepted.
We know , for example, that the past tense forms of verbs in English are
irregular, and some are in fact suppletive. Given this, we are not surprised so
much to learn new verbs with irregular past tenses. However, I think we
would resist entirely learning a new verb with a suppletive progressive, a
progressivethat did not end in -ing.
4.2. Learningsubsystems
In orderto geta paradigmgoing, onemustnoticeparallelcorrelations . For

example , in English, thereis a Latinateparadigm, of the following shape:
(44) verb adjective de- verbal de-adjectival

noun noun
conclude conclusive conclusion conclusivity
The strength.of this paradigm is great enough that when a coined word meets
the criterion for membership, it immediatelyparticipatesin the entire paradigm:
(45) subduct: subductive: subduction: subductivity
How do we know that we are dealing with a paradigm here, and not simply
with several distinguishable morphological rules? Becausethe correlations
amongst the rules striking : for example, 80%' of the words that take -ive to
form adjectivestake -ion to form nouns; this is as compared to the baserate
of 6% of nouns that take. -ion. Surely speakersnotice this sort of correlation ,
and use it to construct a paradigm like (44), which can then be exercisedon
new forms.
The criteria for membership in this paradigm are somewhat rough, but
include at least the following :
(46) word = prefix-stem

prefix = {trans, sub, super, de, dis, con, etc.}
stem= CVC(C).
The force of thesecriteria can be seenin the fact that 26% of the nouns that
begin with trans- fonn nominalizations in -ion, against the base rate of 6%
for nouns in general.
Incidentally, this sort of thing is not limited to the English Latinate
vocabulary. 39% of the verbs beginning with the causative prefix enencroach
, endear, encase, ensnare) form their nominalization in -ment, as
opposed to the background rate of lessthan 5% .
' '
We ordinarily think of -ion as an unproductive suffix, compared, say, to
the suffixness . However, as we have seen, in the domain of certain classesof
stems, -ion approachescomplete productivity , and even becomesapplicable to
new forms. The other side of the coin is that -ness is actually not so
productive over the entire set of stemsin English - it is of course only in the
adjectives that it shines. So -nessand -ion are equally productive, we might
say, over their own classes- the class for -nessis adjectives, and the class for
-ion is Latinate verbs. Given this, we might wonder, why isn' t every affix
completely productive within some arbitrarily drawn subclassof the lexicon,
say the class of things to which it does attach? I think the answer is that
subclasses cannot be arbitrary . The Latinate class is productive for -ion
precisely becauseit can be identified independently of the occurencesof -ion:
it can be identified as the claSsto which -ive attaches, or perhaps it can be
identified in some way along the lines of (46) . In either case, we must
attribute to the language learner the ability and the inclination to compare
subclasses, and look for high matches. When a high match is found , then a
dimension of a paradigm has been identified.
References
. Anderson , S., 1984 . On representation in morphoiogy . NLLT 2, 157-218.

Disciullo, A.M. and E. Williams, 1986 . On the definitionof word. Cambridge , MA : MIT Press.
Fiengo, R., 1974 . Semanticconditionson surfa(:e structure. MIT dissertation .
Halle, M., 1973 . Prolegomena to a theoryof word formation. LinguisticInquiry 4, 3- 16.
Talmy, L., 1985 . Patternsoflexicalization.In: T. Shopen(ed.), Languagetypologyand language
description . Cambridge , MA : CambridgeUniversityPress .
Williams, E., 1981 . On the notions'lexicallyrelated'and ' headofa word' . LinguisticInquiry 12,
245-274.
Lingua92 ( 1994
A preliminary analysis of causative verbs in

English*
BethLevina.and Maika RappaportHovavb

. Department , Northwestern
of Linguistics University, 2016SheridanRoad, Evanston -
, IL 60208
4090, USA
. Department
of English, Bar lIan University
, RaniatGan, Israel52900
This paper investigates the phenomena that come under the label ' causative alternation ' in
English, as illustrated in the transitive and intransitive sentencepair Antonia broke the vase/ The
vasebroke. Central to our analysis is a distinction between verbs which are inherently monadic
and verbs which are inherently dyadic. Given this distinction , much of the relevant data is
explained by distinguishing two processes that give rise.to causative alternation verbs. The first ,
and .by far more pervasiveprocess, forms lexical detransitive verbs from certain transitive verbs
with a causativemeaning. The secondprocess, which is more restricted in its scope, results in the
existence of causative transitive verbs related to some intransitive verbs. Finally , this study
provides further insight into the semantic underpinnings of the Unaccusativity Hypothesis
(Perlmutter 1978).
I . Introduction
is particularly rich in verbs with both transitive and intransitive

. English
uses where the meaning of the transitive use of a verb V can be roughly
' '
paraphrased as cause to V- in transit ive . Such verbs are illustrated in ( 1) and
( 2), where the transitive (a) sentences might be paraphrased in terms of the
' '
intransitive ( b ) sentences; that is , as Antonia caused the vase to break and
' '
Pat caused the door to open .
. Thiswork waspresented at theWorkshopon theAcquisitionof the Lexiconat the University

of Pennsylvania in January, 1992 . We would like to thank the other workshopparticipantsand
' . This work was also
particularly Tony Kroch, the papers discussant , for their comments
presented at Hebrew University in March , 1992; we are grateful to the audiencefor their
comments . This paperhasalso benefitedfrom the commentsof Mary Laughren , StevePinker,
BetsyRitter, andan anonymousreviewer . We wouldlike to thankJohnWickbergfor helpingus
find relevantexamples in on-line texts. This researchwassupportedin part by NSF Grant BNS-
8919884 .
- 3841/94/$07.00 (Q 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

0024
SSDIOO24-3841( 93) EOO38 -9
B. Levin, M. RappaportHovavI Causative
verbsin English
( la ) Antonia broke the vase.

( I b) The vase broke.
(2a) Pat opened the door.
(2b) The door opened.
We refer to this alternation as the causative alternation and to verbs with both
uses as causative alternation verbs. 1
Such transitive/ intransitive pairs have receivedconsiderableattention from
linguists . working in a variety of linguistic frameworks: analyses of this
phenomenon have ranged from the primarily syntactic (e.g., Burzio 1986) to
the primarily semantic (e.g., Fillmore 1968) and from the wholly lexical (e.g.,
Wasow 1977, Keyser and Roeper 1984) to the partly lexical (e.g., Borer
1991). 2 There is a sensein which, at least descriptively, the phenomenon is
taken to be well-understood, and the same handful of acceptedfacts regarding
this phenomenon are frequently cited. 3 Although the analysis of this
phenomenon has been the focus of many studies (see, for example, the
referencescited in Levin 1993), relatively little has been said about the
phenomenonexcept in relation to the multifarious theoretical concernsit has
been used to shed light on.
It turns out , however, that many important questions about the phenomenon
itself remain unanswered. And as long as the phenomenon itself is still
not well-understood, a complete analysis of the alternation cannot be devel-
1 Besidesthe causativealternation. English also has a ' periphrastic ' causative which is
.
expressed with the verbsmakeor have. asillustratedin Antoniamadethevasebreak. It hasoften
beenremarkedthat the notion of 'cause ' that entersinto the relationbetweenthe transitiveand
intransitiveusesof the alternatingverbsallowsfor a morerestrictedrangeof interpretations than
that found in English periphrasticcausatives . The type of causationassociatedwith the
alternatingverbswhicharethesubjectof our studyis termeddirect(or. sometimes .
. manipulative
contact. or immediate ) causation . while Englishperiphrasticcausatives allow indirectas well as
directcausation(Comrie1981 . Cruse1972 . NedjalkovandSilnitsky1973 . Shibatani1976. among
others). As we shallsee. the type of causativeexpressed with alternatingverbsin Englishis not
availableto all verbs. contrastingwith the type of causativeexpressedby the periphrastic
causative constructionin English.whichis generallyavailable . In somelanguages both directand
indirectcausationaremorphologicallyencoded . but in suchlanguages . the two typicallyinvolve
distinctmorphologicaldevices . We referto the kind of causativewearefocusingon in this paper
as the lexicalcausative . sinceit is usuallyformedusingthe lexicalresources of a languageand
showsthe hallmarksof a lexicalprocess( Wasow1977 ).
2 The causativealternationhas also attractedconsiderableattention outsidethe theoretical
linguisticsliterature. It is the subjectof a numberof studiesin psycholinguistics and child
languageacquisition; seePinker( 1989 ) for a reviewof this literature.
3 Two notableexceptions are Pinker( 1989 ) and Haspelmath( 1993 ).
verbsin English
oped. For this reason, before presenting our analysis of the causativealternation
, we provide a survey of certain properties of the causative alternation
aimed at providing a contribution towards filling this gap in our understanding
. This facet of our investigation focuseson two related questions: (i )
Is it possibleto delimit semantically the classof verbs which participate in the
alternation? and (ii ) Do all examplesof the causative alternation as defined
above represent instances of a single phenomenon? Answers to these questions
will not only help us understand the causativealternation itself, but they
should also deepenour understanding of the nature of lexical representation
and its relation to syntactic structure.
In this paper, we hope to show that the phenomenathat fall under the label
4causativealternation' are on the one hand lessidiosyncratic and on the other
hand less uniform than is typically believed. We suggestthat much of the
data we investigate is explained once we distinguish two processes that give
rise to transitive and intransitive verb pairs.4 The first , and by far more
'
pervasive process, is the one which forms lexical 4detransitive verbs from
some transitive causative verbs. The second, which is more restricted in its
sCQpeforms causative verbs from some intransitive verbs. With respect to
intransitivity , we hope to provide further insight into the semantic underpin-
nings of the Unaccusativity Hypothesis, the hypothesis proposed by Perlmut-
ter ( 1978) that the class of intransitive verbs consists of two subclasses, each
associatedwith a distinct syntactic configuration . Finally , as in our previous
work , we hope to show that if the relevant aspectsof meaning of a verb (or
class of verbs) are properly identified, many of the apparent idiosyncratic
properties of that verb (or verb class) fall into place.
: The propertiesof the alternation

2. Background
This section sets out the properties of the causative alternation that need to
be accounted for . We begin by repeating the often - made observation that
4 That is, disregarding those verbs which participate in the unspecifiedobject alternation (e.g.,
the verb eat as in Terry ate her lunch/ Terry ate). In this paper, we also do not discussthe middle
construction (e.g., Bread cuts easily) ; this construction involves intransitive uses of transitive
verbs which at least on the surface show some similarity to the intransitive variant of the
causativealternation. We consider the middle construction to be a distinct phenomenon since it
differs from the intransitive variant of the causative alternation in interpretation and other
properties (Keyser and Roeper 1984, Ruwet 1972, among others) ; however, seeHale and Keyser
( 1987) for an analysis that treats the intransitive variant of the causative alternation as a special
caseof the middle construction.
B. Levin. M . Rappaport Hovav I Causativeverbsin English
there are many verbs in English which occur in the transitive/ intransitive
pairs characteristic of this alternation. A preliminary list of such verbs is
given below.
( 3) bake , bounce , blacken , break , close, cook , cool , dry , freeze, melt , move ,
open, roll, rotate, shatter , spin , thaw , thicken , whiten , widen , ...
Furthennore, the counterparts of these verbs in other languages occur in

transitive/ intransitive pairs characterized by the same semantic relationship.
In some.languages, as in English, the relation is not morphologically mediated
; see the Basque example in (4). 5 In other languages, the relation is
morphologically mediated in some way, as in the French example in (5),
where the reflexive clitic se is associatedwith the intransitive member of the
pair . 6
(4a) Mirenekateaireki duo

Miren-NORK door-NOR open3sNOR-have-3sNORK
' Miren '
opened the door.
(4b) Atea ireki da.
door-NOR open 3sNOR-be
' The door '
opened.
(Sa) Marie a ouvert la porte.
' Marie " '
opened the door.
'
(Sb) La porte s est ouverte.
' The door '
opened.
The existenceof this phenomenonin a wide range of languagessuggeststhat

the causativealternation is not idiosyncratic to English.
Studies of the causative alternation going at least as far back as Jespersen
( 1927) have suggested that this alternation is found with a semantically
5 In
Basque the change jn transitivity is accompanied by a change in the auxiliary accompanying
the verb. Simplifying somewhat, the transitive use selectsthe transitive auxiliary ukan
' have' while the intransitive use
, selectsthe intransitive auxiliary izan ' be' . Thus the difference in
auxiliary reflects general properties of Basqueand not properties of the alternation. The labels
' NO R' and ' NO R K ' are the
traditional namesfor the casesassociatedwith the noun phrasesin
.
the examples. SeeLevin ( 1989) for more discussion.
6 For more on the
morphological relationships between the verb forms in the transitive and
intransitive variants of the causative alternation, see the discussion of Nedjalkov ( 1969) and
Haspelmath ( 1993) at the end of section 4.
B. Levin. M . Rappaport Hovav / Causativeverbsin English
coherent classof verbs. In order to determine whether this suggestionreceives

support, we can ask the following rather simplistic questions: (i ) Do all
intransitive verbs have transitive counterparts with the appropriate paraphrase
? and (ii ) Do all transitive verbs with a causative meaning have
intransitive counterparts with the appropriate meaning? We begin with a
discussionof the first question.
The following examplesshow that there are undoubtedly intransitive verbs
which do not have transitive causativecounterparts. 7
(6a) The children played.

*
(6b) The parents played the children.
(cf. The parents made the children play.)
(7a) The actor spoke.
(7b) * The director spoke the actor.
(cf. The director made the actor speak.)
Sa
( ) The audiencelaughed.
*
(Sb) The comedian laughed the audience.
(cf. The comedian made the audiencelaugh.)
These examples might suggestthat agentivity is the crucial factor and that
agentive verbs do not participate in the alternation , while non-agentive verbs
do. As it happens, both suggestionsare wrong. There are agentive verbs
which do show the causativealternation, as in (9) and ( 10), and non-agentive
verbs which do not , as in ( 11)-( 14) .
(9a) The soldiers marched to the tents.

(9b) The general marched the soldiers to the tents.
( l Oa) The horsejumped over the fence.
( lOb) The rider jumped the horse over the fence.
( 11a) The cactus bloomed/ blossomed/flowered early.
* The warm weather
( 11b) bloomedjblossomed/flowered the cactus early .
( 12a) The neglectedwound festered.
* The heat and dirt festeredthe
( 12b) neglectedwound.
'7 Some
English intransitive verbs without transitive causativecounterparts are used transitively
in the resultative construction, but in this construction such verbs do not have the transitive
causative meaning which the alternating verbs have. Consider the verb laugh in the resultative
construction The crowd laughedthe actor off the stage. This construction does not mean that the
crowd made the actor laugh, which would be the interpretation that would parallel the intended
interpretation of (8b), but rather that the crowd laughed.
B. Levin
, M. Rappaport
Hovav/ Causative in English
verbs
(13a) The jewels glittered/sparkled.

(13b) * The queen glittered/sparkled the jewels.
(14a) The stream burbled/ roared.
(14b) * The rocks burbled/ roared the stream.
The examples in ( 15) and ( 16) illustrate a further complication involving
the transitive use of agentive verbs of manner of motion : the directional
phraseswhich are optional in the intransitive use of theseverbs are obligatory
in their transitive use. 8
(:I Sa) The soldiers marched (to the tents) .

(:I Sb) The general marched the soldiers to the tents.
(:I Sc) " The
general marched the soldiers.
(:16a) The horsejumped (over the fence) .
(:16b) The rider jumped the horse over the fence.
(:16c) ' The rider
jumped the horse.
.The behavior of the agentive verbs of manner of motion contrasts with that
of non-agentive verbs of manner of motion , which, as shown in ( 17), do not
require a directional phrase in either their transitive or intransitive use.
( 17a ) The ball bounced / rolled ( into the room ) .

( 17b ) The boys bounced / rolled the ball ( into the room ) .
Although various researchers have commented that the alternation as

manifested by agentive verbs of manner of motion is qualitatively different
8 There
may be some disagreement about whether the directional phrases are absolutely
necessaryin the transitive causative usesof these verbs, particularly with a verb like jump . But
even if thesephrasesneed not be expressedin certain circumstances, they are always understood
in the transitive causative use. A speaker who accepts ( 16c) stin cannot give this sentencethe
interpretation that the rider made the horse jump in place; rather this sentencereceives the
interpretation involving the directional phrase: the rider made the horse jump over something.
We look at this issuein more detail in section 8, where we also discusssome verbs of manner of
motion that do not have causativeforms even in the presenceof directional phrases.
Verbs of manner of motion are not unique in imposing the directional phraserequirement. The
behavior of agentiveverbs of position parallels that of agentiveverbs of manner of motion in that
they can have a causativevariant only in the presenceof a directional phrase, which givesthem an
' assume ' .
position reading: MDUdestood the baby versusMDUdestood the baby on the table. We do
not discussthis data here becausethis classof verbspresentsa number of complications. SeeLevin
and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) for more discussionof verbs of position, as well as a discussion
of a directional phrase requirementthat surfacesin certain circumstanceswith verbs of emission.
B. Levin. M. Rappaport Hovav/ Causative
verbsin English
from that shown by verbs such as break (Cruse 1972, Hale and Keyser 1987,
among others), we include this alternation among the data that needsto be
accounted for since the general form of the alternation is the same: the
transitive and intransitive usesof theseverbs differ with respectto the notion
of ' cause'. Aside from Pinker ( 1989), previous researchershave taken the
central property of these verbs to be that when intransitive they require
agentive subjects, noting that this property appears to be carried over to the
object of their transitive causative use. This work disregards the change in
status of the. directional phrase. In contrast, we believe that the directional
phrase is the key to explaining why theseverbs show the alternation. On the
other hand, the contrast between ( 15)-( 16) and ( 17) suggeststhat , although
there are agentive verbs which participate in the alternation as we have
initially defined it , this alternation may be an instance of a different phenomenon
, as we propose in section 8.
Jespersen ( 1927) calls the classof causativealternation verbs the ' move and
'
change verbs, becauseit includes a variety of verbs of motion and verbs of
change of state. The list of alternating verbs presented in (3) can easily be
divided into two subclasses along theselines:
( 18a) bake, blacken, break, close, cook, cool, dry, freeze, melt, open,
shatter, thaw, thicken, whiten, widen.
(ISb) bounce, move, roll, rotate, spin, ...
To the extent that verbs of motion involve a change of position (though not
' '
necessarilya translation through space), the set of move and change verbs
' '
might be given the unified characterization verbs of change.
. This semanticcharacterization,
although on the right track , is nevertheless
inadequate. As we will see, change of state verbs do constitute the core of the
class of intransitive verbs which alternate. However, to the extent that verbs
of manner of motion like run are verbs of motion , it remains to be explained
why they cannot appear in this alternation without directional phrases (in
contrast to non-agentive manner of motion verbs like ro//). There are also
verbs manifestingthe causativealternations which cannot be readily character-
ized as verbs of change. These include verbs of sound and light emission and
verbs of position .
( 19a) The bell buzzed/rang.

( 19b) The postman buzzed/rang the bell.
(20a) The flashlight beamed/shone.
B. Levin
, M. Rappaport verbsin English
Hovav/ Causative
(20b) We beamed/shone the flashlight.

(21a) Tony hung the laundry on the clothesline.
(21b) The laundry hung on the clothesline.
Furthennore, different classesof verbs participate in the alternation to

varying degrees, a fact which itself is in need of an explanation. Verbs of
change figure most prominently and most regularly in the alternation. Some,
though by no means all , verbs of emission - whether they describe the
emission. of sound, light , smell, or substance - can alternate. We have
presented examples that show that among the verbs of light emission, the
verbs beam and shine alternate, but the verbs glitter and sparkle do not.
Similarly, among verbs of sound emission, the verbs buzz and ring can
alternate, but the verbs burble and roar do not. Verbs of position allow the
alternation rather freely. Not only hang, but also the verbs lean, sit , and stand
allow the alternation, although a few verbs of position, including slouch and
loom, do not. The behavior of slouchis particularly interesting since this verb
is rather close in meaning to lean.
(22a) The ladder leaned against the wall.

(22b) 1 was leaning the ladder against the wall.
(23a) The surly youth slouchedagainst the wall.
* 1 slouched the
(23b) surly youth against the wall.
(24a) The bear loomed over the sleepingchild.
* The
(24b) giant loomed the bear over the sleepingchild.
To summarize, our discussion so far has focused on the first question:

whether all intransitive verbs have transitive counterparts with the paraphrase
appropriate to the causative alternation. We have seenthat the intransitivity
of a verb is not sufficient to ensureits participation in the alternation. Nor is
the semantic notion 'change' sufficient, since although verbs of change are
generally found in this alternation, intransitive verbs of other types differ in
their behavior with respectto the alternation, even when they are membersof
the same semantic class. Some other properties besides intransitivity and
' '
change must be found, and presumably the properties isolated will help to
explain the behavior of the verbs in the different classes.
We turn now to the second question: whether all transitive verbs whose
' '
meaning involves a notion of cause have related intransitive usesthat lack
this notion . Again , the answer is ' no' . There are verbs which meet the
semanticcriterion , but which do not have related intransitive uses. Examples
B. Levin, M . Rappaport Hovav I Causativeverbsin English
include the verb cut, which Hale and Keyser ( 1987) define as in (25), or kill ,
which has been defined - albeit controversially - as ' cause to die' (Lakoff
1970, McCawley 1968, among others).
(25) cut: [x cause[y developlinearseparation in materialintegrity

], by
sharpedgecominginto contactwith latter]
(HaleandKeyser1987 : (10
(26a) Thebakercut thebread.
' '
(26b) *Thebreadcut. (on theinterpretationThebreadcameto becut)
(27a) Theterroristkilledthepolitician
.
27b
( ) *The politiciankilled
.
Verbs close in meaning to cut such as slice or carve do not show the
alternation ; neither do verbs related to kill , such as murder and assassinate.
(28a) Thechiefsliced / carved the turkey .

(28b) *Theturkeysliced /carved.
(29a) The terroristassassinated
/murderedthe politician.
(29b) *The politician assassinated
/murdered.
Moving to other domains, verbs of creation also do not participate in the

alternation, although creation is sometimesdescribed as ' cause to exist' or
' causeto come to be' e. .
( g , Dowty 1979: 91) .
(30a) Anita Brookner just wrote a new novel.

(30b) * A new novel wrote.
(3Ia ) The contractor built another house.
* Another house built .
(3Ib )
Even more interesting is the fact that many morphologically complex

English verbs formed with the suffixes -ize and -iff lack intransitive counterparts
' '
, 9 although these suffixes can be consideredto be causative affixes. (In
fact, -iff comes from the Latin word for ' make/ do' .) Consider the examples
below:
.(32a) The farmer homogenized/pasteurizedthe milk .

(32b) *Themilk hom0genized
/pasteurized
9 This
property of -;ze is also noted by Keyser and Roeper ( 1984).
B. Levin, M . Rappaport Bovav I Causativeverbsin English
(33a) Carlahumidifiedher apartment

- .
*
( 33b) Her apartment humidified .
However , some of these complexverbs have intransitive

: type:
counterparts of the appropriate
(34a) I solidifiedthe mixture.

(34b) The mixturesolidified.
(35a) The cook caramelizedthe sugar.
(35b) The sugarcaramelized .
The behavior of -ify and -ize verbs contrasts strikingly with that of English
verbs formed with the suffix -en. The suffix -en is also arguably a causative
suffix, but verbs with this suffix appear to show the causative alternation
rather more freely.
(36a) I ripenedthe bananas ./ Thebana~as ripened.

(36b) I loosenedthe rope./ Theropeloosened .
(36c) John thickenedthe sauce ./ Thesaucethickened.
(Lakoff 1968: (37a), (4a
As part of a study that attempted to identify causative alternation verbs

automatically in a machine-readable version of the Longman Dictionary of
Contemporary English (Procter et al. 1978), Fontenelle and Vanandroye
( 1989) found that only 14 out of the 82 -ify verbs in that dictionary
participated in the alternation , contrasting with 46 out of the 84 -en verbs.
Unfortunately , they did not provide figures for -ize verbs, but an examination
of the machine-readable version of a comparable dictionary, the Oxford
AdvancedLearner's Dictionary (Hornby 1974), suggeststhat 14 out of the 78
-ize verbs listed as headwords in this dictionary participate in such pairs. 10
The contrasting behavior of these morphologically complex verbs formed
with ' causative' suffixes again calls into question the existenceof a correlation
betweenthe presenceof a notion of 'cause' in a verb' s meaning and a verb' s
ability to show the alternation. It appears that neither intransitivity nor a
' '
meaninginvolving cause is sufficientto ensureparticipation in the alternation.
10 Thesmallnumber of -ify and-izeverbslistedin thesedictionariescanbeattributed to their
intendedfunction : thesedictionaries arerelativelysmalldictionaries designed for learners of
. However
English . a preliminary examination of a moreextensivelist of suchverbssuggests that
thenumber of alternating verbsreallyis notthathigh.
verbsin Englisll
B. Levin, M. RappaportBovav/ Causative
Before presenting our own account of the alternation, we turn to an

examination of an additional factor that intervenesin determining participation
: selectionalrestrictions. The shared semantic relation betweenthe transitive
and intransitive variants of causative alternation verbs has sometimes
beendemonstrated via the existenceof selectionalrestrictions that are shared
by the subject of the intransitive use and the object of the transitive use
(Fillmore 1967, among others) . For example, only physical objects with
certain characteristics can break, a property reflected in the set of possible
objects of transitive break and possible subjectsof intransitive break.
(37a) Antonia broke the vase/ the glass/ the dish/ the radio.
(37b) The vase/the glass/ the dish/ the radio broke.
* Antonia broke the cloth the
(38a) / paper/ the innocence.
* The cloth the
(38b) / paper/ the innocence broke.
Assuming that selectional restrictions reflect the meaning of a verb, then this
pattern of selectional restrictions reflects the fact that both variants share a
common core of meaning.
However, the extent to which selectionalrestrictions are shared acrosssuch
pairs is not as great as is often thought . Smith ( 1970), whose study of the
factors that determine participation in this alternation we come back to in
section 3, points out that some intransitive verbs that typically do not enter
into such alternations may enter into them for certain specific choices of
subjectsof the intransitive use, as shown in the following examples.
(39a) The baby burped.

(39b) The nurseburpedthe baby. (Smith1970: (36a
(40a) The doctor burped.
(40b) *The nurseburpedthe doctor. (Smith1970 : (36c
(4Ia) The bell buzzed
.
(4Ib) The postmanbuzzedthe bell.
(42a) The beesbuzzed .
(42b) *The postmanbuzzedthe bees.
The exampleswith the verbs burp and buzz show that selectional restrictions
need not be identical for the corresponding arguments in the transitive and
intransitive uses. In theseexamples, the set of possibleobjects of the transitive
use are a subsetof the set of possible subjectsof the intransitive use.
The lack of common selectional restrictions is even more pervasive. There

are also instances of the reverse phenomenon: a verb which when used
transitively is found with a set of objects that is larger than the set of subjects
the sameverb allows when used intransitively . To take one example, consider
the verb clear, a deadjectival verb that presumably means ' cause to become
clear' . This verb is found in causativepairs as in (43), yet, although one can clear
a table or a sidewalk, the table and sidewalkcan' t 'clear' , as shown in (44).
(43a) The wind cleared (up) the sky.

(43b) The sky cleared (up).
(44a) The men cleared the table/ the sidewalk.
(44b) * The table the sidewalk cleared.
/
A similar example involves the verb peel. This verb does not alternate at all in
its most literal sense' remove peel from a fruit or a vegetable', although it can
be used intransitively to describethe removal of skin - a ' peel' -like covering -
from a body part . The intransitive use ~f peel seemseven to be preferred in
.the use in (46) . 11
(45a
') 1 peeledthe orange.
* The
(45b) orange peeled.
(46a) 11peeledmy nose.
(46b) My nose was peeling.
The examplesin (43)-(46) show that for some causativealternation verbs the
selectional restrictions on the object of the transitive and the subject of the
intransitive do not always coincide exactly. 12 The transitive object or the
intransitive subject may show narrower restrictions. Presumably, for those
choicesof arguments where these do not have transitive or intransitive uses,
they lack them for the same reason that some verbs never have them.
To summarize, an account of the causative alternation as defined in the
broadest sensemust explain why someverbs show this alternation freely, why
11 This examplewas inspired by a similar examplein Rothemberg( 1974 ), a study of a

comparablephenomenonin French, which includesmany examplesof divergingselectional
restrictions
.
12 It is possiblethat a closerexaminationof a widerangeof verbsmayshowthat theselectional
restrictionsdo not coincidefor any verb. For instance
, as pointedout by Brousseau and Ritter
( 1991
), thereare evensenses of the verb breakwherethe overlapis not complete : H~ brokehis
promisebut * His promisebroke.
B. Levin, M. Hovav / Causativeverbsin English
someverbsdo not showit at all, and why someverbsshowit underrestricted

circumstances
. Finally, such an account must grapple with the issue of
whetherthe data discussedin this sectionrepresenta unifiedphenomenon
or
not.
3. Towards an account of the alternation
The phenomenon we are dealing with falls under the general rubric of
diathesis alternations, alternations which involve changes in the syntactic
expression of the arguments of a predicator as well as in its adicity (the
number of arguments it requires) . Therefore, our account of the alternation
should ideally be embeddedin a generaltheory which accounts for the adicity
of predicatesand the expressionof their arguments. We follow much current
researchon the lexicon (Jackendoff 1990, Rappaport et al. 1988, Rappaport
and Levin 1988, Hale and Keyser 1986, 1987; Pinker 1989, among others) in
assuming that the properties of diathesis alternations in general can be
predicted from the formulation of appropriate lexical semantic representations
for the alternating verbs together with a set of linking rules (Carter
1988), rules which determine the syntactic expression of arguments of a
predicate. As assumedin much of this literature, we postulate two levels of
lexical representation. The first is a lexical semantic representation, a representation
of the syntactically-relevant aspectsof verb meaning, which probably
takes the form of a predicate decomposition. The second is a lexical
syntactic representation or argument structure, which encodesthe syntactic
expressionof the arguments of a verb. We assumethat the lexical syntactic
. representationis derived from the lexical semantic
representationby a set of
linking rules.
Since the causative alternation verbs can be found with either one or two
arguments, a question which arises in the context of determining the lexical
semantic representation of these verbs is whether they are basically one
argument or two argument verbs. That is, are the causativeusesformed from
the non-causative ones or vice versa? We assumethat the basic use of the
verb will impose less stringent restrictions on its arguments than other uses
since the conditions associatedwith a derived use might impose additional
co~straints on the arguments of the verb. In those instanceswhere there are
different selectionalrestrictions on the transitive and intransitive uses, the use
with the looser selectional restrictions, if there is one, is the basic one. This
means that given the data discussed above, for the verb buzz it is the
B. Levin, M. RappaportHovav / Causativeverbsin English
intransitive use that is basic, but for the verb peel it is the transitive use that is
basic. The question to be asked in such instances is what aspect of verb
meaning determines that peel is basically transitive, while buzz is basically
intransitive.
The selectionalrestriction criterion still leavesopen the issueof those verbs
that appear to have similar selectionalrestrictions for both the transitive and
intransitive uses, such as break or open. (Although given the comment in
footnote 12, it is possible that for all verbs the selectional restrictions in one
variant are looser than those in the other.) In order to isolate the meaning
components which determine the (in )transitivity of a verb, we compare verbs
like break that permit transitive and intransitive uses, to verbs such.as laugh,
cry, or glitter that permit only intransitive uses (except perhaps under very
special circumstances). (In section 6 we will address the issue of what
distinguishes the break verbs from transitive verbs like cut and write, which
have only transitive, but not intransitive , uses.) The question is what makes
verbs like break on their intransitive use different from these other verbs?
Here we draw on Smith' s ( 1970) insightful discussionof the semantic factors
that playa part in determining which verbs that can be used intransitively
have transitive causativeuses.
Smith characterizesthe difference between those intransitive verbs which
'
do and do not have transitive causativeusesby meansof a notion of external
'
control . Verbs like break, Smith proposes, denote eventualitiesthat are under
the control of some external causewhich typically brings such an eventuality
about. Such intransitive verbs have transitive usesin which the external cause
is expressedas subject. Verbs like laugh and cry do not have this property :
' '
the eventualities each one denotes ' cannot be externally controlled but can
' '
be control led only by the person engaging in it ; that is, control cannot be
' '
relinquished ( 1970: 107) . Smith takes the lack of a causativetransitive use for
these verbs and other verbs such as shudder, blush, tremble, malinger, and
hesitate, to be a reflection of the presenceof internal control ; we return in
section 4 to the question of why verbs of internal control should have this
property .
(47a) Mary shuddered.

* The
(47b) green monster shudderedMary .
(47c) The green monster made Mary shudder. : (35a-c
(Smith1970
Similar distinctions have been recognized in other work on English (e.g ., Hale
and Keyser 1987) and other languages (e.g ., Guerssel1986 on Berber ) .
B. Levin, M . Rappaport Hovav / Causativeverbsin English
For reasons which we explain below, we will not use Smith' s notion of
'control' for
distinguishingamong intransitive verbs which do and do not have
causativeuses. Rather, we use a related notion, distinguishing between' inter-
' ' '
nally and externally caused eventualities. With an intransitive verb denoting
an internally causedeventuality, someproperty inherent to the argument of the
verb is ' responsible' for bringing about the eventuality. On this approach, the
concept of internal cause subsumesagency. For agentive verbs such as play ,
speak, or work, the inherent property responsiblefor the eventuality is the will
or volition of the agent who performs the activity . However, an internally
caused eventuality need not be agentive. For example, the verbs blush and
tremble are not agentive, but they, nevertheless , can be consideredto denote
internally causedeventualities, becausethese eventualities arise from internal
properties of the arguments, typically an emotional reaction. 13
Verbs with an inanimate, clearly non-agentive subject, may also denote
internally causedeventualitiesin the sensethat theseeventualitiesare possible
becauseof inherent properties of their subjects. In particular , the notion of
internal cause can be straightforwardly e~tended to encompass verbs of
emission. It is an internal physical property of the argument of such a verb
which brings about the eventuality denoted by the verb. This property is
reflected in the strong restrictions that these verbs impose on possible
subjects. For example, only very few things have the properties that are
necessary to sparkle, and the same holds for other verbs of emission.
Consistent with the classification of theseverbs as internally causedis the fact
that , as mentioned in section 2, verbs of emission generally do not have
causativecounterparts, as illustrated in (48) . (We return in section 7 to cases
in which they do.)
*
(48a) The jeweller sparkled the diamond .
* '
(48b ) Max glowed Jenny s face with excitement .
*
(48c) We buzzed the bee when we frightened it .
*
(48d ) The cook bubbled the stew.
13 The verbsshudder andshake , whichat first glanceappearto havethe samemeaning , present
an interestingminimalpair. Only shake , and not shudder
, showsa transitivecausativeuse. Our
accountwouldsuggestthat shakingis externallycausedandshudderingis internallycaused . This
proposalreceivessupportfrom an examinationof the thingsthat can shakeand shudder . The
tw~ setsarenot co-extensive ; thesetof thingsthat shudderis to a largeextenta subsetof the set
of thingsthat shake. Thingsthat shudderusuallycan be thoughtof as havinga ' self-controlled'
;
body they include people, animals , and, perhapsby forcedextension , the earth or a car. In
contrast, leaves , or furniture can only shake. This difference
, teacups , like the internal versus
externalcausedistinction, reflectsthe way weconceptualize the world.
B. Levin, M . Rappaport Bovav I Causativeverbsin English
Since verbs of emission pattern with other verbs without causative counterparts
, we use the notion internal versusexternal causerather than the notion
of control . It seems inappropriate to attribute control to the inanimate
emitter argument of a verb of emission.
In contrast to internally caused verbs, verbs which are externally caused
inherently imply the existenceof an external cause with immediate control
over bringing about the eventuality denoted by the verb: an agent, an
instrument, a natural force, or a circumstance. Thus something breaks
becauseof the existenceof some external cause; something does not break
solely because of its own properties. Some of these verbs can be used
intransitively without the expressionof an external cause, but , even when no
cause is specified, our knowledge of the world tells us that the eventuality
theseverbs denote could not have happenedwithout an external cause.
(49a) The vasebroke.j Antonia broke the vase.

(49b) The door opened .jPat openedthe door.
.We thus assume that the intransitive verbs which have transitive uses are
externally caused, while those intransitive verbs which do not are internally
caused. A closer look at the class of alternating verbs will bear out this
suggestion.
The change of state verbs that figure prominently among the alternating
verbs describe changes in the physical shape or appearanceof some entity
that can be brought about by an external cause, be it an agent, a natural
force, or an instrument. Many of theseverbs are deadjectival; they are based
on stage-level adjectives which describe properties of entities that can be
caused to change, such as their physical characteristics, color , and temperature
(Dixon 1982) . Some examples of such deadjectival verbs taken from
Levin ( 1993) are given below in (SO); these verbs fall into two major groups,
one in which the verbs are zero-related to adjectives, as in (a), and the second
in which the verbs are formed from adjectivesthrough the use of the affix -en,
as in (b) .
( 50a) brown , clear, clean, cool, crisp, dim , dirty , dry, dull , empty, even,
finn , level, loose, mellow, muddy, narrow , open, pale, quiet, round ,
shut, slack, slim, slow, smooth, sober, sour, steady, tame, tan, tense,
thin , warm, yellow, ...
(SOb ) awaken, blacken, brighten, broaden, cheapen, coarsen, dampen,
darken, deepen, fatten, flatten, freshen, gladden, harden, hasten,
B. Levin. M. RappaportHovav I Causativeverbsin English
heighten, lengthen, lessen, lighten, loosen, moisten, neaten, quicken,

quieten, redden, ripen, roughen, sharpen, shorten, sicken, slacken,
smarten, soften, steepen, stiffen, straighten, strengthen, sweeten,
tauten, thicken, tighten, toughen, waken, weaken, whiten, widen,
worsen, ...
The verb smarten provides a particularly interesting illustration of the constraints

on the adjectives that can serve as the base for verbs. Although the
' ' '
adjective smart has two senses , intelligent and well and fashionably
'
dressed, the verb smarten is related to the second adjectival sense, reflecting
the fact that it is typically only in this sensethat the adjective denotesa stage-
level property, and, hence, a property that might be causedto change. l4 That
is, individual -level properties are typically not acquired as a result of an
external cause, whereasstage-level properties are.
The distinction between internally versus externally causedeventualities is
not relevant only to verbs of change. l 5 It also explains the behavior of verbs
of position with respect to the causative alternation. As noted above, verbs
like hang, lean, sit , and stand have causative uses, but verbs like loom and
slouchdo not. It seemsto us that the differencebetweeninternal and external
cause is the key to their differing behavior. Looming and slouching are
postures that are necessarilyinternal caused, unlike hanging, leaning, sitting,
or standing, which are postures that can be brought about by an external
cause.
Many studiesassumethat the intransitive variant of a causativealternation
verb is basic and the transitive variant derived. This assumption probably
seemsjustified becausethe meaning of the transitive verb includes that of the
14
Betsy Ritter has pointed out to us the expressionSmarten up! Here the verb is related to the
' '
adjectival sense intelligent , but interestingly the verb is related to a stage-level use of the
. It
adjective appears that this adjective, like rnany other basically individual -level adjectives, can
sornetirnesbe used as a stage-level predicate.
Dowty ( 1979: 129, fn. 4) discusses other instancesin which deadjectival verbs lose sorneof the
sensesof their baseadjective. For exarnple, he notes that although the adjective tough can rnean
' '
either ' difficult or ' resistant to tearing , the verb toughencannot rnean ' rnake difficult ' . We think
that the stage-level versusindividual -level distinction could be responsiblefor at least sorneof the
differencesin available sensesthat Dowty cites including the toughenexarnple.
15 There seernsto be a
gap in the English verb inventory : there appear to be no agentive verbs
of changeof state. We do not have an explanation for their absence. In fact, we are aware of very
few internally causedverbs of changeof state at all , and those we have found , such asflower and
blo.r.rom, and, in sorne languages, blush are non-agentive. We discuss this type of verb in Levin
and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) .
B. Levin, M. RappaportBovavI Causative
verbsin English
intransitive verb. For example, while transitive break means' causeto become
broken' , intransitive break means ' become broken' . We suggest that this is
not the case. A scrutiny of the range of verb classesin Levin ( 1993) reveals
that there are no externally causedverbs without a transitive variant. That is,
all externally causedverbs have a transitive causative use, but not all of them
need have an intransitive use in which the external causeis unspecified(e.g.,
write or murder) . Given this generalization, we offer the following analysis:
internally caused verbs are inherently monadic predicates, and externally
causedverbs are inherently dyadic predicates, taking as arguments both the
external cause and the passive participant , which is often referred to as the
patient or theme. The adicity of the predicate is then a direct reflection of a
semantic property of the verb. Externally caused verbs only detransitivize
under specific circumstances; we discuss the circumstances that license the
non-expressionof the causeargument of externally causedverbs in section 6.
But it is important to stress that on our analysis externally causedverbs do
not undergo a processof causativization - they are inherently causative- but
rather a processof detransitivization. Since the majority of causativealternation
verbs are externally caused, it is the processof detransitivization that is
most pervasive in English.
The following lexical semantic representationsfor the two types of verbs
reflect the type of distinction we suggest.
( 51) break-transitive: [x CAUSE

[y BECOME
BROKEN ]]
( 52) laugh: [x LAUGH ]
The representation for a verb like break is a complex lexical semantic

representation involving the predicate CAUSE ; it represents the meaning of
such verbs as involving two subevents, with each of the argumentsof the verb
associated with a distinct subevent. The representation for an internally
caused verb such as laugh does not involve the predicate CAUSE ; such verbs
have only one subeventand are taken to be basically monadic. We discussthe
rules that determine the syntactic expressionof the arguments in theselexical
semantic representations
' in the next section. However, it is clear that the
intransitive fo rm of break involves an operation which prevents the external
cause from being projected to the lexical syntactic representation (the argument
structure) . We do not discussthis operation in this paper, but seeLevin
and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) for discussion.
In light of the discussion above, certain facts about the formation of
causativesacross languagescited by Nedjalkov ( 1969) are not surprising. In
verbsin English
this study, which is basedon a survey of 60 languages, Nedjalkov looks at the

morphological relation between the causative and non-causative uses of the
verbs break and laugh (as well as two other verbs) in each of theselanguages.
Nedjalkov points out that in the majority of his sample, the transitive
causative form of the verb break is morphologically unmarked, with the
intransitive form being identical to the transitive form ( 19 out of 60 languages
) or derived from this form (22 out of 60 languages). If verbs such as
break are appropriatelycharacterizedas denoting externallycausedeventualities ,
then the monadic use is in some sensederived and indeed morphological
marking has a function : it is needed to indicate the non-expression of the
external cause. 16
Nedjalkov also considers the verb laugh. As a monadic verb which is
internally caused, the verb laugh does not denote an eventuality that involves
an external cause and can, therefore, be assumed to be basically a single
argument verb. lit fact, Nedjalkov does not cite any languagesin which this
verb has a transitive counterpart which is identical in form to or morpho -
logically less complex than the intransitive and which receives a causative
17
interpretation . Nedjalkov reports that in .54 of the 60 languagessurveyed,
the causative form is morphologically more complex than the non-causative
form ; seealso Hale and Keyser ( 1987) for discussionof some similar data.
'
Haspelmath ( 1993) follows up on Nedjalkov s study and discusses verbs
which tend not to show consistent patterns cross-linguistically . For example,
verbs corresponding to English melt tend to be basically transitive in most
languages, with the intransitive form being the derived form , but the opposite
pattern is found in a few languages. It is likely that this variability arises
becausethe meaning of a verb such as melt is consistent with classification as
either internally or externally caused. 18 Pinker ( 1989) also points out that
16 Of course , therearesomelanguages wherethereverse typeof morphology is usedto create a

fromthemonadic . 9 of the60languages in Nedjalkov 's
dyadiccausative predicate predicate 's
sample
showthisproperty . However , it is difficultto tell fromNedjalkov paperwhether themorpheme
usedto formtransitive breakisthatusedfor thederivation of causatives in generalin thelanguages
concerned, althoughthedataNedjalkov citesin theappendix to hispapersuggests thatin the
majorityof the languages it is at leastnot the morpheme used to form the causative of laugh.
17 Nedjalkov ( 1969 ) notesthatin thoselanguages wheretheverblaughhasbothtransitive and
' ' '
intransitive uses , this verbis likelyto mean'laughat ratherthan makelaugh whenused
.
transitively
18 Nedjalkov (1969 ) alsolooksat two otherverbs , burnandboil, findingthat theirbehavior
withrespect to causative formation across languages wasmuchmorevariable thanthatof break
andlaugh . Thisvariation . likethevariationthatHaspelmath observes withtheverbmelt, could
alsobeattributedto thevariable classificationof theseverbs .
B. Levin. M. RappaportBovavI Causative
verbsin English
there are certain classesof verbs which denote eventualities which can be
construed on cognitive grounds to be either internally or externally caused. It
is precisely with respect to these kinds of verbs that cross-linguistic variation
is expected. In fact, appropriately formulated linking rules should predict
which kinds of verbs are most likely to exhibit cross-linguistic variation . The
distinction betweeninternal and external causation seemsto do just this, and
we take it to corroborate our approach.
4. Formulatingthe linking rules
Although the number of arguments that a verb requires in its lexical

semantic representationis determined by whether it describesan internally or
an externally causedeventuality, we must also posit linking rules that ensure
that these arguments have the appropriate syntactic expression. As we
describein Rappaport et al. ( 1988), we seelinking rules as creating the lexical
syntactic representation or argument structure of a verb from its lexical
'
semantic representation. As we also outline in that paper, a verb s argument
structure in turn relatively straightforwardly determines the d-structure syntactic
configuration that the verb is found in. We propose that the following
linking rules are among those that determine the lexical syntactic representation
of a verb:
(53) Immediate CauseLinking Rule:

The argument of a verb that denotes the immediate cause of the
eventuality denoted by that verb is its external argument.
( 54) Directed ChangeLinking Rule:
The argument of a verb that denotes an entity undergoing a directed
changedenoted by the verb is its direct internal argument.
We have stated theselinking rules in tenDs of the argument structure notions

' external ' ' '
argument and direct internal argument ; these argument structure
' '
positions are then projected into syntax as the d-structure grammatical
relations of subject and object, respectively. In the next section we explain
why we have stated these rules in tenDS of argument structure notions that
correspond most closely to d-structure grammatical relations rather than to s-
structure grammatical relations. In this section we discuss the linking rules
and their application to the data we have discussed.
B. Levin, M . Rappaport Hovav I Causativeverbsin Englisll
The Immediate Cause Linking Rule is intended to apply to the argument

that causesthe eventuality denoted by both internally and externally caused
verbs. First , we consider internally caused verbs such as laugh or play . The
verb laugh' s single argument is the cause of the eventuality that the verb
denotes and will be expressedas an external argument as a consequenceof
the Immediate Cause Linking Rule. This rule will also explain why laugh and
other internally caused verbs do not have a simple transitive causative use.
Such a use would involve the introduction of an additional cause, external to
the eventuality denoted by the verb. Such an external causewould have to be
expressedas the external argument due to the Immediate Cause Linking
Rule. The external causewould thus compete with the verb' s own argument
for external argument. As a verb has only a single external argument, such
causative useswould be ruled out. On this account, the lack of a causative
variant for an internally caused verb receivesan explanation in terms of the
properties of argument structure; this explanation only indirectly appeals to
the semanticsof the verbs involved. 19
The only way to introduce an external causeis to expressthe causative use
of internally caused verbs periphrastically. And across languages, verbs like
laugh, cry, speak or play are causativized through the use of a causative affix
or verb.
( 55a) * The clown

laughed me.
(55b) The clown made me laugh.
(56a) * The bad news cried me.
(56b) The bad news made me cry .
* The director
( 57a) spoke the actor.
( 57b) The director made the actor speak.
(58a) * The
parents played the children.
( 58b) The parents made the children play .
Following Baker ( 1988), Marantz ( 1984), S. Rosen ( 1989), and others, we

assumethat the causative morpheme or verb comes with its own argument
structure, so that the Immediate Cause Linking Rule does not have to
19 Pinker ( 1989
) points out that internally causedverbs are not expectedto have causativeuses
becausethe eventuality they denote cannot have an external causewhich is at the same time an
immediate cause; that is, such eventualities cannot be construed as being directly caused.
Although this property is probably implicated in the non- causativizability of such verbs, the
existenceof ii1;ternally causedverbs which do causativizeunder certain syntactic conditions, such
as those discussedin section 8, suggeststhat syntactic factors enter into the explanation as well.
verbsin English
B. Levin. M. RappaportBovav/ Causative
associate two arguments from a single argument structure with the same
argument structure position . General principles will determine that in languages
with causativeaffixes or verbs the introduced causewill be first in line
for being chosen as the external argument in its clause.
The Directed Change Linking Rule is similar in spirit to familiar linking
rules which associatea patient or a theme (or an equivalent notion ) with the
direct object grammatical function (Anderson 1977, Fillmore 1968, Marantz
1984, among others) . Our formulation is meant to give specific semantic
content to the notions ' patient' and ' theme' . The Directed Change Linking
Rule is meant to apply to verbs of change of state and verbs of change of
location. This second class includes verbs of directed motion such as come,
go, rise, andfa // but NOTverbs of manner of motion such as roll , run, jog , and
bounce. This difference follows because, although the action denoted by a
verb of manner of motion inherently involves a kind of change, it is not a
directed change. Tenny suggeststhat there are certain kinds of changeswhich
can be characterized ' ... as a change in a single parameter or a change on a
scale' ( 1987: 189) . We call such changes' directed changes'. Tenny. arguesthat
an argument denoting an entity which is specifiedto undergo such a changeis
realized in the syntax as a direct object. This property distinguishes a change
of state verb like dry from both agentiveand non-agentive verbs of manner of
motion like walk and roll . The verb dry specifiesa change characterizable in
tenDS of a single parameter, dryness, whereas walk and roll do not specify
such a change. In contrast, for verbs of directed motion there IS a directed
2o
change: a movement in a particular direction. The argument of a nonagentive
manner of motion verb such as roll will be a direct internal
argument, as we will see, but this linking will be effected by another linking
rule. The justification for this will be given in section 7.
The linking rules we have formulated also ensure that when a verb like
break is used transitively, the external cause will be the external argument,
and the patient, since it undergoes a specified change, will be the direct
internal argument. When a verb like break is used intransitively with only the
patient argument, the Directed Change Linking Rule will apply, and this
10 As fonnulatedherethe DirectedChangeLinking Rule, unlikesomeother proposedlinking

rulesthat aresimilarin scope , suchas widenor cool.
, will applyto certainatelicverbsof change
We arguethat this propertyis desirablein Levin and RappaportHovav (to appear ), wherewe
provide a more detailedcomparison of the DirectedChangeLinking Rule with other linking
rules, especiallythosewhichmakereferenceto conceptssuchas telicity. We alsocompareour
'
approachwith one such as Dowty s ( 1991 ) which makesuseof the rather similar notion of
' incrementaltheme'.
.
argument will be the direct internal argument. Since these verbs have s-
structure subjects when intransitive , this argument must assumethe subject
grammatical relation at s-structure, presumably as a consequenceof independent
syntactic principles. The typical GB -framework account of the expression
of the arguments of such verbs makes reference to the Case Filter ,
Durzio' s Generalization, and the Extended Projection Principle (e.g., Burzio
1986); we do not go into details here. 21
Together the Immediate Cause and Directed Change Linking Rules can be
used to predict whether the membersof the verb classesthat we discussedin
section2 will have causativeusesor not. Verbs of changeof state are inherently
dyadic verbs, so they will always have causativeuses, although not as a result
of causativization; in section 6 we elaborate on the circumstancesin which
these verbs can have monadic ' detransitive' uses. Internally caused verbs are
not expectedto have causativeuses, explaining the behavior we observedfor
verbs of emission; we discuss in section 7 why some verbs of emission
neverthelessdo have causatives. Agentive verbs of manner of motion , as
internally causedverbs, are also not expected~o have causativeuses. As seenin
section 2 these verbs do not typically have causative uses in isolation; we
discussin section 8 why theseverbs may have causativeusesin the presenceof
a directional phrase. We attribute the mixed behavior of verbs of position to a
split in the class: some of theseverbs are internally causedand others are not ,
and the internally causedverbs are not expectedto have a causativeuse.
These linking rules leave open the question of what happens with an
argument that falls under neither of the linking rules introduced in this
section. Here we make the assumption, which we justify in Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (to appear), that an argument that is not linked by one of
these two linking rules will be a direct internal argument rather than an
external argument.22
( 59) Default Linking Rule:

An argument of a verb that does not fall under the scopeof the other
linking rules is its direct internal argument.
21 SeeBresnanand Zaenen( 1990 ) for an accountwithin LFG.

22 In Levinand RappaportHovav(to
appear ), wearguethat verbsof appearance andexistence
requiretheir own linking rule. We formulatean additionalrule that appliesto theseverbs, linking
the argumentwhoseexistence is assertedto directinternalargument. The DefaultLinking Ruleis
supposedto apply to thoseargumentsthat do not fall under the scopeof any linking rule,
whetherit is this additionallinking rule or the previouslyfonnulatedrules, the ImmediateCause
and DirectedChangeLinking Rules.
verbsin English
The Default Linking Rule will apply to the theme (located) argument of
transitive sit , stand and other externally caused verbs of position, since this
argument neither causes the eventuality denoted by the verb nor does it
23
undergo a specified change. We return to the Default Linking Rule in
sections7 and 8, where we illustrate its applicability more fully .
5. The Un8ccaativeHypothesis
We have introduced a distinction between internally and externally caused

eventualities. As we discussin greaterdetail in Levin and Rappaport Hovav (to
appear), the two classesof intransitive verbs describedhere are preciselythose
that are implicated in phenomenawhich fall under the rubric of the Unaccusative
Hypothesis ( perlmutter 1978). Since the linking rules do not make
referenceto the adicity of a predicate, they predict that a verb like break, even
when the external causeis not expressed , still takes a direct internal argument,
as can be seenfrom the application of the linking rules to the representations
we introduced above for the two classesof intransitive verbs. With intransitive
break, only the y variable in (51) is expressed ; as the argument undergoing a
directed change, it will be a direct internal argument, and hencead -structure
object in the syntax. In contrast, the x variable in (52), as an immediate cause,
will be an external argument, and hencea d-structure subjectin the syntax. The
syntactic expressionof the argumentsof thesetwo verbs is given below.
-intransitive
(60a) break : - [vpV NP]
60b : NP
( ) laugh [vpV]
Given the definitions of unaccusativeverbs as verbs taking a single direct
internal argument and unergative verbs as verbs taking a single external
argument, the linking rules proposed in section 4 will receivesupport if there
is evidencethat internally caused verbs are unergative and externally caused
verbs, when monadic, are una(x:usa . tive. We review two uoa(x:usa. tive diagnostics
;
that can be used to support this claim ; for further discussion see Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (to appear) .
23 Wedo notdiscuss of theapplication
theseverbsfurtherin thispapersincea full account of
the linkingrulesto theseverbswouldrequireus to introducecertaincomplications in their
behavior. Wediscuss in LevinandRappaport
thesecomplexities Hovav(to appear ). However,
wewouldliketo pointout thatouraccount thattheexternally
suggests caused verbsof position
shouldbebasically .
transitive
Work on the Unaccusative Hypothesis has establishedthat the resultative

construction can be used as an unaccusativediagnostic (Hoekstra 1984, Levin
and Rappaport Hovav (to appear), Simpson 1983, among others) . Although
both unaccusativeand unergative verbs are found in this construction, they
pattern differently due to an interaction of verb type with a syntactic
constraint requiring the resultative phrase to be predicated of ad -structure
object. What matters for our purposes is that when an unaccusativeverb is
found in the resultative construction, the resultative phrase is predicated
directly of its surface subject, as in (61), but a resultative phrase cannot be
predicateddirectly of the surface subject of an unergative verbs, as in (62a). A
resultative phrase may only be predicated of the subject of an unergative verb
' '
through the mediation of what Simpson ( 1983) calls a fake reflexive object,
as in (62b). Alternatively , a resultative phrase may be predicated of a non-
subcategorizedobject found with an unergative verb, as in (63), an option not
available to unaccusativeverbs, as shown in (64) . 24
(61) The bag broke open.

(62a) *We yelledhoarse.
(62b) We yelledourselveshoarse.
(63) The dog barkedthemawake.
(64) *The bag broke the groceriesall over the floor.
Thus the different patterns of the resultative construction correlate with the
status of a verb as unaccusativeor unergative: a monadic verb which allows a
resultative phrase to be predicated directly of its subject is unaccusative, while
a monadic verb which allows such a phrase to be predicated of an object
- either a ' fake' reflexive or a non-subcategorizedobject - is unergative.
The closely related X ' s way construction is also an unaccusativediagnostic.
This construction, in which a resultative phrase is predicated of the subject of
a verb through the use of the phrase ' X ' s way' in object position, is found
with unergative. verbs, but not with unaccusative verbs (Jackendoff 1990,
Marantz 1992) .
(65) They workedtheir way to the top.

(66) *The Arctic explorersfroze their way to fame.
24 SeeLevin and
Rappaport Hovav (to appear) for an explanation of the differential behavior
of the two classesof verbs in the resultative construction, and Hoekstra ( 1992) f~r an alternative
account.
The resultative and X 's way constructions distinguish internally caused

verbs from externally causedverbs as predicted. An examination of the set of
tokens of theseconstructions we have collected over the last few years shows
that internally causedverbs like laugh, play , and work are regularly found in
the X 's way construction and the unergative resultative pattern, while instances
of monadic externally caused verbs are attested only in the unaccusative
resultative pattern.
The behavior of verbs of emission in the resultative construction is of
particular interest since the classification of these verbs has been the subject
of controversy. Perlmutter ( 1978) originally classifiedtheseverbs as unaccusative
, but this classification has been challenged (see for example Zaenen
1993) . We have classified these verbs as internally caused verbs, and hence,
we predict that they will pattern with unergative verbs in general, and in the
resultative and X 's way constructions in particular . The examples below
verify this prediction . 25
(67a) The beaconsflared the newsthrough the land. (HendersonI 92;

cited in K.-G. Lindkvist, A Comprehensive Study of Conceptions of
Locality, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, Sweden , 1976, p. 89, sec.
233, 4)
'
(67b) ... you cant just let the thing ring itself to death, can you? (Observer
; TraceThat Call No More!, New York Times, March 8, 1989 )
(67c) The very word was like a bell that tolled me back to childhood
summers... (Hers; Child' s Play, Women's Sway, New York Times,
July 17, 1988)
(67d) Then he watchedas it gurgledits way into a whiskeytumbler. (M.
Grimes, TheFive Bellsand Bladestone , Little, Brown, Boston, 1987,
p . 200)
(67e) To counterthe uneasethat was oozing its way betweenthem. (P.
Chute, Castine , Doubleday, GardenCity, NY , 1987, p. 214)
In Levin and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) we look at a wide range of

tests and find that they corroborate the results of the two tests that we have
discussedin this section, further supporting the linking rules formulated in
25 Given their
unergative classification. we would not expect these verbs to pattern as
unaccusativeverbs with respectto the resultative construction. In actual fact. some of theseverbs
are found in the unaccusativeresultative construction. but as we discussin Levin and Rappaport
Hovav (to appear) their unaccusative behavior correlates with a shift in meaning. with the
additional meaning being one that is typically associatedwith an unaccusativeclassification.
section 4. In that work , we also show that there are some verbs which are
compatible with both internal and external causation. Theseverbs include the
non-agentive verbs of manner of motion such as roll and bounce and the
verbs of position . As we show in that work , with such verbs external
causation is correlated with unaccusative status, while internal causation is
correlated with unergative status.
6. When can an externally causedverb detransitivize?
The next question we addressis the following : if externally causedeventu-

alities are basically dyadic, when can verbs denoting such eventualities turn
up as intransitive , and why is this possibility open to some verbs only for
'
certain choices of arguments? Again we draw on the insights in Smith s
( 1970) paper to reach an understanding of this phenomenon.
In trying to identify the factors that permit detransitivization (that is, the
non-expressionof the external cause), it is useful to look at the characteristics
.
of the subjects of externally caused verbs. Among the verbs that never
detransitivize are verbs that require an animate intentional and volitional
agent as subject, such as the verbs murder and assassinateor the verbs of
creation write and build.
(68) The terrorist assassinated / murdered the candidate.

69a
( ) Tony wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper.
(69b) That architect also built the new high school.
Smith proposesthat the verbs of change that may be used intransitively are
'
precisely those in which the change can come about independently in the
'
sensethat it can occur without an external agent ( 1970: 102) . She identifies
independenceand external control - the notion which we have subsumed
under our notion external cause - as the two features which characterize
verbs of change. Independence allows for the possibility of intransitive
counterparts, and external control or causation allows for the possibility of a
'
transitive causativeuse. Smith s observation can also be recast as follows : the
transitive verbs that detransitivize are those in which the eventuality can
happen spontaneously without the volitional intervention of an agent. We
believe that this property is reflected in the ability of such verbs to allow
natural forces or causes, as well as agents or instruments, as external. causes,
and, hence, as subjects, as illustrated with the alternating verb break.
B. Levin, M. RappaportHovav/ Causative
verbsin English
( 70) The vandals / the rocks / the stonn broke the windows .
Verbs such as break contrast with verbs such as murder, assassinate , write.
and build. These four verbs, as well as any other verbs which, like them,
denote eventualities that require the participation of a volitional agent and do
not admit natural force subjects, will not detransitivize, despite the fact that
their meaningsinvolve a notion of ' cause'.
(7]a) *The candidateassassinated

/ murdered.
(7] b) *The letter wrote.
(7]c) *The housebuilt.
In fact , these four verbs are among those that require an agent in the
strongest sense: they do not even allow an instrument as subject .
(72a) *Theknifeassassinated
/murdered
thecandidate
.
(72b) *Thepenwrotetheletter.
(72c) 11The
cranebuilt thehouse.
A verb like cut shows that the set of verbs that do not detransitivize is not
limited to verbs which restrict their subjects to volitional agents. Although
this .verb does not typically allow natural force subjects, it does allow
instruments in addition to agents as subjects. 26
(73) The baker/that knife cut the bread.
Sentence(74), however, cannot be used to describe the bringing about of a

separation in the material integrity of some object.
' '
(74) * The bread cut. (on the interpretation The bread came to be cut )
The behavior of a verb like cut can receive an explanation. Its meaning
includes a specification of the means involved in bringing the action it
denotes about, which in turn implies the existence of a volitional agent.
Specifically, the very meaning of the verb cut implies the existenceof a sharp
instrument that must be used by a volitional agent to bring about the change
26 SeeBrousseauand Ritter ( 1991) for further discussionof the circumstancesthat allow verbs
to take both instruments and agents as subjects.
B. Levin, M . Rappaport Bovav / Causativeverbs"in English
of state denoted by the verb. If the samechange of state were to come about
without the use of a sharp instrument, then it could not be said to have come
about through cutting , showing that the choice of instrument makes cutting
cutting .
Perhaps the same considerations can explain the behavior of the verb
remove, which does not have an intransitive form . Its non-existence might
seemsomewhat surprising since at a first approximation this verb' s meaning
' '
might be paraphrased as cause to become not at some location . A closer
look at the verb remove's meaning reveals that the eventuality it denotes is
brought about by a volitional agent, as shown by the oddnessof the examples
in (75), which have inanimate non-volitional subjects.
(75a) ??The wind removed the clouds from the sky.

(cf. The wind cleared the clouds from the sky.)
(75b) ??The water removed the sand from the rocks.
(cf. The water washed the sand from the rocks.)
We assume that the same factors explain why most morphologically

complex verbs formed with the suffixes -ize and -iff cannot typically detransi-
tivize, as the data repeatedhere illustrates.
(76a) The fanner homogenized/pasteurizedthe milk .

(76b) * The milk homogenized/pasteurized.
(77a) Carla humidified her apartment.
(77b) * Her apartment humidified.
Most of theseverbs cannot detransitivize, we propose, becausethey describe
eventualities such as being pasteurized or homogenized that cannot come
about spontaneouslywithout the external intervention of an agent. It appears
to be preciselythose -ify and -ize verbs which allow for this possibility that do
detransitivize.
(78a) I solidified the mixture./ The mixture solidified.

(78b) The cook caramelizedthe sugar./ The sugar caramelized.
Again , the -iff and -ize verbs that do and do not permit intransitive uses
contrast ,with respectto the range of subjectsthey permit when transitive. The
verbs that resist detransitivization show a narrower range of subjects when
transitive ; specifically, they appear to exclude natural force subjects.
' Hollall I CausativelIerbsin English
B. Levin, M . Rappapor
(79a) * The rainy weather humidified the apartment.

(79b) The intense heat caramelizedthe sugar.
If we look more closely at some of the alternating verbs in -iff and -ize
listed in (80), we see that many of these verbs, such as intensify or equalize,
are deadjectival and are very similar in meaning to the previously mentioned
alternating deadjectival verbs in (50) .
(80a) acetify, acidify , alkalify , calcify, carbonify , emulsify, gasify, intensify,

lignify , liquefy, nitrify , ossify, petrify , putrefy, silicify, solidify, stratify,
vitrify , ...
(80b) caramelize, carbonize, crystallize, decentralize, demagnetize, depressurize
, destabilize, equalize, fossilize, gelatinize, glutenize, harmonize,
ionize, magnetize, neutralize, oxidize, polarize, pulverize, regularize,
staQilize, vaporize, ...
Other alternating -iff and -ize verbs are denominal; their meaning may be
'
paraphrasedroughly as causeto turn into the substancenamed by the noun
that the verb is based on' : caramel for caramelize, powder for pulverize, gas
for gasify, and so on.
The non-alternating -iff and -ize verbs also include some denominal verbs
whose stems are nouns that name substances: zincify , carbonize, and lodize.
But -what is interesting is that the meaning of these non-alternating verbs is
different from that of the alternating verbs: it could be paraphrased as
' ' '
process or treat using the substance rather than cause to turn into the
'
substance. We suggest that due to this difference in meaning, these verbs
require an agent and hence do not detransitivize. In fact, if zincify meant
' turn to zinc' rather than ' '
processwith zinc , we would predict that the verb
could alternate, and our own intuitions , as well as those of others we have
consulted, is that it would. A preliminary examination of a wider range of
non-alternating -iff and -ize verbs suggeststhat many describe changesthat
involve a particular type of processing or treatment, as with the previously
cited verbs homogenize and pasteurize or as with the verbs sterilize or
vulcanize. Other non-alternating verbs involve changesof state that only come
about through the active intervention of an agent, such as legalizeor sanctify.
The constraint on detransitivization also explains why some verbs have
intransitive usesonly for certain choicesof patient : it is only for thesechoices
of patient that the change can come about without the intervention of an
agent. For instance, in section 2 we noted the following contrasts involving
the verb clear:
Hovav
, M. Rappaport
B. Levin I Causative inEnglish
verbs
(8Ia) The menclearedthe table/ the sidewalk.

(81b) *The table/ the sidewalkcleared.
(82a) The wind cleared(up) the sky.
(82b) The sky cleared(up).
Our knowledge of the world tell us that tables and sidewalks are things that
are cleared (of dishes and snow, respectively) through the intervention of an
animate agent. The sky, however, can clear through the intervention of
natural forces, such as the wind . Thus the difference in the possibility of
intransitive counterparts.
-
Similarly, peeling - causing an entity to lose an outer layer is typically
brought about through the actions of a volitional agent, particularly if a fruit
or vegetable is involved. However, there are certain entities that lose their
outer layers due to natural causesrather than through the action of an agent,
and in these instancesthe verb peel can be used intransitively , as in the case
of the loss of skin from a person, as illustrated in (84) .
(83a) I peeledthe orange.

(83b) . The orangepeeled .
(84a) 'II peeledmy nose.
(84b) My nosewaspeeling.
The verblengthencanbe usedto presentanothercontrastof the sametype:
(85a) The dressmaker lengthenedthe skirt.

(85b) *The skirt lengthened .
(86a) The mad scientistlengthenedthe days.
(86b) The dayslengthened .
Typically skirts are only lengthenedthrough the intervention of an agent, and

27
hence the verb lengthen as applied to skirts is not found intransitively .
Days, on the other hand, become longer as the earth progresses through a
certain part of its orbit around the sun, something that happens without the
intervention of an outside agent. And lengthenas applied to days is typically
used intransitively, although in a science fiction context where artificial
Z7 Of course, it is possible to construct contexts in which a skirt might be lengthenedby being

washed. As Mary Laughren has pointed out to us, the intransitive use should be possible in such
circumstances.
manipulation of the length of days is possible, transitive usesare also found ,

as in (86a) . These examplesshow yet again that detransitivization is possible
precisely where an externally causedeventuality can come about without the
intervention of an agent. In this sense, detransitivization is a productive
process, since it appearsto be possible wherever this condition is met.
In trying to pin down a verb' s transitivity , we have suggestedthat verbs
can be categorized according to whether or not they denote an eventuality
with an external cause and according to whether or not they denote an
eventuality which can occur spontaneously. Since these two distinctions are
rather similar, we might ask whether there is any need to distinguish between
them. In fact, Haspelmath ( 1993) has independently developed an analysis
similar to the one we present here, except that he does not make a clear
distinction between the two notions. Although Haspelmath is not explicit
about this, it appears that he takes the likelihood of spontaneousoccurrence
'
for an event to be the opposite of external causation for that event. It seems
to us that there is evidence favoring our approach, which takes the two
notions to be distinct. Haspelmath links the likelihood of spontaneous
occurrenceto intransitivity , without distinguishing betweenunaccusativeand
unergative intransitive verbs as we do. For Haspelmath, those verbs which
denote events which are likely to occur spontaneously will have an intransitive
form , while those which are not likely to occur spontaneously will have
only .a transitive form . However, Haspelmath does note that acrosslanguages
certain intransitive verbs like break tend to be the morphologically marked
member of a causative alternation pair of verbs, while others like laugh tend
to be the morphologically unmarked member. It turns out , as he notes, that
those verbs which, like break, are both spontaneously occurring and externally
caused, are the ones which tend to have the intransitive form as the
morphologically marked one. Those which, like laugh, are spontaneously
occurring and internally caused tend to have the transitive member of a
causative alternation pair morphologically marked. This difference justifies
the retention of both notions. In some sense, Haspelmath' s study provides
cross-linguistic corroboration of the results we obtained from the in -depth
study of a single language.
7. Why can some intern aBy caused verbs have a causative use?
We now return briefly to the question of why some internally causedverbs

sometimeshave causative uses. For instance, in section 2 we discussedhow
the verbs burp and buzz, which we have seen are internally caused, can be
used transitively for certain types of arguments, as in the examplesbelow.
(87a) The nurseburpedthe baby.

(87b) *The nurseburpedthe doctor. (Smith1970
: (36a,c
(88a) The postmanbuzzedthe bell.
(88b) *The postmanbuzzedthe bees.
This phenomenonis sparselyand unevenly distributed acrossthe English verb

inventory . For instance, the verb burp may be the only bodily process verb
with a causative transitive use. The existenceof causative transitive uses is
somewhat more widely attested with verbs of emission, particularly verbs of
sound emission. This property might be attributable to the fact that , unlike
verbs of bodily process, verbs of emission are typically predicated of inanimates
; therefore, some verbs of emission can describe either internally or
externally causedeventualities. Among the verbs of emission that can be used
transitively are a few verbs of light emission, including beam and shine, and a
somewhat larger number of verbs of sound emission, including buzz, jingle ,
ring, and rustle. The verb buzz describesa type of sound that is emitted by
certain animals - bees - or by certain types of devices- bells and buzzers.
This verb can only be used transitively when the emitter of the sound is a
device, and only if the device can be causedto emit the sound through direct
manipulation by an external cause. Similarly , the verb of light emission beam
may be used transitively when the object of the verb is a flashlight, again a
' 28
manipulatable device, but not a person s face.
(89a) He beamedthe flashlight in the dark .

(89b) * He beamedher face with satisfaction.
The following generalization appears to hold of all the verbs of emission

with causative transitive uses: they can be used transitively only with an
emitter that is directly manipulated by an external cause, and when used in
this way, the interpretation must be one in which the emission is directly
brought about by an external cause. There are fewer verbs of light emission
28 StevePinkerhaspointedout to us that the transitiveuseof verbsof light emissiongenerally
'
hasa meaningwhich includes' aimingin a particulardirection, renderinga directionalphrase
. He suggests perhapsthe analysisof these
eitherobligatorily presentor at leastunderstood that
verbsshouldbe similar to the one we proposefor the causativeformsof the agentiveverbsof
mannerof motionin the nextsection.
verbsin English
with transitive causative usesthan there are verbs of sound emission since in
most instances the entities of which verbs of light emission are predicated
emit light without the intervention of an external cause, unless theseentities
are devices. More verbs of sound emission than verbs of light emission are
predicated of entities which emit a sound only under manipulation by an
external cause. Some verbs of emission, such as sparkle and burble cited in
section 2, never have causative transitive uses. It is unclear to us at this point
whether some verbs of emission lack causative uses because they denote
eventualities in which causation simply cannot be assumed by an external
cause - that is, they are necessarily internally caused - or because, even
though external causation may be possible, the set of verbs denoting eventu-
alities compatible with both internal and external causation is explicitly
learned from examples.
We can now propose an explanation for why burp is apparently the only
verb denoting a bodily processwith a transitive causative use. One of the few
feasible instances of external causation of a bodily process is burping as it
applies to babies. Babies are incapable of burping by themselves, so that the
person caring for the baby must assumecontrol of the burping . Thus the verb
burp can be used transitively only when babies are involved.
We propose then that the eventualities denoted by a small number of
English verbs are compatible with either internal or external causation, giving
rise to both an intransitive use and a transitive causative use of these verbs.
Sincethe causativeuse, when available, is associatedwith direct manipulation
of the emitter by an external cause, we assume that in such instances the
emitter is no longer viewed as the causeof the eventuality, and that the only
cause is the external cause which manipulates the emitter. The Immediate
Cause Linking Rule will apply to the external cause, so that it will be the
external argument. The Default Linking Rule will apply to the emitter, since
it does not meet the conditions on the other linking rules, and it will be the
direct internal argument.
As mentioned earlier, certain verbs of manner of motion have meanings
compatible with either internal or external causation. These verbs include the
set of verbs of manner of motion which are not necessarilyagentive, such as
swing, bounce, or roll . In Levin and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) we provide
evidence that a verb like roll is in fact unaccusativewhen predicated of an
inanimate entity, as in The ball rolled ( on the floor ) , but unergative when
used agentively, as in The dog rolled ( on thefloor ) . This behavior is just what
our analysis predicts. When internal causation is involved, the Immediate
Cause Linking Rule will ensure that the single argument, as the internal
verbsin English
B. Levin. M. RappaportHovavI Causative
cause, will be the external argument, and the verb will be unergative. When
external causation by an agent or a force, such as a push or gravity, is
involved but no overt cause is expressed, the single argument will be the
direct internal argument due to the Default Linking Rule, and the verb will
be unaccusative. (The Directed Change Linking Rule does not apply since
there is no directed change; the verb roll is atelic in the absence of a
directional phrase.)
8. The interaction of directional phrasesand tr88itivity
In this section we return to the last type of causatives rnentioned in the

survey in section 2: the causativeusesof agentive verbs of rnanner of rnotion
such as march and jump , illustrated in exarnples( I Sb) and ( 16b), which are
repeatedbelow.
(90a) The general rnarched the soldiers to the tents.

(90b) The rider jumped the horse over the fence.
These verbs are internally caused monadic predicates. By the linking rules,
their single argument should be an external argument; therefore, contrary to
fact, these verbs are not expected on our analysis to have the transitive
causativeuseswhich some of them do manifest. In this section we provide an
account of why some members of this set of internally caused verbs have
causativeuses.
In the process, we will also provide an answer to another question that is
posed by the linking rules that figure in our account of causatives. We have
formulated two linking rules which associatearguments with the notion of
direct internal argument, and one which associatesarguments with the notion
of external argument. Since one of the rules linking arguments to direct
internal argument is a default rule, a natural question to ask is why we need
the other rule that links arguments to direct internal argument, the Directed
'
Change Linking Rule, at all. Couldn t the Default Linking Rule alone yield
the same results? For example, if we dispensed with the Directed Change
Linking Rule, the Default Linking Rule could be applied to the verb break
with the desired result. This section explains why both linking rules are
needed. We illustrate the necessityof the Directed Change Linking Rule using
the behavior of agentive verbs of manner of motion with respectto causativi-
zation.
We propose that the key to understanding the unexpectedbehavior of the

agentiveverbs of manner of motion is the fact that in English, such verbs can
be used as verbs of directed motion in the presenceof a directional phrase
( Talmy ] 975, ] 985, among others) .
(9Ia ) The soldiers marched to the tents.

(91b) The horsejumped over the fence.
When an agentive verb of manner of motion is used in a directed motion

sense, then both the Immediate CauseLinking Rule and the Directed Change
Linking Rule are applicable to the agentive argument. If we assumethat the
Directed Change Linking Rule takes precedenceover the Immediate Cause
Linking Rule - something that a default linking rule could by definition not
do - then the single argument of a verb like run would be a direct internal
argument when the verb is usedin a directed motion sense. And indeed many
studies of unaccusativity have established that English agentive verbs of
manner of motion are unaccusativein the presenceof a directional phrase. 29
Given the unaccusativityof theseverbs with directional phrases, it is possible
to give an explanation for why agentiveverbs of manner of motion may have a
transitive causative use when they are unaccusative: there is no external
argument, so that the external causecan be linked to external argument. Since
this alternative linking, which allows us to explain the existenceof the causative
use of these verbs, cannot be accomplished by a default rule, we do not
dispensewith the Directed Change Linking Rule. This account also explains
why a directional phrase is neededor - at the very least - understood when
agentiveverbs of manner of motion are usedcausatively. The presenceof such
a phrase sanctionsthe alternative linking of the theme argument that permits
the introduction of an external cause, explaining the contrasts below.
(92a) The general marched the soldiers to the tents.

(92b) " The
general marched the soldiers.
(93a) The rider jumped the horse over the fence.
(93b) * The rider
jumped the horse.
Theexamplein (94)I shows that a phrasewith a directionalinterpretation.and

not any type of locative phrase, is needed for the causative use.
29 We do not
repeat this evidence here; see Hoekstra
" ( 1984), L. Levin ( 1986), Levin and
Rappaport Hovav ( 1992), C. Rosen ( 1984), among others.
B. Levin, M. RappaportHovav/ Causative
verbsin English
( 94) 111ran the mouse around the box .
This example is unacceptable on the locative interpretation, which would

involve the mouse running aimlessly around inside the box, but it improves
on the directional interpretation where the mouse runs around the perimeter
of the box. The constraint against locative phrasesreflects the fact that only
directional phrasesallow for a directed change.
The process which makes manner of motion verbs into verbs of directed
motion is fully productive in English. Therefore, we would expect that the
process which transitivizes these directed verbs of manner of motion to be
fully productive as well, so that all class members should have a transitive
causativeuse in the presenceof a directional phrase. 3o In fact, a wide variety
of agentive verbs of manner of motion are attested in causative uses with
directional phrases. 31
(95a) ... severalstrong Teamsters... shuffled Kit out of the room ... (L .
Matera, A Radical Departure, 1988; Ballatine, New York , 1991, p . 79)
"
(95b) ... I promised Ms. Cain I would ride her around the ranch
. . ." (N . Pickard, Bum Steer, Pocket Books, New York , 1990, p . 92)
However, some of theseverbs do not seemto have such causatives.
* The trainer
(96a) logged the runners to the finish line.
* The leader climbed the team to the summit.
(96b)
30 This account leavesunexplained the fact, noted also in Pinker ( 1989), that verbs of directed
motion which are not verbs of manner of motion do not have causative counterparts: . She
arrived the package ( at the store) . We believethat the lack of causativeswith theseverbs may not
be a problem for our accou~t of causativesof verbs of motion . We suspectthat theseverbs are
best not characterized as verbs of motion for several reasons, but rather they should be
considered verbs of appearance. Interestingly, verbs of appearance, for reasons that we do not
.
fully understand, do not permit causative uses: The magician appeareda dove (from his sleeve) .
Pinker suggeststhat the semantic conditions we formulate here are only necessaryconditions for
participation in the alternations. He proposes that membership in lexically specified semantic
subclasses of verbs determinesthe sufficient conditions for participation indiathesis alternations
in general. These subclasses are implicated in what Pinker caDs narrow-range lexical rules. It
remains to be seenwhether the lack of causative usesfor certain classesneeds to be stipulated
lexically as Pinker suggestsor can be shown to follow from more general principles.
31 It is clear from the context that in (9Sb) the riders are actually on separatehorses; that is, the
exampledoes not have the accompanimentinterpretation found in sentencessuch as I walkedmy
dog, which might be argued to instantiate a distinct phenomenon from the phenomenon being
discussedhere.
B. Levin. M. RappaportHovavI Causative
verbsin English
The unavailability of certain causativescan be attributed to the Immediate

Cause Linking Rule itself, which is fonnulated in tenDS of immediate causation
. All of the sentenceswith transitive causativeusesof agentive manner of
motion verbs imply somesort of coercion (a fact also noted in Pinker 1989). In
fact, in the absenceof a particular context, these verbs sound best when the
subject is human and the object is an animal, or else when the subject is
someonein a position of authority and the object is under that authority . We
attribute thesepreferencesto a need to construe such examplesin a way that
the subjectcan be interpreted as the immediate causeof the eventuality. Some
verbs of manner of motion describe types of motion that do not lend
themselvesto an interpretation involving coercion, and such verbs are unacceptab
in the causativeuse. This additional condition on causativizationis
illustrated by verbs that describeaimlessmotion , such as stroll , mosey, meander
and wander. Typically aimless motion cannot be brought about by coercion
and, indeed, theseverbs appear not to have a causativeuse.
However, a search of text corpora did yield the following example of a

causative use of stroll , suggestingthat in the right circumstanceseven these
verbs can causativize, although a reviewer found this example unacceptable,
as our analysis would suggest.
(98) Julie Smith will stroll you through the Garden District , in New
OrleansM Durning... (NewYorkTimes
)
On this account, agentive verbs of manner of motion enter into a real
' '
processof causativization , in the sensethat the causativeform is the derived
form. The account of the causativeforms of theseverbs contrasts with that of
the causative forms of verbs like break, which we have argued are basically
dyadic and enter into a process of detransitivization. This analysis, as we
mentioned in section 3, is corroborated by the fact, noted in Hale and Keyser
( 1987), that cross-linguistically it is the causative form of such verbs which
tends to be morphologically marked. 32
32 Another fact which suggests that the pr~ involvedwith verbsof mannerof motion is
differentfrom theoneinvolvedwith verbsof changeofstatc is pointedout by Reinhart( 1991). She
notesthat the introducedsubjectin a transitiveuseof a verb of mannerof motion must be an
agent, not an instrumentor naturalfon:e. CompareTheriderjumpedthehorseoverthefencewith
. Thewhip/thelightningjumpedthehorseoverthe
fence. Thispropertyis alsonotedin Cruse( 1972)
verbsin English
B. Levin, M. RappaportBovav/ Causative
Our account of the transitive use of verbs of manner of motion is different

from our account of the transitive use of verbs of emission. We have claimed
that certain verbs of emission can be construed as being externally caused;
becauseof that, a directional phraseis not required to effect a changefrom an
unergativeto an unaccusativeverb. In contrast, verbs of manner of motion are
never really consideredexternally caused, so that a directional phrase must be
introduced to effect t.hechangein the classificationof the verb from unergative
to unaccusative. The introduction of the new external causeis constrained in
that the external causemust somehowbe construed as an immediate cause. In
fact, as we discuss at greater length in Levin and Rappaport Hovav (to
appear), even with certain inanimate emitters, the emission of the sound does
not come about by direct manipulation of the emitter, so that causativesare
only possible in the presenceof a directional phrase (e.g., The driver roared/
screechedthe car into the driveway). That is, the situation reducesto precisely
the situation observedwith agentiveverbs of manner of motion.
The crucial part that the directional phrase plays in sanctioning the
causative use of agentive verbs of manner of motion is brought out by
comparing the behavior of the verbs run and roll . The verb roll , although a
manner of motion verb, is not necessarily agentive and falls rather into
'
Jespersen' s ' move class. As discussedat the end of section 7, the type of
motion that roll denotes can be either internally caused OT, when brought
about by an agent or a force such as a push or gravity , externally caused.
Depending on whether the verb roll is understood as internally or externally
caused, monadic roll would be predicted to behave either as an unaccusative
or as an unergative verb. When the verb takes an animate agentive argument,
it would be expectedto show unergative behavior since the rolling would be
internally caused. In fact, when the verb takes an animate subject, it can be
found in the prepositional passive construction, a construction that Perl-
mutter and Postal ( 1984) argue is only possible with unergative verbs.
(99) This carpet has been rolled on by three generationsof children.
When its argument is inanimate, the eventuality denoted by the verb would
be externally caused. The argument would be an internal argument by the
Default Linking Rule, since neither of the other two linking rules would be
applicable, and the verb would be expected to show unaccusativebahavior.
In fact, the verb cannot be found in an unergative type resultative construction
with an inanimate subject, as shown in ( I OOa), though it can be found in
an unaccusativetype resultative construction, as shown in ( l00b ) .
B. Levin
, M. Rappaport
HovavI Causative
verbsin English
( I OOa) * The bowling balls rolled the markings off the floor .
(cr. The basketball players dribbled the markings off the floor .)
I
( OOb) The door rolled open/ shut.
This account of why roll can be unaccusativedoes not make referenceto a

directional phrase, contrasting with the account of why run can be unaccusative
. However, like unaccusative run, unaccusative roll should allow for a
causativecounterpart, though again without the necessaryaccompanimentof
a directional phrase. As predicted, the verb roll can be used causatively even
in the absenceof a directional phrase.
( I Ola) The bowling ball rolled (into the room ) .

( I Olb) The bowler rolled the bowling ball (into the room) .
The contrasting behavior of the verbs roll and run supports our account of
thesetwo verbs.
9. Conclusion
In this paper we have unravelled someof the puzzlesconcerningthe causative

alternation. Central to our analysis is the distinction betweenverbs which are
inherently monadic and verbs which are inherently dyadic. This distinction is
related to - but not reducible t033 - the distinction betweenunaccusativeand
unergativeverbs. With respectto the phenomenathat havecome under the label
'causativealternation' we have
, suggestedthat the more productive processin
is one which forms 'detransitive' verbs from lexical transitive causative
English
verbs, as in the case of the verb break. Some verbs, such as buzz have both
transitive and intransitive usessincethe meaningof the verb is compatible with
both internal and externalcausation; this phenomenonis restrictedonly to those
verbs which are indeedcompatible with both interpretations. Transitivization of
agentiveverbs of manner of motion involves the introduction of an agent to an
inherently monadic verb when, due to the presenceof a directional phrase, the
verb no longer takesan externalargument. We hope that this study of causative
verbsin English will help to illuminate our understandingof the much discussed ,
though still elusive
, notion of transitivity.
33 We
argue in Levin and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) that verbs of inherently directed
motion such as arrive are unaccusativeand monadic.
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Section 2
thewordunits
Discovering
Lingua92 ( 1994
Segmentation problems , rhythmic solutions *
Anne Cutler . .
MedicalResearch
Council.AppliedpsychologyUnit. 15 ChaucerRoad. Cambridge
CB22EF. UK
Thelexiconcontainsdiscreteentries,whichmustbe locatedin speechinput in orderfor speech

to be understood ; but the continuity of speechsignalsmeansthat lexicalaccessfrom spoken
input involvesa segmentation problemfor listeners . The speechenvironmentof prelinguistic
infantsmaynot providespecialinformationto assistthe infant listenersin solvingthis problem.
Maturelanguageusersin possession of a lexiconmight be thoughtto be able to avoid explicit
segmentationof speechby relying on information from successfullexical access ; however ,
evidencefrom adult perceptualstudiesindicatesthat listenersdo use explicit segmentation
procedures . Theseproceduresdiffer acrosslanguagesand seemto exploit language -specific
rhythmic .
structure Efficientas these are
procedures , they may not have been developedin
responseto statisticalpropertiesof the input, becausebilinguals, equally competentin two
;languages, apparentlyonly possess onerhythmicsegmentation procedure. Theorigin of rhythmic
'
segmentation may thereforelie in the infant s exploitationof rhythm to solvethe segmentation
problemand gain a first toeholdon lexicalacquisition . Recentevidencefrom speechproduction
and perceptionstudieswith prelinguisticinfantssupportsthe claim that infantsare sensitiveto
rhythmicstructureand its relationshipto lexicalsegmentation .
I . Introduction: Using the lexicon in listening to speech
The lexicon, which is the focus of the present collection of papers, is

assumed to be an essential component of every language user' s linguistic
apparatus. The contents of a lexicon are so patently language-specific that it
goeswithout saying that a lexicon cannot be inborn - it must be acquired, on
the basis of linguistic experience. Such experienceusually consists of hearing
utterances, which typically are many words in length. But we can safely
. Financialsupportis acknowledged from the Human Frontier ScienceProgram. Thanksas

alwaysto the colleagues with whom the many and variedexperimentssummarised herewere
carriedout: Sally Butterfield, David Carter, Giyoo Hatano, PeterJusczyk , JamesMcQueen ,
JacquesMehler, Dennis Norris, TakasmOtake and Juan Segui. For discussionsand other
assistancewith this paperthanksto MelissaBowerman , Sally Butterfield, Mike Kelly, James
McQueen , JacquesMehler, DennisNorris and Ann Peters .
. . AnneCutler is now at Max PlanckInstitutefor Psycholinguistics , P.O. Box 310, 6500AH
Nijmegen, The Netherlands .
- 3841/94/507.00 @ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

0024
SSDIOO24-3841( 93) EOO39 -A
A. Cutler/ Segmentation
problems
assumethat complete utterancesare not what lexicons consist of. The number
of utterances is potentially infinite , so that to store all the utterances we
might ever hear our lexicon would also have to have infinite capacity. Even if
we set an arbitrary length limit , the number of possible utterances is enormously
large; for instance, Miller ( 1967) calculated that there must be at least
1020possible English sentencesof twenty words or less - a total which, he
drily added, would take considerably longer than the estimated age of the
earth to speak.
Instead, we assume that the contents of a lexicon consist of sound-to-
meaning mappings in discrete chunks. ( Wecan refer to lexical entries by the
shorthand term ' words' , although of course not aU lexical entries necessarily
correspond to what would be written as a single separate word. Some subword
forms such as affixes or stem morphemes may well have lexical
representation, as may particles which are conjoined with other words in
writing ; likewise, multi -word idiomatic expressionsand frequently occurring
phrasesmay be representedby a single entry .) Thus using a lexicon requires
the separation of utterances into the lexically relevant chunks of which they
are made up - producing speechrequires the languageuser to string together
lexical entries to make a whole utterance, and recognising speech requires
division of an utterance into units which can be looked up in the lexicon.
Likewise, acquiring a lexicon eventually involves acquiring the ability to use it
in theseways.
The present contribution focusseson the very start of lexicon-building :
how the infant might find out what words in the input languageare like , and
might assemblean initial stock of known words. The initial task is perceptual.
What exactly does it involve? For instance, does it involve (as mature useof a
lexicon in speechrecognition involves) division of multiword utterancesinto
lexically relevant chunks? And if so, how difficult is this task? To answer
thesequestions we need to consider the nature of the speechinput with which
the infant is most likely to be confronted. Comparative studies of various
types of speechare consideredin the next section.
2. Stylesof adult - directetl speech
Most of the speechany listener hears is spoken spontaneously- the speech

signalswhich occur in the majority of everydaysituations have beenconceived
and composed by their speakerseven as they are uttered. For most listeners,
spontaneous speech is encountered far more often than other styles such
A. Cutler / Segmentationproblems
as rehearsed speech (heard in the theatre or on radio or television, for

example), read speech (in news broadcasts, or , too often, in lectures) or
computer-synthesisedspeech.
Whatever the style of speech, words in isolation occur only rarely - nearly
all utterances are multiword . A lot is known about the phonetics of multiword
utterances, and a fair summary of our knowledge is that words are
strongly affected by the contexts in which they occur; moreover, these
contextual assimilation processes operate to obscure word boundaries, with
the result that there are few reliable cues in a continuous speechsignal to
where one word ends and the next begins. Klatt ( 1989) provides a telling
overview of the problems which this causesfor the lexical accessprocess so
essentialfor speechrecognition.
Nevertheless, the majority of such phonetic studieshave beenconducted on
speechproduced in laboratory situations, which is normally read speech. Is
this a fair representation of the speech which most listeners usually hear?
Motivated by this question, speechscientists have undertaken a number of
studies aimed at describing spontaneous speech, and becauseof the underlying
motivation , most of the studies have been comparative: spontaneous
speech has been contrasted with read speech. These studies have revealed
systematic differences between the two types of speech. Some of these
differences might render the listener' s problems even worse in spontaneous
than in read speech. For example, casual spontaneousspeechis particularly
prone to phonological elisions and assimilations (G. Brown 1977, Labov
1972, Milroy 1980) and to syntactic simplifications and, occasionally, incompleteness
(Cheshire 1982, Labov 1972) . Other differences, however, might
make life easier for listeners to spontaneous speech. These are principally
differences in the prosodic domain. Thus spontaneous speech tends to be
produced at a slower rate than read speech(Barik 1977, Johns-Lewis 1986,
Levin et al. 1982), and to have longer and more frequent pauses and
hesitations (Barik 1977, Crystal and Davy 1969, Kowal et al. 1975, Levin et
al. 1982) and shorter prosodic units (Crystal and Davy 1969) .
Listeners can distinguish spontaneous utterances either from read speech
(Levin et al. 1982, Remezet al. 1985, Blaauw 1991) or from rehearsedspeech
(Johns- Lewis 1987) ; their judgements are most likely based on prosodic
aspectsof the speech, becauseaccuracy is still high when the speechextracts
have been low-pass filtered (Levin et al. 1982), while the distinction can not
be as accurately made on written versions of the text (Johns- Lewis 1987) .
Fluent spontaneous speech can be identified as accurately as disftuent
(Blaauw 1991).
A. CullerI Segmentation
problems
The prosodic differencesbetweenspontaneousand read speechhave consequences

for the way speechin each mode is processedby listeners. McAllister
( 1991) examined word recognition in spontaneousand read speechusing the
gating task, in which listeners hear successivelylarger fragments of a word.
She found that word identification (in context) occurred earlier for a word
stressedon the first rather than on the secondsyllable in spontaneousspeech,
but not in read speech. In a word -by-word gating study of spontaneous
speech Bard et ale ( 1988) and Shillcock et ale ( 1988) similarly found that
words containing strong syllables were easier to identify than words which
were realised as weak syllables.
Mehta and Cutler ( 1988) investigated phoneme detection reaction time in
spontaneous and read speech, and compared in particular the relative
strength in the two speech modes of a number of previously established
effects. They found no overall difference in responsetime between the two
speech modes, and also no difference between the two modes on the one
semanticvariable in the study, the effectsof the transitional probability of the
target-bearing word. However, four other effects differed across modes. In
read speechbut not in spontaneous speech, late targets were detected more
rapidly than early targets, and targets precededby long words were detected
more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous
speechbut not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in
accentedthan in unaccentedwords and in strong than in weak syllables.
Mehta and Cutler explained these differencesin terms of prosodic differences
betweenthe two speechmodes. The greater frequency of hesitations in
spontaneousspeech, for example, results in shorter prosodic units, which in
turn reduces the average span over which rhythmic predictability will hold.
So becauseprosodic units are long - generally clause-length - in read speech,
but usually short in spontaneous speech, the opportunity for rhythmic
prediction in the latter case is much smaller. Mehta and Cutler thus argued
that position in the sentence is not , strictly speaking, what affects target
detection time ; rather, the effective variable is position in the prosodic unit .
Similarly, becausehesitations tend to be more frequent and longer in spontaneous
speech,,it is much more likely that a particular target-bearing word will
be precededby a hesitation in the spontaneousthan in the read mode. Where
a target is immediately preceded by a hesitation, any effects of incomplete
processingof the previous word will be nullified by the extra processingtime
provided by the hesitation, so that effectsof precedingword length, which are
held to reflect just such processinghangovers from the preceding word , will
be lesslikely . Finally , becauseaccent patterns in spontaneousutteranceswere
more varied and less likely to expressdefault accenting than those in read
utterances, and the acoustic differences between strong and weak syllables
were greater in spontaneousthan in read speech, there was greater opportunity
for processing effects of both sentence accent and syllable stress to
appear in the spontaneousthan in the read speech; this would account for the
finding of significant facilitation due to sentenceaccent and syllable stressin
the fonner but not in the latter. The results of the gating studies described
above provide similar evidenceof the perceptual importance of syllable stress
in spontaneousspeech.
These findings speak to the majority case for speech processing. Most
speech that adult listeners hear is spontaneously produced. Such speech is
characterised by a fairly slow overall rate of speech, short prosodic units,
frequent pausesand, in English, a clear opposition betweenstrong and weak
syllables. These factors affect the way the speechis processed.
3. The infant's speechenvironment
Is the infant ' s speechenvironment the sameas that of an adult listener? In

one respect it is not , becausespeechdirected to the infant as chosen listener
exhibits a pattern which is systematicenough to warrant calling it a separate
speechstyle. This conclusion emergesfrom a number of studies which have
investigated the characteristics of speech addressed to young children at
various stagesof development; again, the studies have mainly been comparative
, with infant -directed spontaneousspeechbeing typically contrasted with
speechfrom the same speakersto adults.
In European languages, infant -directed speech tends to be spoken at a
slower rate, to have more frequent stresses, shorter continuous sequencesand
longer pauses, and to be higher in pitch than adult-directed speech(Fernald
and Kuhl 1987, Fernald and Simon 1984, Fernald et al. 1989, Garnica 1977,
Stern et al. 1983) . Slower rate, more frequent prosodic demarcation, and
longer pauses, it will immediately be noted, are the primary factors which the
review in the previous section revealed as distinguishing spontaneous from
'
non-spontaneousspeech. To the present author s knowledge thesetwo literatures
have not been directly compared; there would seemto be a defensible
case, however, for considering adult-directed and it:tfant-directed spontaneous
speechin terms of a single continuum , with infant ~directed speechoccupying
a more extreme position on most measures.
A. CutlerI Segmentation
problems
The one exception is that infant -directed speechis reported to have higher
pitch and a wider fundamental frequency range ( Fernald and Simon 1984,
Garnica 1977) . In contrast, the fundamental frequency range of spontaneous
speechhas been reported in at least some studies to be relatively narrow , at
least in intimate conversation (Johns-Lewis 1986, Blaauw 1991) . Pitch is a
particularly important dimension of infant -directed speech, since the fact that
infants prefer to listen to this style of speech(Fernald 1985) has been found
to be principally due to its pitch characteristics (Fernald and Kuhl 1987,
Sullivan and Horowitz 1983) .
Ohala ( 1983, 1984) has argued that raised pitch is an ethologically universal
signal of smallness, ingratiation and non-threatening attitude. From such a
perspective it would be possible to argue that raised pitch might not be a
phonologically relevant manipulation in speechto infants, but might simply
arise from universal expressionof affection or nurturance on the part of an
adult to an infant . Against this conclusion, on the other hand, might be cited
the more recent findings that the pitch manipulations found in infant -directed
speech in American English and related languagesare apparently not universal
. Although rising contours predominate in infant -directed speechin the
stresslanguagesEnglish (Sullivan and Horowitz 1983) and German (Fernald
and Simon 1984), falling contours are more prevalent in the tone languages
Mandarin (Grieser and Kuhl 1988) and Thai (Tuaycharoen 1978) . In a
comprehensive review of the literature on pitch in infant -directed speech,
Shute ( 1987) concluded that pitch modifications are not only clearly not
universal across languages, but may also differ within one language as a
function of sex of the speaker, age of the child addressee , frequency of the
' s interaction with children and other factors.
speaker
In fact a recognisablestyle of infant -directed speechis itself not universal,
contrary to the confident expectations of researchersin the 70s that it would
prove not only to be universal (Ferguson 1977) but absolutely necessaryfor
successfulacquisition (R. Brown 1977) . It is now clear that there are cultures
where infants are exposedto much normal adult speechbut no speechin any
special infant -directed mode (Heath 1983, Schieffelin 1985, Schieffelin and
Ochs 1983) . Even where infant -directed speech appears to conform to the
pattern obserVedin English and like languages, this may not constitute a
specialisedmode; thus infant -directed speechin Quiche Mayan has relatively
high pitch , but so, in this language, does adult -directed speechfrom the same
informants (Bernstein-Ratner and Pye 1984) .
Thus it is reasonable to conclude that infants in the earliest stages of
- and for some
language acquisition receive at least some of their input
problems
infants, perhaps all of their input - in a fonn that at least closely resembles
nonnal spontaneous speech between adults. One of the characteristics of
spontaneousspeech, it will be recalled, is the high frequency of phonological
elisions and assimilations (G. Brown 1977, Labov 1972, Milroy 1980) . Some
studies have reported that child -directed speech, too , is replete with such
distorting processes (Bard and Anderson 1983, 1991; Shockey and Bond
1980), which is consistent with the view that this style of speechlies on a
generalcontinuum with adult-directed casual speech. Other studies, however,
have reported lower frequency of distorting phonological transformations in
speechto infants than in speechto adults (Bernstein- Ratner 1984a,b) . In an
attempt to resolve this apparent contradiction , Stoel-Gammon ( 1984) transcribed
five hours of speechto one-year-olds; her results strongly support the
view of a continuum , since she effectively discovereda continuum within her
own data, from very clear articulation (e.g. releaseof word -final stop bursts,
clear articulation of unstressedvowels) to very casual forms (frequent vowel
reduction, omissions of whole syllables such as [sko] as a pronunciation of
'
let s go) . Stoel-Gammon concluded that the phonological characteristics of
speech to children depend on such factors as contextual redundancy, the
function of the individual utterance, and the situational context - the same
factors that determine the phonologicalforms of adult spontaneous speech
(Liebennan 1963, Cheshire 1982) .
There is to my knowledge no evidence, from any culture, of a greater
incidence of isolated words in speech to children than in other forms of
speech. Even though phrases may be short, they are still phrases. Thus a
speechsegmentationproblem, as describedin the introductory section to this
paper, seemsto exist for the infant as for the adult languageuser. The speech
'
that the infant hears is continuous; much of the speech of the infant s
environment will be speech among mature language users; in perhaps a
majority of cultures speechaddressedspecifically to the infant would fonn
only a small proportion of the input ; even then, such speech may not
necessarilybe clearly articulated. The problem is compounded for the infant
by the necessity of compiling a lexicon, and this added difficulty does not
trade off against reduced segmentation difficulty in the input . In fact, the
scaleof the segmentationproblem in the structure of the input is remarkably
similar for the infant and for the adult.
problems
4. The segmentation problem for adult listeners
The adult listener typically hears continuous multiword utterances, and

must therefore segmentthe speechstream in order to understand them. The
importance of this segmentation problem has long been acknowledged, and
many, widely varying, experimental approaches have tackled the question
(e.g. Hayes and Clark 1970, Wakefield et al. 1974, Pilon 1981) . But the
adult ' s situation differs from that of the child becauseas a mature language
user the adult is already in possession of a lexicon. This has led some
researchersto claim that the adult listener has no need of explicit segmentation
procedures, since the successfulrecognition of a word will ensure that
whatever immediately follows that word will be known to be word -initial . For
example, Cole and Jakimik ( 1978) proposed that recognition of spoken
utterances proceeds in strictly temporal order, and ' one word ' s recognition
'
automatically 'directs segmentationof the immediately following word ' ( 1978:
93) . We could call such a model ' segmentationby default' .
On closer inspection, though, it becomes obvious that segmentation by
default could not work , at least for English. Firstly , the model relies on
listeners being indeed able to determine where a word ends. It is true that
sometimesphonetic sequenceconstraints will be of use in this. Somesequences
of phonemes- [au k ], [m g] , [ai S] , for example - never occur word -internally
in English (Lamel and Zue 1984, Harrington et al. 1987) ; thus a sentencelike
How comeGuy shaved? should prove very easyto segment. But unfortunately
such helpful sequencesare rare. As McQueen and Cutler ( 1992) have recently
demonstrated, the English vocabulary contains few totally distinct words ;
most long words have other words embedded in them (as reconciliation
contains wreck, reckon, sill , silly , ill , etc.), while most short words occur
within longer words (as late can be found in latency, collate, belated,
'
translatability, etc.) . Moreover, McQueen and Cutler s computations showed
that the majority of such overlaps occur at the beginnings of the longer
words, a particular problem for segmentationby default.
Of course, in typical English speechthe majority of words are monosyllabic
( Cutler and Carter 1987), which will certainly reduce the problems causedby
such embeddings. But most monosyllabic English words do not become
unique until at or after their final phoneme (Luce 1986) ; and in fact many
words - especially monosyllabic words - can not be recognised until after
their acoustic offset. Post-offset recognition has been demonstrated both with
laboratory -produced (i.e. carefully read) speech (Grosjean 1985), and with
spontaneously produced speech(Bard et al. 1988, Shillcock et al. 1988) . If
words cannot be recognisedtill after their ends then segmentationby default

would lose its very basis.
Secondly, models such as segmentationby default are far from robust ; they
assumethat prelexical processingof the speechsignal will be accurate. But in
practice speechsignals are not always fully clear. Background noise, distance
between speaker and listener, distortion of the speaker's vocal tract , foreign
accents, slips of the tongue - all these, and similar factors, conspire to make
the listener' s phonetic interpretation task harder. A much more robust model
is neededto account for what is obviously true, namely that human speech
recognition is extremely successful even under noisy conditions or with
previously unfamiliar voices or accents.
S. A solutionfor English: Rhythmicsegmentation
In fact there is a good deal of evidencefrom human speechrecognition in

English that explicit segmentationprocedures.are employed by adult listeners.
Cutler and Norris ( 1988) suggestedthat the characteristic rhythmic structure
of English could form the basis for an effective segmentation procedure,
becauseEnglish speech shows a systematic relationship between rhythmic
patterns and word boundary locations. The rhythm of English is based on
stress, with syllables of the language being either strong or weak; strong
syllables contain full vowels, while weak syllables contain reduced vowels
(usually schwa) . Cutler and Carter ( 1987) demonstrated that English lexical
words are far more likely than not to begin with strong syllables - in a
33,OOO -word phonetically transcribed dictionary (the MRC Psycholinguistic
Database: Coltheart 1981, Wilson 1988), 73% of all entries had strong initial
syllables. But the frequency of occurrenceof individual words differs widely;
lexical, or content words, are sometimesvery common (e.g. people), but more
often are very rare (e.g. peon, steeple), while some words which inrunning
speech are usually realised as weak syllables - grammatical, or function
words, such as of or the - occur very frequently. Cutler and Carter examined
a 190,OOO -word natural speech sample, the Corpus of English Conversation
( Svartvik and Quirk 1980), using the frequency count of this corpus prepared
by Brown ( 1984) ; they found that in this corpus 90% of the lexical words
have strong initial syllables. However, the grammatical words in the corpus
were actually in the majority , and they were virtually all weak monosyllables.
Cutler and Carter computed that about three-quarters of all strong syllables
in the sample were the sole or initial syllables of lexical words, while more
than two-thirds of all weak syllables w~re the sole or initial syllables of
grammatical words.
This means that a listener encountering a strong syllable in spontaneous
English conversation would seem to have about a three to one chance of
finding that strong syllable to be the onset of a new lexical word. A weak
syllable, on the other hand, would be most likely to be a grammatical word.
English speech should therefore lend itself to a segmentation procedure
whereby strong syllablesare assumedto be the onsetsof lexical words. Cutler
and Norris interpreted results of an experiment they ran as evidencefor such
a procedure. They used a task which they called word -spotting, in which
listeners were asked to detect real words embeddedin nonsensebisyllables;
detection times were slower to the embeddedword in , say, mintayf (in which
the second vowel is strong) than in mintef (in which the second vowel is
schwa) . Cutler and Norris interpreted this as evidence that listeners were
segmenting mintayf prior to the second syllable, so that detection of mint
therefore required combining speechmaterial from parts of the signal which
had been segmentedfrom one another. No such difficulty would arise for the
detection of mint in mintef, since the weak second syllable would not be
divided from the preceding material.
Further evidence for such a procedure was produced by Cutler and
Butterfield ( 1992), who investigated the way in which word boundaries tend
to be misperceived. In both spontaneousand experimentally elicited misperceptions
they found that erroneous insertions of a word boundary before a
strong syllable (e.g. achievebeing heard as a cheap) and deletions of a word
boundary before a weak syllable (e.g. bird in being heard as burgling) were far
more common than erroneous insertions of a boundary before a weak
syllable (e.g. effective being heard as effect oJ> or deletions of a boundary
before a strong syllable (e.g. were waiting being heard as awaken) . This is
exactly what would be expected if listeners deal with the segmentation
-
problem by assuming that strong syllables are likely to be word initial , but
weak syllables are not.
As Cutler and Norris point out , the strong syllable is defined by the quality
of its vowel (full , in comparison to the reduced vowels of weak syllables) ;
thus spotting strong syllables cannot provide a complete solution to the
segmentation problem since word boundaries actually occur prior to the
onset of syllables. A strong syllable spotter must be supplementedby some
means of estimating actual syllable onset; Cutler and Norris suggest that
more than one alternative realisation of such a device would be feasible.
-
Assuming that a rhythmically based segmentation procedure is indeed prac
A. Cutler I Segmentationproblems
tical , its advantages are considerable. For instance, such a procedure is

obviously not going to be affected by the frequency of words embedded
within other words in speech, or by the relative frequency of monosyllables
versus polysyllables. Only where polysyllabic words contain strong syllables
in non-initial position will the procedure produce a non-optimal result (i.e. it
will signal a word boundary but this will be a false alarm) . However,
polysyllabic words with non-initial strong syllables occur relatively rarely
(Cutler and Carter 1987), and in only a small minority of them will a false
alarm actually produce a real word unrelated to the embedding word (e.g.
late in collate; Cutler and McQueen, in press). Thus rhythmic segmentationis
a relatively efficient procedure for English.
It is also quite robust - in fact, it is precisely with uncertain input that
rhythmic segmentation proves particularly useful. R.esearchersin automatic
speechrecognition (e.g. Shipman and Zue 1982) have developed systematic
representationsof phonetic uncertainty, namely transcriptions in which only
general classesof phoneme are provided (e.g. glide, nasal, stop consonant,
etc.). Two studies using uncertain input of this kind have produced further
evidence in favour of rhythmic segmentation. In the first study, Briscoe
( 1989) implemented four segmentation algorithms and tested their performance
-word
on a (phonetically transcribed) continuous input , using a 33,OOO
lexicon. The algorithms postulated potential lexical boundaries: (a) at the
end of each success ' '
fully identified word ( segmentation by default ); (b) at
each phoneme boundary; (c) at each syllable onset; and (d) at each strong
syllable onset (the rhythmic segmentation proposal) . The measureof performance
was the number of potential lexical hypothesesgenerated (the fewer
the better) . With completely specifiedphonetic input all algorithms naturally
performed quite well. However, significant differencesbetweenthe algorithms
emerged when some or all of the input was phonetically uncertain; most
affected were ' segmentationby default' and the phonemic algorithm , both of
which generated huge numbers of potential parses of incomplete input . Far
better results were produced by the algorithms which constrained possible
word onset positions in some way, and the more specific the constraints, the
better the performance: the rhythmic segmentationalgorithm performed best
of all with the uncertain input . In the second study, Harrington et al. ( 1989)
compared the rhythmic segmentation algorithm with a segmentation algorithm
based on permissible phoneme sequences(Lamel and Zue 1984, Har -
rington et al. 1987), using as a metric the proportion of word boundaries
correctly identified in a 145-utterance corpus. With phonetically uncertain
input, sequenceconstraints proved virtually useless , but the rhythmic segmen-
A . Cutler I Segmentationproblems
tation algorithm still performed effectively (in fact it correctly detected more
word boundaries in uncertain input tharl the phoneme sequenceconstraints
had detectedin completely specifiedinput) .
The efficiency and robustness of rhythmic segmentation therefore suggest
that listeners profit from employing an explicit segmentation procedure of
this kind . A striking fact about this procedure, however, is its language-
specificity: as described for English, the procedure is based on stressrhythm ,
i.e. the opposition of strong and weak syllables. Clearly, it therefore cannot
be a universal strategy, becausemany (indeed most) languagesof the world
do not have stress rhythm . However, all languages have rhythm - speech
rhythm need not be stress-based. In the next section alternative forms of
rhythmic segmentation are described, supported by the results from experiments
in languageswhich do not have stressrhythm .
6. Rhythmicsegmentation in French and Japanese
Mehler (e.g. 1981) and his colleagues(e.g. Segui 1984) have used a variety
of psycholinguistic tasks to demonstrate processing advantagesfor syllables
in speech comprehension. In one experiment, which launched a series of
cross-linguistic comparisons, Mehler et al. ( 1981) had French subjects listen
to lists of unrelated words and press a responsekey as fast as possible when
they heard a specifiedword -initial sequenceof sounds. This target was either
a consonant-vowel (CV) sequencesuch as ba- or a consonant-vowel-consonant
(CYC) sequencesuch as hal- . The words which began with the specified
sound sequencehad one of two syllabic structures: the initial syllable was
either open (CY ), as in balance, or closed (CYC ), as in balcon. Mehler et al.
found that responsetime was significantly faster when the target sequence
corresponded exactly to the initial syllable of the target-bearing word than
when the target sequenceconstituted more or less than the initial syllable.
Thus responsesto ba- were faster in balancethan in balcon, whereasresponses
to bal- were faster in balcon than in balance. Mehler et al. claimed that this
result supported a syllabically basedsegmentationstrategy in speechrecognition
in French. Similarly, Segui et al. ( 1981) found that listeners are faster to
detect syllable targets than to detect targets corresponding to the individual
phonemeswhich make up those samesyllables. Further evidencefrom French
that polysyllabic words, whether they are heard in isolation or in connected
speech, are analysed syllable by syllable came from studies by Segui ( 1984)
and by Dupoux and Mehler ( 1990) .
If speechsegmentation in French proceedssyllable by syllable, there is an

interesting parallel to the results from English reported in the previous
section. Just as use of the opposition between strong and weak syllables in
'
segmentingEnglish exploits the English languages characteristic stress-based
rhythmic pattern, so does use of the syllable in segmenting French exploit
rhythmic patterns, since the characteristic rhythm of French is syllable-based.
Recent results from studies of speech segmentation in a third language,
Japanese , confinn the connection between segmentation and speechrhythm .
In Japanese , speech rhythm is based on a subsyllabic unit called the mora
( which can be a vowel, an onset-vowel sequence , or a syllabic coda). Otake et
al. ( 1993) conducted an experiment in Japanesewhich was directly analogous
to the French experiment by Mehler et al. ( 1981) ; they compared detection of
CV (e.g. la-) and CVC (e.g. tan-) targets in Japanesewords beginning with
open ( tanishl) versusclosed ( tanshl) syllables. In both words the first mora is
'
the initial CV sequence ta ; and detection of CV targets was equally fast in
both words (had the Japanesesubjects been using a syllabic segmentation
procedure, the CV targets should have been harder to detect in closed than in
open syllables) . CVC targets constitute two morae, and correspond to the
first two morae of the words with initial closed syllables; however, they do
not correspond properly to a mora-based segmentation of words like tanishi
(CV-CV -CV) . Indeed, the Japaneselisteners respondedto the CVC targets in
words like. tanshi, but usually failed to respond in words like tanishi.
Thus rhythmic segmentation seemsto be quite a widespread phenomenon
across languages, with the nature of the rhythmic processing being determined
'
by the nature of each languages characteristic rhythmic structure:
stress-based, syllabic, or moraic rhythm can all be used in speechsegmentation
by adult listeners. However, there turn out to be strict limitations on the
way any listener can exploit speech rhythm in segmentation; and these
limitations may illuminate the questions with which we started this chapter,
namely those pertaining to how the prelinguistic infant first solves the
segmentationproblem.
7. Limits to rhythmicsegmentation
First of all , the cross- linguistic differences in speech segmentation are

characteristics of the listeners and do not simply follow from the nature of
the speech input . English monolinguals do not use syllabic segmentation in
performing the target detection task with either English or French ( Cutler et
problems
al. 1986) ; neither English nor French listeners use moraic segmentationwhen
performing the same task with Japanese(Otake et al. 1993). In other words,
syllabic segmentationseemsto be specific to French listeners, moraic segmentation
to Japanese listeners. (In fact the French listeners segmented both
English and Japanesespeechby syllables, just as they segmentFrench!)
Moreover, under appropriate conditions listeners can be seen to abandon
the rhythmic segmentation procedures characteristic of their language
community . When responding very fast, French listeners can base their
responseson subsyllabic units (Dupoux 1993) . CVV sequencesare apparently
less conducive to application of moraic segmentation by Japaneselisteners
than the (more common) CVCV and CVN sequences(Otake 1992). The
failure to find processing disadvantages for English words beginning with
weak syllables when the words are carefully read, reported in the second
section of this paper, may reflect a similar case: if the input is very clear,
stress-basedsegmentationmay not need to be called into play. Thus it is quite
clear that none of the rhythmic segmentation procedures constitutes an
'
absolutely necessarycomponent of adult listeners speechprocessing.
The strongestevidencethat this is so comes, however, from studiesof bilingual
processing . Cutler et al. ( 1992) testedFrench-English bilinguals with the techniques
which had demonstratedsyllabic respondingin French listeners(Mehler et
al. 1981) and stress-based responding in English listeners(Cutler and Norris
1988). Their subjectswereas bilingual as they could find - eachhad learnedboth
languagesfrom the earlieststagesof acquisition, spokeboth languagesdaily, and
was acceptedas a native speakerby monolingualsin eachlanguage.
Yet these bilinguals did not necesarilyproduce the pattern of results which
monolinguals had shown on each previous experiment. Instead, their response
patterns could be predicted from a measureof what Cutler et al. called
' '
language dominance , which amounted in essenceto a decision as to which
of their two languagesthe bilinguals would be most sorry to lose. On Mehler
et alis target detection task with French materials, only those bilinguals who
'
chose French as their ' dominant language showed a syllabic pattern of
responding; the English-dominant bilinguals showed no trace of syllabic
'
effects. On Cutler and Norris word -spotting task, in contrast, a stress-based
responsepattern appeared only with those bilinguals who chose English; the
responsesof the French-dominant bilinguals were unaffected by the rhythmic
pattern of the embedding nonsense word. Apparently , these maximally
competent bilinguals had available to them in these tasks only one rhythmic
segmentationprocedure - either that which was characteristic of one of their
native languages, or that which was characteristic of the other, but not both.
problems
Of course, it should be rememberedthat this conclusion is based only on

the results of laboratory experiments, and may not reflect the full extent of
the resourceswhich bilinguals can apply to the processing of , for example,
spontaneous speech; as earlier sections of this chapter described, different
'
speechstyles may call differentially upon a listener s processing repertoire.
However, the experiments undeniably show that in the laboratory some
bilinguals can exploit a given rhythmic segmentation procedure, and do
exploit it , while others certainly do not exploit the same procedure, and
possibly cannot do so. A claim that , for example, French-dominant French-
English bilinguals are capable of stress-based segmentation, but abandon it
when processing laboratory speech, ought therefore to be accompanied by
an account of why Eoglish-dominant bilinguals, and monolingual English
speakers, do not abandon this procedure in the laboratory . On the basis of
the laboratory results alone, it would surely appear that bilinguals simply do
not have available to them the segmentationprocedure characteristic of their
non-dominant language.
This is a remarkable finding in the light of the undoubted competenceof
these bilingual speakersin both their languages. The English-dominant bilinguals
spoke and understood French just as well as the French-dominant
bilinguals did , and the latter group spoke and understood English just as well
as the former. For those bilinguals who used stress-based segmentationwith
English, the apparent unavailability of syllabic segmentation for use with
French seemed to have no adverse effect on their linguistic competence;
likewise, for those bilinguals who used syllabic segmentationwith French, the
unavailability of stress-based segmentation seemednot to reduce in any way
their demonstrated competencein English. These results may therefore indicate
that the rhythmic segmentation procedures are not a necessarycomponent
of a languageuser' s processingmechanism; one can demonstrate native
competencewithout them.
This in turn would imply that rhythmic segmentation procedures are not
simply developed in responseto experiencewith the statistical properties of
the native language, as the arguments made by, for instance, Cutler and
Carter ( 1987) with respectto stress-basedsegmentationin English contended.
There is no doubt that stress-based segmentation does work efficiently with
English; but despite having been exposedto English since their earliest years,
and despite using English with native competenceall their lives, the French-
dominant bilinguals neverthelessdo not , in the word -spotting experiment,
show evidenceof segmenting by stress. The question must be posed, therefore
, of how the rhythmic segmentation procedures could arise, if it is
96 A. Cutler/ Segmentation
problems
arguably the casethat they may not result automatically from experiencewith
the statistical properties of the native language. A possible answer to this
question, proposed by Cutler et al. ( 1992) and by Cutler and Mehler ( 1993), is
discussedin the next section.
Supposethat the rhythmic segmentati.on proceduresused by adult listeners

exist not for purposes of adult processingat all , but are simply traces which
remain from a peri.od when the segmentationproblem dominated the infant ' s
language processing. Perhaps it is precisely the characteristic rhythm of the
input languagewhich offers the infant a first toehold into lexical acquisition,
by suggestinga possible segmentation of the continuous speechstream into
discrete units. In the caseof the syllable in French, in fact, just such a model
has been put forward by Mehler et al. ( 1990) .
More generally, Cutler and Mehler ( 1993) have suggestedthat the infant
enters the world already armed with what they have called aperiodicity bias' .
The task of lexical acquisition is primed in that the infant expects that
meaning will map to form ; the task is made possible by the fact that this
expectation is targeted towards a particular kind of form : input which is
periodically structured. Speechsignals have periodic structure, and for the
majority of children speechwill be among the most salient forms of input
available. In the first few months and even days of life infants prefer to listen
to speech rather than to other auditory input (Colombo and Bundy 1981,
Glenn et al. 1981).
The contrast between the periodic structure of speech as opposed to
random noise is only one level of structure, however; regular periodic
structure in speechexists at several levels. At the level of the speechsound,
some sounds are relatively ' more periodic' than others - for instance, vowels
are relatively steady-state sounds, while consonants are often more transient.
As Cutler and Mehler ( 1993) point out , this could account for the findings
that infants acquire language-specific vowel prototypes at about six months
of age (Kuhl et al. 1992), well before they acquire the consonantal phonology
of their language ( Werker and Polka 1993) . At a higher level again is the
rhythmic structure of language discussedin the preceding sections. It is not
unreasonableto propose that at some point during the infant ' s prelinguistic
period this level of rhythmic structure is also attended to , and that the
processing that goes on at that point is intimately connected with lexical
segmentation- dividing the continuous speechinto lexical units. Nor need

the rhythmic structure be exclusively expressedin the auditory domain ; as
Pettito and Marentette ( 1991) demonstrate, gestural language acquisition by
congenitally deaf infants follows a developmentalpath with noticeable simila-
rities to spoken languageacquisition.
Because , as we have described, rhythmic structure differs even across
spoken languages, the infant exposed to stress rhythm will focus upon a
different regularity than the infant exposed to , say, syllabic or moraic
rhythm . As Cutler et al. ( 1992) argue, this can be conceived of as the infant
attending to the smallest level of regularity occurring in the spoken input .
What is remarkable about this processis that it seemsto happen only once, if
the evidence from the bilingual studies is reliable. That is, exposure to two
differing rhythmic regularities (syllabic and stressrhythm , for instance) does
not result in the ability to use both types of rhythm in speechsegmentation; a
language user appears to be able to command only one rhythmic segmentation
procedure. This type of all-or -none instantiation of a languageprocessing
procedure is distinctly reminiscent of the notion of parameter-setting in
syntactic processing(e.g. Wexier and Manzini 1987) .
9. Prosodyandthe preHnguisticinfant
The notion of rhythmic segmentation by infants as a ' bootstrap' into the

beginningsof lexical acquisition has not been directly tested. In this concluding
section, however, researchon prosodic processingby prelinguistic infants
will be reviewed in an attempt to discover whether there is evidence which
could support the notions proposed above. First , though , it should be
acknowledged that involvement of speechprosody in this level of language
acquisition has been proposed by others in several forms. The suggestionby
Gleitman and Wanner ( 1982; seealso Gleitman et al. 1987) that words are
initially identified as units via their stressedsyllables is closely related to the
application of the present proposal to languages with stress rhythm , for
instance. Likewise, Jusczyk (e.g. 1993) has suggestedthat prosodic structure
is the dimension which infant listeners exploit to accomplish speechsegmentation
. In a series of experiments Jusczyk and his colleagues have shown
that infants are sensitive to prosodic marking of syntactic structure, with
sensitivity to clausal prosody emerging by four to five months of age
(Hirsch -Pasek et al. 1987) , and sensitivity to phrasal prosody by nine
months (Jusczyk et al. 1992); Jusczyk interprets this pattern as
problems
evidenceof infants' exploitation of utterance prosody to structure speechinto

interpretable units.
Indirect evidencefor the present proposal can be found in both perceptual
and production evidencefrom prelinguistic infants. For instance, it has been
shown that the characteristic rhythmic pattern of speech is salient to the
newborn child. Condon and Sander ( 1974) found that neonatesare able to
synchronise their movements with speech structure, whether the speech is
spoken directly to the child or played from a tape recorder, and whether it is
in the parental languageor a foreign language. ( Tapping sounds, on the other
hand, did not invoke synchrony in the infant ' s movement.) The ability to
discriminate the contrasts involved in rhythmic patterning appearsearly ; thus
two-month-olds can discriminate rhythmic groupings of tones (Demany et ale
1977) . These early discriminatory abilities also apply to the particular
contrasts involved in speech rhythm : very young infants can discriminate
stresscontrasts (Spring and Dale 1977, Jusczyk and Thompson 1978, Karzon
1985), and neonatescan make discriminations based on number of syllables
(Bijeljac-Babic et ale 1993) . Speech to infants tends to have more regular
rhythm than speech to adults, as evidenced in English by more frequent
occurrenceof stresses (Garnica 1977) and more regular alternation of vocali-
sation and pause (Stem et ale 1983); however, the relevanceof this is unclear
given that durational features of infant -directed speechdo not appear to be
involved in infant preferencesfor this speechstyle (Fernald and Kuhl 1987) .
More important would seemto be recent evidenceof rhythmic patterning
in the speechproduction of prelinguistic infants. Cross-linguistic studies of
babbling have pointed to increasing language-specificity in babbling during
the secondhalf of the first year of life (e.g. de Boysson- Bardies et al 1984, de
Boysson-Bardies and Vihman 1991, Halle et ale 1991, Blake and de Boysson-
Bardies 1992), including language-specificity in prosodic structure (Whalen et
ale 1991) . Rhythmic structure is one of the language-specific patterns which
appear in speechat this age. Levitt and Wang ( 1991) and Levitt and Utman
( 1992) found that reduplicative babbling of infants from French-speaking
homes showed a gradually increasing regularity of timing of non-final syllables
across the first year of life , while the speechof infants of the same age
from English-speaking homes showed a gradually increasing variability of
syllable structure and timing . This suggeststhat the characteristic rhythm of
'
speechis incorporated into infants linguistic competencebefore they acquire
their first words.
It appears that infants also become aware of the characteristic word
prosody of their language before acquiring their first words. Jusczyk et ale
( 1993) found that nine-month -old infants acquiring English preferred to listen
to lists of bisyllabic words with initial stress (crossing, former , cab/e) than
bisyllables with final stress (across, before, decay), although no such preferences
appeared with six-month-olds. Even when the lists were low-pass
filtered to remove most of the segmental information , nine-month -olds still
preferred the initial -stress lists, suggestingthat their preferenceswere based
on prosodic structure. Jusczyk et ale argued that during the second half of
their first year, infants exercisetheir ability to segmentspeechwith the result
that they acquire knowledge of the typical prosodic structure of words in the
input language.
At later ages, language-specific exploitation of rhythmic structure by
children is established: children learning English use stressrhythm in segmentation
(Gerken 1991, Gerken et ale 1990, Peters 1985) ; children learning
French and other languageswith syllable rhythm use syllables (Alegria et ale
1982, Content et ale 1986) ; children learning Japanese use morae (Mann
1986). The hypothesis proposed here is that language rhythm is also what
allows infants to accomplish their very first segmentation of speech. An
ability to processrhythm is inborn . By using this ability , infants are enabled
to overcomethe segmentationproblem and hencetake their first step towards
compilation of their very own lexicon.
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Lingua92 ( 1994
Domain -general abilities applied to

domain -specific tasks: Sensiti vi ty to
probabilities in perception , cognition , and
*
language
Michael H . Kelly and Susanne Martin

Department , University
of Psychology , 3815WalnutStreet
of Pennsylvania , PA
, Philadelphia
-6196
19104 . USA
Perceptual and cognitive abilities that are species- and domain-specific may nonethelesshave
componentsthat are widespreadacrossspeciesand apply to numerousdomains. For example, all
theories of sentenceparsing are constrained by the operations of a limited -capacity memory that
is a generalcharacteristic of cognition . This paper discussesanother ability that is general across
speciesand, within a species, across numerous cognitive and perceptual domains. We review
evidencefrom the animalleaming and human cognitive literature that animals (a) possessfine-
grained sensitivity to probabilistic patterns in their environment and (b) usemultiple probabilistic
cues to solye particular problems. Such sensitivity is advantageousbecausethe structure of the
environment itself can often be characterized as probabilistic . The chancesof successat solving
various problems, from foraging to depth perception, would therefore increaseif animals were
sensitiveto probabilistic cues and could determine whether multiple cuesconvergeon a solution.
We discussthe implications of theseclaims for languageprocessing, and argue that the domain-
general ability to detect and exploit probabilistic information is brought to bear on numerous
language-specific problems.
1. Introduction
A common theme in evolutionary biology concernsthe distinction between

inherited and specific adaptations. Both structures may aid an organism, but
'
the former derive from the organism s ancestry whereas the latter may have
evolved to suit its specific needs. Consider the duck-billed platypus, for
example. These strangest of all mammals possess numerous anatomical
. Preparationof this paper was supportedby National Institutesof Health Grant I R29
Mehler, and Bob Rescoriafor helpful
HD23385to M.H. Kelly. Thanksto AnneCutler, Jacques
commentson earlierversionsof this paper.
- 3841/94/507.00 @ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

0024
SSDI0024-3841 -E
(93)EO040
-generalabilities
M.H. Kelly, S. Martin / Domain
structures that assist their aquatic lifestyle. Thus, waterproof fur helps to
insulate the platypus from the cold waters in which it normally swims and its
famous bill is actually a highly-developedsenseorgan that is used in foraging.
However, the history of these two adaptations is quite different. Whereas the
bill seems to be a specific adaptation of the platypus and monotreme
relatives, the fur , of course, is a general mammalian trait that the platypus
inherits (seeGould , 1991, for further discussion). This trait is general in two
ways. First , many speciesshare it and, second, it is relatively general purpose.
Thus hair is not only involved in insulation, but also in sensationsof touch
and the transduction of sound in the inner ear.
As Darwin emphasized in many of his works, the same evolutionary
concepts that apply to anatomical structures can also extend to thought and
behavior. Thus, some of our own cognitive and perceptual abilities are
inherited from our ancestors(and henceit is no coincidencethat we can learn
something about, for instance, our visual system by studying the visual
systemsof other animals - they are branches from the same tree) . Still other
structures might be unique to the evolutionary history of human beings.
Language is, of course, the most obvious human duck-bill , and much ink has
been spilled over the years in arguments over whether this obvious intuition
should really be believed. That controversy will be avoided here. Instead, we
will focus on the following general theme: Whatever the evolutionary history
of the language faculty , language processing must involve cognitive and
perceptual abilities that are domain-general in nature. For an example,
consider the parsing literature. Both linguists (e.g., Frazier and Fodor 1978)
and psychologists (e.g., Just and Carpenter 1992) have devoted considerable
attention to how listeners identify sentenceconstituents and their grammatical
relations. Radically different viewpoints are often proposed about how
these tasks are accomplished. However, throughout all the controversy, one
unifying point stands clear: The parser is fundamentally a slave to a limited
capacity short-term (or working ) memory system. Thus, parsing preferences
from Kimball ' s ( 1973) ' fast phrase closure' to Frazier and Fpdor ' s ( 1978)
' minimal attachment' are all
justified by reference to constraints on short-
term memory capacity. Indeed, potential individual differences in parsing
blaseshave recently been related to individual differencesin memory capacity
(Just and Carpenter 1992) .
In sum, then, a system that is shared by other animals, namely a limited
capacity memory, is critically involved in a systemprobably unique to human
beings, namely language. Furthermore, an understanding of this ancestral
memory system is crucial to a full understanding of how linguistic compe-
M .H . Kelly , S. Martin / Domain-general abilities
tence gets put to use in perfonnance. Finally , since this ancestral system is
shared with our non-human relatives, we could gain insights into the human
systemthrough memory experimentswith animals as well as experimentswith
human beings. We will extend these claims here to another domain potentially
shared with non-human animals. This domain is reflected in the old
adage that death and taxes are the only certainties in life. In less depressing
tenDs, much of the information that animals learn during their lives, and
which must be used to guide behavior, is probabilistic in nature. Should the
human being bet on the Flyers to win the NHL championship now that they
have signed the Michael Jordan of hockey in Eric Lindros ? Is the breeding
seasonpromising enough for a bird to raise two clutches of young rather than
just one? Will the squirrel find more nuts foraging by this tree or that one?
Should a listener who hears ' The fruit flies ...' assumethat ' fruit ' is a noun
and ' flies' is a verb?
Though these questions vary in their subject matter and importance, they
all nonethelesscontain some level of uncertainty, and the types of information
that could be used to decide a course of action are probabilistic in
nature. Historically , attention to probabilities and their use has been either
ignored or looked upon with aversion bordering on plain disgust. Thus,
mathematical treatments of probability are relatively recent developments,
and were fonnulated in the dubious area of gambling. Even physics, the
'
paragon of scientific certainty, has not escapedfrom the clutches of probability
, and the probabilistic component inherent to quantum mechanicsdrove
Einstein to exclaim that God could simply NOT be a closet gambler.
One possible reason for negative views of probability could be an implication
that the world is full of mass confusion that cannot lead to anything
'
beyond ignorance. However, an animal s environment is not a homogeneous
' '
soup, although it rarely provides sure things . The basic fact of the matter is
that the world is awash with stuff best described as ' tendencies', ' maybes',
' estimates' and ' '
, generally-speakings. Furthermore, thesetenDs characterizea
wide array of domains, from foraging to parsing, and must be confronted by
creatures from aardvarks to zebus. Finally , animals must often make rapid
decisions while minimizing the likelihood and severity of errors. These
considerations lead to the following conclusion: Animals that have the
capacity to detect probabilistic patterns and exploit them will have an
advantageover those that do not. Furthermore, confidencein the solution to
a problem should increaseif multiple cues converge on that solution. Hence,
one might expect to see widespread sensitivity to multiple probabilistic
infonnation sources in the animal kingdom . Since many aspects of the
-generalabilities
M.H. Kelly, S. Marlin I Domain
environment are characterizedby probabilistic relations among variables, one

would also expect this sensitivity to be relatively domain-independent.
Indeed, such sensitivity might permeate the activities of specializedabilities,
including language. In the remainder of this paper, we will attempt to justify
these claims. We will begin by highlighting some phenomena in the area of
animal learning and cognition that support the view, perhaps surprising, that
rather precise sensitivity to probabilistic information is prevalent in many
species. In fact, it seemsto be a rather everyday, ho-hum ability . We will then
turn to human perception and cognition , and review some evidencein nonlinguistic
domains suggestingthat , like rats, human beings exploit probabilistic
information in a variety of tasks. Furthermore, even when sufficient
information exists to apparently deduce the solution to a problem, human
beings still use additional , probabilistic information that might also be
present. We will discuss some of the possible advantages to this strategy.
Finally , we will summarize evidencefrom the domain of languageprocessing
that also supports widespread sensitivity to probabilistic relations among
linguistic variables, as well as the types of tasks that could be assisted by
exploiting this information . The researchhere will suggestthat , just as human
memory is critically involved in areas ranging from visual pattern recognition
to parsing, so the ability to learn and exploit probabilistic information is
widespreadin perception and cognition, including traits that might be highly
specializedand species-specific.
2. The ' statistical ' rat
Since the cognitive revolution , the once dominant area of animal learning
has become of peripheral interest to many experimental psychologists. This
major shift of both theoretical and experimental emphasiscould be attributed
to a variety of factors, ranging from the development of symbolic computing
devices to Chomsky' s critique of stimulus- response accounts of language.
Hence, in the cognitive sciencesin general, and languagestudies in particular ,
traditional investigations of animal learning and their possible implications
for human cognition have been virtually , if not completely, ignored. (For
some recent exceptions, see Alloy and Tabachnik 1984, Estes 1985, Gluck
and Bower 1988.) We believe that this abandonment of animal learning is a
sad state of affairs. Certain basic processes of learning are clearly homolo-
gous across speciesranging from insects to human beings, and suciJ universality
should hardly be of peripheral interest to cognitive scientists. Our
M .H . Kelly , S. Martin I Domain-general abilities
purpose here is not , however, to instigate a general rapprochement between

divorced parties. Rather, we will attempt to direct attention to certain
fundamental abilities that animals apparently must possessin order to behave
the way they do in learning experiments. These abilities can be characterized
as a keen sensitivity to the rate at which certain probabilistic events occur in
the animal' s environment.
2.1. Behavioral decisionsbasedon detectionof rate information
Consider the following situation : On each of a series of trials , a rat is

placed in the long axis of a T -shaped maze. If the rat traverses down the
correct arm of the T , it will receivea morsel of food as a reward. The correct
arm varies from trial to trial , but the right arm is biased to be correct 70% of
the time, with the left arm correct 30% of the time. Across a wide range of
studies, the results of this situation are clear: The rat will distribute its choices
in accord with the particular probabilistic bias establishedby the experimenter
. In this case, the rat will travel down the right arm 70% of the time and
the left arm 30% of the time. If the probabilities changeto , say, 85- 15 or 60-
40, then the rat ' s choices will adjust accordingly. The rat ' s behavior reveals
precisesensitivity to the rate of reward in the two arms (seeGallistel, 1990,
for more extensivediscussion) .
'
Despite this sensitivity to rate information , the rat s behavior in this
paradigm seemsparadoxical. After all , in order to optimize its food intake,
the rat should always choose the side with the higher rate of return. 1
Although this conclusion is true in the laboratory , where the animal facesno
competition for the food resource, it is not true in the wild . Supposethat two
food patchesexist in a local habitat , with one of them being twice as rich as
the other. If all of the animals went to the richer patch, then selection
pressureswould favor animals who would exploit the food -poor , but competitorless
patch. Evolutionary biologists have argued that , in the long run , the
most stable evolutionary strategy would involve dividing one' s time between
the two food patchesin accord with their rates of return. Investigations of the
spatial distributions of animals while foraging indicates that this strategy is
indeed used in the natural environment (seeGallistel , 1990, for summary) . Of
course, as Gallistel emphasizes , this strategy presumesthe ability to detect the
I For instance,
supposethat the probability of reward on the right arm is 75%. In 100trials , the
rat on averagewould receivea reward on O.75( 100) + 0.25(0), or 75, of the trials if it always chose
the right arm. If it choosesthe arms in accord with their reward probabilities, then the rat can
expect reward on 0.75(75) + 0.25(25), or only 62.5 of the trials.
rate of food return in different parts of the environment. Both laboratory

studiesand natural observations indicate that a range of species, such as rats,
pigeons, ducks, and fish possessthis ability .
This sensitivity to probabilistic patterns reveals itself in a variety of
behaviors besides the choice of where a food resource might be located.
.Furthermore, the
pervasivenessof this sensitivity across speciesis shown by
the fact that different speciesproduce analogous results in the same task.
Consider, for example, the speedwith which an action is performed after a
stimulus is perceived. Gradual increasesin the likelihood of a certain event
leads to corresponding decreasesin the time neededto react to that event. A
notable example in the field of language researchis the inverse relationship
between word frequency and the reaction time needed to make judgments
about a word. However, numerous events vary in their frequency of occur-
rence, and animals generally become faster at reacting to more frequent
events. Indeed, procedures have been developed to test human beings and
other animals in very similar circumstances, and the relationship between
frequency of an event and speedof responseis virtually identical across the
speciesgroups (Pang et al. 1992) . Such results clearly imply that (a) a learning
mechanism exists that permits adaptive adjustments to the likelihoods of
different events, (b) the mechanism is domain-general in that it appears for
numerous eventsand behaviors, and (c) the mechanismis species -general, and
so representsa basic aspect of animal learning, including learning by human
beings.
2.2. Catching the contingencies
In the famous learning experiments conducted by Ivan Pavlov, a dog was

presented with a neutral stimulus, such as a tone, paired with food. As a
result of these pairings, the dog began to salivate when the tone was
presentedalone. In the technical terms of the field, an unconditioned stimulus
(US), the food , normally elicits an innate unconditioned response (UR ),
salivation. By pairing the tone with the food , the former becomesa conditioned
stimulus (CS) that produces a conditioned response(CR ), in this case
salivation. Thousands of subsequentexperiments, involving a huge assortment
, and specieshave verified that this type of learning
of stimuli , responses
is quite basic throughout the animal kingdom .
Extensiveresearchhas tried to understand the mechanismsthat are responsible
for learning in the Pavlovian paradigm. We will focus here on one theme
that has emergedfrom this research. This theme is, in many ways, reflectedin
M .H . Kel/y , S. Martin I Domain-general abilities
the description of Pavlovian conditioning with which we opened this section.

This description, which is commonly used in introductory psychology texts,
assumesthat learning dependson explicit pairings betweenan unconditioned
stimulus and a conditioned stimulus. Various predictions follow from this
assumption. Thus, learning should increase with the number of CS-US
pairings, and learning should not occur in the absence of such pairings.
However, as Rescorl.a ( 1988) has emphasized, this assumption and its empirical
consequencesare untrue. Under certain conditions, even multiple pairings
of a CS and US will not causethe animal to assumethat the CS predicts the
US. On the other hand, learning can be achieved without a single CS-US
pairing . Thus, CS-US pairings are neither sufficient nor necessaryto produce
learning. These facts, and the conditions that create them, have led to major
revisions in learning theory over the past two decades, and indicate that
animals have far more sophisticated learning abilities than were previously
imagined.
In a series of classic experiments, Rescoria ( 1968) demonstrated that
animals are sensitivenot to the raw frequency of CS-US pairings, but rather
the general contingency between the variables. In his studies, rats were first
trained to press a bar for food. In the next phase, the animals received a
number of pairings betweena tone and a mild electric shock. To measurethe
extent of learning, the rats were then permit ted to press the food bar once
again. During this period, the tone was occasionally presented, and the
animal' s behavior monitored. If the animals learned that the tone signals
shock, they would decreasetheir levels of bar pressingand hold a motionless
posture. Slight levels of learning would produce slight decreasesin the rates
of bar pressingwhereashigher levels of learning would produce correspondingly
greater suppressionof the bar presses. The critical manipulation in the
experiments concerned the likelihood that the shocks in the second phase
occurred in the absence of the tone. That is, in addition to the explicit
pairings between the tone and shock, a number of other shocks could be
administered without a corresponding tone. Traditional learning theory
would predict that these additional unpaired shocks would be irrelevant to
the learning process since the number of US-CS pairs would be unaltered.
However, instead of responding just to explicit pairings of the CS and US,
supposethat the rat is sensitiveto the appearanceof the US in the absenceof
the CS. If the animal can detect these general contingencies between the
shock and tone, then the signaling power of the tone should decreaseas
higher rates of independent shocks are encountered. Indeed, a certain point
should be reached at which the shock and the tone are statistically indepen-
-generalabilities
dent. That is, given the overall base rate of shocks, one would expect a
certain number of tone-shock pairs JUST BY CHANCE . Given that such
encountersare mere coincidences, one should make no conclusion about the
relevanceof the tone to the shock, and hence the tone should be ignored in
the final test phase. Rescorla's results strongly supported the contingency
interpretation of learning. As the predictive power of the CS dropped, so did
the effectsof the tone on the rats' bar pressing. When the tone and the shock
reached statistical independence , the presenceof the tone had no effect on
behavior.
In sum, Rescorla' s experiments refute the traditional belief, and one still
generally held outside of the animal learning field, that the number of CS-US
pairings is the crucial variable in learning. Rather, animals are sensitiveto the
statistical relationship between the variables. If no statistical relationship
exists, then even the presenceof numerous CS-US pairings will not causethe
animal to assume that the CS predicts the US. Furthermore, statistical
relationships can exist and be learned even in the absence of any CS-US
'
pairings. For instance, supposeRescorla s experiment is repeated, but with all
of the scheduled tone-shock pairs removed. Thus, the rat would receive a
number of shocks, but none accompaniedby the tone. Since no CS-US pairs
are presented, the stereotyped view of Pavlovian conditioning would predict
that the animal would learn no relation betweenthesevariables. However, the
rats do in fact learn something useful in this situation , namely that the
presenceof the tone predicts the absenceof the shock. Hence, the rats treat
the tone as a safety signal and actually show lessfear reactions when the tone
is present than when it is absent (Rescoria 1969) .
So far , we have discussedsome evidence that animals are sensitive to the
probabilistic relationship betweena single CS and a US. However, numerous
experimentsdemonstrate that animals can attend to multiple predictors of an
event. For example, suppose that an animal has learned that a tone and a
light both signal shock. If the stimuli are now presentedtogether, then, up to
a certain point , the animal will exhibit a stronger fear reaction to the joint
'
than to the separatepresentation of the stimuli. 2 Thus, an animal s behavior
Z The' up to a certainpoint' phraseturnsout to becrucial. If two stimuliarestronglypredictiveof

, thenrepeated
another , evenif coupledwith US presentation
joint presentations , canactuallyreduce
thereactionto individualpresentationsof theCSs. As Uebennan( 1990 ) pointsout, this apparently
counterintuitivephenomenon makessensefor the followingreason . One might expectthat joint
presentationof the CSs would signalan increased probability of the US or strengthof the US. If
theseexpectations are not confirmed, then they must be adjusteddownwardaccordingly . These
downwardadjustments canthenbe observed in reactionsto theseparate presentationsof theCSs.
in a particular situation is best predicted by what it has learned about the set
of informative cues present in its environment rather than any single cue
examined in isolation. Indeed, what an animal learns about a novel stimulus
will depend on what it has learned about other stimuli present at the same
time. Consider, for example, the following situation. An animal learns that a
tone is associatedwith a mild shock. After this relationship is established, the
animal now is presentedwith two stimuli - the original tone and a novel light .
No shocks are experiencedduring this phrase of compound stimulus presentation
. Later, the light can be presented alone, and the animal' s behavior
monitored to determine what , if anything, has been learned about the light . A
number of possibilities are conceivable. Since the light was never experienced
with the shock, one might expect that the former would later be perceivedas
a neutral stimulus. Alternatively , some of the fear induced by the tone might
spread to the light . However, the animal actually treats the light as a safety
signal, and the strength of the safety reaction varies with the strength of the
fear associatedwith the tone (seeRescoria and Wagner, 1972, for summary) .
In learning about the impact of the light , the animal apparently takes into
consideration its knowledge about the tone. Given that the latter normally
signals shock, the absenceof the latter becomes associated with the novel
'
light . As Rescoria and Wagner ( 1972: 73) state, The effect of a reinforcement
or nonreinforcement in changing the associative strength of a stimulus
depends-upon the existing associativestrength, not only of that stimulus, but
also of other stimuli concurrently present' .
In sum, then, numerous experiments in animal learning indicate (a) widespread
sensitivity to probabilistic relations betweenevents and (b) the use of
multiple cues in identifying the probable course of imminent events, and the
types of behaviors neededto deal with them. Nonetheless, we must emphasize
that even though animals behave in accordance with statistical patterns in
their environment, this behavior does not lead to strong conclusions about
the underlying mechanismsthat support it . Animals might reveal sensitivity
to statistical patterns without actually representingor manipulating probabilistic
data. For example, each learning trial could lead to the adjustment of
the association strength between a CS and a US. This association strength
would be increasedwhen the US appearswith the CS and decreasedwhen the
US appears without the CS. Over time, the probability of a CS-US pairing
would become more and more correlated with the association strength,
though the probability itself would not be representedby the animal. Thus
variations in the probabilities of different eventscould produce behavior that
is attuned to those probabilities without entailing that these values are
explicitly represented or that the animal even remembers each individual

learning trial . In fact, the most influential model of Pavlovian conditioning
over the past two decadesdoes reproduce apparent sensitivi~;Y to statistical
patterns by using trial by trial updates of association strengths betweena US
and potential CSs (Rescoria and Wagner 1972) . But regardlessof the exact
nature of the mechanismsthat underlie it , animals clearly have evolved some
form of sensitivity to probabilistic patterns in their environment, and this
sensitivity is finely tuned to the actual probabilities of various events.
2.3. Someimplications
for languagelearning
Let us translate some of theseanimal learning studies into a more familiar

setting, though with controversial implications. During languageacquisition,
children must learn the subcategorization privileges of the verbs in their
' '
language. Thus, English children must learn that give can appear in both
' '
prepositional (e.g., John gave the money to the charity ) and double object
' ' '
dative structures (' John gave the charity the money ), but that donate can
only appear in the prepositional form . How do children learn these relationships
? The ' give' caseseemsstraightforward in that the child will observe the
'
verb in both structures and conclude that ' give is legal in those frames. Thus,
the child makes conclusions based on positive evidence. However, caseslike
' donate' seemto create more
problems for languageacquisition. One possibility
is that general principles of learning could apply to the linguistic domain.
' '
Thus, if children get explicit reinforcement that donate is ungrammatical in
the double object form , then such negative evidencecould help them to learn
' '
syntactic restrictions on donate . However, numerous studies have documented
that children do not get such explicit negative evidence(see Pinker,
1989, for review) . Given the lack of reinforcement coupled with successful
learning, the dominant conclusion has been that general principles of learning
will not apply to languageacquisition.
This argument rests on incorrect assumptions about current theoretical
views in animal learning, or the experimentson which those views are based.
As the preceding discussion has emphasized, animals can readily learn not
only that tones predict the presenceof shock, but also that tones can predict
the absenceof shock. They need no additional feedback for justification or
refutation of their conclusions. If learning is considered, at least in part , as
the detection of statistical regularities in the environment, then children might
'
learn that ' donate systematically predicts the absenceof double-object structures
in the same manner as rats can learn that tones systematically predict
-generalabilities
M.H. Kelly, S. Martin I Domain
the absence of shocks. Just as a species-general memory system can be

critically involved in languageparsing, so species -general learning abilities, in
this casethe ability to detect the statistical texture of the environment, could
be involved in languagelearning.
Referencesto statiscial sensitivity have recently grown in critiques of the
negative evidence problem (e.g., Liberman 1991). However, we believe that
prima facie incredulity over the potential of this approach, or even the mere
existenceof the statistical sensitivity, would decline if animal learning studies
such as those reviewedabove were more seriously consideredin discussionsof
language learning. The evidence from the animal literature is now quite
conclusive in that speciesafter specieshas been found not only sensitive to
probabilistic information , but even to the precise quantitative nature of this
information (bearing in mind once again that the exact mechanismsresponsible
for this sensitivity must be identified) . Furthermore, they show such
sensitivity in a variety of learning situations that use quite arbitrary stimuli ,
suggestingthat the ability is domain-general, and not tied to information that
the animal is biologically prepared to learn.
2.4. Objections
Numerous objections could, of course, be raised against the conjectureswe

have just made. We do not pretend to have definitive answers to these
problems, but the problems themselveshave not beenworked out in sufficient
detail to determine their scope or their resistanceto repair.
'
2.4.1. How to define what s missing?
For a language learner to determine that a verb has not appeared in a
structure, and that this absenceis statistically meaningful, the nature of the
expected structure must be defined. As Pinker ( 1989) has pointed out , the
structures cannot be individual sentencetokens, becausethere are an infinite
number of such structures, and the odds that one of them would be
encounteredin the corpus of speechheard by the learner is vanishingly small.
'
Thus, the items that enter into the learner s statistical tabulations must be
more abstract than individual sentences . Hence reference to the statistical
structure of the environment will not be sufficient to characterize learning
since the nature of the environment is partly defined by how the learner
categorizes items within it . Furthermore, these categories may in fact be
intrinsically linguistic in nature. Hence we are back to a basic problem in
language learning : What notions about the nature of language do children
-generalabilities
bring to the task at hand? Referenceto statistical regularitieshas not

eliminated this problem at all.
We believe this characterization of the learning task is correct, but note
that it is not specificto languagelearning. The useof statistical regularities by
animals also depends on abstracting away from individual tokens. Furthermore
, the categoriesinvolved in this abstraction processmay depend on the
learning domain in question. For example, suppose a rat learns that a tone
signals the absenceof shock. Each instance of a tone is a unique event, and
yet the animal must abstract away from this uniquenessto similarities across
the various tokens. What counts as similar may depend on the nature of the
auditory system just as what counts as similar in language learning may
depend on the nature of a species-specificlinguistic system. As we emphasized
at the beginning of this paper, the use of some general purpose abilities (e.g.,
memory) in a particular task (e.g., parsing) does not preclude the important
role of domain-specific factors. A complete account of the task will require a
specification of the general and the specific, along with how they interact.
2.4.2. Outcomesimilarity despiteinput variability

Given that languagelearning will depend in part on the statistical structure
of the input , why is the outcome of the learning so robust in the sensethat all
normal children attain the same basic level of competencedespite (probably)
wide ' variations in what they have heard? One answer could focus on the
domain-specific languagefaculty , which makescertain assumptionsabout the
nature of the language (in statistical terms, the population) from which the
sample was drawn (e.g., all of the sentencesin the language are either right -
branching or left-branching) . We would also suggesta statistical answer as an
accompaniment. In particular , the learning is robust becauseof the robust
nature of statistical sampling. One of the fundamental theoremsof statistics is
that as the size of a sample increases, it reflects the actual nature of the
population from which it was drawn with greater accuracy. Hence, one can
make reliable conclusions about the population (which is too large to be
examined in its entirety) from a relatively small sample. Although no two
samples from , such a population will be alike, they demonstrably will
3
convergeon the sameconclusionsgiven a sufficiently large sample size. Note
3 Here is an
easy way to dernonstrate this statistical principle : Instruct your cornputer to
generate sarnples of randorn nurnbers between 0 and 100. Start off with two sarnples. each
containing 5 cases. The rneans of these sarnples will probably differ greatly. Now continue
generating sarnple pairs. but increasethe nurnber of casesin each pair . As the nurnber of cases
-general
M.H. Kelly, S. Martin/ Domain abilities 117
that such an account would predict that the greatest variability in linguistic
judgments should occur for relatively rare constructions, where the idiosyncrasies
of the sample will have a much greater impact on learning.
2.4.3. Going beyondidiosyncrasies

Instead of relying on some general learning mechanism, such as one that
involves feedback regarding ungrammatical sentences , children might be able
to exploit regularities about the sentenceframes that verbs could take (Pinker
1989). For example, the absenceof ' donate' from double-object datives is not
an isolated fact. Rather, polysyllabic English verbs and verbs with certain
stresspatterns are, in general, barred from double-object dative structures. If
children could learn such regularities, they could then generalizethem to new
instances. In fact, Gropen et al. ( 1989) have found that children learning
English were re.luctant to generalize polysyllabic nonsense verbs from a
propositional dative to a double-object dative, though they were more willing
to do so for monosyllabic nonsenseverbs. This effect of syllable number did
not extend to other syntactic frames, suggestingthat the children had learned
about the blasesconcerning the English dative.
Although Pinker ( 1989) casts the general learning and regularities ap-
proaches as conflicting alternatives, we see them as quite similar. English-
speakingchildren may in fact detect regularities in the structure of English by
being sensitive to the systematic absenceof certain verbs from double-object
datives. They would , of course, have to recognize dative structures despite
variations in their lexical content, and they would have to recognize that
certain phonological properties of verbs are correlated with the dative structures
. As noted above, some of these classification abilities may derive from
characteristicsof the child ' s native linguistic capacity. However, granted that
theseclassification abilities exist, the results found by Gropen et al. ( 1989) are
quite consistent with the claim that children are sensitive to statistical
patterns in their linguistic environment. The children in the Gropen et al.
experiments were also probabilistic in their responses , rather than discrete.
That is, although they were biased against generalizing polysyllabic words to
double-object datives, they nonethelessdid so. This pattern follows from the
fact that the English restriction is also probabilistic in nature (e.g., ' offer' can
appear in the double-object dative) . Given a probabilistic input , a probabilistic
output is expected. This leads to the next point .
getslarger, the meansof the sampleswill moveclosertogether, convergingon a valueof 50. Yet
the sampleswill obviouslydiffer in their exactsequence
of numbers.
-generalahiliti P.~
M.H. Kelly, S. Marlin I Domain
2.4.4. Probabilistic responsesinherent to the useof statistical patterns

Two items might both be members of a population , but the use of finite
samplesto infer characteristicsof the population could lead to some differences
in how they are treated. Confidencein the membershipof item I might be
lessthan confidencein the membership of item 2. When applied to language,
this aspectof statistics means that two sentencescould, in fact, be grammatical
in the language, but speakersmight differ slightly in their opinions. One
of the sentencesmight be judged more strange than the other, or rated as
grammatical more slowly than the other. In fact, when subjectsare asked to
rate sentenceson scalesof grammaticality, they find the task fairly easy, they
do rate items as somewherebetween grammatical and ungrammatical, and
they agree among themselveson these ratings (e.g., Fisher et al. 1991) .
2.4.5. Contradictory evidencefrom the domain of human decisionmaking

Over the past two decades, voluminous evidence has been gathered that
human beings are actually very poor in statistical reasoning (seeNisbett and
Ross, 1980, for a summary) . For example, they often ignore base rate
information , have incorrect ideas about randomness, and do not realize that
large samples provide better estimates of a population than small samples.
Given thesewell-documented problems, how could human beings use statistical
information as an effective learning tool ?
We will offer two parries to this objection. First , lack of explicit understanding
of statistical principles does not entail lack of some type of richer
implicit knowledge. This knowledge might be relatively inaccessibleto conscious
access, and yet still be useful in perception and action. For instance,
human being have a very poor understanding of physics when problems are
presentedin a verbal format (e.g., McCloskey 1983) . Thus, they often believe
that certain impossible descriptions of moving objects are, in fact, accurate
statements. However, when presentedwith computer-generateddynamic displays
, they now correctly recognize the natural and unnatural motions
(Shannon 1976) . Of course, we normally base our actions on visual perception
of actual motion rather than verbal descriptions of it . Second, the
manner in w~ich the statistical information is presented in the decision-
making experiments differs markedly from the way that information is
normally experienced. In the former , information about base rate (i.e.,
frequency of occurrence) is given as an explicit sum. Thus, subjectsmight be
told that a city contains 100cabs, with 80 being blue and 20 green. However,
we rarely receive explicit information about frequency, and animals literally
never receivesummary data tables. Instead, most of the frequency knowledge
M.H. Kelly, S. Martin / Domain-generalahiliti2.!
that we and other animals have is probably obtained through numerous

encounters with individual objects or events. Hence, we cannot use experiments
in decision making as a strong basis for conclusions about human
sensitivity to statistical patterns, especially since studies have found differences
in the way people treat the samedata when presentedin summary format
or as a seriesof events(e.g., Wassermanand Shaklee 1984) . Rather, we must
examine direct investigations of human sensitivity to frequency information ,
and the potential roles of such knowledge in solving problems in language
and other domains. We turn to theseissuesin the following sections.
3. The useof multipleandprobabilisticinformationsourcesby humanbeings
As the precedingdiscussionillustrates, non-human animals have well-documented

'
abilities to detect the statistical texture of their environment. Such
statistical sensitivity has been documented in numerous species and in a
variety of settings, ranging from highly constrained laboratory environments
to open field situations. The evolution of these abilities along with their
speciesand domain generality should not be surprising given their obvious
use in a variety of tasks such as foraging. In this section, we will turn to
human beings and summarize some of the evidencethat we also are sensitive
to and rely extensivelyon probabilistic information from multiple sourcesin
order to solve a variety of problems. This section will focus primarily on nonlinguistic
domains, with the next section turning to implications for language
processing. The topics that we will discuss here should not be considered
exHaustive, but instead viewed as a sampling from the available evidence.
3.1. General sensitivity to frequency information
In order to effectively use probabilistic infonnation , human beings must, of

course, be sensitive to the relative frequencies of various events. Numerous
experimentsacrossthe past four decadeshave establishedthat human beings
possess this prerequisite ability (though controversy continues over the
mechanismsthat might underlie it , cf. Hintzman 1988, Jonides and Jones
1992) . Furthennore, this frequency sensitivity seemsto be general in nature,
as it extends across numerous domains (see Hasher and Zacks, 1984, for a
more detailed review) . For instance, studies have shown that people are quite
sensitive to the relative frequencies of right and left -handers (Coren and
Porac 1977), encounters with different people (Saege~ et al. 1973), the
lethality of different events (Lichenstein et al. 1978), and even fast-food

restaurant chains (Shedier et al. 1985) . This frequency sensitivity appears not
only across domains, but also across tasks. Whereas some studies explicitly
ask subjects to rate items in terms of frequency, others use more indirect
probes. For instance, in numerous experiments, Zajonc ( 1968) has found that
the more frequently something is experienced, the more it is liked (even
though the subjectshave no control over theseexperiences ) . Hence frequency
sensitivity can be revealedby subjective evaluations.
As with fast-food restaurants, numerous experiments have shown that
human beings are sensitive to the relative frequencies of many linguistic
events, such as words (Shapiro 1969), syllables (Rubin 1974), and letters
(Attneave 1953). 4 Indeed, this sensitivity to frequency is quite strong. For
example, Attneave asked subjectsto estimate the frequency of English letters
per thousand tokens. He found that fully three-quarters of the variance in the
'
subjects responsescould be accounted for by the actual frequencies of the
letters in English text. Using different techniquesand word frequency as the
object of study, Shapiro ( 1969) found that over 85% of the variance in
judgments of word frequency could be accounted for by measuresof actual
5
frequency.
In fact, this frequency sensitivity might be even stronger than these
experimentsindicate, given that our measuresof actual frequency are subject
to typical errors of sampling. These errors will be particularly apparent for
low frequency items. For example, Gernsbacher ( 1984) points out that the
words ' boxer' , ' icing' , and 'joker ' have the samefrequencies(namely, one per
million ) as ' Loire ' , ' gnome' , and ' assay' in the two most widely used frequency
norms for English. However, there is clearly no doubt that the former
words are ' really' more commonly encountered, and that a sufficiently large
sample of English would confirm these intuitions . In fact, the validity of the
4 Thesevariablesare, of course , correlatedin that relativelycommonsyllablestend to contain

relativelyfrequentlettersand phonemes . However , the variablescan be statisticallyseparated
.
Thus, Rubin ( 1974 ) foundthat Englishspeakers aresensitiveto syllablefrequencyindependently
of phonemefrequency .
5 Thestrengthof thesecorrelationscan, of course , beinfluencedby the rangeof materialsused.
If only the words' the' , ' house
' and ' zinc' were
, judged, the correlationbetweenratedand actual
frequencywould obviously(and trivially) be perfect. SinceAttneaveusedall the lettersof the
Englishalphabet , the resultsfrom his experimenton letter frequencycannot be criticizedas
artifactsarisingfrom the typesof lettersselected . Shapiro( 1969 ) used60 words for his adult
subjects, and theserangedfrom very high throughintermediateto low frequencies . Using455
wordsin a lexicaldecisiontask, Gemsbacher ( 1984 ) found that ratedfamiliarity accountedfor
.
morethan 71% of the variancein reactiontime.
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intuitions in this casesuggeststhat human ratings of frequency might in fact

be more useful in experiments than listings in word frequency norms, and
Gemsbacher ( 1984) found that subjects agreed quite well on their ratings of
word familiarity , and that these ratings were better predictors of reaction
times in a lexical decision task than supposedmeasuresof ' actual' frequency.
Given that human beings are sensitive to frequency, sampling considerations
might lead one to expect that their frequency judgments would be more
accurate than current frequency norms. After all , the Francis and Kucera
frequency norms are based on an analysis of one million word tokens, which
is a relatively small sample. Given conservative assumptions (speech/reading
rates of ISO words per minute along with an eight-hour sample per day), a
typical person will be exposedto a million -word sample in about two weeks.
In sum, human beings are sensitiveto frequency information in a variety of
domains. This domain-independencesuggeststhat this sensitivity is a general
ability and hence might be exploited in a variety of domain-specific tasks.
Nonetheless, we must emphasizethat human beings are far from infallible in
their frequency judgments. For example, .they tend to overestimate the
frequency of rare events and underestimate the frequency of common events
(seeBaron, 1988, for a summary) . In addition , frequency estimatesare based
at least in part on factors other than frequency. For instance, one category is
often consideredto be larger than another if instancesof the former class are
more easily retrieved from memory. Now , these retrieval effects might be
correlated with actual frequency, and so be reasonably accurate. However,
they also might reflect aspects of memory organization itself. Thus, people
' '
generally and falsely believe that more English words begin with r than have
' r ' as the third letter. Theseintuitions
probably reflect the fact that the mental
lexicon is organized by first rather than third letter and/ or phoneme, and
henceexemplars of the former class are more easily retrieved from memory.
however, despite these inconsistencies, the evidence as a whole supports the
view that human beings, like other animals, can learn probabilistic patterns in
their environment. We will now turn to a sample of some areas where
multiple , probabilistic information sourcesare available and might be used to
solve particular problems in perception and cognition .
3.2. Depth perception
One of the fundamental questions in the history of visual perception

concerns how we perceive a three-dimensional world based on a two- dimensional
image. Centuries of research on this question have focused on two
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issues, one optical and the other psychological. First , what types of optical
patterns exist in the two-dimensional image that are correlated with the three-
dimensional world that reflected the image to the eye? Second, which of these
information sourcesare actually used in visual perception, and how are they
weighed? The second question becomes particularly important given that
numerous potential cues to depth exist, such as those listed in table I .
TableI
Somevariablesthat arecorrelatedwith distance
Variable Description
Binocular disparity Differencesin the image of an objected projected to the two eyes
Motion parallax The relative velocity of imagesacross the retina
Accommodation Changesin the shape of the lens
Relative size The size of an image on the retina
Height in picture plane The location of an image along the vertical axis
Texture gradients The e , shape, and densityof textureelementslike pebbles
, tiles on a floor
Occlusion An object blocking the view of a more distant object
Of course, these cues vary in their range and predictive power. Thus
accommodation is not effective beyond 10 feet, and height in the projection
'
place can easily be violated (e.g., a person s head will be higher in the
projection place than the feet, yet is not further away from an observer) .
Nonetheless, many cuesare simultaneouslyavailable, and hencean important
issueconcernshow the various cuesare weighedand whether an available cue
might even be used. The situation could be complicated further becausethe
weights given to a set of cuesmight vary with context. Consider, for example,
the caseof textural cuesto depth. Many surfacesconsist of textured elements,
such as pebbles along a path or tiles in a room , that have roughly the same
size and shapeand are distributed randomly . However, becausethe elements
can systematically vary in their distance from an observer, their projected
imageswill vary also. As distance from the observer increases, the images of
the texture elements will decreasein size, compress in shape, and become
more densely packed. Investigations of these variables have found that
human observers(a) are sensitive to all three dimensions, but (b) respond to
some dimensions more strongly than others, and (c) change their weightings
with context (Cutting and Millard 1984). In particular , for flat horizontal
surfaces, the size gradient had the greatest effect in creating impressions of
depth, followed by the density and shape gradients. However, for curved
surfaces, the shapegradient dominated over the other variables.
Given that cues vary in their effectiveness, one might consider the extreme
case, and inquire whether some cues , though present, might receivea weight
of zero, and hence be totally ignored. Such total neglect might appear most
clearly when another more powerful cue is present. In such a situation , visual
processing might engage in what Bruno and Cutting ( 1988: 162) call cue
' selection' in which ' observers ... use the
, single most effective available
information source and the others' . For instance a static
[ ] disregard , , pictorial
cue to depth, like height in the image plane, might become ignored when
motion parallax is present, given that the former is lessconsistently predictive
of distance. However, using a variety of experimental methods, Bruno and
Cutting examined the impact of motion parallax, height in the image plane,
occlusion, and relative size on distancejudgments, and found that all of these
variables contributed significantly to those judgments. Such results indicate
that human beings use a variety of cuesin three-dimensional perception, even
cuesthat are not completely reliable.
3.3. Categorization
When subjectsare asked to judge the truth fulness of category membership

statementslike ' An x is a V ' , where Y is a category term and x is a possible
member, their time to respond consistently varies depending on x (cf. Smith
and Medin , 1981, for summary) . For example, subjects take longer to
' ' ' ' ' '
respond true to An ostrich is a bird than to A robin is a bird . These
reaction time patterns can be predicted by examining the extent to which an
instance possess es features typically associatedwith the category in question
e.
( g,. Rosch and Mervis 1975). In the case of birds, these might be flight
capacity, relatively small size, song, etc. This interpretation of the reaction
time phenomenaindicates that numerous information sourcesare used in the
processof categorization. Indeed, some have claimed that the reaction time
(and other) data indicate that membership in categories is not discrete, but
rather continuous, or that human beings believe that category membership is
usually fuzzy. However, subsequentresearchhas cast serious doubt on these
conclusions. For example, the status of an integer as even or odd is clearly
discrete. A simple, straightforward definition sufficesto unambiguously classify
any integer as even or odd. If the classification decision data reflect the
fact that human beings typically lack knowledge of category definitions and/
or believe that category membershipis generally fuzzy, then the decision data
should look rather different if subjects have to classify integers as even or
odd. If subjects know the mathematical definition and explicitly admit that
M .H . Kelly , S. Marlin I Domain-general abililies
category membership is completely and unambiguously determined by that

definition , then all integers should be classified as even or odd with equal
speed, so long as confounding variables like word frequency are control led.
However, Arm strong et al. ( 1983) found that some numbers are in fact
classified as even or odd faster than other numbers. Indeed, for a range of
categoriesthat had clear, agreed-upon criteria for membership, Arm strong et
al. found that some members were consistently classified faster than others.
Given these results, Arm strong et al. argue that , whatever the reaction time
data indicate, they do not imply that items are members of categories to
varying degrees, or that people believe in graded category membership.
We agree completely with the rationale for the Arm strong et al. experiments
and their conclusions. However, we nonetheless believe that the
reaction time data reflect certain aspectsof the processof categorization. In
particular , even when a criterion exists that is necessaryand sufficient for
category membership, people cannot help but weigh other factors that are
correlated with membership, though in the final analysis such features are
irrelevant. For instance, prime numbers are almost always odd (2 being the
only counterexample). This feature is, however, neither necessarynor sufficient
for being classified as odd. Still , the feature might be weighed in
classification, with prime numbers being classified as odd faster than nonprime
. Consideration of such other factors might be beneficial by speedingup
decision times while keeping error rates low. This advantage might also be
illustrated in the following phenomenon.
3.4. The word superiority effect
' '
Suppose subjects view a clearly printed letter k either by itself or in a
'
word , and they must identify whether a ' k or some other letter was
presented. Numerous experiments using variations on this task have repeat-
edly found that subjectsidentify the target letter more accurately if it appears
in a word than if it appears by itself (e.g., Reicher 1969, Johnston 1978) .
' '
Thus, ' k ' would be identified more accurately in the context of work than
alone (or in a string of letters that do not form a word ) . Why is the word
context advantageouseven though the letter in isolation is clearly printed ?
One possibility concerns the high speedswith which skilled readers process
orthographic material. Given that the context in which a letter appears is
partly predictive of its identity , observers could bypass complete perceptual
'
encoding of a letter, and use partial information about a letter s appearance
plus partial information about the identity of surrounding letters to speed
-generalabilities
overall processing while minimizing error rates. Thus, observers could circumvent
the usual tradeoff between speed and accuracy by using multiple
sources of information about letter identity . Of course, this additional
information is probabilistic in nature, given that words other than ' work '
' ' ' ' ' '
begin with wor , such as word and worm . Nonetheless, human beings are
apparently sensitive to this probabilistic information , and use it to increase
processingspeed.
4. Probabilisticinformationandlanguage process
ina
In this section, we will review some evidence that multiple , probabilistic

information sourcesare used to solve various tasks in language processing.
We will focus on phoneme perception, word boundary identification , and the
assignmentof words to grammatical categories. Other potential examplesalso
exist, such as word identification in sentencecontexts and assignmentsof
words to agent and patient roles. SeeMassaro ( 1991) for discussion of these
and other cases, along with mathematical models of some of these phenomena
.
4.1. Speech perception
As in the case of visual depth perception, numerous acoustic cues for

phonemeidentification exist. Indeed, Lisker ( 1978) lists fully sixteen variables
that could be used by listeners to determine whether a / b/ or /p/ is present in
' ' . Furthermore numerous
rud , experimentshave shown that listenersweigh
multiple variables in speechperception. Many of these experiments exploit
the possibility of trading relationships between different acoustic cues for
phonemecategories. In particular , supposethat the values along two acoustic
dimensions could be used to distinguish between two phonemesA and B. If
these two dimensions are in fact weighed by the listener, then shifts in the
value of one dimension toward the B category should be offset by compensatory
changestoward the A category in the value of the other dim ~nsion. This
paradigm has been used to document the existence of a variety of trading
relationships. For example, both voice onset time ( VOT) and r~lative aspiration
are potential cues for distinguishing voiced from voicelessstop consonants
. With amplitude of aspiration held constant, a particular VOT value
can be identified as the approximate boundary betweena voicelessand voiced
stop consonant. However, if the aspiration amplitude is then raised, thus
-generalabilities
increasing the evidence for an unvoiced consonant, the VaT boundary

betweenthe two phoneme classeswill shift toward shorter VaTs . Hence, an
' '
aspiration value that indicates unvoiced can be offset by a suitable VaT
' '
indicating voiced . Such results indicate that both VaT and aspiration are
weighed in distinguishing voiced from voiceless consonants (Repp 1979) .
Similar trading relations have been found for formant transition duration and
the duration of the following vowel, which are used to distinguish jbj from
jwj (Miller and Liberman 1979), silence duration and Fl onset frequency,
'
which are involved in the distinction between ' say' and ' stay (Best et al.
1981), and many other contrasts (seeRepp, 1982, for summary) . Furthermore
experimentsindicate that infants as well as adults weigh multiple variables in
speechcategorization (Miller and Elmas 1983) . The huge mass of this speech
'
perception evidence leads to the conclusion that listeners will make use of
'
any cue for a given phonetic distinction (Repp and Liberman 1987: 98) . Even
further , listeners will combine multiple cues to identify phonetic segments.
The search for multiple information sourcesin speechperception has been
driven in large part by the failure to find invariant relationships between
acoustic structure and phoneme categorization. If such invariants did exist,
then they would presumably be sufficient in themselvesto distinguish between
phonemes. Other, probabilistic cues, though present, might then be considered
superfluous. One possible invariant that has been identified and
explored over the past decadeinvolves the spectral shapeof a stop consonant
release burst. Blumstein and Stevens ( 1979) have argued that place of
articulation distinctions among stop consonants are invariantly signaled by
this variable. For example, alveolar stops exhibit a gradual rise in amplitude
as frequency increases, whereas labial stops show a falling or flat amplitude
pattern. Experiments have, in fact, shown that listeners are sensitive to this
information (Blumstein and Stevens1980) . However, even if this information
is invariant , its presenceapparently does not eliminate the effects of other,
probabilistic cues for stop consonant identity . Indeed, when the invariant and
probabilistic information conflict , the latter dominates (Walley and Carrell
1983). These results are analogous to the literature in visual depth perception,
in which probabilistic cues to depth are exploited even if more powerful cues
are also present. They also emphasize the danger of assuming that the
measuredstrength of a cue will map directly onto cue weights in perception.
4.2. Identification of word boundaries
Identifying word boundaries in continuous speech is one of the major

M.H. Kelly, S. Martin / Domain-generalabilities
problems in speechperception, languageacquisition, and the development of

speechrecognition devices. In contrast to our intuitions regarding our native
language, invariant cuesto word segmentationdo not appear to exist. Hence,
our impressionsof an unfamiliar languagemight better capture the true state
of affairs in the sound stream: Words seemto be tightly knit together, with
no obvious seamsthat can be used to teasethem apart . In fact, errors in word
'
segmentationoccur in learning and listening to one s native language, testifying
to the difficulties involved in this task. Segmentationproblems are well-
attested in the acquisition literature (e.g., Gleitman et al. 1988), and uncertainties
' ' '
over whether ' a napron or an apron was spoken may have caused
the former to have lost its initial / n/ over the course of English history .
Despite its clear difficulties, listeners nonethelessbecome quite skilled at
word segmentation, and numerous researchershave tried to identify the types
of cues listeners can and do use to solve this problem. These investigations
have uncovered cues that exist at various levels of language structure, from
constraints on phoneme sequencesto patterns in the prosody. None of these
cuescan guarantee successin word segmentaition, either alone or in concert,
but their joint effectsmay conspire to make word segmentationby and large
successful.
4.2.1. Phonemesequences
Languagesoften have restrictions on phonemesand/ or phoneme sequences
at syllable, morpheme, and word boundaries. Some of these restrictions are
strong constraints, such as the impossibility of obstruent + nasal sequences
within English syllables. However, large-scale corpora analyses might also
reveal probabilistic relationships between the distributions of phonemesand
various boundary types. Speakersdo appear to have some knowledge of such
probabilistic relations. Thus, Cutler et al. ( 1987) have shown that English
-
speakers have learned that English consonant vowel sequencesare more
likely to follow a CVCV than a CVCC pattern . Experiments on human
sensitivity to frequency information have found that people are not only
sensitiveto the frequenciesof individual letters (Attneave 1953) and syllables
(Rubin 1974), but also to letter combinations (Underwood 1983) . Given that
letter combinations will be correlated with phoneme combinations, such data
indicate that speakers also have knowledge of the relative frequencies of
phoneme sequences . However, experiments need to be performed to see if
speakers are sensitivenot just to the overall frequency of phoneme sequences,
but also to significant interactions between those frequencies and syllable,
morpheme, and word boundaries.
-generalabilities
4.2.2. Syllable cues

Individual syllables may vary in the likelihood with which they signal word
boundaries. In a recent analysis, we examined four common English syllables
- / 9~/, / b /, / m/, and / ~/ - and estimated their probability of occurring before
a word boundary . For example, / ~/ occurs before a word boundary in ' a .
maze' and ' Louisiana cooking' , but not in ' amaze' or ' astounding' . The
analysesrevealed that / 9~/ and / b / almost always appear just prior to word
boundary, followed by / ~/ and then / m/ . As a result, it is far easier to find
' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
English words like increase, invade , applause, and approach than words
' ' '
like today and topeka . '
We recently conducted an experiment to test whether English speakershave
knowledge of theserelationships. This experiment used a one-word / two -word
judgment task. In this procedure, subjects hear a sequenceof two syllables
and must judge as rapidly as possible whether the sequencecorrespondswith
one word or two. The critical items consisted of quadruplets such as ' the
mind ' , ' a mind ' , ' to mind ' , and ' in mind ' . In thesecases, a monosyllabic open
class word is precededby one of four monosyllabic closed class words, with
the closedclasswords varying in the likelihood with which they signal a word
boundary. If English speakers have learned these probabilities and exploit
them in word segmentation, then we would expect faster ' two -word ' judgments
for those syllablesthat most reliably correspond with word boundaries.
In addition , listeners should make fewer errors with these items. The filler
items consisted of disyllabic words such as ' typhoon ' . All of the disyllabic
words had stresson the secondsyllable, and so matched the stresspatterns of
the two-word cases. This control prevented the subjects from using stress
pattern as a guide to the correct answer.
The results from this experiment are presented in table 2. Statistical
analysesrevealedthat subjectswere significantly faster and made fewer errors
for the / 9~/ and / b / conditions than for the / ~/ and then / m/ conditions. In
Table2
Mean reactiontimes(in msec ) and error rates(pereight items) to identify a disyllabicpattern
' '
(e.g., the mind) as two wordsdependingon the initial word in the pattern
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addition , I ~I was significantly easierthan Iml on both the speedand accuracy

measures. The 19~1 and Ibl conditions were not significantly different. We are
currently planning a secondexperiment involving Ib / , I ~/, and Im/ . The same
one-word/ two -word task will be used, but in this case, the target syllableswill
' ' ' ' ' '
actually be part of a word as in tomorrow , abandon and infection . The
' '
correct answer here is one word , but the predictions are exactly the opposite
'
of those made for the samesyllablesin the ' two word context. Now , listeners
should be fastest and make the fewest errors with Iml items and be slowest
and make the most errors with the Ib / items.
4.2.3. ~rosodic structure

Cutler and her colleagueshave recently argued that the distinction between
strong and weak syllables, which is a major characteristic of English prosody,
can provide powerful cues to word segmentation. Whereas strong syllables
have a full vowel, weak syllables have a reduced vowel, which is typically
though not exclusively realized as a schwa. In extensive analysesof English
speechcorpora, Cutler and Carter ( 1987) found that over 70% of strong
syllables coincided with a word boundary. Our own unpublished analysis of
parental speechto children between 12 and 25 months of age is even more
strongly marked. Across the 14 mothers in our sample, strong syllables
corresponded with word boundaries 95% of the time, with 93% being the
LOWEST value in the corpus. 6 Hence, a productive word segmentation
strategy for English would divide an utterance at the beginning of each strong
syllable, and submit the resulting units to a lexical search. In general, these
units will match words in the lexicon, and the failures can be subjected to
some type of re-analysis.
Current evidence indicates that listeners do, in fact, use some version of
this strategy. First , Cutler and Butterfield ( 1992) predicted that when listeners
make word segmentationerrors, they should remove weak syllables from the
beginnings of words and attach them to the ends of words. Analyses of
6 Of course, the mothers are not deliberately making their speech more predictive of word
boundaries so as to assist their children in acquiring English. Rather, parental speechcontains a
strikingly high percentageof words that refer to concrete objects and easily perceivableevents, for
the good reason that children are more interested in these entities rather than more abstract
themes like religion or politics . Given that the vocabulary of everyday objects contains a high
-
proportion of monosyllabic words and is drawn from a core Germanic lexicon that is character
ized by polysyllabic words beginning with strong syllables, a greater correspondencebetween
strong syllables and word boundaries will appear in parental speech than in speech between
adults.
-generalabilities
naturally -occurring and experimentally-induced segmentationerrors supported

thesehypotheses. For example, a listener misheard ' bought a Mercedes' as
' Mortimer Sadies'
, which involved detaching the weak initial syllable of
' Mercedes' and ' '
appending it along with the weak a to the strong first
syllable. (Of course, some phoneme misperceptionsoccurred as well.) Second,
Cutler and Norris ( 1988) found that listeners took longer to identify the real
word 'mint ' in ' mintayf ' than in ' mintef' . Cutler and Norris argued that since
'
mintayf ' contains two strong syllables, listeners would initially segmentthe
syllablesinto separateword-units after the In/ . As a result, the listenerswould
have to overrule the initial word boundary and reunite the It I with the
'
preceding syllable. In mintef' , on the other hand, no word boundary would
be inserted between the Inl and It I since the final syllable is weak. Thus, the
subjectswould not have to rectify incorrect word boundaries in this case, and
their reaction time would be faster. Finally , although Cutler and Carter' s
corpus analysis indicated that a strong syllable generally marked a word
boundary, numerous segmentation errors would still be made with a simple
heuristic that always and only placed word boundaries before strong syllables
. However, Cutler and Carter point out that most of the errors in this
case would involve closed-class items as these are the principal words that
violate the strong syllable heuristic. Indeed, they systematically violate the
heuristic becauseword boundaries generally appear before weak syllables of
closed class words but strong syllables of open class words. If English
speakershave learned this pattern, and supplementedtheir word segmentation
strategies with it , they could further reduce the chances of a missegment
. In fact, segmentationerrors themselvesprovide some evidence
that English speakershave learned these prosodic patterns. Although Cutler
and Butter worth ( 1982) found that segmentationerrors tended to place word
boundaries before strong syllables, some did in fact occur before weak
syllables. However, most of these casesposited a closed-classword immediately
after the boundary.
4.3. Parsing
In determining the grammatical structure of . a sentence, listeners and

readers are often faced with local ambiguities. For example, in a sentence
' '
beginning with The judge knew the law ... , the final noun phrase could be
' '
the direct object of knew or the subject of a complement clause. In
attempting to understand how such ambiguities are dealt with , two major
questions have been intensely investigated: What information is brought to
bear on the ambiguity , and when is that information available? Over the past
two decades, the dominant answershave claimed that only a restricted range
of information contributes to initial parsing decisions, with other classesof
information only coming into play later to rectify errors in the first parse
(e.g., Frazier and Fodor 1978, Frazier and Rayner 1982, Ferreira and Clifton
1986, Ferreira and Henderson 1990) . In particular , preferencesfor certain
phrase structure geometries are used to guide initial parsing, such as a
preference to create the simplest phrase structure tree consistent with the
preceding input . These preferences are reputedly blind to other types of
information , such as the identity of the verb in the sentence.
The impenetrability of certain information classesto parsing mechanisms
createsvery interesting predictions. Consider, for example, the sentences' The
student forgot the solution was in the back of the book ' and ' The student
' '
hoped the solution was in the back of the book . In both sentences , the
' '
solution is the subject of a complement clause. However, a complement
clauseinterpretation would create a more complex phrase structure tree than
an interpretation that initially categorized' the solution ' as the direct object of
the respectiveverbs ' forgot ' and ' hoped' . Hence, upon reaching ' the solution ' ,
a reader might opt initially for the simpler direct object parse, which would
have to be rejectedwhen later disconfirming information is encountered. Still ,
one might entertain the possibility that the identity of the verbs themselves
could affect theseinitial parsing blases. Although ' forgot ' can be followed by
an NP object or an object clause, ' hoped' cannot appear with the former
structure. If such facts about verb argument types can influence the earliest
stages of parsing, then one would predict that readers would not posit a
direct object interpretation for ' hoped' , and so would not need to reject such
a hypothesis when subsequentportions of the sentenceare read. One would
therefore predict that reading times for the disambiguating areas of the
sentencewith ' hoped' would be faster than those for the same areas of the
sentence with ' forgot ' . This prediction and analogous ones using other
dependentmeasuresand experimental procedureswere supported in a set of
studies by Trueswell et al. (in press b) . The results could not be attributed to
' ' ' '
generally faster processingof forgot than hoped becausethe reading time
differencesbetween the verbs were significantly reduced in control sentences
' '
containing the complementizer that , which made the sentencesunambiguous
. Although some studies have been reported that did not find effects of
verb subcategorization preferenceson parsing (e.g., Ferreira and Henderson
1990), Trueswell et al. argue that thesestudies have a number of methodolo-
gical flaws. For instance, the verbs used by Ferreira and Henderson ( 1990)
-generalabilities
did not differ very much in their preferencefor noun phrase versus sentential
objects. Consequently, their methods were not sensitive enough to detect
differences.
In sum, then, the experiments conducted by Trueswell et al. (in press b)
indicate that subcategorization information about a verb has immediate
effects on parsing (see also Shapiro et al. 1993), contrary to models that
severely restrict the class of information available to parsing mechanisms.
Indeed, Trueswell et al. argue that a wide range of information sources
contribute to parsing decisions. As one final illustration , Trueswell et al. (in
press a) have recently provided evidence that semantic properties of the
sentencesubject can influence parsing. They contrasted sentenceslike ' The
defendant examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable' with ' The
evidenceexamined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable' . Parsing models
that rely solely on syntactic preferenceswould claim that readerswould have
'
difficulty with these sentencesbecausethey would initially treat defendant/
'
evidenceexamined to be the subject and verb of the main clause. Although
such syntactic preferencesmight exist, Trueswell et al. explore the possibility
that they could be modified by the relative prototypicality of the preceding
nouns as the subject for the verb. Although ' defendant' is a reasonable
' ' ' '
subject of the verb examined , evidence is not , and Trueswell et al. provide
evidence that readers weigh such information in their initial parsing proces-
ses. Thus, like visual depth perception, parsing appears to proceed by
considering multiple sourcesof information , which may range from general
syntactic preferencesto properties of the specific lexical items composing a
sentence.
4.4. Grammatical category assignments
One problem that listeners must solve during language comprehension is

the assignmentof words to the correct grammatical classes , such as noun and
verb. These assignments must be made rapidly given that conversational
speechproceedsat about 150 words per minute (Maclay and Osgood 1959).
What types of information might listeners exploit in order to make these
categorizations? Both semantic and syntactic factors are certainly available.
Semantically, nouns tend to denote concrete objects whereas verbs tend to
denote actions. These patterns are not invariant , but children do show
sensitivity to them in experiments (e.g., Brown 1957) . Syntactically, words
from different grammatical classesvary in their distributional requirementsin
sentences . Thus, English nouns, but not verbs, can appear in the sentence
' The
- stole the base' whereas verbs, but not nouns, can appear in the
'
sentence The runner - the base' .
While not disputing the important role of semantic and syntactic information
for grammatical class, we would like to explore a relatively neglected
domain of information . In particular , a large number of phonological cuesto
grammatical classexist, and experimentshave repeatedly shown that speakers
are sensitiveto them. For example, nouns and verbs in English differ in stress
pattern, syllable number, duration , vowel characteristics, and other phonolo-
'
gical dimensions (see Kelly , 1992, for a review) . English speakers have
revealed their sensitivity to these and other correlations in a wide range of
tasks. For instance, if listeners hear disyllabic pseudowords that differ in
stressand are asked to use each of these words in a sentence, they will use
words with first syllable stress more often as nouns and words with second
syllable stressmore often as verbs (Kelly 1988b) . Another set of experiments
took advantage of the fact that English words often develop uses in " other
' '
grammatical categories. Thus, police originated in English as a noun, but
' '
subsequentlydevelopeda verb use, whereas fumble originated as a verb, but
later developed a noun use. Despite the frequency with which these lexical
extensionsoccur, blasesagainst certain types of extensions exist (Clark and
Clark 1979). Although the cited blases tend to be based on semantic and
pragmatic factors, Kelly ( 1988b) speculatedthat the phonological characteristics
of nouns and verbs could influence the easewith which they develop uses
in the other category. In particular , if English speakers have learned the
correlation between stressand grammatical class in English, then they might
' '
use this knowledge as a measureof fit betweena current noun and possible
verb use and vice versa. Thus, they might consider nouns to be better verb
candidates to the extent that they have the prototypical verb stress pattern.
This possibility was tested by presenting one group of subjectswith pairs of
disyllabic nouns that differed in stress but were control led for other factors ,
7 Although thesecorrelationsare well- documented , their originsmay seemmysterious . However
, explanationsfor someof thesepatternshavebeenproposedand experimentally evaluated.
For example ) hasarguedthat threefactorsmight be involvedin the evolutionof
, Kelly ( 1992
phonologicalpredictorsof grammaticalclass: ( I ) Wordsfrom differentgrammaticalclasses differ
. (2) Thesedistributionaldifferencesmay havephonological
in their distributionsin sentences
reflexesassociated with them, whichcreatecontextualdifferences in the waywordsfrom various
classesare pronouncedand/or perceived . (3) Overtime, listenersviewthesecontextualeffectsas
permissible context-freepronunciations. This accounthasbeenappliedto the Englishnoun-verb
stressdifference(Kelly I 988a, 1989) and duration difference( Daviset al. 1992 ), and might be
usedas a heuristicto predictthe existence of other, currentlyunknownphonologicalcorrelates
with grammaticalclass.
-generalabilities
such as word frequency (e.g., llama and gazelle) . Another group of subjects
were presented with pairs of disyllabic verbs that differed in stress (e.g.,
grovel and beseech ) . None of the words had uses in the other category as
determined by the most recently available Webster's Collegiate Dictionary .
Subjects in the two groups were asked to select one noun (verb) from each
pair and use it as a verb (noun) in a sentence. The choices were significantly
affected by the stress patterns of the words, as nouns with second syllable
stress were used as verbs more often than nouns with first syllable stress
whereas verbs with first syllable stress were used as nouns more often than
verbs with second syllable stress. These patterns are not simply a laboratory
artifact . Analyses of the history of English also found the same patterns in
actual grammatical category extensions down through the centuries (see
Kelly , 1988b, for details) .
Although such experiments demonstrate that English speakers possess
implicit knowledge of the nounverb stressdifference, and that such knowledge
may even have affectedthe history of English, they do not entail that the
initial identification of a word as a noun or verb is at all affected by stressor
other phonological variables. That is, the subject might have recognizedthat
' ' ' '
gazelle is a noun just as easily as they recognized llama . Stressthen came
into play only later as a metalinguistic variable, but did not affect initial
categorization of the words. In order to determine whether stress actually
affects grammatical category assignmentsearly in speech processing, Kelly
and Martin ( 1993) recently conducted a nounverb categorization task that
we will summarize here.
The task was straightforward : On each trial , the subjectsheard a word that
they had to classify as a noun or a verb as quickly as possible. The words
were disyllabic and differed in stress, with half of the nouns and half of the
verbs having first syllable stress and the other half having second syllable
stress. In addition to varying a phonological correlate to grammatical class,
we also manipulated a semantic cue. Given that nouns generally denote
concrete objects and verbs readily perceived actions, we selectedour words
such that half of the nouns and half the verbs had the prototypical meanings
of their class, whereas the other half denoted abstractions. It is conceivable
that the phonological cue to grammatical classwould only influence grammatical
category assignmentswhen the semantic cue is absent. Given that the
semanticcue is universal whereasthe phonological cuesare languagespecific,
one might expect the former to be more basic and perhaps completely
eliminate effects of the phonological cue. The results indicated that both
semantic and phonological factors affected the subjects' judgments. Nouns
and verbs were classified faster if they had meanings typical of their classes.
In addition , the phonological variable of stressinteracted with grammatical
classsuch that nouns were classifiedfaster if they had first syllable stressbut
verbs were classified faster if they had second syllable stress. Most importantly
, the phonological effects were not eliminated for words that had
concrete meanings. Indeed, these effects were significantly magnified by the
presenceof semantic features that convergedon the samecategorization. The
effect of concretenesswas likewise magnified by the presenceof appropriate
phonological features. For example, concrete nouns with first or second
syllable stress were classified faster than abstract nouns with either stress
pattern. However, the differencebetweenthe concrete and abstract nouns was
larger for items with first syllable stress. For verbs, on the other hand, the
concrete/ abstract difference was larger for items with second syllable stress.
Thus, listenersappear to use a conspiracy of cues to identify the grammatical
category of a word . These cues can either be language-universal, like the
semanticcue to grammatical class, or language-specific, like stressin English.
Finally , the language-specific cues are not overwhelmed or even damped by
the language-universal factors. Instead, they mutually reinforce one another.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have submitted arguments and evidencefor the following

claims:
( I ) Multiple sources of information are available to solve problems in
perception and cognition .
( ) These information sources, though plentiful in number, are often probabilistic
2
in nature. Nonetheless, if multiple probabilistic sourcesconverge
on the solution to a problem, that solution is likely to be correct. Reliance
on multiple cues should therefore produce greater successthan reliance
on an individual cue.
( ) Given ( 1) and (2), one would expect to see widespread sensitivity to
3
probabilistic information throughout the animal kingdom . Furthermore,
since many problem domains are characterizedby probabilistic solutions,
sensitivity to variables such as frequency and rate of return should be a
domain-general ability . This general ability could, like memory, be involved
in species-specificproblems that have domain- dependentcharacteristics
. The current evidence from the human and non-human animal
literature strongly supports the hypothesis concerning sensitivity to pro -
babilistic information . Its domain-independence and interactions with

-specific abilities need to be heshed out in much
species greater detail,
however.
(4) Sensitivity to multiple sources of information for solving particular
problems should be widespread and domain-independent. We have reviewed
some areas, such as visual depth perception, where this claim
appears to be correct. Language appears to be no different from other
domains in this regard as numerous studies have shown that speakersare
sensitive to statistical regularities in their language, even though some of
these patterns are quite subtle. Extensive research remains to be performed
to determine if such knowledge is actually exploited in language
acquisition, comprehension, and production .
In conclusion, over the past few decades, cognitive scientists have moved
away from t ~e position that general principles operate across cognitive and
'
perceptual domains. Instead, research and theory ranging from cognitive
development (e.g., Chi 1978, Keil 1989) to animal learning (e.g., Seligman
1970) have emphasizedthat domain- dependentprinciples might constrain the
ways in which human beings gather, organize, and draw inferences from
different kinds of information . This approach recognizes that organisms
confront many problems whose solutions require specific kinds of information
that must be manipulated in highly constrained ways. As a result, the
manner in which, say, migrating birds solve their navigational problems will
probably not provide us much guidance in determining how children acquire
the meaningsof words in their language. However, the value of the domain-
specific approach should not causeus to neglect the fact that similar types of
problems are in fact encounteredacross domains, and hencedomain-general
solutions might have evolved to deal with them. The inherent probabilistic
nature of an animal' s environment is one such invariant , and sensitivity to
probablistic patterns appears to permeate perception and cognition, even in
areas like language that seemto be highly constrained by domain-dependent
principles.
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Section 3
the
Categorizing world
92(1994
Lingua ) 143
- 167 -Holland
. North
Does learning a language

require the child to reconceptualize the world ?
Susan Carey
Departmentof Brain and CognitiveScience
, Massachusetts
Instituteof Technology
, 77 Massachusetts
Ave., 25-406, Cambridge. MA 02139 , USA
Sortslconcepts , lexicalizedascountnounsin languages with a count/massdistinction, provide

criteriafor individuationandnumericalidentity. This paperexamines ' '
Quines andPiagets claims
that babiesand youngchildrenlack the logicalresources to representsortalconcepts.
Evidenceis marshalledagainstthe Quine/Piagetposition, in favor of a view that evenyoung
infants representat least one sortal concept , physicalobject, which providesspatiotemporal
criteriafor individuationand identity. Evidenceis alsoprovidedthat babiesbelow II monthsof
agemay not representmore specificsortalssuchas cup, animal, bottle, or book. Rather, they
mayconceptualize theseentitiesin a waycloselyrelatedto Quine's hypothesis
.
1. Intr04uctio D
Many students of language acquisition and cognitive development argue

that the continuity hypothesisshould be the default, to be defeatedonly in the
face of extraordinary evidence (e.g., Pinker 1984, Macnamara 1982). The
continuity hypothesis is that representational format is constant throughout
development; that the child has innately the logical and conceptual resources
to representhis or her world as do adults. The continuity hypothesis denies
'
stage changesof the sort envisioned by Piaget, denies changesin the child s
'
linguistic representations such as the putative semantic category/syntactic
'
category shift posited some years ago. According to the continuity hypothesis
, language learning is a very complex mapping process; the child must
learn which syntactic devices his/ her language employs, and which of a
universal set of semantic distinctions are expressedin the syntax of his/ her
language. What the child need not do, on the continuity hypothesis, is
construct genuinely new representationalresources.
Of course, whether the continuity hypothesis is true or not is an empirical
question, and to examine it , one must entertain possibilities as to what types
/94/$07.00@ 1994- Elsevier

-3841
0024 B.V. All rightsreserved
Science
SSDI0024-3841(93)EOOS8 -F
S. Carey / Reconceptualizingthe world
of discontinuities could possibly obtain in the course of development. If

evidence for discontinuities is found , several further questions are then
licensed, including : ( 1) by what mechanism is the change effected (e.g.,
maturational , learning by some other process than currently understood
parametersetting or hypothesis testing methods) . (2) What is the relation
betweenthe discontinuity and languagelearning? Is somechange in representational
resources required as a prerequisite to some aspect of language
learning? Alternatively , does language learning playa role in causing the
change?
'
Here I examine an important discontinuity proposal of Quine s, versions of
which are endorsed by thinkers as diverse as the British empiricists and
Piaget. Quine, Piaget, and others maintain that early representationsof the
world are formulated over a perceptual quality space(Quine, the empiricists)
'
or sensori -motor representational system (Piaget) . On both Quine s and
'
Piaget s views, the baby is not capable of formulating any representations
with the properties of adult concepts such as object, dog, table.
'
Quine s proposal is that the ontology that underlies language is a cultural
construction . ' Our conceptual firsts are middle -sized, middle distanced
objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comesmidway in the
'
cultural evolution of the race (Quine 1960: 5). Before the child has mastered
'
this cultural construction, the child s conceptual universeconsistsof representations
of histories of sporadic encounters, a scattered portion of what goes
'
on. Quine speculatesas to the representationsunderlying the toddler s usesof
' ' ' ' ' ' '
the words water , red , and Mama . His first learning of the three words is
uniformly a matter of learning how much of what goes on about him counts
as the mother, or as red, or as water. It is not for the child to say in the first
' ' '
case, ' Hello , Mama again , in the secondcase Hello , another red thing , and
' '
in the third case, Hello , more water . They are all on a par : Hello , more
'
Mama , more red, more water (Quine 1960: 92) . The child mastersthe notion
of an object, and of particular kinds of objects, in the course of getting the
' '
hang of what Quine calls divided reference, and this through the processof
' ' '
mastering quantifiers and words like same. The contextual learning of these
various particles goes on simultaneously, we may suppose, so that they are
gradually adjusted to one another and a coherent pattern of usageis evolved
'
matching that of one s elders. This is a major step in acquiring the conceptual
schemethat we all know so well. For it is on achieving this step, and only
'
then, that there can be any general talk of objects as such (Quine 1969: 9-
10) . And in another place he finishes the same idea with a bootstrapping
metaphor, underlining the degreeof conceptual changehe thinks is occurring :
S. Carey/ Reconceplua
Ilzing lhe world
' The child scrambles

up an intellectual chimney, supporting himself against
each side by pressureagainst the others' (Quine 1960: 93) . Quine also states
that once the child has masteredthe notion of an object, and got the trick of
divided reference, he goes back and reanalyzes' Mama ' , so that it is now the
name of a unique enduring person.
'
Quine s view can be schematizedas follows. Imagine a portion of bottle
experience that we adults would conceptualize as a single bottle. Babies
respond to bottleness or bottlehood also, and can learn many things about
bottlehood ; for instance, they can come to associatebottlehood with milk , or
with the word ' bottle' . Now imagine a portion of bottle experiencethat we
would conceptualizeas three bottles. The infant would also expect to obtain
milk (indeed, more milk ) from this bottleness and could also refer to it with
the word ' bottle ' . Note that shape is important to the identification of
bottlehood, just as the shape of the individual grains is important for
distinguishing riCefrom spaghetti from macaroni. Similary, even if Mama is a
scattered portion of what goes on, shape is important for distinguishing
Mama from Rover or from Papa. That shape is important for distinguishing
what scattered portion of experienceconstitutes bottlehood does not mean
that the baby is capable of representing' a bottle ' , ' two bottles' , or ' the same
bottle I had yesterday'. Thus, demonstrations that toddlers are sensitive to
shape in inductions of word meanings when new words are ostensively
defined over objects (e.g., Landau, this volume) do not bear on Quine' s
proposal.
In this discussion I will not make contact with Quine' s radical philoso-
phical views such as the indeterminacy of translation. I assumethat we can
characterize the adult ' s onto logical commitments, that these include middle-
'
sized physical objects, and that words such as ' table' , ' dog' and ' person ,
'
function as sortals in the adult lexicon, in Wiggins ( 1980) sense. Sortals refer
to kinds of individuals (i.e., divide reference), providing conditions for
individuation (establishing the boundaries of entities) and for numerical
identity (establishing when an individuated entity is the same one as one
experiencedat someother time, or in somecounterfactual world ) . One way of
'
stating Quine s hypothesis, as I construe it , is that babies and toddlers
represent no sortal concepts, no concepts that provide conditions of individuation
and numerical identity , no concepts that divide reference.
Two reviewers of this paper raised the objection that representations of
shapes presuppose representations of individuals that have those shapes,
'
claiming therefore that Quine s proposal (at least as construed above) is
'
incoherent. This is not so. Pleasedwell on the spaghetti, macaroni case. It s
S. Carey I Reconceptualizingthe world
true that if the contrast between the two types of stuff is basedon the shape
differencesof individual pieces, then some representationof those individual
pieces must enter into the representation of shape. But our concepts of
spaghetti and macaroni (and the words spaghetti, macaronI) do not quantify
over those individuals. Similarly , we can represent the shape of a scattered
portion of sand, arranged, for example, into an S, and when we refer to it as
'a ' ' '
portion or an S we are quantifying over that individual . But when we
' '
think of it as sand, we are not. Quine s proposal is that the child s conceptual/
linguistic system has only the capacity to represent the world in terms of
'
concepts like furniture , sand, bottlehood. Of course the child s perceptual
system must pick out individuals in order to represent shape, to determine
what to grasp, and so on. This is part of what Quine meant when he claimed
' '
that the child is inherently body minded (Quine 1974) .
Piaget, like Quine, believed that that baby must construct the concept of
enduring objects, although he differed from Quine as to the' mechanismshe
envisioned underlying this construction. Quine saw the child s mastery of the
linguistic devices of noun quantification , the machinery by which natural
languagessuch as English manage divided reference, as the' processthrough
'
which the child s ontology comes to match his or her elders . Piaget held that
the baby constructs the concept object during the course of sensori -motor
development by the age of IS-months or so, and that this construction is the
'
basis for the child s mastery of natural language. Since Piaget did not frame
his discussion in terms of an analysis of the logic of sortals, it is not clear
when he would attribute full sortals to the child. 1
'
The Quine/Piaget conjecture about the baby s representational resourcesis
a serious empirical claim, and as I will show, it is difficult to bring data to
'
bear on it . In what follows , I first consider Quine s views, contrasting his
hypothesis that children come to represent sortals only upon 'learning the'
linguistic devicesof noun quantification with what I will call the Sortal First
hypothesis. The Sortal First hypothesis is that babies represent sortal
concepts, that toddler lexicons include words that expresssortals, and that
these representations underly the capacity for learning quantifiers rather
than resulting from learning them. I then turn to early infancy, and explore
the contrast betweenthe Quine/Piaget hypothesis and the Sortal First hypothesis
as regards the earliest phases of word learning. A preview of my
conclusions: whereas the Sortal First hypothesis is ultimately favored, evi-
1 For example, Piaget thought that the logical prerequisitesfor representingthe adult concepts
all and someare not acquired until after age S.
S. CareyI Reconceptualizing
theworld 147
denceis presentedfor a decidedly Quinian discontinuity in infant conceptual

development.
's mastery
Thetoddler of syntax
'
Quine s hypothesis is that the child masters the logic of sortals through a
processof adjusting the meanings of nouns and of natural language quanti-
fiers to each other (scrambling up an intellectual chimney, the walls of which
are the child ' s currently worked out representationsof the quantifiers he/ she
knows). To address Quine' s conjecture experimentally, we must first know
when in the child ' s life the putative scrambling is going on. Even by age 3 the
child is not producing all the quantifiers that constitute the sides of Quine' s
chimney. The very beginnings of the English count/ mass distinction are
masteredin the months leading up to age 21/. 2. Many children age 2:0 produce
nouns with no determiners or plurals, but some have begun to produce
plurals and a few determiners and quantifiers (usually possessivessuch as
' ' ' ' ' '
my , plus a and the ) . Many 2-year-olds beginning to use determiners do
not distribute them differently according to the noun' s count/ mass status in
the adult lexicon. They still omit many determiners, and use others like ' the'
and ' my' that do not differentiate count nouns and mass nouns. By 21.J2 '
virtually all children distinguish in some ways the syntactic contexts in which
words like ' table' and ' dog' appear from those in which words like ' water'
and ' playdoh' appear (Gordon 1985, Sola et al. 1991) . Gordon ( 1982) showed
that between 21/. 2 and 3 years of age the distinction becomes marked in
'
syntax, as the child s speechabruptly comes to reflect the arbitrary rule that
detenniners are obligatory for singular count nouns, but not for mass nouns
' ' .' '
(that is, one can say I like juice , but not 1 like dog ) .
The developmentalfacts summarizedabove determine the relevant agesfor
an empirical test of Quine' s speculations. Data bearing against Quine' s claims
could be of several types: e.g., data showing children age 2 or under take
proper nouns to refer to individuals of a kind or that they take count nouns
to refer to kinds of individuals. But, as already mentioned, the trick is
' ' '
figuring out how we can know whether toddlers Mama refers to entities
' '
they conceptualize as individuals or whether their bottle divides reference,
referring to each individual of a certain kind , as opposed to bott/ehood.
Another type of evidencecould be relevant. If it can be shown that upon
first learning ' a' or the plural ' -s' , toddlers interpret them correctly, as
signalling an individuated entity of a kind or a plurality of individuals of a
148 theworld
kind , respectively, this would tell against Quine. This is becausetheseare the
first relevant quantifiers the child learns. If he or she interprets them correctly
from the beginning, the interpretation could not have been acquired through
an adjustment process involving the entire set of quantificational devices of
noun syntax. This last point is important . In the beginnings of language
'
learning, on Quine s view, children will not interpret those few quantifiers in
their lexicons as adults do. The scramble will have just begun. Data showing
'
that children use ' a' and plurals will not be itself relevant to Quine s
hypothesis; it must be shown that such quantificational devicesare doing the
samework as they do in the adult language.
3. The composition of the toddler lexicon
'
A large proportion of the baby s first words are words for middle-sized
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
physical objects, such as bottle , book , dog , cup , and banana . But that
babies have words in their lexicons that refer to object kinds in the adult
lexicon tells us nothing of what these words mean to the babies. Many have
argued that the earliest words are often complexive (e.g., Bowerman 1978,
Dromi 1987, Vygotsky 1962). That is, children appear to extend words to new
referentson the basisof any of the salient perceptualproperties of the original
experiencesin which the word was heard. These complexive uses often cut
' '
across what are for adults distinct ontological categories, as when paper
apparently refers to the act of cutting, the act of drawing, to pens and pencils
and to paper (Dromi 1987). If such complexive uses reflect unconstrained
(from the point of view of adult lexical categories) projection of word
'
meanings, Quine s views receivesupport . But it is important to seethat such
'
complexive usesare not necessaryfor Quine s conjecture to be correct.
Indeed, others deny that toddlers construct complexive meanings; Hutten-
locher and Smiley, 1987, for example, presentevidencethat from the beginning
' '
babiesuseeach word for middle-sizedobjects appropriately: bottle to refer to
bottles, ' book' to books, and so on. But even if Huttenlocher and Smiley are
'
right , this fact .does not disconfirm Quine s conjecture. In fact, Quine presupposes
that the baby usesthe words in contexts adults would. His point is that,
'
evenso, the baby might not be individuating the words referentsas we do. The
baby could refer only to what we conceptualize as bottles when she uses
' bottle' but could be
, referring to bottlehoods. She could be using the word to
refer to a scattered portion of what goes on, determined by perceptual
' '
similarity to the portions of her experiencewhen adults use bottle .
S. Carey I Reconceptua/izing the world
4. Toddler se. itivity to noun syntax
Children as young as 17 months (at least girls that young) are sensitive to
the syntactic context in which a new noun is heard in their projection of noun
meaning (Katz et al. 1974, Macnamara 1982) . Specifically, if ostensively
taught a new word in a count noun context, referring to an unfamiliar doll
.
( See this. This is a dax. Can you touch the dax? Can you put the dax on
'
your head ... ), they assumethat other dolls of the sametype are also daxes.
But if taught in a proper noun context (.Seethis. This is Dax. Can you touch
Dax. Can you put Dax on your head ...' ), they assumethat other dolls of the
sametype are not Dax , reserving ' Dax ' for the original doll only .
Do thesedata establish that young children distinguish kinds from individuals
, and use count nouns to achieve divided reference? Certainly not. They
do establish that toddlers are sensitive to the syntactic distinction between
nouns following determiners and those not following determiners, but this
distinction could be signalling a different semantic distinction than that
between individuals and kinds. For a sample Quinian interpretation : babies
' ' ' '
could take nouns without determiners such as ' Dax , ' Rover , and Joan , to
refer to portions of experiencedefined by a stricter similarity metric than that
referred to by nouns with determiners. Supposea Quinian baby, Alice , has a
' ' ' '
brother whom she hears called both Rupert and a boy . Supposealso that
she relies on shape to determine Rupertness and boyness. She could have
' '
learned from others' usage of the words that to be called Rupert , a given
portion of experiencemust be very similar in shapeto the original portions of
' '
experienceto which the term was heard to refer, whereasto be called a boy ,
.the '
boy , something need look only somewhat like the original referent. A
' ' ' '
generalization of this pattern of distinction , across Alice and a baby ,
.Rover' and ' a ' and so on could
, dog , , underly the patterns of projection
found by Katz et al., 1974, and subsequentreplications.
This interpretation of the Katz et al. data attributes to the baby a different
' ' ' ' ' '
meaning for a from the adult as well as different meaningsfor bottle , boy ,
. ' '
Rupert . This is, of course, Quine s position . On his view, it is only in the
course of learning other quantifiers, plural markers, and so on, and adjusting
to all the contrasts in usage they mark (the process of scrambling up the
' '
intellectual chimney cited above) that the baby works out the meaning of a ,
' . ' '
.the another some more all ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
, , , , , many , same,2 etc.
2 Bloom.
personal communication, provides the following argument against the Quinian
'
interpretation of the Katz et al. data. Among children s very first words are some pronouns (e.g.,
In several studies, my colleaguesand I have attempted to addressQuine' s
'
proposal by comparing children s representations of solid physical objects,
such as cups, with their representationsof non-solid substances , such as sand
.
or gels or creams Our idea that is since adults conceptualize the former as
kinds of individuals (i .e., in terms of sortals that divide reference), but do not
conceptualize the latter in this way, we might be able to find evidence that
infants and toddlers respect the quantificational distinction between the two
as well.
In the first studies, Sola et al. ( 1991) compared 2-year-olds' projection of
newly learned :words ostensively defined by reference either to novel solid
physical objects (e.g., a brass plumbing T) or novel non-solid substances(e.g.,
a hair-settin$ gel with grapenuts embeddedin it ) . The objects were made of
unfamiliar materials and the non-solid substanceswere presentedformed.into
distinctive novel shapes. The child was introduced to the novel entity and
' ' ' '
provided a word for it (e.g. blicket for a novel object; stad for a novel nonsolid
substance). The child was then presented two new sets of stimuli and
asked to give the experimenter the blicket or the stad. For each object trial ,
the choicesconsistedof another object of the same shapemade of a different
material (e.g., a plastic plumbing T) or three small pieces of the original
material (brass) . For each substance trial , the choices consisted of a new
substanceformed into the original shape, or three small piecesof the original
substance. Figure I shows the design for one trial of each type. There were
four object trials and four non-solid substancetrials. Of course, which words
were assigned to which entities varied across subjects, but for expository
' ' ' '
clarity I will use blicket as my sample object name and stad as my sample
non-solid substancename.
' he' ' it ' and thesearetreatedfrom theonsetas ' '

, ) belongingto the samecategoryas Rupert and
' '
not as dog . Childrendo not usethemwith determinersor modifiers(Bloom 1990 ). The adultlike
analysisworks well in accountingfor this finding; pronouns, like proper names , denote
individuals. But the Quiniananalysisfails, sincea far broaderrangeof referentsare called' it '
or ' he' than are called'dog' . I agreewith this argument, as I rejectthe Quinian proposalin
favor of the Sortal First hypothesis . However, Quinecould reply that the child hastwo setsof
words: wordslike ' dog' and wordslike ' Rupert', and a few singularitieslike ' he' , eachtagged
with someof the syntacticcontextsin which they appearand eachtaggedwith prototypical
referentsand a similarity metric that determinesusage . Comingto recognizethat the syntactic
contextsin which ' he' appearsare the sameas those for ' Rupert' might be part of the
scramblingprocess .
S. Carey / the world
OBdECr 1' RIAL 8U~ dCEftW .
RAJ8D
Sft MULU8:
T S
~ . my Dbt . . " . . ..., . ~ .
TEST
LI :
8' 11MU
~
..dad4
JUh @8
~ . o. Mlabtf . ~ . o. . . . ?
Fig . 1. Object trials and substancetrials in Sola et al. ( 1991) .
'
Sola et al. carried out two analysesto assesswhether children s representations
of the referents of the words were influenced by the status of their
knowledge of count/ mass syntax. First , they collected production data and
assignedeach child a value corresponding to the degreeto which count nouns
and mass nouns appeared in selective syntactic frames (e.g., ' a NO U N ' ,
' NO UNs ! ' ' too much NO U N ' . Scores ran from 0 to near 1.0. Second
) , they
introduced the new words in two different ways. In the neutral syntax
condition , no syntactic information as to the count/ mass status of the word
was provided ; the words were introduced as ' my blicket , my stad' and
' '
subsequentlyappearedin the context the blicket , the stad . In the informative
' '
syntax condition , the words were introduced as a blicket , some stad , and
further differentiated syntactically, e.g. another blicket , some more stad' .
'
As figure 2 shows, children at age 2:0 and 2:6 used different basesfor their
projection or words for the two different types of entities. They projected
' biicket' to the other whole
object the sameshapeas the original referent and
' stad' to the scattered
they projected portion of substancethe same texture
and color as the original referent. For object trials , children were sensitive to
matchesin shapeand number; for non-solid substancetrials , children ignored
matchesin shapeand number. Performancewas more adult-like on the object
trials, but performance on both types of trials was better than chanceat both
ages. Also apparent on figure 2, the syntactic context made no difference. The
children were no more likely to interpret ' blicket' as the word for a kind of
individual when it was heard in a count noun context. Similarly , hearing
% choicesmatchingreferentin shapeandnumber
Ir.a rigid
I [] nonsolid
.
"
& .
60
chance
! .
0 :
- =
e .
40
.
! .
"a" "some
" "a" " "
"some "my" " . "
my" my" my"
2:0 2:6 2:0 2:6
SYNTAX
INFORMATIVE NEUTRAL SYNTAX
condition
Fig. 2. % trials in which test stimulus chosen matched original referent in shape and number
(Sola et al. 1991).
' stad' in a massnoun context made them no more

likely to conceptualizestad
as a substancethat can appear either in scatteredor singly bounded portions .
Further , the child ' s productive control of count/ masssyntax did not influence
the pattern of projection : children with differentiation scoresof 0 showed the
samepattern as those with differentiation scoresclose to 1.
'
We can conclude from these results that an entity s status as a solid
physical object (or not ) influences which of its properties are salient in
determining what other entities are referred to by the sameword. We can also
conclude that this distinction between objects and non-solid substances
predates mastery of count/ mass syntax. These data are consistent with the
' ' '
Sortal First hypothesis, for they are consistent with the child s taking blicket
' '
to refer to each individual whole object of a kind , and stad to refer to a kind
of substance, conceptualized as a non-individuated entity . But the data are
'
also consistent with the following more Quinian interpretation of the child s
representationsof the blicket and the stad.
'
Babies, being ' body-minded (Quine 1974) could be sensitiveto the perceptual
experiencesthat determine objecthood: boundedness, rigidity , coherence
through motion . Whenever theseare detected, they could heavily weight such
features as shape in their representation of these experiences . Shape would
S. CareyI Reconceptua/;zing the world
thus be a salient feature of the blicket , but not of the stad, for non-solid
substancesdo not maintain their shapeswhen manipulated. For non-solid
substances , properties such as texture and color might be salient, for these
stay constant over experienceswith substances . In other words, the two -year-
old could be using ' blicket' to refer to blicketness, and recognize blicketness
by shape. The differential patterns of projection do not establish that the
toddler is using ' blicket ' to refer to any individual whole object of a certain
kind , that the toddler divides the referenceof ' blicket ' .
One detail of the data from figure 2 favors the Sortal First over the
Quinian interpretation, and that is that toddlers performed more like adults
on the object trials than on the substancetrials. Quine' s interpretation of this
would have to be ad hoc, perhaps that the baby has had more object
experiencethan substanceexperience. But the Sortal First hypothesispredicts
this asymmetry. To seethis, supposethe Sortal First hypothesis is true, and
' '
suppose that upon first hearing the word blicket the child assumesthat it
refers to each individual object of a certain kind . The choicesfor testing how
the child projects ' blicket ' included another si.ngle object, and 3 small objects.
Even if the child isn' t exactly sure of which features of the blicket establish its
kind , the child can rule out that the 3 small objects are a blicket , for under no
interpretation can they be an individual object of the same kind as the
original referent. Children should then be at ceiling on the object trials , which
' '
they are. .The substancetrials are another story. If upon first hearing stad ,
the child takes it to refer to the kind of substanceof the original referent,
then scatteredportions have no different status from unitary portions . There
is no clue from number of piles which of the choices on the test trials is the
stad. If children are not certain what properties of the original sample of stad
determine the kind stad, they might do worse on the stad trials. And indeed,
they do.
The key issue here is the role of number in determining how to project
' blicket' . If the
Quinian interpretation of the data is correct, the baby should
' blicket' on the basis of
project shapesimilarity , no matter whether the choice
that does not match in shapeconsists of one object or three objects. That is,
the baby should succeedon an object trial as on figure 3 as well as on an
object trial as in figure 1. The Sortal First interpretation predicts that
performance on the object trials will fall to the level of performance on the
substancetrials if the cue from number is removed (figure 3) . In an object
trial such as that on figure 3, ' blicket' is ostensivelydefined as before, but the
choicesfor projection are changed: another blicket of a different material (as
before) and another whole object of . a different kind made of the same
NAMBO
B' nMULV8:
1DT
.i~
rt ~
rnMULI :
~ b. . tM MlDbl ?
).
trialin Sola(1987
Fig. 3. Object
material as the original referent (instead of the three small objects) . Now the
child has no clues from number of objects as to which is the correct choice.
Performanceshould fall to the level of the substancetrials , and indeed, this is
what happens(Sola 1987) .
Apparently , the child uses the information provided by number on the
object trials , but not on the substancetrials. We take this as evidencethat the
child conceptualizessomeentities as individuals (such as kinds of objects) and
conceptualizesother entities as non-individuated (such as kinds of substances
) . These distinct ways of conceptualizing objects and substancespredates
' '
mastery of count/ masssyntax. Toddlers do not merely project blicketness on
the basis of shapeof individual piecesof blicketness, as we determine whether
somepasta is spaghetti on the basis of the shapeof individual pieces. Instead,
' '
the pattern of projection suggeststoddlers divide referenceof blicket , and
take it to refer to any individual of a certain kind .
' ' ' ' '

6. Toddlers i Dgof 8 , someNOUN_
understand
I take the data reviewed in the previous section to show that by age 2:0
children take ' blicket ' to refer to individual objects of a certain kind and
' stad' to refer to non-solid substancesof a kind and that the toddlers'
,
representationsof blickets and stads have the same quantificational structure
' '
as would adults . ' Blicket is a sortal term. These data disconfirm Quine only
on the assumption that the baby did not acquire these representationsfrom
S. Carey / Reconceplualizinglhe world
learning English noun quantifiers. This assumption seemswarranted, given

that as a whole toddlers at 2:0 do not produce quantifiers, and given that the
pattern of projection was independent of whether the individual subjects
produced any noun quantifiers selective for count nouns. A worry , though ,
is that babies may have better comprehension than production of the
quantifiers.
We attempted to address that possibility by manipulating the syntactic
context in which the word appeared. As mentioned above, the syntactic
environment in which the new word appeared had no effect in Sola et alis
experiments, even at age 2!j2 when many children did produce quantifiers
differentially for what are count and mass nouns in the adult lexicon. The
Quinian interpretation of this fact is that quantifiers like ' a' , ' another' , ' some
NOUN _ ' , ' some more NOUN _ ' do not yet signal the distinction between
individuated and nonindividuated entities, just as the child is not projecting
' blicket' and ' stad' on
the basis of that distinction . The Sortal First interpretation
: objects are naturally construed as individuals of a kind and non-solid
substances are naturally construed as non-individuated entities, even by
toddlers, as shown by performance in the neutral syntax condition . Informative
'
syntax merely reinforces the child s natural construal of the two types of
entities.
A study by Sola ( 1992) decided betweenthesetwo interpretations, and also
establishedthat our production data did not underestimatetoddlers' interpretation
of the quantifiers. Sola taught toddlers words for the objects and
substancesin a new condition : contrastive syntax. ' Blicket' was introduced in
a mass noun context ; ' stad' in count noun context. That is, when shown a
novel solid object, the child was told , ' Here' s some blicket ... Would you like
to seesome more blicket?' And when shown a non-solid substancefashioned
into a distinctive shape, the child was told , ' Here' s a stad ... Would you like
to seeanother stad?' As can be seen from figure 4, at both ages 2 and 2!j2'
the pattern of projection was markedly different from that seenin the neutral
and informative syntax conditions (figure 2) . At both ages, the syntactic
context ' some NOUN _ ' , ' some more NOUN _ ' made children slightly less
' '
likely to construe blicket as referring to an individual whole object of a kind .
There was a slight tendency towards interpreting it to mean something like
brass. The syntactic context ' a stad' made children significantly less likely to
construe the non-solid substance as a non-idividuated entity . Rather, they
interpreted the word as meaning something like s-shapedpi /e.
Wait , you might say, doesn' t this show that children at theseagesdo know
the force of ' a' , ' another' , and so might have learned to represent sortal
referent in and number

% choices
matching shape
m
rigid
1 1
10 nonsolidi
.
.
160
! .
chant
40
.
II
Do
" "
some
some
. ,
1
2 : 6
2 : 0
CONnl Crl NG SYNTAX

CONDm ON
. differentfrom d1ar: e
Fig. 4. % trials in which test stimuluschosenmatchedori2inai referent in shape and number

in Sole( 1992
).
concepts in conjunction with bootstrapping the meaning of the quantifiers?

No , becauseof one further aspectof the data. At the younger age, sensitivity
to conflicting syntax was shown solely by those children who had differentiated
count and mass nouns in their production . Those whose differentiation
scoreswere low performed just as did toddlers in the informative and neutral
conditions, projecting ' blicket' to the other object of the same kind as the
' '
original referent and stad to the other substanceof the same kind as the
' '
original referent. This shows that the interpretation of blicket as a sortal
' ' ' '
predateslearning the meaning of a , another , and presumably underlies the
latter achievement, as predicted by the Sortal First hypothesis.
' '
These data tap the very moment children first learn the meaning of a .
's
They have only begun the scramble up Quine chimney, and have not had
' '
time to adjust their interpretation of ' a' to many other quantifiers. Yet , a
signals an individuated entity of some kind . Together these data provide
converging support for the Sortal First hypothesis. The child naturally
the world 157
construes physical objects as individuals in distinct kinds , and naturally

construes non - solid substances in terms of kind of non - individuated entities .
These natural construals support adult - like projection of word meaning
(figure 2), and support adult - like interpretation of newly learned quantifiers
' ' ' '
like a , some and plurals .
YGungerinfants
'
Altogether the data support the Sortal First hypothesis over Quine s
conjecture, but they do not establish when the child first begins to
represent sortal concepts. As noted earlier , it is not clear when Piaget
would attribute sortal concepts to children , but it is certain that he would
deny them to young infants . The argument I have developed so far does
not bear on Piaget' s claims about the representational capacities of
infants , as it concerns children age 24 months and older . Of course, a
demonstration that young infants represent sortal concepts would defeat
' ' '
Quine s conjecture as well as Piaget s characterization of the infants
conceptual resources.
Studies by Cohen and his colleagues(e.g., Cohen and Younger 1983) show
that quite young babies will habituate when shown, for example, a seriesof
distinct stuffed dogs, and that they generalize habituation to a new stuffed
dog and will dishabituate when shown a stuffed elephant. Similarly , when
shown a seriesof distinct stuffed animals, babies of 8 or 9 months habituate,
generalize habituation to a new stuffed animal, but dishabituate to a toy
truck. Do thesedata not show that babies of that age representconceptssuch
as ' dog' and ' animal?'
Certainly not. Babies may be sensitive to dog shapes or animal shapes;
babies may be habituating to doghood or animalhood. To credit the baby
with sortals such as ' dog' , or ' animal' , we must show that such concepts
provide the baby with criteria for individuation and identity .
My discussion of this question has two steps. First , I argue that babies
represent at least one sortal , object. Second, I present some recent data
from my lab that suggest that as late as 10 months of age, the baby may
have no more specific sortal concepts - not cup, bottle, truck , dog, animal
.... Thus, a Quinian interpretation of the above habituation data may well
be correct.
8. Principles of individuation : Yo UDger infants
' '
Piaget s characterization of infants cognitive capacitieswas basedon tasks
in which the baby must solve some problem, often involving means- end
'
analysis, and often involving planning some action. For example, Piaget s
conclusions that babies do not represent objects as continuing to exist when
out of view were basedon the robust finding that babies under 8 or 9 months
'
cannot remove a cover to get a hidden object. The babies failure might be
due to their failure to realize the object still exists, as Piaget thought , or
equally might be due to their inability to carry out one action (remove a
cover) to achievesome other goal (obtain the object). What is neededis some
reflection of the baby' s conceptualization of the world that relies on behaviors
well within the repertoires even of neonates. Over the past 15 years or
so, such a method has been developed and is now very widely used. It relies
on babies' ability to control what they attend to.
The basic idea is simple. Under most circumstancesbabies will look longer
at what is unfamiliar or unexpectedcompared to what is familiar or expected.
Researchersuse this fact to diagnosehow the baby representssome situation ,
especiallywhat the baby considers surprising given his or her current state of
physical knowledge. The selectivelooking paradigm has been usedextensively
to probe babies' representations of objects, and the data from a subset of
thesestudies can be recruited to bear on the question at hand. They establish
that by four months of age the baby representsat least one sortal concept -
the concept of a physical object. The baby has criteria for individuation and
for numerical identity of objects.
Spelke and her colleagueshave shown that babies establish representations
of objects on the basis of criteria which individuate them - an object is a
coherent, bounded, entity that maintains its coherenceand boundaries as it
moves through space(seeSpelke, 1990, for a review) . The baby predicts the
motion of objects according to principles such as that one object cannot pass
through the spaceoccupied by another (Spelke et al. 1992, BaillargeoD 1990) .
Most relevant to the present discussionare studies showing that babies count
objects.
These are of two types. In the first , babies are simply presentedwith arrays
containing a fixed number of objects, say 2 of them, one after another. For
example, two cups, followed by two shoes, two bottles, two hats, two pens,
and so on. The pairs of objects are never repeated, so the arrays have nothing
'
in common but twoness. The baby s looking is monitored , and after a while,
' s attention to each new
the baby array decreases , relative to his or her
original looking time. The baby is getting bored. After looking time has
decreased to Y2 its original level, the baby is presented with an array
containing one object, or three objects. In both cases, looking time recovers
to its original level. The baby notices the difference between two objects, on
the one hand, and a single object or three objects, on the other. This result, or
one very like it , has been obtained with neonates(Antell and Keating 1983) .
In fact, the baby' s capacity to detect similarity in number across distinct
arrays serves a methodological wedge into the problem of how babies
individuate objects. The baby can be habituated as described above, to two
objects, and then presented with an array as in figure 5, consisting of two
distinct objects sharing a common boundary. Babies dishabituate to this
array, showing that they perceiveit as one object, rather than two. Thesedata
support the conclusion, derived from other types of data as well, that babies
are not sensitive to shape or texture regularity in individuating objects; they
needpositive evidenceof distinct boundaries, such as one object moving with
.111
,.:~..:..~
;1
'
~
respectto the other, or the objects being separatedin space.
: 111111
.
~
Fig. 5. Test~timulu ~ of two adjacentblocksof different size, texture and color .
A second source of evidence that babies count objects derives from data
showing that babies can add and subtract. Wynn ( 1992) showed four -month -
olds events in which a secondobject was added to an array already containing
one object. An object was placed on an empty stage while the baby
watched and then a screen was raised that covered the object. A hand
carrying a second object was shown going behind the screen and returning
empty. The screenwas then lowered, revealing either one object (unexpected
outcome, even though that was what the baby had last seen) or two objects
(expectedoutcome, if the baby knows I + I = 2) . Babies looked longer at the
unexpectedoutcome.
A further experiment showed that babies expected exactly two objects,
rather than simply more than one object. In this study, the expectedoutcome
was two objects, as before, but the unexpected outcome was three objects.
Again , babies were bored at seeing two there, and looked longer at the
unexpectedoutcome of three objects. Experiments of the same sort demonstrated

that babies expected3 - I to be 2, and 2 - I to be I .
Whereas these studies were performed to explore the baby' s concept of
number, they bear on our question as well. Babies, like anybody, cannot count
unlessthey have criteria that establishindividuals to count. Babiesclearly have
criteria that establishsmall physical objects as countable individuals.
That babies individuate and count objects does not show that they trace
identity of objectsthrough time, that they have the representationalcapacity to
distinguishone object seenon different occasionsfrom two numerically distinct
but physically similar objects. However, there are now two demonstrationsof
'
this capacity in infants age 4 months or younger. Spelke( 1988) showedbabies
objectsmoving behind and r~ erging from two separatedscreens , screenA to
the left of screenB (figure 6). An object emergedto the left of screenA and
returned behind it, and then an object emergedto the right of screenBand
returned behind it. At any given time, at most one object was visible, and no
object ever appeared in the space between screensA and B. Under these
conditions, 4-month- olds inferred there must be two objects, as shown by the
fact .that when the screenswere removed, revealing two objects (expected
outcome), they looked less than when the screenswere removed revealingone
object (unexpectedoutcome). Baillargeon ( 1990) showedinfants two objects at
once, one on either side of a screen. The babiesthen used the existenceof two
numericallydistinct objectsto make senseof what would be an impossibleevent
if only one object were involved. Togetherthesestudiesshow that babiesusetwo
spatiotemporalprinciples to individuate and trace identity of objects: one object
cannot be in two placesat the same time, and one object cannot go from one
p}a(' e to another without tracing a spatiotemporallycontinuous path.
In sum, infants have a concept physical object that functions as a sortal ;
they have at least one concept that divides reference, that provides criteria for
individuation and numerical identity . These criteria are spatiotemporal.
differencebetweenyounginfantsandadults
10. A majorconceptual
Adults also look longer at the unexpected events in the experiments

described above. Further , they ask how the magic tricks are done. This is
S. CareyI Reconceplualizing
lhe world
DiscontinuousCondition
I I Screens introduced
. . - - +
~
Object 1
brought out
. . +- -
Object 1
returned
8 +- -
I I Object 2
brought out
- - +
.
Steps 2 - 5 repeated
. Object2
returned
Screens removed
~ ~ revealing
Expected outcome
~ or
Unexpectedoutcome
Fig. 6. Numerical identity trials , after Spelke ( 1988).
becauseadults use spatiotemporal information in just the sameway as do the

infants. But adults use other types of information in establishing individuals
and tracing their identity through time: property information and membership
in kinds more specific than physical object. We use property information
- if we see a large red cup on a window still , and later a small green cup
there, we infer that two numerically distinct cups are involved, even though
we have no spatiotemporal evidenceto that effect. And , as philosophers point
out , our identity judgements are relative to sortals more specific than object
(Wiggins 1980, Hirsch 1982, Macnamara 1986) . Imagine a junk car, consigned
to the crusher. The process of crushing is a spatiotemporally continuous
'
, gradual process. Any changes in the car s properties are also continuous
; it changesshapecontinuously, for example. Yet we say that at a certain
point the car goes out of existence, and is replaced by a lump of metal and
plastic. We trace identity relative to kinds more specific than object, kinds
S. Carey I Reconceplualizingthe world
such as car, person, tab/e. Such concepts (sortals), typically lexicalized as

count nouns in languages that have a count / mass distinction , provide
additional criteria for individuation and identity to the spatiotemporal
criteria that apply to bounded physical objects in general, and to the general
'
assumption that an object s properties stay stable over time, or change
continuously. When a person, Joe Shmoe, dies, Joe ceasesto exist, even
'
though Joe s body still exists. The sortal person provides the criteria for
' '
identity of the entity referred to by the name Joe Shmoe .
In collaboration with Fei Xu , I have been exploring the question of
whether babies represent any sortals more specific than object, or whether
babies can use property/ kind information to individuate and trace identity of
objects ( Xu and Carey 1993) .
Consider the events depicted in figure 7. An adult witnessing a truck
emerge from behind and then reenter a screen and then witnessing an
elephant emerge from behind and then reenter the screen would infer that
there are at least two objects behind the screen: a truck and an elephant. The
adult would make this inference in the absence of any spatiotempotal
evidence for two distinct objects, not having seen two at once nor any
suggestion of a discontinuous path through space and time. Adults trace
' ' ' '
identity relative to sortals such as truck and elephant and know that trucks
do not turn into elephants.
Xu and Carey ( 1993) have carried out four experiments based on this
design. Ten-month -old babies were shown screensfrom which two objects of
different kinds (e.g., a cup and a toy elephant, a ball and a truck ) emerged
from opposite sides, one at a time. Each object was shown a total of four
times. After this familiarization , the screenwas removed, revealing either two
objects (expected outcome) or one object (unexpected outcome). In all four
studies, babies looked longer at the expectedoutcome. They could not use the
difference between a cup and an elephant to infer that there must be two
objects behind the screen.
Another group of IO-month -olds was run in a parallel version of this study
basedon Spelke's design (figure 6) . That is, babies were shown two identical
objects emerging from the two screensa total of four times each, and the
timing of the eventswas the samein the one screen/two kinds studies. Babies
succeeded , looking longer at the unexpectedoutcome of one object. Apparently
, babiescan use spatiotemporal information to individuate objects before
they can use kind information .
We have ruled out severaluninteresting interpretations of the failure in the
property/ kind conditions of these studies. For example, it is not that babies
S. Carey I Reconceplualizillgthe world
Different Condition
I~II~~I Screen introduced
UI ~~
III - - +
~
Object1
broughtout
~~~IIII +- -
Objecl1
relurnep
~ 4- -
1~
llii~~i Object 2
brought out
-...
~llilllll Object 2
returned
do not notice the difference between the two objects. In one version of the
study, babies were allowed to handle each object (one at a time of course, for
we didn ' t want to provide spatial information that there were two ) before
beginning the events. This made no difference to the results. In another, we
compared looking time to the familiarization events when the objects are of
different kinds (e.g., a cup and an elephant) to looking times during familiari -
zation in a condition where the objects emerging from each side of the screen
are of the same kind (e.g., two elephants) . Babies habituated much faster in
the latter condition . That is, they noticed that the elephant and the cup are
different from each other. After habituation, we removed the screen, revealing
either one object or two objects. Babies in both conditions (cup/elephant;
elephant/ elephant) looked longer at the outcomes of two objects (unexpected
in the elephant/ elephant condition ; expected in the elephant/ cup condition ) .
The preference for two objects was equal in the two conditions. Thus,
although babies notice the difference between the elephant and the cup, they
simply do not use this information to drive the inference that there must be
two numerically distinct objects behind the screen.
In appears, then, that in one senseQuine was right . Very young infants
have not yet constructed concepts that serve as adult -like meanings of
works like ' bottle ' , ' ball ' , and ' dog' . How are the babies representing these
events? We can think of two possibilities. First , the babies may actually
establish a representation of a single individual object (O BJECTi ) moving
back and forth behind the screen, attributing to this object the properties of
being yellow and duck-shaped at some times and white and spherical at
other times. The basis for such a representation could be spatiotemporal :
the infants may take the oscillating motion as a single, continuous , path .
A second possibility is that the baby is making no commitment at all
concerning whether the objects emerging to the left and right of the screen
are the same or different. That is, the baby is representing the event as
OBJECT emerging from the left of the screen, followed by OBJECT
emerging from the right of the screen, and represents these neither as a
single object (O BJECTi ) nor as distinct objects (O BJECTi , O B JECTj ) .
Supposeyou seea leaf on the sidewalk as you walk to class, and you seea
leaf on roughly the same place on the sidewalk as you return from class.
That may be the same leaf or it may not ; your conceptual system is capable
of drawing that distinction , but you leave the question open. If the infant is
leaving the issue open in this case, then why does he/ she appear surprised
when the screens are removed and two objects are revealed? On this
hypothesis, the longer looking time at two objects is a familiarity effect; the
infant has been familiarized with instances of single objects, and thus seeing
' '
two objects is different . After all , babies can be habituated to oneness by
being shown a series of objects, one at a time. Even if you were not sure
whether that leaf was the same as the one you had seen earlier , if you
returned to the classroom later in the day and encountered two leaves on
the sidewalk, you would see this state of affairs as different from ones in
which you encountered casesof single leaves on the sidewalk.
We do not know which possibility is correct. The baby actually may be
representing the events as if a duck-shaped object is turning into a ball -
shaped object (possibility one) or simply may be failing to establish representation
of two distinct objects (possibility two ) . The take-home message
is the samewhichever possibility is correct ; IO-month -old infants do not use
the property/ kind differences between a red metal truck and a gray rubber
elephant to infer that there must be two numerically distinct objects
involved in the event.
S. Carey/ Reconceptualizing
the world
At II months , about half of the babies we test succeed at our task.

When babies do succeed, are they doing so on the basis of kind information
or property information ? That is, are they representing the events as
do adults , as involving a duck and a ball , or are they individuating the
objects on the basis of property differences? Further experiments could
bear on this question . For example, habituation studies show babies to be
sensitive to color changes and size changes, but color and size are not the
types of properties that signal kind differences, at least in the adult
conceptual system. Would babies of the age succeeding at this task be as
likely to infer two objects when shown a blue and red cup, or a big and
small cup , emerging from either side of the screen, as when shown a blue
cup and a blue elephant of equal sizes emerging from either side of the
screen? A difference in success rate favoring the latter pair would be
suggestivethat babies, just like adults , come to represent kinds of objects,
and individuate objects relative to kinds . These experiments together
would provide information about the developmental course of this repres
~ntational capacity .
It is significant that babies begin to comprehend and produce object names
at about 10 to 12 months of age, the age at which they begin to use the
differences between cups and elephants to individuate objects. Again, this
pattern of results is consistentwith the Sortal First hypothesis. That is, babies
do not seemto learn words for bottlehood ; they begin to learn words such as
' bottle'
just when they show evidencefor sortal concepts such as bottle which
provide conditions for individuation and numerical identity . Current studies
in our lab are exploring the relations between specific words understood and
successat individuation basedon the kinds expressedby those words.
It is not surprising that babies use spatiotemporal information before kind
information to individuate and trace the identity of objects. All physical
objects trace spatiotemporally continuous paths; no physical object can be in
two placesat the same time. However, what property changesare possible in
a persisting object depends upon the kind . An apparent change of relative
location of the handle to the body of a ceramic cup signifies a different cup;
an apparent change of relative location of a hand to the body of a person
does not signify a different person.
In sum, these data suggest that babies have at least one sortal concept
innately - physical object. Their object concept provides spatiotemporal
conditions for individuation and numerical identity . They can use spatio-
temporal information to identify individuals in their environment, and can
then learn more specific sortals for kinds of theseobjects. Exactly how this is
166 S. Carey
I Reconcept
uaJizing
theworld
accomplishedis the big question, of course. The presentdata suggeststhat

they spendmost of their first yearof life on this accomplishment
.
II . A few eRne
' odin! remarks
Where does this leave us vis-a-vis the continuity assumption? The major
discontinuity posited by Quine and Piaget does not receive support; there is
no reason to think that babies lack the logical resourcesto representsortals,
and indeed, object functions as a sortal at least from 4 months on. But if the
interpretation of the Xu and Carey data suggestedabove is correct, then an
important Quinian discontinuity is supported. Babies may be setting up a
representation of an object which sometimesis round , white, and styrofoam
and at other times red, metal, and truck -shaped. This is a representational
systemvery different from yours and mine.
My story is not complete. I do not know if Xu and I are interpreting our
data correctly. Also , we have as yet no account of the mechanism by which
babies might begin to acquire specific sortals at around 11 months. But as I
am convinced important conceptual changes occur later in life (cf. Carey
1991, Carey and Spelke, in press), I would not be shocked to find interesting
discontinuities in the conceptual histories of infants, even in arenasso closely
implicated in languageas the conceptual underpinnings of count nouns.
References
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'
Baillargeon, R., 1990. Young infants physical knowledge. Paper presented at the American
PsychologicalAssociation Convention, Boston.
Bloom, P., 1990. Syntactic distinctions. Child Language 17, 343- 355.
Bowerman, M ., 1978. The acquisition of word meaning: An investigation into some current
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Carey. S.. 1991 . Knowledgeacquisition: Enrichmentor conceptualchange ? In: S. Carey.
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Carey. S. and E. Spelke. in press
. Domain specificknowledgeand conceptualchange . In: L.
Hirschfeld. S. Gelman(eds.). Cultural knowledgeand domain specificity . Cambridge . UK :
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(ed.). New trendsin conceptualrepresentation . 197-200. Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum.
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Dromi, E., 1987 . Early lexicaldevelopment . London: CambridgeUniversityPress .

Gordon, P., 1982 . Theacquisitionof syntacticcategories : Thecaseof thecount/massdistinction.
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Lingua92 ( 1994
Explanation , association ,
and the acquisition of word meaning *
FrankC. Keil
, 223 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY /4853-760/ , USA
, CornellUniversity
Departmentof Psychology
A newly emerging view of concept structure, the concepts-in -theories view, suggeststhat adult
conceptsare intrinsic mixes of two different sorts of relations: (a) those involving domain-general
tabulations of frequenciesand correlations and (b) those involving domain-specific patterns of
explanation. Empirical results from early cognitive development suggestthat , by the time first
words are acquired, most concepts have this intrinsic mix even though changesin the nature of
the mix can produce marked developmental changesin apparent concepts, word meanings, and
their use.
. The concepts-in -theories view suggests that the sorts of constraints needed to model the
representation and acquisition of concepts cannot be based solely on either perceptual or
grammatical bases; they must also arise from blases given by specific patterns of explanation,
patterns that may depart from standard notions of intuitive theories. These in turn suggest
different views of possible constraints on the acquisition of word meaning.
I . Introduction
Categorization is one of the most common and salient of human cognitive

activities, and many of the categoriesso fonned appear to be shared among
individuals, a pattern that is highlighted by the use of common words to refer
to those categories. In experimental psychology, the distinctive aspects of
mental life that enable each categorization are usually thought of as concepts.
Sharedmental structures are assumedto be constant acrossrepeatedcategorizations
of the same set of instances and different for other categorizations.
When I think about the category of dogs, a specific mental representation is
assumedto be responsiblefor that category, and roughly the same representation
for a later categorization of dogs by myself or by another. The
. Much thanksto two anonymousreviewersand to Dan Simonsfor extensivecommentson

reportedon in this paperwassupportedby
. Muchof the research
earlierdraftsof this manuscript
NIH grant numberROl-HD23922 .
- 3841/94/$07.00 @ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

0024
SSDI 0024- 3841( 93) EO049- D
F.C. Keill Wordmeaning
phenomenonof categorization, coupled with the notion that repeatedcategorizations

of the samesort are basedon the samemental representation, is the
launching point for most psychological investigations of what conceptsare.
Categorization, however, must not be equated with heuristics and other
procedures that provide rough and ready identification of instancesabove a
modest confidence level. Although one might use hair length as a rough
means for identifying human sex at a certain confidence level, a careful and
deliberative categorization of humans by sex would make little note of such
an attribute . Careful, consideredjudgements of membership may emphasize
different aspectsof mental structures than the fastest and loosest means of
identifying members of categories. In this paper, these different facets of
categorization behaviors are considered together in terms of their implications
for models of the acquisition and representation of word meaning.
Psychologicalresearchon concepts in the last three decadesstarted largely
with the phenomenonof categorization, first with teachingartificial categories ,
and later with the study of more naturally acquired ones. But psychological
viewsof conceptshave undergonetwo dramatic shifts, initially as a consequence
of uncoveringmore details on categorizationbehavior, but increasinglyalso as a
consequenceof using other behavioral measures , measuresthat are starting to
raise questionsabout what conceptsare in the first place. My purpose here is
to explore the consequences of the most recent shift for word meanings.
I will argue for the following points :
( I ) The currently emerging view, the concepts-in -theories view, must ultimately
characterizeadult conceptsas intrinsic mixes of two different sorts
of relations: (a) those involving domain-general tabulations of frequencies
and correlations, such as done by associative models and many
connectionist systems, and (b) those involving domain-specific patterns of
explanation, usually of a causal nature.
2
( ) Empirical results from early cognitive development and first word meanings
suggestthat by the time the first words are acquired, most if not all
conceptshave this intrinsic mix even though changesin the nature of the
mix can produce marked developmental changes in apparent concepts,
word meanings, and their use.
( ) The intrinsic mix and its early appearancesuggestsa different kind of
3
ambiguity in word meaning, wherein largely overlapping setsof instances
have the same label .applied to them but have different meanings, allow
different patterns of induction , provide different categorizationsof critical
test cases. Unlike classical lexical ambiguities there is no dramatic change
in the class of referents even as there is a discrete change in meaning.
(4) In consideration of thesefirst three points, the sorts of constraints needed

to model the representation and acquisition of conceptscannot be based
solely on either perceptual or grammatical bases; they must Also arise
from blases given by specific patterns of explanation that emphasize
different causal roles for the same properties in different domains. These
conceptual constraints in turn suggest different views of possible constraints
on the acquisition of word meaning.
The emergence of the concepts-in- theories view of concept structure
In the past three decades, models of categorization and concept structure

have evolved through three stages. It is useful to briefly describe this history
as a way of better understanding the current view.
The first view tried to specify concept structure as lists of singly necessary
and jointly sufficient features. Conceptssimply consistedof compartmentalized
sets of features that were accessedas a cluster by a processing agent. Not
surprisingly, this sort of representational theory of concepts was easy to
model in a variety of computational systems. In addition , the first view fit
nicely with some early feature-based models of word meaning, where again,
each word consistedof a set of features that were singly necessaryand jointly
sufficient (e.g. Leech 1974) . In psychology, these feature-list views survived
far beyond their natural lives by focusing on laboratory learning of arbitrary
' ' ' '
concepts such as bliks being large blue triangles. Such learning tasks
uncoveredsome strategiesused to encodearbitrary conjuncts and disjuncts of
meaninglessattributes, but provided little insight into the acquisition and
representation of natural concepts. The necessary and sufficient features
model still has limited appeal becausesome word meaningsseemto logically
entail others in a way that suggestsan underlying concept structure with
necessityrelations; but several other models of concepts and word meanings
can capture such entailments without embracing the idea of concepts being
solely comprised in that manner (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 1990) .
The first view yielded to a family of views collectively known as the
probabilistic approach, in which concepts were said to reflect real world
correlational structure and feature frequency (Rosch and Mervis 1975) . That
approach spawned a huge body of studies arguing that concepts themselves
are ill -defined probabilistic representations, consisting of weighted features,
samplings of exemplars, or even combinations of dimensional values (Smith
and Medin 1981) . Even as these studies collectively embraced probabilistic
F.C. Kei/ / Word meaning
accounts and were united in focusing on such phenomenaas instanceshaving

different goodness of membership in a category, they began to diverge on
what concepts actually were. Feature-based models" tended to be like the
earlier necessaryand sufficient feature view except that they added weights to
each feature representingits relative importance in detennining membership.
Importance was usually derived from how often a feature co-occurred with
members of the category in the real world . Correlations between features
were also often included in these representations. One consequenceof these
weightings was that a much larger number of features could be included in a
representation and thresholds could be set up for excluding features with
sufficientlylow weights. Thesethresholdscould also be adjustedas a function of
contexts (as in Lakotrs hedges' technically speaking' and ' loosely thinking ' ,
which were thought to raise and lower the threshold respectively ( Lackoff
1972). Nonetheless, these views continued to compartmentalize concepts as
distinct from ,the rest of knowledge.
Certain phenomena related to typicality of instances were considered
central to understanding conceptsand were shown to be strongly interrelated.
These included: intuitions that membership in a category is not all or none
but graded such that some instances are better members than others, intuitions
that some entities were at the borderline and their membership in a
category was indeterminate, and reaction times to identify instances(it takes
longer to verify membership of an atypical vs. typical member). All of these
responsesseemedto convergeon mental representationsthat encodedfeature
frequenciesand correlations.
This second view required more subtle refutations than the first. Concepts
still seemed to have components that were different from their merely
probabilistic parts; and demonstrations appeared showing that people could
easily think about typical and atypical instances for completely well-defined
categories, such as odd numbers. Such findings suggest that typicality and
well-definednessare not mutually exclusive for the sameconcept (Arm strong
et al. 1983). Indeed the probabilistic phenomena associated with concepts
were sometimes relegated to the realm of ' identification procedures' for
picking out instancesof concepts rather than to the concepts themselves.
Additional concerns came from demonstrations of illusory correlations in
the social and clinical psychology literature. That is, people will see nonexisting
feature correlations when they follow from prior beliefs (Chapman
and Chapman 1969) . Simple tabulations of feature frequenciesand co-occur-
rences in the world are not enough. In developmental research as well,
conceptsemergedin ways not explainable by mere shiftings of either feature
F.C. Keitt Wordmeaning
frequencies or correlational weights. Thus, one set of studies show how

developmental shifts in what are regarded as legitimate members of a kind ,
such as being a tiger or being an uncle, cannot be plausibly modeled by
shifting probabilistic weights on features or changing global criteria of what
frequenciesare to count as important (Keil 1989) .
Other problems were seenin adult processingstudies in which two concepts
with the same highly typical feature nonetheless placed greatly different
emphasison those features becauseone played a much more central role in
patterns of causal explanation. Thus, bananas and boomerangs were judged
to be equally typically curved, but straight bananaswerejudged to be a much
better new member of the class of bananas than straight boomerangs in the
classof boomerangs(Medin and Shoben 1988) . This particular shapechange
seemsto influence what it meansto be a boomerang to a much greater degree
than a banana and does so in a way not predictable from feature frequencies
or correlations.
Problems of this sort with probabilistic models have led to what is known
as the concepts-in -theories view (Murphy and Medin 1985) . A closer look at
categorization, and increasingly at other phenomenathought to be related to
concepts and their structure, has put a central emphasis on notions of
explanation, mechanism and cause. People do not simply note feature frequencies
and feature correlations ; they have strong intuitions about which
frequencies and correlations are reasonable ones to link together in larger
structures and which are not. Without theseintuitions , people would make no
progressin learning and talking about common categoriesgiven the indefinitely
large number of possible correlations and frequencies that can be
tabulated from any natural scene. These intuitions seemmuch like intuitive
theories of how things in a domain work and why they have the structure
they do , hence the concepts-in -theories label.
One on the most frustrating drawbacks of the current concepts-in -theories
view is the lack of consensuson what theories really are and how they are
mentally represented. Theories might be sets of propositions with causal
connectivesinterspersedamong various logical connectives, all interconnected
by deductive chains. Alternatively , theories might be more like mental
models, with image-like notions of mechanism. Or , theories might not need
any notions of cause whatsoever, just a more general senseof explanation;
indeed some have decried the appearance of causal relations in any well-
specified theory (Hempel 1965, Russell 1924) . These controversies, however,
should not blur a simple fact : some notion of explanatory coherence does
have a powerful and overarching influence on almost any behavioral measure
F.C. Keill Word
meaninR
of concept structure. Above and beyond the details of representationalformat

lies the common realization that our concepts for dogs, diners, and dandelions
emphasizesome features and relations over others becauseof their fit
within broader explanatory patterns.
3. Hybrid vigor
The increasedimportance of explanatory systemsin concept structure has

suggesteda complementary need for uninterpreted probabilistic tabulations
as part of concepts, resulting in a hybrid structure. For all but the most
contrived cases, concepts may be intrinsic mixes of both systemsof explanation
and atheoretic tabulations of properties. Any detailed account of the
theories or explanatory systemsthat embed conceptswill end up confronting
the same issue, regardlessof their particular approach. Such systemscannot
fully interpret the raw data of experience, yet must rely on it .
The limitations of explanatory systemsor theories in organizing properties
and concept are best understood by a concrete example. Consider someone
who has had a limited exposureto birds ; let us call him Icarus. Becauseof his
limited experience, Icarus' s explanatory knowledge specific to birds is modest.
In addition to knowing many general things about animals that apply to
birds .as well, Icarus only knows explanatory reasons for properties corresponding
to two sorts of bird category contrasts: flightless vs. flying birds and
predators vs. prey. Thus, Icarus understandswhy flightless birds tend to have
much smaller wings compared to body size than flying birds and why their
legs tend to be bigger and more muscular; and he understandswhy predators
have many properties that help them catch prey and why prey have many
features that help them avoid predators. In this way explanatory knowledge
helps order the conceptual space and helps influence intuitive inter -birds
similarities, inductions about new properties, and categorization. Moreover,
this knowledge helps constrain which correlations are first noted for novel
instances.
There is, however, a problem with birds that occupy the same spot in this
two-dimensional spaceout which are easily distinguishable in terms of surface
feature probabilities and correlations and which Icarus can in fact distinguish,
such as a robin vs. a wren. They occupy the same place in Icarus' s explanatory
matrix and yet Icarus stores additional information about them so as to
be able to distinguish them. This information may well be largely associative
and guided by broad hunches laid down by Icarus' s theory of animals and
F.C. Keill Wordmeaning 175
perhaps some general hunches about birds. Those hunches insure that even
the associatively organized features will not include whether a bird was first
seenon a tree with an odd vs. even number of branches, or whether it was
facing left or right , or whether it was old or young. But , within those general
constraints, many other regularities must indeed be stored purely in terms of
correlations and frequencies. In this way, associative structures in concepts
can persevere. This perseveranceis inevitable, simply becausewe can never
have explanations for all regularities that we observe.
It is tempting to try to exclude frequency and correlation information from
the concept proper and say that they are only part of heuristics and
identification procedures having to do with concept use; but such a move
fails to explain why our beliefs are often directed specifically towards
explaining those correlations; the correlations form an integral part of the
system. Only in special caseswhere we have conventionally defined concepts
with accidentally correlated features, such as the concept odd number, do the
two aspectsbecomemore fully separable. There must be not only explanatory
structures that narrow down an indefinitely large number of features and
feature relations to a manageablenumber but also mechanismsfor storing
information that is outside the ken of current explanation. We could never
acquire new explanations if there were not some way of storing information
external to current explanations.
"
These issueshave often led to proposals of a core- periphery distinction in
concept structure, wherein typicality information is relegatedto the periphery
(see discussions in Arm strong et al. 1983 and Rey 1983) . Although this
distinction may imply that the periphery is less important , or even optional ,
the relation between the two facets of concepts may be more symbiotic.
Explanations do not amount to much if they do not have anything to explain,
and raw tabulations quickly overwhelm any informati ~n gathering system if
it does not partially order that information in terms of explanatory useful-
ness. A parallel casecan be made for scientific theories. Scientific theories are
sometimes presented as a set of tightly connected laws linked through
deductive chains (e.g. Hempel and Oppenheim 1948), but in practice, they
start with sets of regularities that they seek to explain, regularities that are
noticed and remembered often before the fledgling theory has any way of
incorporating them.
The atheoretical component of concepts should therefore not be relegated
to a ' periphery' that is not part of the concept proper . There is no general
way to justify such a move despite those cases of a few formal and
conventional terms where a clean distinction is possible. However, even as the
F. C. Keill Word meaning
atheoretical component must be part of the concept itself, it remains distinct.

There is not an association-to- theory continuum consisting of increasingly
strong and reliable correlations and frequencies. Such a continuum could not
explain caseswhere high frequenciesand correlations are clearly understood
as explanatorily irrelevant to membership in the category, whether it be hair
length and gender or economic value and type of chemical element. Although
explanatory systems may always need some reserves of correlational and
frequency based information for interpretation, not all of the information in
such reservesis always found meaningful, even when broad hunches suggest
it might be.
4. Theorigi- of the hybrid
The idea that most adult conceptshave a hybrid structure has not led to a
consensuson how this relation comes about in development. Two sharply
contrasting views predominate:
( 1) The earliest concepts are independent of theories and are therefore pure
casesof the probabilistic models. The earliest concepts are constructed
solely by tabulations of feature frequenciesand correlations presumably
with the help of low -level, domain-general perceptual and cognitive
blases. Early word meaningsat this time would be similarly basedon such
tabulations.
(2) Even the earliest conceptsmay be subject to organizational principles that
go beyond tabulations of features. Primitive systems of explanation
embed concepts even in infancy and certainly by the time of the first
words ; or at least young children' s concept-related behaviors are only
understandable by imputing to them mental structures like our own
explanatory systems.
This debate has proved difficult to resolve. Recent studies would seem to
favor the explanations-from -the-start alternative as younger and younger
children' s judgements are shown to apparently be governed by such explanations
. Yet , advocates for the opposite view need merely claim that the
acquisition of such explanatory systems occurs very early on in infancy
(McClelland , forthcoming), a reply that becomesincreasingly difficult to test
as ever younger infants are needed. But the tension between these views has
resulted in an important empirical discovery. There has been a rapid downward
march of the ages at which concepts are endowed with explanation,
from five-year-olds postulated as purely associative beasts ( Vygotsky 1962,
F.C. Kei/ l Wordmeaning
Werner 1948, Quine 1977), to preschoolersbeing in such a state, and now to

infants before their first words. Indeed, a strong casecan be made that four -
month-old infants categorize aspects of their physical and social worlds in
-
ways only understandableby attributing to them domain specific systemsof
causal explanation (e.g. Spelke et al. 1993, Leslie, in press) . The debate
continues about even earlier origins (e.g. Slater 1993), but there is now little
'
doubt that the child s first words must be sensitive to the same sorts of
relations that have causeda dramatic shift in how adult conceptsare viewed.
In my first attempts to understand how word meaningsmight changewith
' '
development, I posited a characteristic-to -defining shift in the acquisition of
word meaning (Keil and Battennan 1984) . Following decades of vaguer
claims about shifts from such things as holistic to analytic meanings, accidental
to essentialfeatures and the like , one more testable possibility seemedthat
early word meanings are very much like the probabilistic views of concepts,
' '
but then shifted to be more defining such that a simple principle character-
ized meaning. The predominant method was to present scenariosin which an
instance had either all the characteristic features associatedwith a category
but lacked critical defining ones or in which instances had all the critical
defining features but had many highly uncharacteristic ones as well. Being an
~uncle' was asked either of
friendly , gift giving , middle-aged men unrelated to
'
one' s family or of brothers of one s parents who were still children and
' '
distinctly unfriendly . Being an island was asked of peninsulaswith beaches,
palm trees and burled treasures or of cold , forbid ding beachless places
'
surrounded by water on all sides. Children s judgements of instancesdid shift
with age and on a domain by domain basis as shown in figure I (Kei I1989 ) ;
but it becameincreasingly clear that a true characteristic-to -defining shift was
not and could not be occurring.
Even the youngest children were never simply tabulating up all salient
feature frequenciesand correlations. No child thinks that uncles must have
glasseseven if all the uncles they happen to have seen wear them. The
features selectedby even the earliest word learners were always constrained
by somenotions of reasonablenessfor the kind of thing in question. A second
problem was that true definitions are rare occurrences in word meanings.
Only a handful of words even approach clear simple definitions. Putnam
( 1975), estimated a few hundred in English, and even these are under
contention (Lakoff 1987) . Thus, although the developmental changeis robust
and easy to produce experimentally, it cannot really indicate a shift from one
representational format to another. Rather, it appears to be two related
phenomena: ( I ) There are increasing elaborations of explanatory systems
F.C. Kei/ I Wordmeaning
Moralterms
-
",~-~-"+ ~
+d
- - -c/ +d
Mealterms
~ -
/,-~-~-"-+
_ C
-
c/
-
/
+.
I
u
d
Tool terms
,K c/
~
+d
Kinshipterms
. ~
-..-".'~ ~-
,:;.-<-.
+
c
-
c/
~
+
/d
Cookingterms
K '
"
( '
+
c/
~
-to- definingshift in the acquisitionof word
Fig. I . Illustration of an apparentcharacteristic
meaning . The y-axesrepresentthe extent to which eachdescribedentity wasjudged to be a
legitimatememberof thecategory . Thex-axesrepresent threegradeschoolclasslevelsandadults.
The graphsshowthat thereis a developmental shift in whetherthe + characteristic / - defining
descriptionsor the - characteristicl + defining ones are taken to indicate membersof the
category . In addition, the shifts occur at different times on a domain by domain basis.
(Adaptedfrom Keil 1989 .)
with age such that explanations play ever more extensive roles in constraining
what features and correlations are noticed . Thus , as explanation - based knowledge
becomes more and more elaborated , default tabulations of information in
associative terms are less common . ( 2) There are shifts in understanding which
explanatory system is most relevant to a class of phenomena . A child might
realize that ' uncle ' is better understood in terms of set of biological relations
that comprise kinship and not in terms of social relations that govern
F. C. Keill Wordmeaning
friendship; the social explanation is discovered to generate more serious

mistakes and is abandoned (Keil 1989, 1992) .
A similar change of perspectivehas occurred with tenDS for natural kinds.
For example, young children assert that zebras who are surgically transformed
to look and act like horses are no longer zebras but truly horses.
Older children declare the animal to still be a zebra, suggestingadevelop -
mental shift from a phenomenalsimilarity spaceto a theoretically driven one.
After many follow -up studies conducted both by my research group and
other groups, a different story emerges(Keil 1989) . Younger children may
never be total phenomenalistshelplessly buffeted about by correlations and
frequencies. There invariably seemsto be an understanding of deeper relations
that allows them to go beyond what would reasonably be considered
phenomenal similarity . Thus, even for three-year-olds, tigers can only be
changed into lions if you use a mechanism of change that' is reasonably
related to being a member of the two kinds. Younger children s beliefs about
such mechanismsmay differ , but they have them nonethelessand will use
them to override associativeinfonnation .
At any age most natural concepts have a mix of associationistic tabulated
information and systemsfor interpreting , explaining and guiding the pickup
of that information . There can be dramatic developmental change, but not
from one kind of representational system to a dramatically different one.
Instead,- the predominant change is in how extensively the child is able to
interpret and explain the raw data of association. As those explanations
become more and more elaborated over time, the child has to fall back less
and lesson the associativecomponent to make judgements.
'
Following the Icarus example offered above, suppose a child s initial
.
understanding of birds involved only notions of what properties supported
flight and thereby clusters of features corresponding to flightless vs. flying
birds but did not understand how to organize the features that clustered
around predator vs. prey. Some more general principles about animals may
bias the child to associatively store frequenciesand correlations concerning
featuressuch as feet shape, beak shape, eye location in head and typical diet ;
but these properties may be stored largely in tenDS of associative relations
until the predator/prey insight comes to dramatically organize those features
and shift similarities accordingly, thereby shifting induction and categorization
. Note that the developmental studies also support the essential hybrid
structure of concepts. Even as these studies show that the youngest children
never rely solely on brute force tabulations of feature frequencies and
correlations, they also show that something like an associativecomponent is
F. C. Keil / Word meaning
also present that shrinks with age in each domain in the face of more
elaborated explanation. Although the characteristic:-to -defining change in
development is not strictly correct, the changesthat do occur support both
aspectsof the hybrid .
S. Multiple domains andreferentiallyoverlappingambiguities
The concepts-in-theories view suggestsmultiple modes of explanation from

the start of acquisition of word meaning. At least two domains have been
clearly implicated : (a) a physical-mechanical domain that helps explain the
properties of kinds subject to mechanical causality; and (b) a folk -psychological
domain that helps explain the properties of kinds subject to belief-
desire accounts of causation. These radically different ways of construing the
.
world result in sharply contrasting assumptions about what properties are
central to membersof a kind .
Carey ( 1985) was one of the first to make this proposal, and the evidence
for early and universal appearanceof these two domains is now strong and
'
widespread, ranging from infants clear intuitions about the mechanics of
physical objects to findings that autistic children who have excellent intuitions
about physical mechanics can be grossly deficient in their understanding of
belief- desire causality. Severalstudies have now shown that high-functioning
autistic children can reason about events that do not require belief- desire
inferences, while having great difficulty reasoning about events that do
require belief- desire inferences (e.g. Baron-Cohen et al. 1985) . One recent
study suggeststhat the contrast between the two domains might already be
under way in the first few months of life. Infants as young as six months have
been shown to have markedly different expectations about the causal interactions
among social entities as opposed to non-social ones. If they observe
events in which a six foot high cylinder rolls towards another, they expect
that only physical contact can produce a movement in a second one. If the
first cylinder stops, leaving a gap between it and the second one, and the
second one th~n moves off as if launched without contact, the infants (and
adults) find the event anomalous. If , however, the same events occur with
human actors, the infants find launching of the second person without
contact to be no more surprising than launching with contact (Spelke et al.
1993) .
If the young child initially has only these two fundamental modes of
explanation, most concepts must be somehow assimilated into one of these
two ways of understanding the world . This possibility results in predictions

concerning not just the nature of early concepts but also how they become
linked to the lexicon. If children are presentedwith partial information about
a novel kind , they must.decide whether its known and future properties are to
be interpreted in belief/ desire terms or in physical/ mechanical terms and
ensuinginductions about properties will vary accordingly. For example, it has
been argued that biological kinds and their properties are often interpreted in
solely behavioral terms. The behavioral aspectsof a property come to be seen
as the basis for it . Young children have been shown to attribute properties
such as eating and having babies only to animals that are sufficiently
psychologically similar to humans so as to have the behavioral and belief/
desirecorrelates of eating and having babies (e.g. feeling hungry and wanting
'
food and being nurturant towards offspring) . Worms don t eat becausethey
cannot have feelings of hunger and desires for food in any way like humans
(Carey 1985). These sorts of misattributions were found not only forproper -
ties that have salient behaviors associatedwith them but also for unfamiliar
ones described on the spot for the child (such as having a spleen) . Young
children seemto assumethat even novel properties are likely to be possessed
by other animals to the extent that they are behaviorally similar to the one on
which they are taught. Only later in development would an appreciation of
biological kinds as such emerge and would new properties be based on
induction over sets of functional biological relations.
It now seemsthat young children might not be so narrowly restricted in
their earliest kinds of understanding, that the explanation part of the hybrid
has more diversity than just a mechanics and psychology. For example, a
wide range of studies now converge to suggest that preschoolers see living
kinds as having their own causal patternings distinct from physical mechanics
and social behavior (Keil 1992, Inagaki and Hatano 1993, Hatano et al.
1993, Springer and Keil 1991, Gelman and Gottfried 1993) . They understand
that both plants and animals tend to have functional /adaptive explanations
associated with them that are not seen elsewhere in the natural
world and which are distinct from the sorts of functional explanations used
with artifacts. For example, preschoolers show a stronger tendency to
explain the properties of living things in terms of the purposes those
properties serve for those things than they do for non-living things (Keil
1992). Adaptive , or design, explanations have becomerecognizedas a distinct
form of explanation linked to the biological sciences, and it now appearsthat
the same form of explanation is available and salient to young children
(Woodfield 1976, Wright 1976) .
F.C. Keil / Word meaning
One way to show this distinctive pattern of expectationsconcerning living

things is to ask preschoolers which of two explanations they prefer as
appropriate for explaining the properties of living vs. non-living things. For
'
example, the children might be told the following : Two people are talking
about why plants are green. This person says it is becauseit is better for the
plants to be green and it helps there to be more plants. This person says it is
becausethere are little tiny parts in plants that when mixed together give
them a green color. Which reason is a better one?'
The same question would then be asked about emeralds. Although both
the reductionist and functional explanations are appropriate for the plants,
children preferred the functional sorts of explanations for living things while
at the same time preferring the reductionist explanation for non-living things
(Keil 1992).
The contrast with artifacts is more subtle, but involves an understanding
that most of the properties of non-domesticated living kinds are ultimately
self-serving whereas most of the properties of artifacts are other -serving.
This seemingly abstract notion appears to be well within the grasp of
preschoolers when they are asked to choose between explanations for
functional properties that are for the good of the object vs. the good of
another entity ; and they show similar understandings for plants as well as
animals, ruling out any need to see the living things as . capable of mental
goals or desires.
The full set of such early modes of construal may be quite small, possibly
as few as half a dozen. The earliest modes of construal seemto originate from
notions of broad domains of phenomena, such as physical mechanics, folk
psychology, and functional /teleological explanations and not local areas of
expertise such as dinosaurs or chess. Other possible basic modes include:
moral reasoning, notions of ownership and transfer <;?f ownership, and social
power relations. The existenceof other domains besidesmechanics, psychology
, and design/teleology is speculative at this point , but remains plausible
given the likely universal presenceof such domains and the possibility that
they have distinctive fonDS of causal explanation. Alternatively , the basic
three might h~ve a special status making them more fundamental than all
other schemasfor making senseof the world . A major challenge for future
work is to develop criteria that demonstrate how these basic modes of
construal are distinct from the thousands of local explanations and mental
models that people come to use in everyday tasks. In addition to different
roles in processing, the basic modes may be earlier emerging and more
invariant over the course of development.
F.C. Keill Word meaning
The early presenceof multiple forms of explanation may lead to a distinct

kind of ambiguity for lexical items. The ambiguity arises from caseswhere
heavily overlapping sets of individuals are meaningfully interpreted by different
forms of explanation. For example, a class of people can often be
understood in biological, social, or physical terms, just as properties of
c.omputers can be understood .in mechanical, functional , or psychological
terms. A computer might be described as failing a task becausetwo routines
are seen as ' colliding ' (mechanical), becausethe programs are not designed
for the task (functional ), or because the program cannot understand or
remember the correct sequences(psychological) . Clearly distinct meanings
can be invoked even though the real world referents may often be heavily
overlapping. These examplesappear to be different from casesof vagueness
or more standard lexical ambiguities where the referents are usually nonoverlapping
' ' ' '
, as with the two meanings of such terms as bat , bank , and
' tank ' . With standard lexical
ambiguities, one gets the immediate impression
of a new set of referents as one switches meanings, whereaswith referentially
overlapping ambiguities, the meaning seemsto switch equally strongly but
many of the same referents remain.
Referentially overlapping ambiguities suggest an alternative account of
many developmental changes in word meanings. Children might not be
reworking the feature sets that organize members of a category and discarding
the old (a pattern that has the counterintuitive consequenceof
suggestingthat adults should have difficulty accessingearlier states of their
own vocabularies) but rather realizing the relevance of a different, but
already present, system of explanation for interpreting roughly the same
properties.
In the case of kinship terms, a preschooler might well have notions that
there are ways of understanding things in social as well as in biological/
functional ways, but may have assumedearly on that instances of kinship
terms were to be understood social/ behaviorally. A change in word meaning,
to more classic bloodline relations might reflect not so much a new learning
of biological relations, but an insight that a biological/ functional way of
explaining properties and judging similarities is the most common one in
adult usages of those terms. This speculation gains support from recent
studies showing that , although younger children might have different default
assumptions about properties for living things, modest contextual cues can
result in biologically basedinductions. For example, when children judge that
dogs and humans but not birds, snakes or insects eat, it appears as if they
' '
might have encoded eats as referring to social and belief/ desire aspectsof
F. C. KeU / Word meaning
eating. Yet the same child will also judge that eating applies to all and only
animals if they are primed to think about terms like eating in biological/
functional terms ( Vera and Keil 1988) . Those studies are relevant because
they illustrate how a property can alternately be embedded in two very
different systems of explanation. Comparable switches in embedding for
kinship terms could cause the sorts of referentially overlapping ambiguities
proposed here.
Apparent developmentalchangesin word meaning may therefore reflect an
awarenessthat a different set of explanatory relations can be superimposed
on roughly the same set of instances and properties so as to afford new
insights. The different explanatory system may have been present for some
time, but is now decided relevant to a class of lexical items in a certain
domain.
Shifts betweenmodes of explanation occur in adults as well. For example,
most of the time we understand the personality traits and behaviors of others
in terms of belief/ desire patterns of causation. John is afraid of snakes
becausehe had some bad experienceswith them that led him to .believe that
snakes are dangerous to him , even if those beliefs are false about most
snakes. But we can understand the same traits in biological/ functional terms
as well. One would then explain John' s fear of snakes not in terms of his
beliefs and desires, but in terms of the ecological niches occupied by humans
and their evolutionary predecessorsand of a need to develop an adaptation
that causesa built -in fear of snakes. Although explanations of behaviors in
biological/ functional terms as opposed to belief/ desire ones may not be the
first option taken, once adopted, they lead to different inferences and
understandings.
If shifting modes of explanation over roughly the samereferents provides a
senseof ambiguity, there should be other signs of that ambiguity as well. One
example might be a tendency not to switch betweenmeaningswhen a word is
shared in a clause. In the sentence' The pilot banked at the intersection of
Pine and Locust and the lawyer at Oak and Walnut ' , it is bizarre to have
' bank'
being used first as an airplane maneuver and second as fiscal action.
' '
Similarly, in the sentence The rock hit the house and John did too , it is
'
awkward to have ' hit be in the mechanical/ billiard -ball sensefor the rock
and in the intentional sensefor John. One is more inclined to seeJohn hitting
the house in an inanimate senseas a hurtling body not intending the impact.
"
As a second example, consider the sentence The daffodil neededwater and
' ' '
John did too , where need has the senseof a physiological need in both
cases, not as physiological need and explicit desire or wanting in the other. If
F.C. Keill Word meaning 185
this analysis is correct, a child hearing an unfamiliar tenD can safely assume
that when a word is shared in usage, the mode of explanation is likely to
remain constant.
The awkwardness of mixing different sensesseemsless marked for other
casesthat are not true ambiguities. For example, with metaphor, one can say
' Phil embraced her ' ' '
body, and Bill her ideas , where embrace clearly has
different senses , but little awkwardness results. Similarly , with syncategore-
' '
matic terms like good , different sensescan be mixed in the sameclause, as in
'The meal was '
good and the fire was too . If thesesorts of intuitions prove to
be more general, they suggestthat shifts in explanatory frameworks are not
to be confused with a host of other possible context effects that cause more
subtle shifts in meaning (Barsalou 1987, Lakoff 1987) . There are dozens of
' '
different nuancesof the word instrument depending on context, as there are
'
of the verb ' cut ; but these do not seemto reflect deep shifts in explanatory
frameworks.
6. Explanation - based constraints on concepts and word meanings
One possible consequenceof the concepts-in -theories view in concert with

multiple early domains and shifting modes of construal is that causal explanatory
blasesmight constrain inferencesabout early word meanings in ways
that have sometimesbeen assumedto be more in the province of perceptual
blases. Thus, several researchershave suggestedthat young children might
'
have a ' shape bias in terms of how they approach the meanings of novel
nouns, especiallywhen used as count nouns (seeLandau, this volume) . Such
a bias might well exist, but its origins may not be simply in the form of a
perceptual rule, but rather in terms of what sorts of properties are more
central to understanding different sorts of kinds.
Fundamental modes of explanation might influence the shapebias from the
earliest times of lexical acquisition. Thinking of something simply as a
physical object and in terms of its overall paths of motion should actually
reduce the shapebias, whereasthinking of it as a biological functional thing,
or an artifactual functional thing should have a stronger impact on the shape
bias. Thus, the simplest naive physics envisions objects as point massesand
predicts their trajectories accordingly with little regard for their shape. Heavy
things push lighter things further than the opposite, and objects that hit
another head-on have more of an effect than those that just graze them at an
angle. A functional approach to objects, however, pays close attention to
F.C. Kei/ I Word meaning
aspectsof shape in making inferencesabout function. Moreover, shape itself

might be more profit ably subdivided into overall shape vs. local parts and
relative spatial arrangements, with one aspect more important for artifacts
and the other for living kinds. There might not be any general shapebias, but
rather an understanding of the different degrees of importance of certain
aspectsof shapein different explanatory systems. Shape, or more properly its
subtypes, might then be seen as one of several sorts of properties whose
centrality can vary as a function of the kind of entities considered (seealso
Bloom, this volume) .
This alternative would gain support if the bias varied in strength as a
consequenceof the type of explanatory system invoked by an object or
category. Some evidence is already present in cases where adding eyes to
inanimate objects changesthe strength of the shape bias at different ages in
different ways (e.g. eyes make an uninterpretable object for a younger child
becomea living kind for which shape matters a great deal ... whereasmore
complex interactions with texture and color are invoked in older children
(Landau, this volume .
We have begun exploring this issue with both adults and children. With
adults, the experimental paradigm involves describing a change in types of
properties of typical members of familiar categories and asking about the
effectsof such changeson the categorical and lexical status of those members.
Four- changesin property types were used: color , size, shape(as specifiedby a
tripling of width and a one-third reduction of height), and surface pattern.
Thesechangeswere described for randomly selectedmembersof four categories
: animals, plants, non-living natural kinds (e.g. rocks), and artifacts.
Subjectswere given instancesof a member of a category and asked about the
effects of changesof different feature types. For example, subjects might be
told about some artifacts that are exactly like ordinary chairs in every way
except that all members of this group are normally uniformly shaded bright
pink . The subjects would then be asked if it would still be called a chair. A
different item might ask about rocks that were just like gold except that they
are nonnally bright pink . One group of subjects were asked whether the
object with the altered feature should be assigned the standard name, one
group was asked how well the altered object would function in the original
role, and a third group was asked how unusual a member of the original
category the altered member would be. With the exception of functional
intuitions about non-living natural kinds, adults have reliable intuitions about
such questions and show clear patterns of responses . Functional questions
were asked of things like kinds or rocks to keep the design consistent across
all categoriesand to check that in fact they would be lessinfonnative for such
kinds.
The importance of property types varies strongly as a function of the kind
of thing querled. Overall shape and size changeshad a profound impact on
functional roles of artifacts as well as on their lexical labels. By contrast
changes in color and surface patternings were irrelevant for comparable
ratings of artifacts. For non-living natural kinds, such as minerals, the effects
were roughly reversed, with color and patterning being seenas essentialto the
judgements and shape and size as largely irrelevant. For both plants and
animals the results were consistently similar , suggestinga set of expectations
about the category of living things in general. Shapeand color were generally
seenas most relevant across conditions and size as least relevant, a pattern
that was clearly distinct from both artifacts and non-living natural kinds. An
example of these different patterns of judgement for naming is shown in
figure 2.
Above and beyond the differences just described for the data set as a
whole, judgements also varied as a function of the kind of question asked.
Questionsabout what the altered entity should be called had different profiles
across the three category types than did questions about its function or
unusualness . This finding illustrates that judgements about preservation of
function and typicality are not the sameasjudgements of what a thing should
be called.- Such differencesmight seemobvious, but they are often conftated
in experimental researchwhere results collected with one type of judgement
are compared to those collected with another. Moreover, as seenshortly , the
precise nature of their interactions can be informative about the roles of
specific properties in particular categories.
One final measurement taken in these studies provided an important
finding . After all initial ratings were completed, subjects were asked to
consider ordinary exemplars of each of the judged categories and rate how
much those items normally vary with respect to overall shape, size color , of
patterning. Thus, a subject might be asked to judge how much ordinary
chairs, or lumps of gold, vary in color. These questions were designed to
addressan important issuein the literature : how much the natural variability
of features in a category could cause the discounting or emphasis of the
importance of featureswhen querled in one of the three ways. A 3-inch disk is
more likely to be considered a pizza than a quarter, even though it is more
similar to the quarter in physical size, because the minimal variability of
currency disallows even modest size changeswhereasthe larger variability of
size for pizzas allows for an albeit implausible 3-inch pizza (Rips 1989).
F.C. Keill Word meaning
. Shape
8
D Size
6 ~ Surface
Pattern
5.5
.E 5
c. 4.5
e
Ic 4
Ai
3.5
8
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
Artifact Non - Plant Animal
Living
NK
Fig. 2. Resultsof first studyconductedby GruberthandKeil showingadult intuitionsof whether

a newnameshouldbegivento a classof entitiesthat differ from nonnalmembers of that classby
a in either ,
shape size
, patternor color. The y-axis representsthe mean
having propertychange
ratingsof the extentto which a kind or propertychangewasjudgedto causea needfor a new
name(7= definitelya newname, O= not at all).
Perhaps more generally, tabulations of variability are the basis for judgements
of the effectsof changing properties: the lower the variability , the more
the judged impact of the change.
In thesestudies, variability alone did not predict the significant effectsseen
for any of the three judgement types. For example, if a subject said that color
typically varied more for chairs than for whales, those judgements did not
predict other judgements about category membership when the color was
changedfor novel instances. However, when the data analysis was performed
F.C. Kei/ I Word meaning
in a rnanner that looked for patterns remaining after all contributions by

variability were nurnerically removed, there were differencesacrossjudgement
types. For judgernents of function , high variability of a feature had little
influence predicting the effect$ of changing that feature. Consequently, when
variability was factored out , the differences in property effects across categories
were still large and robust. Even when an item' s color or shapevaries
greatly in the real world , variability is largely ignored in making judgments
about functional influences; instead the deviant instanceitself is examined for
specific functional consequences . By contrast, judgements about the appropriate
narne were influenced by variability not by allowing predictions of
effects, but by eliminating differences in property effects across categories.
Thus, although neither variability judgements alone, nor property -type
cornbinations alone, could predict judgement of naming, their joint action
produced reliable effects. In a related pattern, variability mattered more for
non-living natural kinds, for which function is irrelevant, than for artifacts.
In surn, in no casesare intuitions about property variability for instances
adequate to predict how changes in those properties influence category-
related judgrnents about those instances; but in the case of naming judge-
rnents, property variability is involved in interaction with other factors.
The assignment of labels may therefore rely more on the heterogeneous
aspectsof concepts than other category-related judgements since both varia-
bility information for instances and general views about differences in property
importance across broad category types are involved. Variability may
be information stored largely through associative means, whereas the differential
effectsof property types as a function of category seemlinked to the
natural explanatory systemsinvoked by such kinds as living things, artifacts,
and sentient beings. Any number of simple frequency and correlation tabulation
systemscan note how often features vary for instancesin a category and
accessthis information through network in which activation strength is a
function of those tabulations, hence the notion that associative means of
representation would be adequate. By contrast, judgements about which
properties are most central to a category and causethe most disruption when
negatedseemto arise from notions about the causal structures underlying the
property configurations of broad categoriesand how particular properties are
much more closely connected to those causal structures than others. Such
judgementscannot be captured by storing information about feature frequencies
acrossinstancesas they rely on beliefs about mechanismand explanation.
Thus, arguments made in earlier sectionsof this paper about the importance
of hybrid structure may emerge with a vengeancein the case of mapping
F.C. Kei/ l Wordmeaning
concepts into the lexicon. (For other arguments about the special influences
of lexical items seeMarkman 1989and Woodward 1992.)
It is one thing to demonstrate that adults seemto be strongly influenced by
abstract explanatory belief systemsin how they interpret the importance of
properties for different categoriesof things. It is quite another to demonstrate
that such systems might be implicated early in life when the lexicon is
growing most rapidly . We have begun a seriesof studies addressingthis issue
as well.
These studies use triads of pictures in which an exemplar with a novel
name is shown followed by an object that varies in the shapesof the most
salient parts but which preservescolor and surface patterning and by another
object that preservesall shapesbut varies in colors and surface patterning. In
each case, novel items and names are clearly depicted as being from one of
four categories: artifact , plant , animal, or non-living natural kind . The
original object is referred to in a manner that is indeterminate betweencount
' '
and mass(e.g. ' this is an animal that is in the hyrax group and this is a rock
' ' '
that is of the malachite group or this is my hyrax ... it is a kind of animal
' '
and This is my malachite ... it is a kind of rock ) .
In one preliminary study 16 three- and four -year-olds ignored shape and
emphasizedcolor when deciding which of two novel non-living natural kinds
shared the same label as an originally labeled one. For the living kinds and
the artifacts, shape differencesas depicted by different parts are vastly more
important . Color and texture also playa role for living things but not at all
for artifacts where, with few exceptions, they may apparently be understood
as purely conventional. This insight may get stronger as the children get older
and enter elementary school, a pattern that is now under active study. One
aspectof the results is shown in figure 3.
A secondstudy now under way suggeststhat shapechangesnot implicating
changes in salient parts are seen as less important for living kinds than
artifacts because of their generally smaller roles in changing functional
properties for living things. Different parts compel a senseof category change
for li .ying things. We have constructed stimuli sets where a class of novel
.
things is distorted two ways: ( I ) a computer graphics transformation displaces
the image pixels such that the object becomestwisted around its central
point and thus the overall shape is dramatically changed whereaslocal parts
stay pretty much the sameand in roughly the samerelations to each other ; or
(2) the overall shape is not changed, but small properties are substituted for
other ones, such as one kind of beak for another on a bird , or one kind of a
dial for another on a machine. When preschoolers are shown these images
F. C. Keitt Word meaning
' V
C
o
!
0 . 9
!
. !
0 . 8
. .
3
: S
0 . 7
- !
. ~
0 . 6
:
' V
c
0 . 5
i
8 .
. ~
0 . 4
! . 2
u
0 . 3
' 0
0 . 2
0 ~
0 . 1
B .
8 .
0
eo !
non - liv animals artifacts

A . .
plants
Fig . 3. Results of preliminary preschool study showing that shape is de- emphasizedrelative to
color and surface pattern for non-living natural kinds whereas the opposite holds for living
kinds and artifacts.
and told that a target image has a certain .novel label and are then asked
which of the other two images (the overall shape distortion vs. local parts
substitution) should also take the same label, they give different patterns of
responsesfor living kinds vs. artifacts. For plants and animals, local part
differences from the target are much more important than overall shape
differenceswhereasthe opposite is true for the artifacts, as long as the local
part changesare not seenas disrupting function . These sorts of expectations
could certainly constrain how they learn the meanings of new words.
Follow -up studies have used ambiguous displays where the triads are
labeled in one caseas a kind of animal, and in other casesas a kind of nonliving
natural kind or a machine. In these cases, with precisely the same
display, generalizationsare different depending on how the depicted entity is
construed. Preliminary studies with preschoolers suggest that when, for
example, an entity is labeled a frog , the shapechangeis critical ; but when it is
labeled a rock , color and texture becomescritical ; hence expectations of the
kind of things observed can guide how properties and similarities are interpreted
for exactly the samedisplays.
The examples offered here raise the possibility that many constraints on
early concept learning and on word learning may flow from our beliefs about
the sorts of properties and relations most explanatorily central to fundamental
kinds of things. Shape, like any other property , may betheory -
dependent for its perceived causal powers and central organizing role in a
category. Very young children seemto have setsof strong expectationsabout
192 F.C. Keill Wordmeaning
the likely causal power of different properties in organizing categories at a

high level of abstraction (e.g. living thing and artifact ) . However, expectations
are less influential for individual items, arguing against some simple storage
of concrete exemplarsand comparison back to those instances. Perhapsthese
effect do not operate at finer levels of categorization. Strong effects of
different causal centrality for properties may exist at levels such as living
kinds, substancesand artifacts, but not at much finer levels such as birds vs.
fish. That is, it may be difficult to find properties applicable to both fish and
birds which, when counterfactualized, distinguish among them by having a
strong effect in one caseand not in another. Note that the properties cannot
be one like ' breathes underwater' since it is already counterfactual for birds.
Of course, many properties are causally central to both , but the kinds of
properties that are causally most potent may be pretty much the sameacross
all animals and reflect general notions about the sorts of causal patterns
distinctive to living things.
7. Conclusions
I have argued for the following themes:

Current views of conceptsrequire that they be acquired and representedin
terms of a systemthat has two distinct components: one that stores frequency
and correlation information through domain-general procedures, and one
that carries domain-specific beliefs about causal relations that help explain
property relations. This hybrid structure is well supported by a wide range of
experimental studies as well as more principled considerations.
The beliefs about causal patternings and property types are linked to broad
domains of explanation, such as sentient beings, living kinds and artifacts.
Those domains seem different from the many smaller domains of expertise
that all of us come to acquire as well. The evidencehere is still accumulating
but indications come from distinct sources, such as beliefs about how
property changesinfluence category integrity and how ways of understanding
classesof things seemto shift in development and acrossdifferent contexts.
This hybrid mixture appears to be present throughout much of cognitive
development, at least by the time first words are acquired and quite possibly
much earlier. The evidence here arises from the failure of domain-general
tabulation models on their own to explain young children' s performance on a
wide variety of tasks involving concepts. There is less evidencefor just how
many of these basic domains might exist in the prelinguistic child. I have
argued that there are good reasons to suspectat least three and speculated
that as many as half a dozen more seemplausible.
These patterns concerning the acquisition and representation of concepts
matter directly for models of lexical representationand acquisition. Both the
strategiesused to acquire word meaningsand their underlying representations
themselvesare deeply affected by such views about concepts. The hybrid
structure suggeststhat word meanings are linked both to frequency-based
information and to causal/ explanatory beliefs and that different sorts of
lexical tasks may highlight one or the other of these two facets. Empirical
studies of the lexicon must therefore keep in mind these two facets and their
interactions with specific tasks.
Becausethe hybrid structure appears to be already present in the prelinguistic
child , both facets influence the child ' s first attempts to learn the
meanings of words, hence the claim that there are explanation-based constraints
on the acquisition of word meaning. If early representations were
only based on tabulations of feature frequencies, then strategiesthat key on
some of these features, such as shape, might be the sole means of narrowing
down the hypothesis space of what novel words refer to. Instead, even the
first guessesabout word meanings may be biased not only by bottom -up
counts of feature frequenciesand correlations, but also by top- down abstract
expectationsabout what sorts of featureswill be causally central to a domain.
Apparent developmental shifts in the internal representations of word
meaningsrarely, if ever, are signs of a change in basic underlying representational
format . Instead they may representincreasing elaboration of explanatory
beliefs that are able to interpret a larger and larger percent of the
tabulated information and shifts in which explanatory systemis deemedmost
relevant to understanding membersof a category. Younger children may not
be showing an inability to represent word meanings in certain formats as
much as they are exercisingdifferent default options and having lessdetail in
some of their explanatory systems.
The hybrid structure and its early appearancehighlights a different kind of
ambiguity in word meaning, wherein largely overlapping sets of instances
may have the same label applied to them but have different meanings, with
different inductions, different categorizations of critical test cases, and a clear
senseof ambiguity as opposed to vaguenessor synonymy. It appearsthat the
shifts of meaning here are not caused by realizing that a label points to a
'
wholly different part of one s conceptual system with different instancesand
feature clusters, but rather by realizing that the label may point to a class of
things that can be interpreted in terms of more than one explanatory schema.
Seeingconceptsas essentialhybrids of explanation and association has led

to the claim that early word learners have explanatory blasesthat guide first
guessesabout the sorts of properties that are most strongly causally linked to
the central structure of a category. These blasesappear to be high level and
abstract yet also powerful in how they guide choices of relevant properties.
The acquisition of word meaning is thus suggestednot to rise out of higher
and higher order tabulations of regularities among perceptual primitives, but
from the start to be strongly influenced by overarching distinct patterns of
explanation that are associated with such domains as biological kinds,
artifacts, and sentient beings. In addition , the possibility of a handful of such
patterns early on allows for much of semantic development to involve
switching among these patterns and not acquisition of totally new forms of
explanation.
These discussionshave carefully skirted questions of what explanations or
theories are really like ; but one possibility is that they are not much at all like
theories in the classic nomological-deductive sense. Increasingly in the philo -
sophy of science, it is common to attribute to the working scientist not a set
of propositions linked by rules of inference, but something less structured
involving notions of causal powers (Salmon 198?) . Not only children, but
also adults, often have explanations in the form of notions about the sorts of
properties likely to be causally most central to a kind , with only the vaguest
of hunchesabout how they are linked together. It may therefore be that the
earliest notions of what properties are central to a category are not so much
consequencesof a deepertheory, but are much of the theory itself.
Lexical items cannot be simply equated with concepts; but neith,er can they
ignore the details of concept structure. In this paper I have -argued that a
current view of conceptsand concept acquisition has important consequences
for how we might think of word meanings and how they are acquired. The
notion of hybrid structure, its early origins, the presenceof multiple early
modesof construal, and subsequentconstraints suggesta very different model
of how lexical items becomemapped onto conceptsand changewith development
than would be suggestedby alternative models of concepts. Even if one
is solely interested in the lexicon, one cannot avoid making some commitments
about concepts themselves.
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Section 4
Categories , words , and language

) 199-227. North-Holland
Lingua92 ( 1994
Constraints on word meaning in

*
early language acquisition
Ellen M . Markman
, Stanford, CA 94305
, StanfordUniversity
of Psychology
Department , USA
Very young children success fully acquire the vocabulary of their native languagedespite their
'
limited information processing abilities. One partial explanation for children s successat the
inductive problem word learning presents is that children are constrained in the kinds of
hypotheses they consider as potential meanings of novel words. Three such constraints are
discussed: ( I ) the whole-object assumptionwhich leadschildren to infer that terms refer to objects
as a whole rather than to their parts, substance, color , or other properties; (2) the taxonomic
assumptionwhich leads children to extend words to objects or entities of like kind ; and (3) the
mutual exclusivity assumptionwhich leadschildren to avoid two labels for the sameobject. Recent
evidenceis reviewedsuggestingthat all three constraints are available to babiesby the time of the
naming explosion. Given the importance of word learning, children might be expectedto recruit
'
whatever sources of information they can to narrow down a word s meaning, including
information provided by grammatical form class and the pragmatics of the situation. Word -
learning cOnstraintsinteract with theseother sourcesof information but are also argued to be an
especiallyuseful source of infonnation for children who have not yet masteredgrammatical form
class in that constraints should function as an entering wedge into languageacquisition.
1. Introduction
One impressive accomplishment of young children is the degree to which

they acquire the vocabulary of their native language. Not only is the rate and
'
extent of young children s word learning impressive, it is puzzling as well.
'
Given the limitations on children s hypothesis testing, reasoning, memory,
and other information processingabilities, their facility for building a lexicon
is evenmore striking . This is especiallyso in light of the well-known inductive
problem that word learning poses(Quine 1960) . Faced with an infinite set of
. This work was supported in part by NSF Grant # BNS-9109236. I am very grateful to Andrea
Backscheiderfor allowing me to publish the results of our study here. I thank Barbara Landau,
Lila Gleitman, and two anonymous reviewersfor their helpful comments.
- 3841/94/507.00 (C) 1994- ElsevierScien~ : B.V. All rights reserved

0024
SSDI0024 - 3841( 93) EO054- B
200 E.M. Markman
/ Earlylanguage
acquisition
possibilities about what a novel word might mean, the speed with which
young children acquire word meanings requires explanation.
Given the importance of word learning for language acquisition, children
might be expected to recruit whatever sources of information they can to
narrow down a word ' s meaning. One powerful one, for children old enough
to benefit from it , is grammatical form class. As one example, Fisher et ale
(this volume) provides dramatic demonstrations of the way in which syntactic
information helps constrain the meaning of a novel verb (seealso Fisher et ale
1991, Naigles et ale 1992) . Being able to infer aspectsof the communicative
intent of a speaker should provide another source of information about the
referent of a novel term. A conscientiousparent or other tutor might further
help by arranging the environment in ways to exaggeratethe salienceof the
aspect of the situation being labeled in the hope that their child will find it
salient too. ,Another potentially powerful source of information young
children can use to figure out the meaning of a new word comes from word-
learning constraints. Constraints on word meaning may be particularly
critical for babies who have not yet learned enough syntax to rely on
'
grammatical form class to limit their hypothesesas to a word s meaning. I
will argue that by the time they are ready to acquire vocabulary, children
place constraints on possible word meanings, thereby greatly reducing the
hypothesis space that needs to be considered. Children would not need to
formulate a long list of potential meanings and painstakingly assessthe
evidence in support of each. Rather, they could quickly zoom in on some
hypothesesthat they are predisposedto prefer.
In this paper, I will consider evidence in support of three word -learning
constraints: the whole-object, taxonomic, and mutual exclusivity assumptions
. I will argue that the most recent evidence supports the claim that
children' s early word learning is guided by such constraints. For some
different formulations of possible constraints seeBloom (this volume) ; Clark
1991; Golinkoff et al. 1992a).
To claim that children' s early word learning is a constrained form of
learning is nqt to claim that no other source of information matters. On the
contrary, the recent evidence reveals some of the complex and subtle ways
that word learning blasesinteract with other sour~ s of information . There is
evidence, for example, that word -learning constraints can affect each other.
When two or more constraints converge on the same hypothesis the learning
will be efficient compared to cases where the constraints conflict and one
must override another. Similarly word -learning constraints interact with
grammatical form class. In some casesboth thesesourcesof information lead
E.M. MarkmanI Early language
acquisition
to the sameconclusion about a novel word , but in other casesthey conflict.

Analogous points can be made about communicative or pragmatic sourcesof
information and the word learning assumptions. Finally , there is emerging
evidence about the ways that the processing demands of a given word
learning situation can affect the use of constraints. The evidenceI will review
suggeststhat beginning word-learners rely heavily on word -learning assumptions
but that these constraints are modulated by other constraints, by
'
nonlinguistic context, by children s problem solving and other information
processing abilities, and by the pragmatics and syntax of the language
children hear.
2. Some preliminary considerado . .
In this paper, I will reviewstudiestestingthe hypothesisthat word-learning

constraintsprovide
- young - children with an essentialsourceof infonnation
about the meaning of a novel word. That is, that such constraints provide a
partial explanation for the speedwith which new words are acquired. Before
turning to the evidence, I will briefly consider a few theoretical issuesin order
to sharpen the fonnulation of the hypothesis.
2.1. The developmental hypothesis
One way of fonnulating this hypothesis is to expect word -learning constraints

to be available at the start of language acquisition. This would
require documenting that at least some constraints are used by babies by the
time they are capable even of understanding their first word . Babies acquire
their first word often by age one year or less if measuredby production and
probably younger if measuredby comprehension. There is reason to believe,
however, that the nature of word learning undergoesa marked developmental
shift from the time babies are capable of acquiring their first word at say a
year and the rapid word learning they becomecapable of by 18 months or 2
years (Bloom et al. 1985, Corrigan 1983, Dromi 1987, Halliday 1975,
McShane 1979, Nelson 1973) . The contrast betweenvery early word learning
and this vocabulary spurt or naming explosion has been characterized in a
number of different ways. The early phase of word learning has been tenDed
' '
prelexical (Nelson and Lucariello 1985) to emphasizethat there are ways in
'
which the first ' words' may not be word like ; it has been called nonreferen-
' ' '
tial (Snyder et al. 1981) and associative (Lock 1980) to distinguish these
E.M . Markman / Early languageacquisition
' '
early words from genuine words that are referential; and it has been termed
' formative'
per (Snyder et al. 1981) to suggest that the early words are
responses used to perform some instrumental act rather than functioning as
words that make reference. Another characteristic of this first phase of word
learning is that words are added to the productive lexicon very slowly. A slow
accumulation of new words might proceed by some relatively unconstrained
associativemechanism. Dozens or even hundreds of trials may be neededfor
a baby to learn, for example, to say ' bye-bye' on command. This is in marked
contrast to the very fast acquisition seenaround 18 months.
This developmental shift at the time of the naming explosion suggestsan
alternative formulation of the hypothesis that word -learning constraints are
necessaryfor word learning. The more preciseclaim is that some constrained
form of learning is necessaryto account for the rapid acquisition of words
seen at the time of the naming explosion. Babies could not be acquiring
words at the rate of 30 or so a week if they were open-mindedly considering
all possible hypotheseseach time they encountered a novel word. Thus the
main hypothesis to be evaluated here is that word -learning constraints are
available to babies by the time they enter the naming explosion at roughly 18
months of age.
2.2. Word-learning constraintsas default assumptions
Before summarizing the evidencethat the word learning of 1Y2-year-olds is

a constrained form of learning, I would like to clarify the claim. Some
confusion has been generated by the terminology where ' constraints' is
interpreted differently by different disciplines, especially linguistics versus
ethology. I and other investigators have borrowed the terminology from the
ethology of learning (seeWoodward and Markman 1991 for a discussion of
this perspective). Within this discipline ' constraints' on learning are formulated
as default assumptions - probabilistic blases that provide good first
guessesas to a problem an organism must solve (Marler and Terrace 1984,
Rozin and Schull 1988, Shettleworth 1984). To take one example from Gould
and Marler ( 1984), foraging beesmust learn the color of the flowers that yield
a given nectar. Purple is the default value beeshold. It is easier for them to
learn about purple flowers than about flowers of any other color. Note that it
is by no means impossible for them to learn sources that are other colors.
Violations of the default assumption are common. Nevertheless, purple serves
as a first guess, and it takes more trials or more evidenceto learn values that
differ from the default assumption. Turning to word learning, the hypothesis
, acquisition
E.M. MarkmanI Early language 203
is that children are able to make progress in word learning by use of such
default assumptions (see Merriman and Bowman 1989 and Woodward and
Markman 1991) . These constraints on learning provide good first guesses
about the likely meanings of terms. Words that conform to the constraints
should therefore be easier to learn than ones that violate them. Some of the
controversy surrounding such claims stems from confusion over whether
constraints must be absolute or whether they function as default assumptions
(Gathercole 1989, Nelson 1988, Tomasello 1992) .
2.3. Are word - learning constraints domain -specific ?
To clarify another potential source of confusion, I ' d like to briefly consider

the question of whether the word learning constraints I will consider here- the
whole-object, taxonomic and mutual exclusivity assumptionsare specific to
languageor available to other domains. Rather than discussthis here, let me
refer you to Markman ( 1992), where this issue is considered in detail along
with speculationsabout the origins of the constraints. My conclusion is that
there is no reasonat all to believe that thesethree constraints are limited only
to word learning and good reason to think they are available to some other
domains. This is not to say that they are domain-general in that important
domains are organized by very different principles. Given that analogous
constraints are available to some fundamental domains, I suggestedthat
word-learning constraints have been recruited from existing abilities that
children possessrather than evolving as special purpose mechanismsonly for
word learning (Markman 1992). Such speculations aside, these assumptions
function as word -learning constraints, not in the sensethat they are domain-
specific, but in the sensethat they help solve the inductive problem that word
learning poses.
3. The taxonomic assumption
The first assumption I will consider is the taxonomic assumption which

statesthat terms refer to entities of the samekind . An object term would refer
to objects of the samekind , a color term to colors of the samekind , an action
term to actions of the same kind , and so on. Although to adults this might
seemself-evident, there was reasonto question whether young children would
interpret terms in this way. First , taxonomic relations are not the only
relations available to children. A label learned for a given object, for example,
204 E.M . Markman I Early languageacquisition
could refer to objects of the same kind , but it could in principle refer to the
object and its spatial location , or the object and its owner, or the object and a
salient part , etc. This is not , moreover, just a theoretical possibility . Many
studies of classification have found that not only do children attend to such
' thematic' relations between
objects, they often find them more salient or
interesting than taxonomic relations per se (seeMarkman 1989). When shown
a car, for example, and told to find another one, children might pick a man
becausehe drives a car rather than a truck , another vehicle. Given such
'
findings from children s classification, the question arises as to how children
avoid such thematic interpretations of a novel word. Hutchinson and I
proposed that children expect novel terms to refer to objects of like kind
(Markman and Hutchinson 1984) . Hearing a novel label, then, should cause
children to seek out taxonomic relations even in cases where thematic
relations would otherwise be more salient. There is now a substantial body of
evidencethat children from about 21J2or 3 expect labels to refer to things of
like kind (Baldwin 1989, in press; Hutchinson 1984, Markman and Hutchin -
son 1984, Waxman and Gelman 1986, Waxman and Kosowski 1990) . I turn
now to consider whether the taxonomic assumption is available to babies by
the time of the naming explosion.
3.1. ~he taxonomic assumptionat the time of the naming explosion
Bauer and Mandler ( 1989) first addressedthis issue in their study of the
categorization abilities in very young children. As part of their study
'
, they
asked whether labeling would increase 16- 31-month -old children s tendency
to sort taxonomically . Unexpectedly, however, even the youngest children in
their study were sorting taxonomically from the start. That is, even with no
labels children were sorting taxonomically about 75% of the time. Labeling
did not increasethis already high level of performance. Bauer and Mandler
( 1989) have thus convincingly demonstrated that quite young children are
capable of sorting taxonomically . They also argue that there may not be any
general thematic preference. Because of the already high rate of sorting
taxonomically, however, they were unable to test whether children of this age
adhere to the taxonomic assumption. That is, it is still important to know
whether there are situations in which very young children show thematic
preferencesand, if so, whether hearing a label will cause them to shift to
taxonomic sorting. Backscheiderand I addressedthis by changing aspectsof
'
Bauer and Mandler s procedure that resulted in children responding taxo-
nomically from the start.
E.M. Markman
I Earlylanguage
acquisition 205
One reason why Bauer and Mandler ( 1989) achieved such a high rate of
taxonomic responding in their young children is that they used areinforcement
procedure whereby they briefly pretrained children to selecttaxonomic-
ally and maintained this selectivereinforcementof taxonomic choicesthroughout
the testing procedure. The selective reinforcement clearly mattered
becausein a control study Bauer and Mandler achievedan equally high rate
of thematic responding by selectively reinforcing thematic rather than taxo-
nomic responses . Since they demonstrated that selective reinforcement is a
powerful way to influence children' s responses
, Backscheiderand I avoided
selectivereinforcement (as did all earlier studies with older children). Other
differencesbetween our procedure and Bauer and Mandler ' s ( 1989) are that
we used pictures instead of objects, we used items whose thematic relations
we thought would be better known to 18-month -olds, and we used an up/
down placemen,t of thematic and taxonomic choices instead of left/right .
Finally, Bauer and Mandler counterbalanced the position of thematic and
taxonomic choices by alternating the left /right placement from trial to trial .
This alternation is unfortunate especially when coupled with a reinforcement
procedure. Children may have simply learned the correct answer changes
sidesevery trial . We counterbalancedside but not by alternating from trial to
trial . The major difference between the studies, however, is that we did not
differentially reinforce taxonomic responding.
Thirty -three children participated in our study. They ranged in age from 18
to 25 months with a mean age of 21.5 months. The experimental materials
consisted of ten triads, each containing one target picture, one picture
thematically related to the target, and one picture taxonomically related to
the target picture. We selectedthematic relations that we thought would be
highly familiar to even very young children. The taxonomic match belonged
to the same basic level category as the target but , where possible, came from
distinctive subordinate categories. The ten triads are listed in table 1.
The experimental questions were preceded by a set of four warm-up
questions designed to clarify the instructions and procedure but not to
differentially reinforce either taxonomic or thematic responding. The warmup
questions and the experimental questions were oddity tasks, where children
viewed a target picture and then selectedone of two choice pictures. To
begin, children were introduced to a frog hand-puppet who manipulated the
pictures. They were asked to help the frog find the pictures it wanted. The
children were told that the frog had just gotten a new house, and wanted
things to put in its house. In order to ensure that children gave unambiguous
responses , they were shown how to place the pictures they selectedin the frog
206 E.M . Markman I Early languageacquisition
Table I
's
Experimentalitemsfrom Markmanand Backscheider study
Choices
Target
Taxonomic Thematic
Sitting baby Lying baby Stroller

Bottle Bottle Baby
Chair Chair Sitter
Rabbit cup Cup Pitcher
Foot Foot Shoe
Glasses Glasses Eyes
Blue scoop shovel Red shovel Pail
Spoon Spoon Cereal in bowl
Toilet paper Toilet paper Toilet
Mitten Mitten Hand
'
puppet s mouth . There were two experimental conditions , the No Label
Conditionand the Novel Labelcondition.
3.1.1. Warm-up questions

For the wanD-up questions, children were shown a target picture and then
had to select one of two pictures, one of which was an unrelated distractor.
The other picture, the correct choice, was thematically related to the target
for half of the trials and taxonomically related for the other half. The items
used for the wanD-up questions are listed in table 2.
Table2
'
Warm-up itemsfrom Markmanand Backscheiders study
Target Choices .
Taxonomic match Thematic match Distractor
Hat Hat Head Car interior

Watch Watch Wrist Road
Shopping cart Shopping cart Bag of groceries Pillow
Hair Hair Brush Pot
. In a single trial the child saw either the taxonomic match or the thematic match , not both . The
distractor was always present .
The experimenterplacedthe targetpicture(for examplea hat) on the table

' '
and askedthe child to ' look at this picture' or seethis , etc. Then the two
E.M . Markman / Ear'v jranguag
~. acquisition 207
choice pictures were placed on a magnetic board, one above the other. (Pilot
work suggestedthat a vertical alignment of the pictures produced fewer
responseblasesbased on position than did a horizontal alignment.) The top/
bottom position of the random distractor and correct picture was counterbalanced
. The target picture was held next to the top picture while the
' '
experimenter asked Is this another one? and then held next to the bottom
'
picture while the experimenter asked or is this another one?' When children
selectedthe wrong picture they were told that that was not the one that the
frog wanted and were encouragedto make another selection. For the warmup
questions, the frog would not accept the wrong picture - it would keep its
mouth closed and shake its head, etc. When children selected the correct
choice the frog opened its mouth to take the picture and enthusiastically
thanked them, saying ' Yeah! Yeah! That is just the one I wanted. Thank
'
you , kissed the child , etc. The experimenter then explained why that was the
picture the frog wanted, describing either the taxonomic relation betweenthe
target and the picture or the thematic relation as appropriate. For example
for the thematic pair hat/ head, the frog said ' That ' s great! A hat goes on a
head. Do you ever put a hat on your head? A hat goes on a head, they go
' ' '
together . For the taxonomic pair hat/ hat, the frog said That s great! Now I
'
have two hats. Look , these are the same, two hats . Thus, the warm-up
questions encouraged, explained, and reinforced taxonomic and thematic
responsesequally.
The procedure for the two experimental conditions was similar to that of
the warm-up questions with two exceptions. First , in the procedure proper
there was no unrelated distractor. One of the choice pictures was thematically
related to the target and the other was taxonomically related to it , as shown
in table I . Second, the frog acceptedany choice the child made, that is, there
was no selectivereinforcement during the experiment proper.
3.1.2. No label condition

To begin each trial , the puppet placed the target picture on the table and
said ' Now let' s look at this picture' or ' Here' s a new picture' . Then the two
choice pictures were placed on the magnetic board, one above the other.
Whether the thematic choice was placed on the top or on the bottom was
counterbalancedsuch that for each child half of the time it appeared on the
top and half the time on the bottom . The order of presentation of the items
was randomly determined for each child. Once the child saw the target
' '
picture, the puppet asked the child to find another one . It held the target
'
picture next to each of the choice pictures, asking Is this another one, or is
E.M . Markman I Early languageDCQuisiliOIl
this another one?' The frog then held the target between the two pictures
while the child selectedone of them and placed it in the frog puppet' s mouth.
The experimenter took the target out of the frog ' s mouth as the child moved
his or her choice over to the frog . Children were enthusiastically thanked on
every trial , regardlessof which picture they chose.
3.1.3. Novel label condition

The materials and procedure for the Novel Label Condition were identical
to those of the No Label Condition except that children in this condition
were told that the puppet would sometimes speak in puppet talk and the
puppet gave each target picture a novel label. For example, the puppet would
show the child the target picture saying ' Now I am going to show you a sud.
'
Look at this, it is a sud. Can you find another sudl When children were
'
making their choices the puppet said, e.g., Is this another sud or is this
another sud1' Ten nonsensesyllables were used as the novel labels and were
randomly assignedto the targets for each child.
The first question this study addressedwas whether children as young as 18
to 24 months will show thematic preferencesat all. In marked contrast to
Bauer and Mandler ' s ( 1989) findings, these young children did show a
thematic bias. When children in the No Label Condition were asked to
choose between an object that was from the samecategory as the target and
one that was thematically related to it , they chose the taxonomic match only
32% of the time, which was significantly less than chance, t ( 15) = 4.78,
p < O.OOI. That is, they chose thematically 68% of the time. Thus, when
children are not selectivelyreinforced for choosing taxonomic items and when
the thematic relations are geared towards what would be well-known to even
18-month -olds, quite young children will reveal the thematic blasesoften seen
'
in older children. This does not contradict Bauer and Mandler s claim that
these young children are capable of grouping the objects on the basis of
common categories, but it does establish that when the thematic relations are
well-known and when children are not reinforced for one type of responseor
another they prefer to organize objects thematically.
Given that for theseitems, theseyoung children do show thematic blases, it
then makes senseto ask whether hearing an object labeled will help them
override their thematic preferencein favor of taxonomic relations. As predicted
, there was a highly significant effect of condition , with children in the
Novel Label condition picking taxonomically fully 77% of the time compared
to 32% of the time for children in the No Label Condition , F( I , 31) = 66.58,
P < 0.000I . Children hearing an object labeled selected a taxonomic match
E.M. Markman/ Early language
acquisition 209
well over what would be expected by chance, 1( 16) = 6.75, p < O.OOOI . Thus,
these young children do adhere to the taxonomic assumption. They extend
object labels to other objects of like kind rather than to objects that are
thematically related.
Wasow and I have conducted subsequent studies to detennine if these
results would replicate with babies 16 to 18 months old. Several changesin
procedure were made to accommodate to the younger children. We used
objects instead of pictures and reduced the number of questions that children
were asked. The experimental triads that were used are presentedin table 3.
The procedure was otherwise quite similar to that of Backscheider and
Markman , including use of wanD-up questions. Thirty -two 16-month -olds
and 32 18-month-olds participated in this study, half of each age group in
eachcondition . As before 18-month -olds honored the taxonomic assumption.
First , when in the No Label condition , 18-month -olds showed a clear
thematic bias selecting the taxonomic choice only 28% of the time, which is
below chance, 1( 15) = 10.97, p < O.OOOI. When the target object was given a
novel label, the 18-month -olds significantly increased their taxonomic selections
, now picking a member of the same category 54% of the time,
1(30) = 3.34, p < 0.005.
Table3
Itemsfrom Markmanand Wasow's studywith familiar objects
Target Choices
Taxonomic Thematic
Felt doll hat Plasticdoll hat Doll head
Whitedoll-sizesock Yellow toddler-sizesock Doll-sizefoot
" Smallerdoll (approx. 3" )
Babydoll (approx. 5 ) Doll-sizebottle
Red& whiteadult-sizetoothbrushPink child-sizetoothbrush Setof plasticteeth
Pink plasticdollhousetable White woodendollhousetable Pink plasticdollhousechair
Yellowplasticpail Redplasticpail Yellow& white~plasticshovel
We did not find this labeling effect with 16-month -olds, however. The 16-
month-olds did find the thematic relations salient, picking taxonomically only
34% of the time in the No Label condition , which was less than chance,
1( 15) = 3.76, p < O.OO2
. But labeling had no effect on their selections, with
babies selecting taxonomically only 39% of the time in the Novel Label
condition .
One possible reason for our failure to replicate the labeling effect with 16-
month-olds is that in this procedure we provide a novel label for a familiar
210 E.M. MarkmanI Early language
acquisition
object and then look to seehow the child interpreted the label. As I will argue
later, children find it more difficult to learn second labels for objects because
this violates mutual exclusivity, another word -learning constraint. Other
studies mimimized the conflict betweenmutual exclusivity and the taxonomic
assumptions by telling children that the novel word was a word in puppet
language or a foreign language (Markman and Hutchinson 1984, Waxman
and Gelman 1986) . Although older children have been shown to treat mutual
exclusivity as applying within a single language, not acrosslanguages(Au and
Glusman 1990), 16-month -olds would not have understood a discussion of
puppet language. To test the possibility that the conflict between mutual
exclusivity and the taxonomic assumption was confusing the 16-month -olds,
Wasow and I ran another version of the study, this time using novel objects.
Thirty -two 16-month-old babies were introduced to novel triads of toys
where two of the toys were similar in appearanceand two were related by
some thematic relation we demonstrated. For example, two honey dippers of
different colors were novel taxonomic pairs and one honey dipper was
scraped against a plastic grid to demonstrate the thematic relation. Babies
were then shown a target, e.g., a honey dipper, heard it labeled or not , and
were then depending on the condition , asked to find another one or another
X (where X was the novel label) . The full set of novel items used is described
in table 4.
Table 4
' Tern~ frnm Markmal1 and Wasow' s study with novel objects
Target Choices
Taxonomic Thematic
Smallgreenspongecircle Large yellow spongecircle
Smallorangeblock Largeblueblock Plastic' tub' containerwith

squarecut out in lid
Red ' person' peg Yellow ' person' peg Wooden car with round hole
Largered propellor Smallyellowpropellor Red helicopter
(with post to hold propellor)
Yellowhoneydipper Greenhoneydipper Yellow plasticgrid

DecoratedPVC pipe Plain PVCpipe Decoratedfunnel
Once again we failed to find an effect of labeling with 16-month -olds.

Babies selectedthe taxonomic choice 40% of the time when the object was
unlabeled and 44% of the time when it was labeled. Our avoiding second
labels for objects did not improve babies' performance in the labeled
condition .
One possibility, of course, is that 16-month -olds lack the taxonomic
assumption. Another is that the oddity task we have been using is insensitive
to the knowledge babies have. To reveal use of the taxonomic assumption in
this task, babies must inhibit a dominant response. We deliberately selected
thematic choices that would be preferred by babies this age. Being asked for
"a dax' for
example may not be compelling enough to prevent babies from
what ' '
doing they most prefer, even if they do interpret dax as referring to
objects of like kind .
Thus, our failure to find the labeling effect with the 16-month -olds might
be partially acCounted for by the requirements of the oddity task. The
taxonomic assumption may not be strong enough to allow young children to
inhibit reaching for a preferred object.
Support for this interpretation comes from work from Waxman and her
colleagues, who found that labels highlight categorical structure for even 12-
and 13-month-olds (Waxman, this volume; Waxman and Helm 1991, Mar -
kow and Waxman 1992). Instead of an oddity task where children would
need to .inhibit a dominant thematic response to reveal knowledge of the
taxonomic assumption, Waxman and Helm ( 1991) and Markow and Waxman
( 1992) used a manual habituation procedure which assessedwhether
babies could notice and distinguish two different categories of objects. The
'
hypothesis being tested is that words should enhance babies tendency to
notice object categories. The prediction was that labeling objects should ( I )
increase the rate of habituation to category exemplars and (2) increase the
degree of dishabituation to an object from a different category. In this
procedure, babies are first familiarized with four toys from a given category
(e.g., four cars or four animals) . Children were presentedwith each toy, one
at a time for 30 secondseach. On analogy with visual habituation tasks, a
decrementin the time spent exploring the last toy compared with the first was
used as an index of habituation . After the familiarization trials , babies were
presentedwith a new exemplar from the old category and an object from the
novel category. Here, again on analogy with standard habituation tasks,
babies who had best formed the category would be expected to show a
greater interest in the object from the novel category than in the object from
the original category. For some of the babies the experimenter labeled the
' '
object during the familiarization phrase saying, e.g., Look at the car . For
some babies the experimenterdrew attention to the object without labeling it
' '
saying, e.g., Look at this . As predicted, labeling the objects improved
babies' ability to categorizeas measuredboth by rate of habituation to within
category exemplarsand by dishabituation to a novel category (Waxman and
Helm 1991, Markow and Waxman 1992). Moreover, Markow and Waxman
'
discoveredthat at 12 months labeling objects improved babies categorization
even when adjectivesrather than nouns were used to refer to the objects. This
finding is of interest becauseit supports the idea that babies first treat words
as referring to objects of like kind rather than treating only nouns that way.
One-year-olds, presumably with minimal knowledge of grammatical form
class, were better able to categorize objects if they were labeled regardlessof
whether a noun or adjective was used as the label.
'
At this point it is of interest to consider briefly Bloom s (this volume)
alternative framework for constraints on word meaning. Bloom views the
postulation of particular constraints such as the taxonomic and whole-object
assumptions as unmotivated and corrects this in his model with an elegant
systemthat generatesconstraints to conform to universal grammar-cognition
'
mappings. Bloom s systematicanalysis provides a clear statement of what the
endpoint of development should be. Where we disagreeis in what to attribute
to the very early phasesof language learning - the time before children have
mastered grammatical form class. On the view I have proposed very young
children will break into the systemby assumingthat a word refers to a whole
object (the whole object assumption) and is extended to things of like kind
'
(the taxonomic assumption). Bloom s account, which is bolstered by counterexample
to my formulation , is that children map count nouns on to kinds of
individuals rather than kinds of objects. Yet , this may describe adevelop -
mental achievement rather than the initial state. Babies may treat terms as
referring to objects but with time note the regularity with which count nouns
refer to objects. Once this correlation is establishedchildren may then be able
' '
to metaphorically extend object-like or individual status to non-objects that
' ' ' '
are referred to with count nouns such as a forest or a lecture . Second, on
'
my account as well as Waxman s, young children rely on word -learning
constraints before they have mastered grammatical form class. Very young
children should err by treating adjectives, for example, as referring to kinds of
objects. The work just described (Markow and Waxman 1992) is one source
of evidencethat before children have masteredthe noun/adjective contrast in
'
English, adjectivesas well as nouns enhanceone-year-old s attention to kinds
of objects.
E.M. Markman
I Earlylanguage
acquisition 213
'
Labeling has been found to enhance even younger babies attention to
objects. Baldwin and I found that babies from 10- 14 months old attended
more to toys that had been labeled compared to ones that had not ( Baldwin
and Markman 1989) . In a second study, we compared labeling to another
'
powerful means of directing babies attention , namely pointing . Although
labeling did not increasebabies attention over pointing at the time pointing
occurred, during a subsequentplay period babies attended more to toys that
had been labeled than to those that had not . Thus, labeling may sustain
babies' interest in objects beyond the time the labeling occurs. By helping
babies sustain their attention to relevant objects, this labeling effect may
help babies notice and remember the word -object correspondences. It is not
yet known whether this labeling effect is caused by labels per se or whether
other nonlinguistic sounds would have the same effect (see Baldwin and
Markman 1989 for other possible explanations as well) . So far , the existing
data are inconsistent. Waxman and Balaban ( 1992) have found that words
but not tones increased attention to object categories in 9-month -olds. On
the other hand, Roberts and Jacob ( 1991) found that music as well as words
facilitated object categorization in infants . Whether the effect is specific to
words or not , words do heighten babies' attention to objects and object
categories.
Taken together, then, the experimental findings document that babies from
12- 18 m"Onths(and maybe even younger) use the taxonomic assumption to
help them determine the appropriate referents of a word. This conclusion
from the experimental data is supported by the results of Huttenlocher and
'
Smiley s ( 1987) study of naturalistic data. They generateda set of criteria to
distinguish thematic (complexive) extensionsof words from taxonomic extensions
, arguing that not every use of a word by a young child should be taken
as a simple label of an object. They followed severalchildren from the time of
their first word (around 13 months for most of the children) and periodically
recorded both the words children produced and details of the situation and
context in which utterances occurred. For example, a child who reaches
towards a cookie jar saying ' cookie, cookie' with an insistent request intonation
, should not be interpreted as labeling the cookie jar as a cookie. Instead,
the child is most likely requesting a cookie. Using coding categories that
'
capture reasonable interpretations of children s utterances, they found that
from the start children use words to refer to objects of like kind . Thus,
evidence from experimental and naturalistic studies alike indicate that the
taxonomic assumption is available to babies who have not yet undergone the
naming explosion.
214 E.M. Markman/ Early language
acquisition
Although the taxonornic assurnption goesa long way in reducing the kinds
of hypothesesbabies need to consider in figuring out the rneaning of a new
word , it by no rneans solves the problern. Babies rnay be led to treat novel
words (or nouns) as referring to kinds of objects but that still leavesopen the
question of which kind . This problern has been extensively addressed by
Waxrnan and her colleaguesand is reviewed in Waxrnan (this volurne) . To
'
briefly surnrnarize, labels facilitate young children s attention to objects at
sorne hierarchical levels but rnight actually interfere with their ability to
categorizeat other levels. Young children hearing a noun expect it to refer to
categories either at a basic or superordinate level of categorization, but do
not expect it to refer to the distinctions rnade at subordinate levels of
categorization. Rather, they expect this level of detail to be indicated by
'
adjectives. Waxrnan s work reveals the interaction between use of word-
learning constraints, grarnrnatical form class, and conceptual structure.
Not only does the taxonornic assurnption leave open the question of which
kind of object is being referred to , it even leavesopen which object is being
referred to. As Baldwin ( 1991) pointed out , in normal environrnents that
babies find thernselvesin , there are often rnany candidate objects around that
could serveas potential referents for a new word. Even if babies are prepared
to treat a novel word as referring to , say, a basic level category, they rnust
figure out which one. One possibility is that babies rnay treat a novel word as
refelTing to whatever novel object they are attending to. Whenever babiesand
adults are focussing on the sarne object, this would lead babies to correctly
identify the referent of a novel term. On those occasions, however, when the
adult was in fact labeling an object other than the one the baby was focused
on, the baby would wrongly interpret the new word and would rnake a
rnapping error. Such rnapping errors appear to be very rare, although there is
evidence that babies learn words rnore readily when parents tend to label
what their baby is attending to (Tornasello and Farrar 1986) . Baldwin ( 1991)
suggested that babies could avoid rnapping errors if they rnonitored the
'
speakers focus of attention. If babies recognize that the object they are
interested in is not the one the speakeris attending to , then they would know
not to treat the word as a label for their object. Baldwin tested whether
'
babies use information about a speakers focus of attention in inferring the
referent of a novel word or whether they rnapped a novel word to whatever
novel object they were interested in. To test this, she provided novel labels to
' '
16- 19-rnonth-old babies in one of two conditions. In the discrepant label
condition , babies were given a toy to play with . Once the experirnenter was
assured that the baby was exarnining the toy the experirnenter provided a
E.M . Markman I Early languageacquisition 215
novel label saying, e.g., ' It ' s a toma' . Instead of looking at the baby or the
' '
toy , however, the experimentergazedinto an opaque bucket as she said It s a
'
toma . Thus, the baby heard the novel label while looking at a novel toy but
while the speaker looked into a bucket that contained a second toy . In the
' follow -in '
labeling condition , the experimenter looked at the visible toy while
she provided the novel label.
In the follow -in labeling condition , babies of both ages treated the novel
word as referring to the visible toy . Of more interest is what happenedin the
discrepant conditions. The results were quite clear: at neither age did babies
treat the novel word as referring to the visible toy even though they were
looking at the toy at the time they heard the label.
By monitoring the eye-gaze, posture, direction of voice, or some other cues
to the speaker's focus of attention babies avoided making a mapping error.
The 16- 17-month -olds avoided errors by simply failing to learn the new
word. The 18- 19-month -olds not only avoided errors, but were able to infer
that the new word referred to the object that was hidden in the bucket at the
time of labeling. Baldwin' s results reveal how babies' use of word-learning
constraints is coordinated with their construal of the communicative intent of
the speaker.
4. The wbole- objeet assumption
The whole-object assumption states that babies should treat a novel label
as referring to an object rather than a part , substance, color , movement, etc.
There is somecontroversy as to whether young children treat a novel label as
referring to the shapeof an object rather than the object per se. Some studies
have found that young children will extend an object label to things of the
sameshaperather than those of the samecolor , or texture (Au 1989, Au and
Markman 1987, Baldwin 1989, Landau et al. 1988, Ward et al. 1989) . One
interpretation of these findings, however, is that children are treating the
terms as referring to whole objects of like kind , and that shape is a
'
particularly reliable clue to an object s taxonomic category. Sola et al. ( 1991)
reinforce the conclusion that it is the object, not the shape, that children are
responding to in that they do not treat words as referring to the shape of
non-solid substances even when different substances were arranged into
common shapes. Baldwin (in press) has found that , on the one hand, children
will extend a label on the basis of shapewhen there is no obvious taxonomic
category, but , on the other hand, children will extend a label on the basis of
acquisition
taxonomic category even when the objects in question do not have the same
shape. Moreover, Landau (this volume) along with Becker and Ward ( 1991)
have found that preschoolers treat novel terms as labels for objects rather
than shape in that they treat a term for a worm -like animal as referring to
another worm twisted into a different configuration . (Landau, however,
argues for a different interpretation of these results. In particular she argues
that children are still responding on the basis of shapeibut shape now is
defined as the possible shape transformations an object of a given shape can
undergo.) In addition , there are developmental differences in the way this
whole-object bias interacts with grammatical form class (Landau et al., in
press; Landau, this volume) . Older children and adults will treat a novel noun
as referring to the kind of object but treat an adjective as referring to a
property such as texture. But the youngest children treated even novel
adjectives as referring to kinds of objects. Here again we see that when
knowledge of grammatical form classis weak, word -learning constraints such
'
as the whole-object assumption dominate the child s interpretation of a novel
term.
Taken together, these findings suggestthat children attempt to honor the
whole object and taxonomic assumptions per se, rather than treating words
as shapeterms. Further support for the whole-object assumption comes from
studies that have documented that children interpret a novel term as a label
for an object and not its part (Markman and Wachtel 1988, Mervis and Long
1987) and for an object over its substance(Markman and Wachtel 1988, Sola
et al. 1991) .
4.1. The whole-object assumptionat the time of the naming explosion
Although the whole-object assumption has received experimental support,

only Mervis and Long ( 1987) examined babies around the age of the naming
'
explosion. Moreover, none of the studies (except perhaps Landau s, this
volume) provided a strong test of the whole-object assumption. Babies might
-
map words onto objects not becauseof a whole object assumption per se, but
simply becauseobjects are salient and babies might map novel words to
whatever is most salient at the time of labeling. Thus a stringent test of the
whole-object assumption requires examining whether babies treat novel
words as referring to objects even when an object is not the most salient
aspectof the environment. Woodward ( 1992) has provided such a test.
Woodward ( 1992) had babies view two video monitors. On one screen
babies viewed a dynamic substancein motion , such as flowing lava. On the
E.M. Markman/ Early /anxuaR
.e acquisition 217
other screenthe babies viewed a static novel object. When the screenswere
turned on and babies allowed to watch freely, they clearly preferred the
swirling substancesto the static objects. Thus, Woodward created a situation
where the object was lesssalient than the substancein motion . On some trials
babies heard a label that could be interpreted as referring either to an object
or substance. The prediction from the whole-object assumption is that
hearing a label should cause babies to shift attention more to the whole
object. This hypothesis was confirmed for 18-month-olds (though lessclearly
for the 24-month -olds) . Around the time of the naming explosion, then,
babies treat novel words as referring to objects per se, rather than to
.
whatever is most salient.
Testing a somewhat different hypothesis, Echois also has evidence suggesting
that well before the time of the naming explosion babies honor the
whole-object assumption, but that younger babies (8- to 10-month -olds) may
not. Echois ( 1990, 1991) asked whether young babies might map labels to
whatever in the environment is consistent rather than to objects per se. She
used an habituationjdishabituation procedure where babies heard labels
either in the presenceof consistent objects with varying motions or consistent
motions with varying objects. Trends in the pattern of habituation and
dishabituation led Echois to speculatethat there is a developmentalshift from
8- 10 months to 13- 15 months in how babies are affected by labeling. The
younger babies appeared to focus on what was consistent when they heard a
label while the older ones focused on objects per se. The older babies were
only 13 to 15 months old , however.
Woodward ' s visual preferencestudy and Echols' habituation studies both
suggest that the whole-object assumption is in place by the time of the
'
naming explosion. By focussing children s attention on objects as the most
likely referent of a novel word , the whole-object assumption greatly reduces
the number of hypotheseschildren need to consider for the meaning of a
novel term. The whole-object assumption thus promotes the rapid learning of
object labels. While the whole-object assumption can account for the speed
with which children acquire names for objects, it poses an obstacle for
learning terms for parts, substances , colors, texture, and other properties of
objects. With only the whole-object assumption to guide their interpretation
of novel words, babies would be limited to learning only object labels. One of
the functions of the mutual exclusivity assumption discussednext is that it
can override the whole-object assumption, freeing children to learn a greater
variety of terms.
acquisition
5. The mutual exclaivity assumption
The mutual exclusivity assumption leads children to prefer only one label
for an object. This assumption is stronger than a related one of contrast
(Clark 1987, 1990, 1991), which is that any two words contrast in meaning.
' ' ' '
Although words such as car and vehicle contrast in meaning with one
being a superordinate of the other, they violate mutual exclusivity in that one
' ' ' '
object can be called both car and vehicle . In some cases, mutual exclusivity
comesinto conflict with the whole-object assumption. Supposea child hears a
' '
novel word , say finial in the presenceof a novel object, a pagoda. On the
' '
whole-object assumption, the child should (mistakenly) treat finial as referring
to the pagoda. Supposeinstead that another child who has learned that a
' ' ' '
pagoda is called pagoda also hears the novel word finial in the presenceof
the pagoda. Here the whole-object and mutual exclusivity assumptions are
brought into conflict. As before, the whole-object assumption would lead
' '
children to interpret finial as referring to the pagoda. In contrast, children
' ' ' '
who know a pagoda is called a pagoda are led to avoid treating finial as
' '
yet another word for the same object. By rejecting finial as a second label
children would then be motivated to find some other referent for the term.
Thus, mutual exclusivity can motivate children to find salient parts, substances ,
and properties of objects as referents for novel terms. As predicted by mutual
exclusivity, preschool children are in fact better able to .learn novel terms for
parts and substancesif taught on objects with known labels (Markman and
Wachtel 1988) . More generally children should be better able to learn a
variety of property terms when taught on objects with known labels. Mutual
-
exclusivity can then help override the whole object assumption allowing
children to interpret the novel word as something other than an object label.
Mutual exclusivity may also enable children to override the taxonomic
assumption to enable them to better learn proper names (Hall 1991) . While
the taxonomic assumption leads children to interpret new terms as referring
to objects of like kind , proper names refer to particular individuals , not
kinds. Hall ( 1991) predicted that children should be better able to learn
proper namesfor familiar objects with known labels than for objects without
known labels. To test this Hall ( 1991) relied on the logic first put forward by
Katz et ale( 1974) . Katz et ale taught children a new label for an object. They
then looked to see whether children restricted the new term to the labeled
object or whether they extendedit to a highly similar secondobject. Choosing
the original object above chance was taken as evidencechildren treated the
term as a proper name; indifference between the two objects was taken as
E.M . Markman / Early languageacquisition 219
evidence they treated the term as a common name. Katz et al. ( 1974)
manipulated two sourcesof information about whether something might be a
proper name or not. The first was grammatical form class, in particular ,
'
whether the novel term took an article or not , e.g., ' a dax' vs. ' Dax . The
second was the type of object that was labeled, in particular , animate-like
things which are appropriate referents of proper names, in this case dolls,
versus inanimate objects unlikely to be treated as unique individuals , in this
caseblocks. Their results for girls suggestedthat when both the grammatical
form class and the conceptual domain were appropriate, girls treated the
novel term as a proper name. That is, when a doll was called ' Dax ' , girls
interpreted Dax as a name for that doll and not the other one. When the doll
was called ' a dax' , girls treated the term as applying to both dolls. No matter
whether the block was called by common or proper name, girls treated the
new word as referring to both blocks. A partial replication of this stud)'
suggestedthat 18-month -old girls would also distinguish betweenproper and
common names for dolls. These results did not hold up for the boys,
however. Two -year-old boys were at chance for all object selections, even
when hearing a proper name for a doll .
Gelman and Taylor ( 1984) replicated the Katz et al. ( 1974) study with some
improvements and modifications. They addressedthe concern that evidence
for treating a term as a common noun was undifferentiated from chance
performance. By adding other distractors to the responseset, they avoided
this problem. Gelman and Taylor ( 1984) also used unfamiliar rather than the
familiar objects that Katz et al. had used. Testing somewhat older children
(2- 3-year-olds), Gelman and Taylor found that boys as well as girls treated
terms as common nouns except in the casewhere proper nameswere used to
refer to animate-like objects (stuffed animals) .
To return to Hall ( 1991), then, the question is whether, along with
grammatical form class and conceptual domain, mutual exclusivity is used to
help children learn proper names. By overcoming the tendency to treat a
novel label as a second term referring to things of like kind , mutual
exclusivity could promote the interpretation of a new term as a proper name.
Second labels for objects should be more likely than first labels to be
construed as proper names. To test this Hall ran a partial replication of
Gelman and Taylor ( 1984), running only the condition that resulted in proper
name interpretations in the prior work . That is, two - and three-year olds were
taught proper names for animate objects. They were taught in one of two
conditions: either the animate objects had known names or they did not.
Overall, Hall ( 1991) again replicated Gelman and Taylor ( 1984) and Katz et
acquisition
al. ( 1974) with children treating the novel term as referring to the individual
object labeled at above chance levels. Moreover, as predicted, children were
more likely to treat the novel term as a proper name when they already knew
another common name for the object. Combining the results of Hall ( 1991)
with those of Gelman and Taylor ( 1991), we can conclude that young
children recruit information from three sourcesto determine how to interpret
a novel term: When the conceptual domain is appropriate, when the syntactic
information is consistent with a proper name interpretation , and when
mutual exclusivity can help override the taxonomic assumption, young children
are most likely to treat the term as a proper name.
These studies with parts and substancesand proper and common names
lead to the general conclusion that some word -learning constraints can be
used to moderate or override others. Mutual exclusivity can override the
whole-object assumption leading children to learn terms for parts, substances,
and other attributes of objects. It can also override the taxonomic assumption
, thereby helping children interpret a proper name as a term for a unique
individual .
'
5.1. Mutual exclusivity as a guide to a word s referent
Another advantage of mutual exclusivity is that it can provide an indirect

means of inferring the meaning of a novel word. Suppose a child hears
' ' '
someoneuse a novel object label, for example Look at the gadget or Please
'
bring me the gadget . The child looks around and seesone or more objects
with known names - say, a ball , and a novel object, say, a garlic press. By
' ' '
mutual exclusivity the child should reason that gadget can t refer to the ball
' '
becauseit is a ball , so it must refer to the garlic press, the only novel object
around. In this case the child can fulfill both the whole-object and mutual
exclusivity assumptions and use them to infer the meaning of a novel word .
Adults and children alike use mutual exclusivity to figure out which object a
novel label refers to without anyone explicitly pointing to or otherwise
indicating the object (Au and Glusman 1990, Dockrell and Campbell 1986,
Golinkotr et al. 1992b, Hutchinson 1986, Markman and Wachtel 1988,
Merriman and Bowman 1989).
Golinkotr et al. ( 1992b) went a step further and documented not only that
mutual exclusivity provides children with an indirect means of inferring the
meaning of a novel term but that that term then functions as a familiar word
in the child ' s lexicon. They showed that after 21J2 -year-olds used mutual
exclusivity to infer the referent of a novel term, they treated the referent as an
E.M . Markman I Early languageacquisition
object with a known label which in turn prevented the children from
accepting another novel label for that object.
Two -year-olds' successat using mutual exclusivity to infer the referent of a
novel term belies the inferential requirements of this task. The logic of this
'
problem is of the form of a disjunctive syllogism: The novel word must refer
to either object A or to object B. It is not A (by mutual exclusivity),
therefore, it must be B' . Hutchinson ( 1986) has found , in fact, that this logic
of the problem may pose a problem for developmentally delayed children
even when they are matched in mental age to normal children. In her task,
normal and developmentally delayed children were given pairs of objects
where one object had a known name and the other did not. The normal
children were 2, 2Y2 and 3 years of age and, as expected, at all age groups
they chose the unfamiliar object at above chance levels as the referent of
a novel label. The performance for the developmentally delayed children
showed a marked developmental difference with children matched in mental
age to the 2Y2- and 3-year-olds selecting the novel object at above change
levels, but with children matched in mental age to the 20- 24- month-olds
failing to do so. Thesechildren did not select the novel object as the referent
of the novel word even though normally developing children of 20- 24 months
did. It was not until retarded children reacheda mental age of 28 months that
they seemed capable of using mutual exclusivity to infer the appropriate
referent of a novel term. One possible reason for this delay is that the logic of
the problem is particularly slow to develop in the delayed children.
5.2. Mutual exclusivity at the time of the naming explosion
There are two concerns that have been raised about whether children
around the age of the naming explosion can use mutual exclusivity to infer
the meaning of a novel term. The first is that this use of mutual exclusivity
has been documented only in children from two years of age and up .
Studies with younger children are needed. Second, an alternative explanation
for these results has been proposed by Merriman and Bowman
( 1989 .
) They argued that children might map a novel word to a novel
object in these studies becausethey are predisposed to fill lexical gaps - to
find first labels for objects. Thus , when children encounter an object for
which they do not know a label , they should seek out its name. Children
might be mapping the novel label to the novel object becausethey desire a
name for the novel object, not because they reject a second label for the
familiar object .
E.M. Markman/ Early language
acquisition
Wasow and I have addressed both of these concerns in a recent set of

studies(Markman and Wasow, in preparation) . We asked whether children at
around the age of the naming explosion can use mutual exclusivity unaided
by a bias to fill lexical gaps to infer an appropriate referent of a term. The
lexical gap hypothesis states that in the presenceof a novel object, children
will seekits name. With no novel object visible, no lexical gap can be created.
We ruled out the possibility of children using a lexical gap strategy by not
having a novel object visible at the time of labeling. At the time they heard
the novel label children saw only a familiar object and a bucket which served
as a possible location for objects. The prediction from mutual exclusivity is
that upon hearing a novel label children should reject it as a secondlabel for
the visible familiar object and search for an appropriate referent. This search
could consist of looking around the room , or on the floor , etc. or by wanting
to seewhat is in the bucket. We found that babies as young as 15 months of
age can use mutual exclusivity to reject a second label for an object and to
motivate them to search for another potential referent. In this case, not only
do the babies need to use the disjunctive logic to reject the label as a label for
object A , they infer it applies to some unknown object B that is not visible at
the time. It is remarkable that this very demanding test of the use of mutual
exclusivity is passedby such young babies.
Another less demanding test of the use of mutual exclusivity in young
children is to seewhether mutual exclusivity simply causeschildren to reject
second labels for objects, without requiring the children to make any inferences
beyond that. The prediction is simply that second labels for objects
should be more difficult to learn than first labels. Although there are a
number of studies that document young children are capable of learning
second labels for objects (Banigan and Mervis 1988, Mervis et al. 1991,
Taylor and Gelman 1989, Tomasello et al. 1988, Waxman and Senghas1990)
all except Mervis et al. ( 1991) were conducted for other purposesand none of
thesecompared the learning to first labels. The prediction is not that second
labels should be impossible for young children to learn, but rather that they
should be harder becausechildren prefer not to have secondlabels for things.
Liittschwager and I tested this hypothesis with 18- and 24-month -olds
(Liitschwager and Markman 1991) . Children were briefly taught either a first
label for a novel object or a second label for an object with a known first
label. The results for the 18-month -olds were as expected- they success fully
learned a new first label for an object but failed to learn a secondlabel. The
results for the 24-month -olds were more complicated and reveal another
subtlety to the way constraints on word learning work . Not only did the 24-
E.M . Markman I Early languageacquisition
month-olds success fully learn a new first label after brief training , but they
learned a second label just as well. These young children clearly violated
mutual exclusivity to acquire this second label. We then ran a second study
with 24-month-olds to see what would happen if the task were made
somewhat more demanding. Now children were required to learn two new
labels rather than just one - either two new first labels or two new second
labels. In contrast to the earlier results, the two -year-olds now showed
evidenceof using mutual exclusivity. They succeededat learning two new first
labels but failed to learn the second labels for objects. This suggestsanother
way in which word -learning constraints function as default assumptions:
children may rely on the default assumptionsmore heavily when the demands
of the task increase.
6. Conclusions
Word -learning constraints were presente~ as necessaryto help children

cope with the inductive problem involved in learning a novel word . An
unconstrained, unbiased learning mechanismwould be forced to consider too
many hypothesesand would be unable to converge on a candidate meaning
in a reasonable amount of time. Some constraints on hypothesess are
required to explain the fast learning actually seenat around 18 months to two
years of age. I reviewed evidence for three specific constraints - the whole-
object, taxonomic, and mutual exclusivity assumptions. Recent work reveals
that all three assumptionsare available to babies by the time of the naming
explosion. Even for young children, however, other sources of information
about a word ' s meaning may be available. When several sourcesof information
, such as grammatical form class, eye gaze of the speaker, and all three
word-learning constraints converge, word learning should be especially efficient
. Yet there remain many interesting issues to be resolved about the
complex and subtle interplay of word -learning constraints with each other
and with other sourcesof information about a word ' s meaning.
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learning. Developmental
Lingua92 ( 1994 229
Thedevelopment of an appreciation of
specificlinkagesbetween linguisticand
conceptual *
organization
Sandra R. Waxman
Department . Northwestern
of Psychology . 2029Sheridan
University Road. Evanston
. 1L 60208
, USA
Evidencefrom infants and toddlers, and from preschoolchildren learningeither English,

French, or Spanishas their first languageare summarizedto revealthe emergence of specific
linkagesbetweenlinguisticand conceptualdevelopment . The data suggestthat infantsbeginthe
processof word learningwith a generalexpectationthat words (independentof the linguistic
form) referto objectsand objectcategories
. This initial, rudimentarylinkagegivesway to more
specificpairingsbetweenparticular linguisticforms (e.g., nounsvs. adjectives ) and particular
typesof meaning(e.g., objectcategoriesvs. propertiesof objects ). Thesemorespecificlinkages
maydependupon languageexperience .
.
'WhenI makea word do a lot of work like that I '
, alwayspay it extra
(LewisCarroll 1895 )
I . Introduction
Humans are uniquely endowed with the capacity to build complex , flexible ,
' '
and creative linguistic and conceptual systems. Infants and toddlers remarkable
achievements in each of these arenas have engaged researchers for
decades. Yet in recent years , it is the relation between linguistic and conceptual
development that has come to occupy center stage. Some of the most
exciting current work has been designed to explore the relation between early
'
linguistic and conceptual development in the young child s acquisition of the
lexicon .
This new , integrative approach has brought into sharp focus a fascinating
puzzle . We know that infants acquire their native language naturally at a
. This work wassupportedin part by grant # HD30410from NIH . Thanksto Marie Balaban
,
D. GeoffreyHall, ElizabethShipley, and an anonymousreviewerfor their commentson a
previousversion.
- 3841/94/ $07.00 ~ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

0024
SSDI0024- 3841( 93) EO041- S
230 S.R. Woxman andconceptual
I Linguistic organization
remarkable pace (Carey 1978, Dromi 1987, Gopnik and Meltzoff 1987,
Nelson 1983) . We also know that even before learning the words to express
them, infants appreciate many different kinds of conceptual relations among
objects, including category relations, thematic relations, causal relations, and
event-related or associative groupings (Bornstein 1984, Leslie and Keeble
1987, Mandler et al. 1987, Younger and Cohen 1986) . These early linguistic
and conceptual achievementsset the stagefor what has beendescribedas ' the
inductive problem of word learning' (Goodman 1983, Quine 1960, Carey
1990). The problem is that , in principle, the richnessand flexibility of infants'
conceptual abilities should complicate the task of mapping new words to their
meanings.
To understand why this is the case, consider a typical word learning
scenario, in which an adult introduces a child to a novel object (say, a
' '
flamingo) and offers a novel label ( a flamingo ) . Let us assumethat both the
child and adult are focusing attention on the same object or scene( Baldwin
and Markman 1989, Tomasello 1988) . If children have the conceptual ability
to appreciateso many different kinds of relations involving that object, and if
'
each of these is a potential candidate for the new word s meaning, then
how do infants select from among these many possible meanings when
determining what the new word is intended to convey? How do infants so
rapidly learn that a given word (e.g., flamingo) may apply to a particular
whole object and may be extended to other members of that object category
(e.g., other flamingos)~but not to salient properties of the object (e.g., its long
neck or unusual color), to salient actions in which it is engaged(e.g., feeding
its young), or to salient thematic relations (e.g., a flamingo and sand) ? If
children had to rule out theseand countlessother logically possiblecandidate
meanings, word learning would be a formidable task indeed.
1.1. Solvingthe inductiveproblem
Yet despite the logical difficulty of the task, young children rapidly and
successfully map novel words and meanings. This observation has led several
researchers , working from several different paradigms, to suggestthat children
come to the task of word learning equipped with certain implicit blases
or expectationswhich lead them to favor some types of conceptual relations
over others when ascribing meaning to a new word (Chomsky 1986, Landau
and Gleitman 1985, Pinker 1984, Markman 1989, Waxman 1990, 1991) . The
claim is that these expectations reduce the logical difficulty of word learning
S.R. Waxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization
by narrowing the range of candidate meanings a child will consider for any
given new word.
Several such implicit blaseshave been proposed. For example, researchin
several different laboratories has converged on the finding that children
expect that the first word applied to a novel object will refer to the whole
object and other members of its basic-level kind , rather than to its parts or
other salient aspects(Markman and Wachtel 1988, Taylor and Gelman 1988,
Hall et al. 1993, Markman 1989) . Further evidencerevealsthat children, like
adults, expect that different words will contrast in meaning (Clark 1987,
Golinkoff et al. 1992, Markman 1984, 1989; Merriman and Bowman 1989,
Waxman and Senghas1992).
A third type of bias or predisposition will serve as the focal point of this
article. There is now considerableevidencethat children use the grammatical
form of a novel word (e.g., count noun, proper noun, adjective) as a guide to
determining its meaning (Brown 1957, Katz et al. 1974, Landau and Gleit -
man 1985, Naigles 1990, Gleitman et al. 1987, Hall and Waxman 1993) . For
example, by two to three years of age, English-speaking children expect
objects and object categories(e.g., flamingos, birds, animals) to be marked by
count nouns (Markman and Hutchinson 1984, Waxman and Gelman 1986,
Waxman and Kosowski 1990, Waxman and Hall 1993) ; they expect substances
(e.g., wood ; gel) to be marked by mass nouns (Dickinson 1988, Sola
et al. 1991); and they expect object properties (e.g., size, color ) to be marked
by modifiers (Gelman and Markman 1985, Hall et al. 1993, Taylor and
Gelman 1988, Waxman 1990) .
Notice that any linkage between grammatical form class and meaning
requires that the word learner has (a) the linguistic capacity to distinguish
among the relevant syntactic categories (e.g., count noun vs. mass noun vs.
adjective) in her language, and (b) the conceptual or perceptual ability to
appreciate the various kinds of relations among objects.
In sum, recent work has establishedthat young children appreciatelinkages
between particular types of words (e.g., count nouns vs.. adjectives) and
particular types of conceptual relations. These linkages help to explain how
children so rapidly map novel words appropriately to their meanings. For ,
although children appreciatemyriad kinds of conceptual relations, only some
of these relations become lexicalized. Children do not sample randomly
among thesemany possible relations when determining the meaning of a new
word. Instead, particular kinds of conceptual relations are favored in the
context of learning particular kinds of words.
232 S.R. WaxmanI Linguisticandconceptual
organization
1.2. Overview of the article
In this article, I take as a starting point the general hypothesis that (a)
young children are sensitiveto preciserelations linking linguistic with conceptual
development, and that (b) these linkages promote rapid lexical acquisition
and foster the establishmentof powerful systemsof conceptual organization
. I begin by reviewing the evidence in support of this position with
preschool-aged children, focusing primarily on the role of linguistic information
'
(e.g., count nouns vs. adjectives) in the young child s ability to form
categories of object kinds at various hierarchical levels (e.g. flamingo, bird ,
animal) . Seefigure I .
Next , I turn to theoretical questions concerning the origin or developmental
status of these linkages between word learning and conceptual
organization, asking how and when they emerge in the developing child ,
This discussion highlights some limitations in the existing literature and
underscores the importance of two distinct , but complementary research
approaches.
First , becauseso much of the existing literature is devoted to primarily
preschool children who have already made significant linguistic advances,
we are left with a very limited understanding of how the child acquires these
important linkages early in development. Therefore, the goal of the first
approach is to chart the emergenceof these links in preverbal infants and in
toddlers by examining the influence of language on their categorization
abilities.
Second, becausethe existing researchhas been basedalmost exclusively on
English-speaking subjects, it is unclear whether these linkages are universal
features of human development or specific to English. Therefore, the goal of
the secondapproach is to seekevidencefor theselinkages in children learning
languagesother than English.
Although these developmental and cross-linguistic research programs are
still very much in progress, our initial results converge to suggest that the
linkage between count nouns and object categories is evident even at the
onset of language acquisition and may be a universal phenomenon. In
contrast, the data suggesta very different developent course for the linkage
between adjectives and properties of objects. This linkage appears to emerge
later in development and to vary across languages.
S.R. WaxmanI Linguisticandconceptual
organization 233
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234 S.R. Waxman / Linguisticand conceptualorganization
2. Describing the phenomenon: The influence of linguistic form class infor -

mation on object categorization in preschool children
An essential task in early development is to form categories that capture

the commonalities among objects and to learn words that describe these
categories. A considerableamount of scholarly attention has been devoted to
examining the establishment of categories within hierarchical systems of
organization. Hierarchical systems are exceptional for their efficiency in
organizing existing information and for their power in generating new
information ; it therefore stands to reason that developmentalistswould seek
to understand when such systemsare available to the young child.
Empirical work with both adults and children has singled out one particular
hierarchical level - referred to as the basic level - as being most salient
psychologicalliy (Rosch et ale 1976) . The basic level, which occupies a midlevel
position within a hierarchy, has been shown to have a privileged status
on a range of psychological tasks. (See Rosch et ale 1976 for details.)
Although it has been difficult to account formally for this privileged psychological
status, the construct of a basic level has proven useful as a summary
description or heuristic in research with adults and children alike (cf.,
Gleitman et ale 1987) . Although Mandler and her colleagues have argued
against this position in favor of the view that infants initially conceptualize
object~ at a level more abstract than the basic level (Mandler 1988, Mandler
and Bauer 1988, Mandler et ale 1991), the weight of the evidence overwhelming
favors the developmental primacy of the basic level.
For example, one of the most robust findings in the developmental
literature is that preschool children succeedin classifying and labeling objects
at the basic level long before they do so at other hierarchical levels (Anglin
1977, Brown 1958, Mervis 1987, Mervis and Crisafi 1982, Rosch et al. 1976) .
However, because the inductive and organizational power of hierarchical
systemsderives from relations among categoriesat various levels of abstraction
'
, developmentalistshave also been concerned with children s acquisition
of categories beyond the basic level. Although preschool children have
considerabledifficulty forming superordinate and subordinate level categories
under most circumstances, their performance improves dramatically when
they are introduced to novel words in the context of categorization tasks.
Indeed, it is at the non-basic levels that the interplay between word learning
and conceptual organization has become especially evident. To observe this
'
interplay, we have compared children s ability to form object categories at
various hierarchical levels with , and without , novel labels.
S. R. Waxman/ Linguistic and conceptualorganization 235
In an early study, we examined the impact of introducing novel nouns in a

superordinate level categorization task ( Waxman and Gelman 1986) . The
' '
experimenter introduced preschool children to three very picky puppets and
then displayed three typical members (e.g., a dog, a horse, a cat) of a
superordinatecategory (e.g., animal) to indicate the type of thing each puppet
would like. She then asked children to sort additional items for each puppet.
Children in the Instance condition , who sorted the additional pictures
(various membersof the classesanimals, clothing , and food ) with no further
instructions, perfonned only slightly better than would be expected by
chance. This is consistent with traditional reports that children have difficulty
establishing superordinate relations (Inhelder and Piaget 1964, Rosch et ale
1976). In contrast, children in the Novel Label condition , who encountered
the sametypical instances, but were also introduced to a novel Japaneselabel
for each superordinate class (e.g., ' These are the dobutsus, these are the
gohans) formed superordinate classesvery success fully . Simply introducing
them to novel labels led these children to classify as success fully as other
children who had been given familiar English superordinate labels for the
classes (e.g., ' These are animals, these are clothes' ) . Clearly, novel count
nouns effectively oriented preschool children toward object categories and
licensedthe induction of superordinate level categories. Data from Markman
and Hutchinson. ( 1984) have revealed that count nouns also highlight basic
level object categoriesfor 3- and 4- year-old children.
This result has linked one particular linguistic fonn class - count nouns -
to object categories at the basic and superordinate levels. This intriguing
finding raised two important questions, both of which concern the specificity
of the linkage: First , do novel count nouns draw attention to object categories
at all hierarchical levels, or is this effect specific to the basic and
superordinate levels? Second, are object categorieshighlighted in the context
of word learning in general, or is this focus specific to learning novel nouns?
To address these questions, I systematically compared the effect of introducing
either novel nouns or novel adjectivesin a multiple -level classification
task (Waxman 1990) . Each child in this study classified pictures of objects
from three contrastive classesat three different hierarchical levels (subordinate
, basic and superordinate) within the two different natural object hierarchies
(animals and food ) depicted in figure 1. As in Waxman and Gelman
' '
( 1986), the experimenter introduced three very picky puppets and revealed
three typical membersof each class to indicate the type of thing each puppet
would like. Children in the No Word condition sorted with no further clues.
Children in the Novel Noun condition were introduced to a novel noun in
S.R. Waxman / Linguistic and conceptualorganization
conjunction with the photographs from each class (e.g., These are the akas;
these are the dobus) . Children in the Novel Adjective condition also heard
novel words, but the words were presented within an adjectival syntactic
context (e.g., ' These are the ok-ish ones, theseare the ones that are doh-ish' ) .
The children in this experiment were very sensitiveto the linguistic context
in which the novel words were introduced. Novel nouns facilitated object
1
categorization at the superordinate, but not the subordinate level. In the
Novel Adjective condition , this pattern was completely reversed. Unlike
nouns, novel adjectives supported the formation of subordinate level object
categories, but exerted no demonstrableeffect at either the basic or superordinate
levels. Thus, each of these different linguistic forms facilitated object
categorization at particular hierarchical levels.
An interestingparallel to this phenomenonin children has beendocumented
acrossa wide variety of adult languages , both spokenand signed. According to
ethnobiological data, count nouns typically mark objectsand object categoriesat
the basicand superordinatelevelswhile adjectivestend to mark subordinatelevel
distinctions (Berlin et aI. 1973, Newport and Bellugi 1978). Although these
correlationsbetweenlinguistic form and object categoriesat particular hierarchi-
cal levelsare not perfect, they do suggestthat a relation betweennaming and
object categorizationmay exist throughout the lifespan. (SeeWaxman, 1991, for
a more thorough discussionof this literature and its relevanceto acquisition.)
The developmental finding that novel nouns and adjectiveseach produced
systematic, but distinct , patterns of results at distinct hierarchical levels
revealsthat three-year-olds are not only sensitive to the distinctions between
these two linguistic forms, but also consider linguistic form as relevant to
establishing meaning. This important finding constitutes strong support for
the hypothesis that by three years of age, children appreciate powerful and
preciselinkages betweenword learning and conceptual organization.
Notice , however, that the data from preschool-aged children cannot
address crucial questions concerning the development of these linkages in
infants and toddlers. (See Nelson, 1988, for an extended discussion of this
point .) Neither does the existing evidence address questions concerning the
universality of such linkages across languages. These questions become
1 In fact,
although novel nouns facilitated classification at the superordinate level, they made
classification at the subordinate level more difficult . Children in the Novel Noun condition
classified less successfully at the subordinate level than did their agemates in the No Word
condition . This very interesting result has spumed a whole independent line of research (see
'
Waxman et al. 1991) which suggeststhat children s interpretations of novel words are mediated
by their existing lexical and conceptual infonnation .
S.R. Waxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization 237
especiallyengagingwhen they are consideredin light of the nonnative pattern

of early lexical acquisition. (See Nelson, 1988, for a review of this pattern;
also seeGopnik and Choi , 1990, for a suggestionthat this pattern may not
obtain in the acquisition of Korean.) The milestones of early lexical acquisition
have beenwell-documented. Infants typically produce their first words at
approximately 12 months of age and continue to add new words to their
productive vocabularies at a gradual pace. However, at approximately 17- 20
months, both the pace and character of lexical acquisition changesdramatically
. Infants exhibit a sudden burst in vocabulary development (Benedict
1979, Carey and Bartlett 1978, Goldfield and Reznick 1990) . Becausemost of
the words acquired at this period and at this pace are basic level count nouns
(Dromi 1987, McShane 1980, Gentner 1982), this period has been dubbed the
naming explosion. The naming explosion draws to a close as infants begin to
produce combinatorial speech, typically around their secondbirthdays.
Clearly, any thorough account of the early development of an appreciation
of linkages between word learning and conceptual organization must be
compatible with thesemilestonesin lexical development. Bearing this in mind ,
three broad alternative accountsconcerning the developmentof this appreciation
warrant consideration.
of Unkages
3. Three alternative accounts of the development of aD appreciation
between Hnauisti (: form and conceptual organization
The first alternative account posits that these linkages are learned entirely
on the basis of infants ' experience with human language. On this account,
infants embark upon the process of lexical development with no a priori
expectations concerning linkages between word meaning and conceptual
organization . Instead, they learn their first words in an unconstrained
fashion, slowly establishing the mappings betweenwords and their meanings.
Later, once they have made a sufficient number of word -to -meaning map-
pings, infants may come to notice a correlation between particular linguistic
forms (e.g., nouns, adjectives) and particular types of meaning (e.g., object
categories, object properties) . They may then exploit this correlation in future
word learning (seeNelson, 1988, for a fuller discussionof this account) .
This first account is plausible becauseprior to the naming explosion, lexical
acquisition is indeed comparatively slow; later, perhaps once infants come to
notice the linkages betweenform class and meaning, their rate of acquisition
increasesexponentially. It is possible that it is only at the onset of the naming
explosion that infants have accumulated enough word -to -meaning mappings
238 S. R. Waxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization
to make the appropriate induction regarding the relation between linguistic

form and meaning. If this account is correct, then infants who have yet to
commencethe naming explosion should evidenceno labeling effects. Instead,
novel words should influence object categorization for infants only after the
onset of the naming explosion.
The secondaccount posits that the specific linkages that we have observed
in preschool children are available even at the very onset of lexical acquisition
. This alternative requires that preverbal infants expect (a) that there are
distinct linguistic forms and (b) that these distinctions are relevant to establishing
meaning (c.f ., Pinker 1984, Grimshaw 1981) . If this account is correct,
then novel words should influence preverbal infants in just the same way as
they influence older infants and preschool children. That is, even infants who
have yet to commence the naming explosion should expect that object
categorieswill be marked by count nouns and that object properties will be
marked by modifiers.
The third alternative account strikes a balancebetweenthose outlined above.
On this account, infants begin the processof lexical acquisition equippedwith a
generalrudimentary expectation that will becomefurther refined overdevelopment
and with experiencewith the particular language to which they are
exposed. On this account, infants will interpret words (independent of their
linguistic form ) as referring to objects and object categories. This alternative is
plausible becauseprior to about two yearsof age, infants do not yet distinguish
among linguistic form classesin their languageproduction or comprehension
(Bloom 1990, Gordon 1985, McPherson 1991, Prasada 1993, Valian 1986).
Later, at around 2 years of age, when infants do begin to distinguish among
the linguistic forms, so do they discover the finer correlations made in their
native languagebetweenparticular linguistic forms and meaning.
There are actually two variants of this account. One possibility is that
infants begin with an abstract expectation that particular linguistic forms will
mark particular kinds of conceptual relations; however, becausethey have
not yet learned how these linguistic distinctions are marked in their own
language, they (mistakenly) interpret adjectives as they do nouns. Another
possibility is that infants begin with an expectation that words in general will
mark object kinds ; they only later learn that this linkage is true for count
nouns, but not for other grammatical categories(e.g., adjectives) .
These two variants are quite difficult to disentangle empirically . For in
either case, the patterns of performance should be the same: prior to the
onset of the naming explosion, infants should interpret all novel words,
independent of their linguistic form , as referring to objects and object
S.R. Waxman/ Linguisticandconceptual
organization 239
categories. This pattern would suggestthat infants embark upon the process
of lexical acquisition with a rudimentary linkage between words and object
categories that will become increasingly specific as a function of their
experiencewith the particular syntactic distinctions drawn in their language.
To adjudicate among these broad alternative accounts, I have initiated a
detailed examination of the influence of words of various linguistic forms on
infants' and toddler ' s object categorization. I have also begun to examine
young children learning languagesother than English.
To foreshadow, the results of thesetwo complementary setsof experiments
converge to provide initial support for the third alternative account. Infants
at 12 months begin the processof lexical acquisition with a general expectation
that words (independent of their linguistic form class) will refer to
objects and object categories. This initial , rudimentary linkage becomes
increasingly specific in the second year of life , perhaps as a function of their
own languageexperience.
toddlersand in preverbal infuts
The overarching goal of this seriesof studies is to elucidate the manner in

which the linkages between word learning and conceptual organization
unfold in infants and toddlers. The studies are designed to go beyond the
well-established finding that infants and toddlers form object categories.
Instead, each study is designedto ascertain whether and how the introduction
of novel words from different linguistic form classesinfluences their object
categorization.
Before describing the studies themselves, one important issue bears mention
. It is clear that the distinctive intonational contours characteristic of
' motherese are
' especially effective in arousing and sustaining infants' attention
(Fernald 1992) . Several previous studies have explored the influence of
labels on infants' attention to objects by comparing performance in a label
condition with performance in a silent condition (e.g., Baldwin and Markman
1989). However, in such designs, it is unclear whether the effect observedin a
label condition is due to labels, per se, or to infant -directed human language,
in general. Therefore, we use the mothereseregister to capture the attention
of infants in all conditions. Even subjects in a No Word condition are
introduced to the objects (or pictures of objects) with infant-directed speech.
Then, against this ' baseline', we examine the effect of introducing words from
various linguistic form classes. In this way, we are able to determine whether
240 S.R. Waxman / Linguistic and conceptualorganization
of labels, per se, or to the
4.1. Evidencefrom toddlers: Forced choiceprocedures
Two -year-old children are at an important developmental crossroad. They

have just completed the naming explosion and have entered a phaseof rapid
syntactic and semantic development. To examine the influence of linguistic
form class on object categorization during this very active period of development
'
, we compared 2-, 3- and 4- year-olds performance in a match-to-sample
task. Children read through a picture book with an experimenter. On each
page, there were 5 pictures: a target (e.g., a cow), two taxonomic alternatives
(objects from the same superordinate class as ~he target, e.g., a fox and a
zebra), and two thematic alternatives (objects that were thematically related
to the target, e.g., a barn and milk ) ( Waxmanand Kosowski 1990) .
Children participated in one of three conditions. In the No Word condition ,
the experimenter pointed to the target and said, ' See this? Can you find
'
another one?' In the Novel Noun condition , she said, for example, See this
'
fopin ? Can you find anotherfopin ? In the Novel Adjective condition , she said,
'
for example, ' Seethis fopish one? Can you find another one that is fopish ?
The child and experimenter read through the book two times. On the second
reading, the experimenter reminded the children of their first choices and
asked them to selectanother from the remaining (3) alternatives. In this way,
we were able to examine the conditions under which children make consistently
taxonomic choices.
We reasonedthat if children are sensitive to a specific link between nouns
and superordinate relations, then children in the Novel Noun condition should
be more likely than children in the Novel Adjective and No Word conditions
to selectthe superordinate category memberson a page, and not the thematic
alternatives. The results with the 3- and 4- year-olds supported this prediction
entirely. Only in the Novel Noun condition did children consistently select
taxonomic alternatives. In both the Novel Adjective and No Word conditions,
children performed at chance. Thus, superordinate relations gained priority
only in the context of novel nouns, not in the context of word learning in
general. Moreover, the effect of the novel noun was powerful enough to guide
both a first and secondset of choices, even in the presenceof a clear thematic
alternative.
Two -year-olds' performance was very similar to that of the older preschoolers
. Two- year-olds in the Novel Noun condition were more likely than
S. R. Waxman / Linguistic and conceptualorganization
those in the Novel Adjective and No Word conditions to select superordinate

category members. However, when comparing performance in each condition
to chance, one slight developmental difference emerged: 2-year-olds in the
Novel Noun condition selectedtaxonomic alternatives more often than would
be expected by chance; those in the No Word condition selectedtaxonomic
alternatives less often than would be expectedby chance; those in the Novel
Adjectivecondition were intermediate. As predicted, 2-year-olds in this condition
selectedtaxonomic alternatives less often than did children in the Novel
Noun condition ; however their mean rate of taxonomic selectionswas greater
than would be predicted by chance.
This difference in the 2-year-olds' interpretation of novel adjectives, though
it is a slim one, provides an important clue into the development of an
appreciation of linkages between word learning and conceptual relations.
Although the linkage between nouns and object categories is clearly evident
by two years of age, toddlers at this age also revealed some inclination to
interpret adjectivesin a similar fashion. This suggeststhat 2-year-old children
may overextend the linkage between count nouns and object categories to
include new words from other linguistic form classes. This possibility is
consistent with the hypothesis that infants embark upon the task of word
learning with an assumption that words (not specifically nouns) highlight
object categories. If this is the case, then the tendency to interpret adjectives,
like nouRs, as referring to object categoriesshould be even more pronounced
in younger subjects.
4.2. Evidencefrom infants: Novelty-preferenceprocedures
With this question in mind , we designeda procedure to examine the impact

of novel words on object categorization in 12- and 13-month -old infants
(Markow and Waxman 1992, 1993) . Infants at this age are acutely interested
in human language, but produce very little , if any, of their own. To
accommodate the very active nature of the infants, we developed an object
manipulation task, analogous to standard novelty-preferenceprocedures (see
also Ruff 1986, Ross 1980, Oakes et al. 1991) .
In thefamiliarization phase, the experimenteroffered the child four toys from
a given category (e.g., four different animals) one at a time, in random order,
for 30 secseach. This was immediately followed by the test phasein which the
experimenterpresentedboth (a) a new member of the familiar category (e.g.,
another animal) and (b) an object from a novel contrasting category (e.g., a
fruit ). In both phases, infants manipulated the objects freely. Each infant
242 S. R. Woxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization
completed this procedure four times, with four different sets of objects: 2
basic level sets(cows vs. horses; cars vs. planes) and 2 superordinate level sets
(animals vs. vehicles; tools vs. animals) .
Infants were assignedto one of three conditions, which differed only in the
'
experimenters comments during the Familiarization phase. See figure 2. In
the Novel Noun condition , the experimenter labeled objects during the fami -
'
liarization phase (e.g., ' See the auto ) . In the Novel Adjective condition , she
' '
introduced the novel word in an adjectival context (e.g., Seethe aut-ish one ) .
In the No Word condition , she drew attention to each object but offered no
'
label (e.g., ' See this ) . The test phase was identical for infants in all three
conditions. The experimenter introduced the test pair (e.g., cow vs. horse),
' '
saying, Seewhat I have . No object labels were introduced in the test phase.
Becauseinfants at this age do not yet distinguish among linguistic form
classes such as noun and adjective in their own language production or
comprehension(Bloom 1990, Gordon 1985, McPherson 1991, Prasada 1993,
Valian 1986), it is unlikely that they would consider linguistic form as
relevant to establishing meaning. We therefore hypothesized that for infants
at this developmental moment, object categories would be highlighted in
word learning in general, not by nouns in particular . We predicted that
infants in both the Novel Noun and Novel Adjective conditions would
categorize more readily than would infants in the No Word condition . More
specifically, we predicted that infants hearing novel words (be they nouns or
adjectives) would show ( 1) a greater decreasein attention to the objects over
the familiarization phase, and (2) a stronger preferencefor the novel object in
the test phase than should infants in the No Word condition .
The results of the experiment were consistent with these predictions.
Consider first the data from the familiarization phase, depicted in figure 3.
We calculated individual contrast scores to test the prediction that infants
would show a linear decreasein attention across the four familiarization
trials. At the basic level (figure 3a), infants in all three conditions showed this
linear trend. This is consistent with arguments concerning the primacy of the
basic level. However, on the superordinate level trials (figure 3b), only infants
hearing novel words (in the Novel Noun and Novel Adjective conditions)
showed a decreasein attention.
During the test trials , the effects of novel nouns and adjectives were also
quite comparable. Figure 4 displays the proportion of attention the infants
devoted to the novel test object. At the basic level, infants in both the Novel
Noun and Novel Adjective conditions showed a reliable novelty preference;
those in the No Word condition showed no such preference. At the super-
FamlUarizatioa Phase
Pm
Dili8iz8ticm Tri8l1 P8DIi1i1ri8ti- Trial7.
(ADiI D8lVI. Fruit) (ADimalVI. Fruit)
"S:1118
NOUN
:I1VB ,
-
ee?"..mkh"S:V
:
NOUN 1118
,
-
ee,".u-ni8h
ADJFL
"
NO -
S 1118
:"S-ee
WORD r
ee -
'" NOrAD
JB
Cn
WORD-
S
B '" ,-
:"S-eer
1118
ee
Pamililriz8timl
Trial3 F8I Dili8rizali
- Trial4
(AnimllVI. Fruit) (ADim8 I VI. Pruit)
Test Phase
"Seewb8tI haver
T. Trial
-WO
NOU
:NO
S
ADJS r"-i7
:dI8
'_
-dI8
7 ee
-8h
ee
(ADim8
I VI. Pnit)
-SeewM I baver
Fig. 2.
S.R. Waxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization
- BASICLEVEL
FAMlLI ARI ZATl O~ PHASE FA~ ILIARIZATIO:\: PHASE- SUPERORDINATE
LEVEL
30
oo
'U
1 :!:::.25
1
~
(
II
~
~
~
-~
;IIz:20
- Q - NOUN
~
< -
-
0
0
-
-
NOUN
ADJ~
- 0 - - ADJK
" nVE . NOWORD
NOWORD
IS@
- . -
1 4 4
FAMILIARIZATIO~ TRIAL ~ TRIAL
FAMILIARIZATIO
Fig. 3.
ordinate level, only infants in the Novel Noun condition showed this
preference.
These are very striking results, for they reveal a nascent appreciation of a
linkage between words and object catagories in infants who have yet to
commencethe naming explosion. This finding weakensconsiderably the first
alternative account - that prior to the naming explosion, infants fail to
appreciate any linkages betweenword learning and conceptual organization.
'
Clearly, novel words do focus infants attention on object categories. These
results also weaken the second alternative account - that infants embark
upon the processof word learning with a fully developedappreciation of the
specificlinkages betweentypes of words (e.g., nouns and adjectives) and types
of meaning. Instead, these data support the third view - that 12- and 13-
month -old infants begin the processof word learning with a general expectation
that words, be they nouns or adjectives, will refer to object categories.
How do the piecesof evidencefrom the infants fit together with the data
from the 2-year-olds? Together, the data suggestthat from the earliest stages
'
of lexical acquisition, count nouns focus infants attention on object categories
. Indeed, we have also obtained converging evidenceon this point with
16- and 2O-month -old subjects, using an entirely different method (Waxman
S. R. Waxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization 245
Tf:ST TRIALS
0 70 .
.
0 65 .
. .
. ~
. .
~
ADJB: ' nvE
0 60 .
0
NOWORD
0 . 5
* *
<
O .
OOS
p
O OS.
p <
0 . 5
BASIC SUPERORDINATE
LEVEL
Fig.4.
and Hall 1993). However, initially , this focus is not specific to count nouns.
At 12 and 13 months, both nouns and adjectives focus infants' attention on
'
object categories. The infants ability to distinguish between linguistic form
classesand to use these distinctions as a guide to establishing word meaning
must undergo important developmental change during the second year. By
the time they are approximately two years of age, infants begin to teaseapart
the syntactic form classes; by two and a half years, we begin to get evidence
that they treat nouns and adjectivesdifferently with respect to object categorization
(Waxman and Kosowski 1990, Taylor and Gelman 1988) .
Put differently , the data suggestthat .the affinity betweencount nouns and
object categoriesis evident even in preverbal infants, but the specificity of this
246 S. R. Waxman / Linguistic and conceptualorganization
affinity increasesover development. This pattern fits nicely with some anecdotal
evidence concerning early word learning. One interesting observation
has been made by severalresearchers: Prior to the naming explosion, infants
seemto interpret most words, independent of syntactic form , as referring to
objects and categoriesof objects. This is illustrated by the oft -cited anecdote
'
regarding infants initial interpretation of adjectives like hot. In the earliest
' ' ' '
stagesof lexical acquisition, when children hear, Don t touch that. It s hot ,
they often interpret hot as referring to an object (e.g. a stove), rather than to
a salient property of that object. Indeed, all of the data documenting that
children use syntactic form to affix meaning to a new word comes from
children who have at least embarked upon the naming explosion (Hall 1992,
Hall et ale 1993, Katz et ale 1974, Markman and Wachtel 1988, Sola et ale
1991, Waxman 1990, Waxman and Kosowski 1990) .
Basedon the data reviewed thus far , I have suggestedthat the appreciation
of a linkage between count nouns and object categories undergoes no
developmental change: it appears to emerge early, requiring little , if any,
experiencewith the language. In contrast, an appreciation of specific linkage
between other grammatical categories (e.g., adjectives, mass nouns, verbs)
and meaning emergeslater in development and may depend upon language
experience.
Notice , however, that this suggestion is based almost exclusively on
English-speaking subjects. This is a serious limitation , for it is important to
determine whether the patterns observedin our English-speaking samplesare
universal to human development. (SeeSlobin, 1985, for excellentdiscussionsof
the necessityof cross-linguistic work in establishingtheories of acquisition.)
S. Cross studies:FrenchandSpanish
- linguisticdevelopmental
Becausecross-linguistic evidenceis essentialin piecing together the nature

and development of an appreciation of linkages between linguistic and
conceptual development, I have begun to examine these linkages in young
children learning languages other than English. The studies have been
designedto pinpoint universals, and at the same time, document any differences
in children' s appreciation of the relation between linguistic form and
meaning. If the hypotheses proposed here are correct, then the effect of
introducing novel nouns should be universal: In all languages, count nouns
should highlight object categories. In contrast, the effect of introducing novel
adjectivesmay vary, depending upon the particular languagebeing acquired.
S. R. WaxmanI Linguisticandconceptual
organization 247
To date, our sample includes unilingual speakersof two different language

communities. The French-speaking preschool children came from Montreal ,
Canada. All of the children in this sample were members of families for
whom French was the language spoken at home. Moreover, these children
were enrolled in French-speaking preschool programs. The Spanish-speaking
children came from Buenos Aires, Argentina . Despite the similarities among
these two Indo -European languages, there are variations in their grammars
that bear on the questions at hand. For example, in Spanish and French, as
opposed to English, each object or class of objects has associatedwith it a
grammatical gender. Therefore, the words (e.g., nouns, adjectives, determiners
) which refer to these carry gender markings as well. One possibility is
that the gender markings associatedwith the various terms would influence
the children' s interpretations of the novel words. Briefly stated, we found that
this was not the case(Waxman et al., in preparation) .
Another difference in theselanguageswas of greater potential relevance. In
Spanishand French, nouns are typically dropped if the grammatical subject is
recoverable from context. If I have six mugs before me, in English, I
' '
distinguish them linguistically by pairing the noun mug with an adjective
' ' ' '
(e.g., the big mug or the big one ) . In Spanish, such constructions are
ungrammatical. Instead, the noun is dropped, leaving the determiner and
' '
adjective (e.g., el grande ) to refer to the intended mug. This construction is
also common (although not obligatory) in French, where one might ask for
' la '
petite to refer to the smallest mug. In such instances, adjectives have
referential status and convey nominal information . This grammatical difference
in the referential status of adjectives may have consequencesfor chil-
'
dren s interpretations of novel words. Perhaps in Spanish, novel adjectives,
like nouns, will highlight category relations. Perhapsin Spanish, the influence
of novel adjectivesis lessdistinct from that of novel nouns.
To addressthis hypothesis, ,we adapted the five-item forced-choice method
(Waxman and Kosowski 1990) to test 2- to 4- year-old unilingual speakers
of French and Spanish (Waxman et al., in preparation) . For French-speaking
preschoolers, the results were identical to those obtained in English : Children
in the Novel Adjective and No Word conditions demonstrated no particular
preferences; only those in the Novel Noun condition chose predominantly
taxonomically related items. These data support the view that the specific
linkage between nouns and object categoriesin English is evident in French
as well.
However, our results with the Spanish-speaking children were different :
Like English- and French-speaking children, Spanish-speaking preschoolers
S.R. WaxmanI linguistic andconceptual
organization
in the Novel Noun condition exhibited a strong preferencefor taxonomically

related items; those in the No Word condition showed no particular preference
for taxonomic, thematic, or gender-related matches. The essentially
random performance in this condition replicates the results from our other
two language samples. However, unlike their English- and French-speaking
counterparts, Spanish-speaking children in the Novel Adjective conditions did
display a systematic inclination toward the taxonomically related items. In
'
Spanish, then, adjectives also seem to focus young children s attention on
superordinate category relations. This finding has now been replicated twice
with two independent groups of Argentine preschool children ( Waxman et
al., in preparation)
- - .
This observed difference in Spanish-speaking children' s interpretation of
novel adjectives cannot be attributed to any procedural differences between
the Spanish and English protocols, for the proceduresemployed were identical
in all languages. Neither can the differences be attributed to the stimuli
themselves, for when we testeda group of English-speakingchildren using the
picture book designedfor the Spanish-speakers, the data were identical to the
original English findings (Waxman and Kosowski 1990).
This difference, then, may indeed be due to cross-linguistic differences in
the referential status of adjectives. In English, adjectives do not (as a rule)
convey object reference. Although 2-year-old English-speakersare somewhat
inclined to interpret adjectives as referring to objects and classesof objects,
this is not the casefor 3- and 4-year-olds. In Spanish, where adjectivesdo, in
fact must, convey nominal information , experience with the language may
lead to a different outcome. Here, even 3- and 4-year-olds often interpret
adjectivesas referring to objects and classesof objects.
Thus, the role of adjectivesappearsdifferent in Spanishthan in French or in
English. And it appears to differ in a predictable way, given the grammar of
the adult languages. There are severalpossibleexplanations for this difference.
First, it is possiblethat in Spanish, the grammatical distinction betweennouns
and adjectivesdevelopsover a more protracted period. It is also possible that
the grammatical distinction between these linguistic forms is made early, but
that the appreciation of specificlinkages betweenlinguistic form and meaning
develops over a more protracted period in Spanish. Additional research is
to examinethesepossibleexplanations.
.currently underway
Let us now integrate thesefindings from the French- and Spanish-speaking
children with those from children, toddlers, and infants learning English. The
results of these complementary lines of research converge to provide initial
support for the hypothesis that from the earliest stagesof lexical acquisition,
S.R. Waxman / Linguistic and conceptualorganization 249
infants expect that words (independent of their grammatical form ) will refer
to objects and categories of objects. Later , this general linkage gives way to
more specific pairings between particular grammatical forms and particular
types of meaning. The affinity between count nouns and object categories
emergesearly and is evident in all three languageswe have examined to date.
In contrast, the more specific linkages for adjectives emerge later and may
vary, depending upon the language being acquired.
This account of the child ' s emerging appreciation of linkages between
linguistic and conceptual organization is consistent with other major milestones
in lexical acquisition. It gains further plausibility by virtue of the fact
that it is also consistentwith cross-linguistic evidenceconcerning the linguistic
categoriesnoun and predicate (including, e.g., adjectives, verbs) .
6. Cross- linguistic analyses of nouns and memben , of the predicate system
The cross-linguistic consistency of the gra~ matical category noun and the
variability of the category adjective, which has been documented by linguists
(c.f., Dixon 1982), is quite relevant to issues of acquisition. The syntactic
category noun has a stable and uniform function across human languages.
Count nouns refer primarily to objects and classesof objects. Furthermore,
unlike words from other form classes, nouns supply principles of individuation
and identity for their referents. (See Macnamara, 1986, for thorough
discussionsof these principles; see Hall 1992, Hall and Waxman, 1993, for
evidencethat preschool children, like adults, expect that count nouns supply
these principles.) Additionally , early lexical acquisition consists predominantly
of nouns (Gentner 1982, Nelson 1973) .
In contrast to the cross-linguistic stability of the classnoun, membersof the
predicate system (e.g., adjectives, verbs) have a more fluid status. There is
considerablecross-linguistic variation as to what information is conveyed as
part of one predicate and what is conveyedas part of another (Gentner 1982,
Talmy 1985). Furthermore, there is cross-linguistic variability in the evolution
of particular predicates. Dixon ' s ( 1982: 1- 3) discussion of the distinction
betweennouns and adjectivesis quite revealing.
' It is an
empirical fact that there is always a major class that is aptly termed Noun ; there is
never any doubt as to the applicability of this traditional label, and never any question as to
which class should be called Noun ... However, not all languageshave the major word class
Adjective. Either they have no Adjective class at all , or else there is a small non-productive
minor class that can be called Adjective. In either of thesecasesit is interesting to ask how the
250 S.R. Waxman I Linguistic and conceptualorganization
language ) ... express

getsalongwithout a full Adjectiveclass... Some(languages all adjectival
conceptsthroughintransitiveverbs... othersexpresssomethroughnounsand somethrough
verbs... and othersinvokefurther means .'
Thus, the syntactic category adjectivediffers widely acrosslanguages. Some

languages(like English and the Australian language Dyirbal ) have extensive
and elaborate adjective systems; others (like Igbo and the Bantu languages)
have very few adjectives (Dixon 1982) . Further , adjectives and other predicates
appear to be acquired later than nouns. Moreover, there is question as
to whether there is anything analogous to the naming explosion for the
acquisition of predicates (Gopnik 1988) . Finally , members of the predicate
systemare both semantically and syntactically dependent upon nouns.
7. The development of an appreciationof linkagesbetweenlinguistic and

rel
conceptual _tioM
Taken together, the cross-linguistic analyses of the noun and predicate

systems converge with the developmental data to suggest the following
account of the development of an appreciation of linkages between linguistic
and conceptual relations.
'
Early in infancy, infants visual attention is augmented by what appear to
be very general sensory and/ or perceptual factors, rather than by specifically
linguistic ones. Throughout infancy, the distinctive intonational contours
characteristic of mothereseare especially effective in arousing and sustaining
'
infants' attention (Fernald 1992) . Moreover, in the first six months, infants
visual attention is also heightenedwhen objects are presentedin conjunction
with moderate auditory stimulation (Kaplan et al. 1991, Mendelson and
Haith 1976, Paden, 1975, Self 1975) . Initially , then, general auditory factors
'
(rather than specifically linguistic ones) appear to intensify infants general
visual interest (rather than their interest in objects or categoriesof objects) .
In the latter half of their first year, a more specific pairing becomesevident
as infants begin to single out words from other, more general sources of
auditory input . By 9- to 12-months of age, infants focus more on objects and
categories of objects in the presenceof novel words than in their absence
-
(Baldwin and Markman 1989, Echois 1992, Waxman and Helm 1991, Mar
kow and Waxman 1992, 1993) . Indeed, we find evidence that 9 month old - -
infants establish object categoriesmore readily when the objects are accompa-
'
nied by a label (e.g., ' a bird ) than when they are accompaniedby a sine wave
tone (Waxman and Balaban 1992). Thus, by 9 months of age, labels facilitate
categorization of objects. Moreover, this labeling effect appears to be tied to
language, rather than to auditory stimulation , in general. (But see Roberts
and Jacob 1991, for a different view.)
However, at this point in development, the data do not support the claim
that infants make systematic distinctions among words from various form
classes. The data from our laboratory reveal that at 12 months, infants tend
to interpret most words, independent of their syntactic status, as referring to
objects or categoriesof objects. Therefore, prior to the onset of the naming
explosion, there appears to be a general (and possibly universal) linkage
betweenwords (not specifically count nouns) and object categories.
As the naming explosion draws to a close, and as infants begin to
distinguish among the linguistic form classes(e.g., count nouns, mass nouns,
adjectives, verbs) in their own language production and comprehension
( Bloom 1990, Gordon 1985, McPherson 1991, Prasada 1993, Valian 1986),
infants probably begin to consider syntactic form class as relevant to determining
a novel word ' s meaning. By two to three years of age, children begin
to reveal an appreciation of specific linkages between particular linguistic
forms and particular types of meaning.
For example, English-speakingchildren expect that object categorieswill be
marked linguistically by count nouns (Brown 1957, Markman and Wachtel
1988, Wa~man 1990, Waxman and Kosowski 1990, Taylor and Gelman 1989,
Waxman and Senghas1991), that substanceswill be marked by mass nouns
(Dickins.on 1988, Sola et ale 1991), that individuals will be marked by proper
nouns (Katz et ale 1974, Gelman and Taylor 1984, Hall 1992), and that
various properties (e.g., size, color , temperament) will be marked by modifiers
(Hall et ale 1993, Markman and Wachtel 1988, Waxman 1990, Taylor and
Gelman 1988).
I t is interesting to note that even at this point , when children are clearly
capable of using syntactic information as a cue to meaning, they do not do so
invariably . Instead, the tendency to use syntactic information is modified
considerably by the child ' s existing lexical and conceptual knowledge (Au
1990, Banigan and Mervis 1988, Callanan 1985, Chi 1983, Mervis 1984,
Mervis and Mervis 1988, Waxman et. ale 1991; Hall et ale 1993) . Children' s
interpretation of a novel word depends, at least in part, upon whether or not
they already have an existing label for the referent object. If the object is
familiar (that is, if children have already acquired a count noun label for the
object), then they use syntactic information as a guide in interpreting the
meaning of subsequentwords applied to that object. For example, if a child is
S.R. Waxman / linguistic and conceptualorganization
taught a new noun for a familiar object (e.g., a dog), the child exhibits a
strong tendencyto interpret the word as referring to an object category that is
subordinate to (e.g., collie), superordinate to (e.g., mammal), or overlapping
with (e.g., household pet) the familiar basic level category (Taylor and
Gelman 1989, Waxman and Senghas 1992) . For a new adjective, children
tend to interpret the word as referring to a salient property , substanceor part
of the object (Hall et al. 1993, Markman and Wachtel 1988) .
However, if the object is unfamiliar (that is, if children have not yet
acquired a count noun for the object), they tend to rely upon an earlier
pattern of behavior; they tend to interpret any word applied to that object
(be it a count noun, proper noun, or adjective), as referring to an object
category, typically at the basic level (Hall 1992; Hall et al. 1993, Markman
and Wachtel 1988) . Thus, children are attentive to syntactic form in ascribing
meaning only after a count noun has beenassignedto that object and to other
membersor its kind .
8. Summaryandconclusion
In summary, an appreciation of the linkage between nouns and object

categories is likely to be a universal phenomenon which guides human
development from the very onset of lexical acquisi.tion . In contrast, a distinct
role for other form classes(such as adjectives) appears to emergelater, may
rely upon an existing base of linguistic and conceptual knowledge, and may
vary according to the specificsof the languagebeing acquired.
What do theseemerging linkages betweenlinguistic and conceptual organization
mean for the developing child ? In the first few years of life , children
encounter a virtually continuous stream of new sounds, new objects, and new
events. The linkages described in this article help infants to organize these
encounters rapidly into efficient and coherent systems. When ascribing
meaning to a novel word , infants and children do not sample randomly
among all the possible relations and meanings that might logically be
considered. Instead, in the context of word learning, they pay special attention
to particular types of meanings. Although the linkages may initially be
quite general, by 2 to 3 years of age, children are acutely sensitiveto linguistic
'
form and use it to arrive at a novel word s meaning.
The existing evidencesuggeststhat a nascentlinkage is in place at the onset
of lexical acquisition, that it may serve as a general guide to lexical acquisition
-
, and that it will becomeincreasingly specific over the course of develop
S.R. Waxman andconceptual
I Linguistic organization 253
ment. Of course, linkages like the ones described here cannot tell the entire
developmental story, for children do not learn meaning on the basis of
syntactic context alone. Additional researchwith preverbal infants and with
children learning diverse languages will further clarify when these various
linkages betweenlinguistic and conceptual developmentemerge, how they are
modified by linguistic input , and how they are modulated within the context
of the child ' s existing fund of knowledge.
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Lingua92 ( 1994 259
Where's what and what's where:

The languageof objectsin space*
Barbara Landau
of CognitiveScience
Department , Universityof California, Irvine, CA 92717
, USA
Many traditional views of languagelearning emphasizethe importanceof non-linguistic

'
knowledgein constrainingchildrens interpretationsof the utterancesthey hear as they learn
form- meaningcorrespondences . In the presentpaper, I proposethat the structureof the human
spatial-cognitivesystemmay imposemassivelimitations on how the languageof objectsand
placescan be representedduring first languagelearning. Specifically , the separationand
respective structuresof the 'what' and ' where' systems(as documentedby neuropsychologists )
show striking correlationwith the propertiesof geometricrepresentations underlyingobject
namesand placeexpressions (as proposedby Landauand Jackendoff1993 ). Spatialrepresentations
underlyingobjectnamesseemto be linked to detailedobjectshape(along with possible
relevantshapetransformations ), while the representations underlyingplace-functions(spatial
in
prepositions English) seem to be linked to preservingprincipalaxes,but no
objectdescriptions
detailedshape . Evidenceis reviewedthat thesedistinctrepresentations are reflectedin children's
early comprehension , production, and learningof namesfor objectsand places . Additional
evidencefrom cross-linguisticstudiesof spatialtermsappearsto be consistentwith the account
given, althoughchallenges remain. As a whole, the linguisticand psychological evidencesupport
the notion that non-linguisticrepresentational systemsmay playa part in shapingsomeof the
characterof languages .
I . Objects , places, and language leaming
For anyone who has ever watched as an infant begins to speak, it is

obvious that the observational context for learning serves as a critical
support . Common sense suggests that language learning proceeds as rapidly
as it does in part because children can map the utterances they hear onto
. . This researchwas supportedby Socialand BehavioralSciences ResearchGrant # 12-214

from the Marchof DimesBirth DefectsFoundation , NIH Grant # I -ROI-HD2867S - OI, and the
Universityof Pennsylvania Institute for Researchin CognitiveScience , whereLandauwas a
- 93. Thanksgo to Lila and HenryGleitmanfor numerouscomments
visitingscientistduring 1992
on a previousversionof this paperand for suggestingits title; and to D.Stecker , E.Lynch,
D.Beckand J.Chosakfor assistance in the work describedherein.
- 3841/94/$07.00 ~ 1994- Elsevier. ScienceB.V. All rights reserved

0024
SSD10024 - 3841( 93) EO043- 7
' '
B. Landau I Wheres what and what s where
what they perceive and know. Of chief importance is their perception and
knowledge of objects, the motions they undergo, and the locations they
occupy.
But how does perceiving or knowing about objects help in learning
language? As Quine ( 1960) argued, the novice analyst hearing an utterance
might be free to conjecture any of an infinite number of hypothesesabout its
meaning, each compatible with what he observes. Such rampant indetenni-
nacy would , of course, prevent learners from converging on the correct
meaning of a word. However, human infants do not seemto find themselves
mired in such an impossible learning situation ; quite the contrary, they
manage to map many words onto coherent meanings in a relatively short
period of time. Accounting for this phenomenon in tenDS of constraints on
learning - both linguistic and non-linguistic - is currently a major challenge
for both linguists and psychologists.
One sourCeof constraints is the human spatial- cognitive system. Recent
non-linguistic investigations have shown that the spatial systemcontains two
'
separate components: one dedicated to representing objects (the what sys-
' '
tem' ) and the other to representinglocations (the where system ; Ungerleider
and Mishkin 1982) . The two components exhibit quite different properties,
perhaps not surprising if one evolved to represent objects, the other, places.
What is intriguing about each component, however, is that broad properties
of each appear to converge with the differences in the ways that languages
expressobjects and locations (Landau and Jackendoff 1993) .
Theseconvergencescould impose significant constraints on learning. For if
the design of the ' what' and ' where' system engagesonly certain geometric
representations, then only thesewill be available for mapping onto language.
Learners possessingsuch a representational system would not be subject to
'
Quine s radical indeterminacy; rather, they would approach language learning
equipped with strong blases to consider only certain properties of the
world as ' relevant' to naming objects vs. places.
In arguing for such constraints, severallines of evidenceare required. First ,
there must be differences in the way that languagesuniversally encode the
two onto logical categories of object and place. Second, these linguistic
universals should show properties that are similar to those found in nonlinguistic
' ' ' '
representations of what and where . Finally , there must be evidence
that children learning names for objects and places generalizeon the
basis of different geometric properties in the two casesthat , essentially, the
problem of learning names for objects and places is bifurcated, with each
domain drawing on quite different kinds of representations.
B. Landau 's whatandwhat's where 261
I Where
In the sectionsthat follow , I first provide evidencefor such a bifurcation in

young children. This phenomenonwill set the stagefor asking in detail about
' '
the nature of ' what and ' where representationsin languagesand language
learning. I then explore in detail the spatial representationsunderlying object
naming and those underlying the language of places. Finally , I discuss
questions about the possible contributions of spatial representation vs. language
itself to thesedifferent representations.
Before turning to the findings, however, the reader might wonder how
learners know in the first place that a particular part of an utterance
expresses the name of an object vs. a place. Our researchis neutral on how
learners first come to know the mappingbetweenforms and these broad
ontological distinctions. In fact, our empirical research begins at the point
(age 21f2years) when young children can already use syntactic context to
create a coarsedivision of the hypothesisspace. By this time, they can use the
syntactic and morphological properties of count and mass nouns, adjectives,
and verbs to disambiguate among various readings in English. For example,
they can use count/ mass syntax to distinguish between object and substance
readings (Brown 1957; P.Bloom, this volume); noun/adjective syntax to
distinguish betweenobject and property readings (Landau et al. 1992a); and
number of verb argumentsto disambiguatebetweenagentive vs. non-agentive
readings (Gleitman 1990, Fisher et al. this volume) . In our research, we use
children' s knowledge of syntax and morphology as a wedge in asking about
the representationaldifferencesbetween object and place.
I assume that such broad mappings between form and meaning are
achievedquite early in languagelearning. For example, prelinguistic children
can represent major onto logical categories, such as OBJECT, PLACE , and
ACTION : Infants know that objects continue to exist over spatial and
temporal displacements (see Carey, this volume; Spelke 1990) and that
'
objects occupy spatial locations which are constant over one s own movements
(Landau and Spelke 1988, McKenzie et al. 1984, Rieser 1979) . Objects,
'
static locations, and trajectories are mapped to languagein the child s earliest
vocabulary, including words like in, on, up and down (Brown 1973, L . Bloom
1973).
Children also can representlexical and phrasal categoriessuch as N , NP , P,
PP, V , VP. These categories might be identified in the speech stream by
correspondencesbetween certain properties of the wave form ' and major
'
lexical, phrasal, or clausal units (i.e. by prosodic bootstrapping , see Gleit -
man et al. 1988, Kelly , this volume) . Another possibility is that nouns are
discovered first , when the child hears a single word in isolation (usually an
262 B. Landau 's whatandwhat's where
/ Where
object name) together with the sight of an object (Gillette and Gleitman,
forthcoming) . Given only a small group of nouns, the remaining categoriesin
the syntactic configuration may be deduciblefrom internal linguistic principles
(Grimshaw, this volume).
In either case, it seemsreasonable to assumethat children also approach
language learning with certain expectations about the canonical mappings
betweenthe major onto logical categoriesand the syntactic categories(Grim -
shaw 1981) . For example, OBJECT is mapped canonically onto N , and
PLACE - more properly , spatial-locative-functions - onto Preposition, PP, or
other argument-taking categories.!
Once the learner has come to know how objects and placesare syntactically
expressed in his or her language (in English, by count nouns and PPs
respectively), he or shecan infer that a novel lexical item falls into the domain
of either object or place. Now , from the different structural properties of the
' what' and ' where'
system, the relevant geometric generalizations should
automatically fall out.
Given this view, the syntactic properties of a novel word can provide the
learner with quite coarse semantic distinctions (e.g. the major onto logical
' '
categoriesand broad semantic classes ) . The remainder of the learning of a
word must be discoveredfrom sourcesoutside of syntax2 (seeGrimshaw, this
1 The encodingof spatiallocation functionsvariesacrosslanguages : Englishencodesthem

canonicallyasprepositionsand PPs, whileotherlanguages incorporatethe locationinto the verb
( Talmy1985 .) In this paper, I focuson Englishprepositions , whichhavebeenanalyzedin detail
by linguists, computerscientistsand psychologists (Miller and Johnson -Laird 1976, Herskovits
1986 , Jackendoff 1983 , Talmy 1983 .) However, the principlesproposed this paperaremeantto
in
be universallyrepresented in expressions of spatiallocation(cf. Talmy 1983 ), regardlessof their
syntacticrealization . The strengthof analyzingEnglishspatialprepositionslies in the fact that
theseelements - unlike, e.g., manyspatialverbs- encodeonlyobjectlocationfunctions,henceare
an especially clearexampleof how languages representplaces .
2 Thesesemantic -syntacticmappingswill be richerin somedomainsthan in others, and we can
expectcorresponding differences in theextentto whichlearnerswill beableto usesyntacticcontext
to learndetailsabout the meaningsof newwords. For example , in the caseof verbs, we might
expectrelativelyrich correspondences carvingout setsof meaning -relatedwords(Pinker 1989 ,
LevinandHovav1991 ) and such correspondences expected aid thelearningof newverbs
can be to
(Landauand Gleitman 1985 , Fisheret al. 1991 , Fisheret aI., this volume.) In contrast , the
interpretationof novelnounsshouldbehelpedrelativelylittle beyonddistinguishing between count
vs. massreadings . For example , a learnerwould not be able to tell, from the syntacticcontext
an ' individuated '
alone, muchmorethan that theword describes entity(e.g. a concreteobject, see
P. Bloom, this volume.) The samesparsemapping seems true for spatialprepositions. In English,
placesmap canonically onto PPs (Jackendoff 1983 .) If the learner understands this mapping
principle,shemightbeableto interpreta newPPasdescribing a place,but it will only be through
B. Landau / Where's what and what's where 263
volume; Fisher et al., this volume; Pinker, this volume) . Our interest is in
how the spatial-cognitive system might further pare down the hypothesis
spacefollowing the broad division into object vs. place.
2. Namesfor object vs. place: Two different kinds of representation
Given that words for objects and places are among the earliest acquired,
one might wonder whether a general, all -purpose representationunderlies the
earliest learning in both domains. Perhaps human learners are designed to
detectjust the samesetsof properties whether attending to an object (and its
name) or the object' s location (and its name) . This kind of representation
would keep track of a compound - an object' s identity together with its
location. Such a relatively unbiased device could definitely learn to represent
objects and places separately (see Rueckl et al. 1988 for a demonstration
using connectionist modelling) . The question, however, is whether this is the
way that young learners do represent objects and their locations under
different form-classinstructions, i.e., when they are being told the name of a
novel object vs. a novel pla~ .
In a seriesof experiments, we asked whether young children could draw on
qualitatively different geometric representations acorss the two domains of
object and place (Landau and Stecker 1990) . In order to induce these two
kinds of representation, we showed 3-year-olds and adults a novel object
' '
being placed on top of a box (the standard location), and simultaneously
presentedthem with a novel word occurring in one of two different syntactic
contexts. A count noun context was meant to induce a representation of the
object itself, while a preposition context was meant to induce a representation
of the place where the object was located.
In the count noun context, subjectsheard ' Seethis? This is a corp' . In the
' '
preposition context, subjects heard See this? This is acorp my box . The
entire display then was set aside, and subjects saw each of three different
shapedobjects - one identical to the standard plus two shapechanges- being
placed in each of five different locations on and around a second box (see
264 B. Landau I Where's what and what's where
figure I for objects and standard location) . Each time subjects observed an
' '
object being placed on the secondbox, they were asked either Is this a corp?
' '
or Is this acorp your box? (matching their initial instructions) . We asked
whether subjectswould attend to different properties of the array in the two
contexts.
uu .r
Thisis a corp. No No
~ I I
This is acorpmy box. Yes Yes Yes

I I
' '
Fig . 1. Objects and array used in spatial preposition experiment. In this experiment, a standard
' '
object was placed in a standard position (as shown) on the upper surfaceof a box. Subjectswere
"
told either " This is a corp" (count noun condition ) or "This is acorp my box ( preposition
condition .) Then each of the objects was placed in each of several positions on and around the
" "
box, and subjects were asked either " Is this a corp?" or Is this acorp your box? (with the test
question matching the initial instruction ) . The responses showed that in the count noun
condition , subjects acceptedonly the standard shape and rejected shapesthat differed from the
standard. In contrast, in the preposition condition , subjects accepted all shapes, apparently
considering object shapeirrelevant to decisionsabout location.
'
The results showed that both children and adults attended to the object s
shapein the count noun condition , accepting the original shape but rejecting
all shape changes. In the preposition condition , however, subjects ignored
shape, accepting all three shapesequally. In complementary fashion, subjects
'
ignored the object s position in the count noun context, but attended to it
closely in the preposition condition . Children accepted all positions on the
upper surface of the box, while adults were more conservative, primarily
accepting the standard position .
'
B. Landau I Wheres what and what's where
This pattern of results shows a rather extreme dissociation - presenceof

detailed shape vs. no shape information at all - in 3-year-olds who are
generalizing a novel preposition. But such an extreme dissociation is not a
necessaryproperty of the geometriesof object vs. location tenDs. There are
terms in English and other languageswhich preserverestricted elementsof an
'
object s shape. For example, the terms acrossand along both require that the
' '
figure object be roughly linear , that is, that the object have a principal axis
that can be located with respect to the axis of the reference object (Talmy
1983; seesection 4) . Therefore, in a subsequentexperiment, we asked whether
children could represent objects in this intennediate fashion: as a geometric
kind that does not represent exact shape, but preservesjust one critical
'
component - the object s principal axis.
We now used the same method but changed the objects' shapes and
locations (see figure 2 for shapes and ' standard' location). The standard
"
object was now a 7 straight rod , and the test objects included a replica of the
standard, a squiggly rod that was the same extent as the standard, and a
2" x 2" x I " block. The standardwas placedperpendicularto the box's main axis
when we introduced it , and the test positions included this sameposition, one
'
slightly to the left, one parallel to the box s main axis, and one diagonal to it .
The overall results showed the same complementary pattern for attention
to shapevs. position as we had found in the first experiment: Subjectsin the
count noun context attended to shape but not position , while subjectsin the
preposition context did the converse. However, it is the details of the shape
results that are of particular interest, for we observed two different kinds of
shaperepresentationsfor objects in the two syntactic contexts.
In the count noun context, children and adults preservedthe preciseshape
of the figure object when generalizing: They accepted the standard and
rejected both the squiggle and the block. In the preposition condition , some
3-year-olds ignored shape altogether as they had in the previous experiment.
But other 3-year-olds, and most 5-year-olds and adults acceptedthe standard
and the squigglewhile rejecting the block. That is, they acceptedboth objects
that had intersectedthe box, even though thesewere quite different in precise
shapeand hencehad not both been a~ pted as instancesof the same named
object category in the count noun condition . What thesechildren did was to
treat both the standard and the squiggle alike as linear objects in the
preposition condition , attending to the one property of shape- the extent of
its main axis - that was apparently important in describing its location.
In sum, we found that when young children were asked to generalize a
name for a novel object, they engageda full description of the object' s shape.
' '
266 B. Landau / Wheres what and what s where
-
.
Thisis a corp.
This is acorpmy box.
Fig . 2. Objects and array used in ~ nd spatial preposition experiment. This experiment was
' '
identical to the first , except for the shapesof the standard and test objects, and the positions
that were tested (see text.) As in the first experiment, subjects in the count noun condition
' '
attended to shape, aa: epting only the standard (the straight rod.) In the preposition condition ,
' linear' - -
subjecg a<x:epted the two objects objects whose principal axis could span the box and
rejected the block. This suggests that subjects in the preposition condition schematizedthe test
objects, focussingonly on the existenceof a principal axis of a pa~ cular extent. The results of the
two experimentsshow that detailed object shapematters for the extension of object count nouns,
but that schematicobject shapematters for the extension of spatial prepositions.
In contrast, when asked to generalizea new place term, they either ignored
' ' '
the object s shape altogether - representing it essentially as a blob - or did
something in between, representing just one component of shape as if the
' '
target object were a linear thing .
Why did young children generalizeso differently in the context of a count
noun vs. a preposition? Clearly, we cannot appeal to an 1;inbiased Quinean
' '
similarity spacewhich dictateswhat will be salient in any scene, for thesewere
identical in the two situations. The only differencebetweenthe conditions was
the syntactic context in which the novel word was introduced. Children must
have assumedthat the novel count noun referred to the object being placed
on the box - in this case, an object of a specific shape (to be explored in
section 3) . And they must have assumedthat the novel preposition referred to
the place where the object was located. Syntactic context thus directed
' '
B. Landau I Wheres what and what s where 267
children' s attention to two different ontological categories- object and place -

from which followed quite different kinds of geometric representations.
These findings raise many questions. As for objects: Do children always
generalizenovel object nameson the basis of shape and if so, what does this
'
suggestabout the role of object perception in constraining the child s initial
hypothesesabout object names? As for places: Is the lack of shape information
in locational terms a universal feature of languages and is failure to
attend to shape for place terms a universal feature of language learners?
Finally , do these differences between object and place representation reflect
facts about the way languagesare organized? Or , as I ' ve already hinted, do
they partly reflect the way the human spatial-cognitive system operates
independently of language?
3. How named objects are represented
Count nouns such as dog , apple , chair name categories of objects - sets of
objects that cohere under some criteria that can be used to generalize the
word to new instances. The nature of these criteria is as yet unclear , but often
has been assumed to include some set of perceptual or conceptual features
united by an underlying theory (Carey 1982, Arm strong et al . 1983, Murphy
and Medin 1985) . Such theories would specify not only which object properties
are critical for different named categories , but why the same property
can assume different weighting for different categories - for example , why
feathers are more critical to the description of birds than to the description of
hats.3
3 Therecentemphasis on the importanceof suchunderlyingtheoriesin conceptacquisitionand
word learningoftenhasbeenviewedasan alternativeto the moretraditional' perception -driven'
approach . For example , it has been argued that young children use their knowledgeof
ontological categoriesto constraindecisionsabout word meaning , therebyallowing them to
' '
overrideperceptualinformation(Kei11989 , Solaet al. 1991). This either- or approachto word
learningseemsmisguided , however , for althoughsuchknowledgecan be important in certain
kindsof decisionsaboutcategorymembership , perceptualinfonnationalsois likely to play an
importantrole, especiallyamongyoungchildren(Landauet aI. 1988 , Landauet aI. 1992 , Smith
1989 .)
For example , youngchildrenmay not possess the samekinds of rich theoreticalsystemsas
adults(Carey 1985 , Keil 1989 .) Careyhas arguedthat children's theoriesof ' living thing' are
shallowerand qualitativelydifferentfrom thosecontainedin maturebiologicaltheories . Evenif
childrendo havetheoriesof objectkind that enterinto their classification (henceobjectnaming),
perceptualappearance of objectsis boundto be a critical factor in initial objectsorts, as it is for
adults in many contexts(Bosterand Johnson1989 , Landau 1982 , Murphy and Wright 1984 ,
Common sensesuggeststhat object shape might be particularly critical in

the extensionof object names. For adults who have full -blown conceptsand a
mature lexicon, the representationsof objects named by count nouns such as
chair, apple, and dog must in part be linked to the shapesof these objects
(Jackendoff 1987, Jackendoff and Landau 1991) . Object shape remains
constant over space and time, is an excellent predictor of object kind , and
shape perception is undoubtedly a part of human native endowment. Shape
has been shown to be a critical property of object representation at the basic
level (Rosch et ale 1976); it is the principal basis for children' s spontaneous
over-generalizations (Clark 1973); and it may be a privileged property in
extending object namesto depictions in representationalart. For example, the
well-known sculptures by Claes von Oldenburg include ' The Clothespin' (a
45-foot metal object) and ' Good Humours' (floppy, furry objects); in both
cases, similarity to the real thing is solely in their shape.4 In these cases,
'
similarity of shape licensesthe use of the real object s name, despite the fact
that the representational object is not really an X (seeJackendoff, 1992, for
related discussion) .
Yet shapeis definitely a perceptual property . If object names are extended
on the basis of perceptual properties only as weighted by theories, then what
is the status of shape? Is shape somehow ' special' as a brute-force preferred
property? Or are there always effectsof higher-level knowledgein determining
whether and to what extent shape is important ?
In our studies of object naming, we have discovered that the answers to
thesequestionsare complex. As the following evidenceshows, shapeis indeed
' '
special as a property often critical to the extension of object names among
young children. Considering the reasonsfor this suggeststhat constant object
shapemay be intimately related to our notions of object kind. However, the
results also show that leamer' s use of object shaperecruits a systemof shape
perception that is itself quite complex and subtle. Moreover, the system can
L .B.Smith 1989, Smith and Medin 1982.) Most important , the existence of theories does not
logically preclude the use of perceptual information in word learning. Presumably, our theories
have evolved in part to make senseof what we observe.
4 Jackendoff 1983, 1992 has '
( ) suggestedthat an object s name can be extendedto many possible
referentsX , including ' depiction of X ' . This would account for the naturalnessof referring to the
' ' '
sculpture as clothespin even though we all know it isn t really one. Jackendoff suggeststhat the
distinction betweenreal referentsand depictions may be critical for binding theory. I thank Paul
Bloom for pointing out the relevanceof Jackendoff' s treatment, and Robert Remezfor providing
an extensivelist of Oldenburg' s work that exemplifies this problem.
' '
B. Landau I Wheres what and what s where 269
3.1. Rigid objectsand theshapebias
When a child hears an object labelled with a novel count noun, he facesat
least a circumscribed version of Quine' s problem : He must decide which of
the properties he perceivesare relevant to generalizing the new word. Which
' '
properties of the whole object (Markman , this volume) will the learner select
as the basis for generalization?
In a first seriesof experiments, Landau et al. ( 1988) investigated 2- and 3-
' '
year-olds and adults representation of concrete 3-dimensional objects. We
askedwhether children and adults would tend to generalizea new count noun
'
on the basis of an object s shape, its size, or its texture, and whether any such
blaseswere due to generalizedperceptual preferencesrather than the task of
learning a new word.
We showed subjects a single object - for example, a 2" blue wooden Ushaped
' '
thing - and labelled it by saying, Seethis? This is a dax . This object -
the standard - was placed aside but still in view and subjects were shown a
series of objects, one at a time, which were either size, texture, or shape
changesfrom the standard. These changes ranged from relatively minor or
moderate changestested in a first experiment (e.g., ~2" larger for the minor
sizechange or a slightly bent leg for the shapechange) to either moderate or
"
quite extremechangestested in a secondexperiment (e.g., 24 for the extreme
sizechangeand a completely rotated leg for the shapechange; seefigure 3 for
! ' '
examples ) . For each object, subjectswere asked Is this a dax?
The results are shown schematically in figure 3. Subjects of all ages
acceptedthe size and texture changesat ceiling levels, but rejected the shape
changes. For the minor and moderate magnitudes of change in the first
experiment, adults acceptedall size and texture changesbut rejectedall shape
changes. Two -and three-year-olds showed the same pattern but probabilisti -
cally rather than categorically.
5 Note that varyingthe magnitudeof the changefor eachdimensionis critical to determining

whetherit is the dimension of the change
itself that childrenattendto, or simplythe magnitude .
For example , a child might rejecta givenshapechangewhileacceptinga givensizechangejust
becausethe shapechangeis quite radical but the size changeis rather minor. Unlessthe
magnitudeof changesis variedoverdimensions , wecannotdissociatethesetwo possibilities(see
Landauet al., 1988 , for discussion ).
' '
The
(Landa
~ Bias
Shape
,and
Smith ,1988
)
Jones
YES ~ ! !
[1:0
St8Dd8Id
(2" woodeD)
~.x.:.
CaIh Us,.. U
ClIck
- Wile
~
nn
N 0
[ b ?
L . ~ . : ~ : J
Fig . 3. The shapebias in early lexical learning. When children or adults bear a novel object (the
' standard' named with a novel count
) noun, they tend to generalizethat noun on the basis of the
's and not on its size or texture.
object shape ,
For the moderate and extreme magnitudes of change in the second

experiment, adults again acceptedall size and texture changesand rejectedall
'
shapechanges. The adults pattern here was quite rigid : They rejectedeven a
very minor shape change while accepting at ceiling a size change that was
more than 10 times the size of the standard. Three-year- olds showedthe same
- -
pattern as adults, again in a weaker form , while the two year olds did not
show any particular preferences, accepting all objects at a relatively high
' '
level. This pattern of results for the 2-year-olds was due in part to the yes/ no
' ' ' '
procedure, which often elicits blanket yes or no in this age group . Using a
forced-choice procedure, 2-year-olds did tend to accept size and texture
changesand reject shape changes,. as did the 3-year- olds (see Landau et aI.,
.
. , Experiment 2 forced-choice procedure)
1988
Thus we found that children and adults alike extend the reference of a
count noun to new objects on the basis of shape. But they reject extension to
-
objects with even quite minor shapechanges. This pattern which we called
B. Landau / Where's what and what's where
the ' shape bias' - appears by age 2 in a relatively fragile form , is stable by
age 3, and reachesadult strength by age 5 ( Landau et ale 1992a) .
Does the shapebias reflect a general, indiscriminateperceptualpreferencefor
grouping same-shapedobjectstogether? One might supposethat children generalize
a count noun on the basisof shapejust becausethe objectswith the same
shapeas the standardlook more like the standardthan objectswith the samesize
or the sametexture. Evidencefor this interpretation would be a shapebias across
a variety of object matching tasks, whether they involve an object' s nameor not.
To assessthis possibility, Landau et ale ( 1988) presented2- and 3-year-olds
with the same standard as before, but did not name the object. Children' s
attention was drawn to the standard by pointing and saying ' Seethis?' Then
the object was placed aside as before, and the test objects were brought out in
' '
pairs. Children were now asked Which one goes with this? (requesting a
' '
match to the standard) . The expression goes with is, of course, ambiguous;
that is, one object could ' go with ' another on many different bases. Previous
experiments have shown that children who are asked this question might
group on a number of different bases, including various dimensions of
perceptual similarity , magnitude of similarity , or thematic relationship with
another object (Smith 1989, Markman and Hutchinson 1984, Inhelder and
Piaget 1964). The question was whether children would still group on the
basis of shape given that there are many possible bases for similarity
grouping.
Although children had shown a shape bias in the count noun condition ,
this time they showed either a weak shape bias or none at all. Two -year-olds
were as likely to pick the most extreme size change (which had the same
shapeand texture as the standard) as the most extreme shapechange (which
was identical to the standard in size and texture) . Three-year-olds showed a
weak shapebias, nowhere near as strong as in the count noun condition .
Thus, by age 3, the shapebias is elicited reliably and strongly in the context
of object naming. During the early years of languagelearning, the perceptual
' '
space has already become biased - stretched towards emphasizing different
dimensions in different contexts. The context of object naming draws on a
perceptual spacewhere similarity of object shapeis critical .
Further researchhas confirmed that the shape bias is extremely robust in
the context of object naming, that is, under count noun instructions. It
appears in 3-year-olds and adults when the objects are three-dimensional
(Landau et ale 1988, Au and Markman 1987), or two-dimensional ( Landau et
ale 1992b, 1993; Baldwin 1993) ; when the object' s texture or coloration is so
salient that children are drawn to those dimensions if asked for non-linguistic
's whatandwhat's where
272 I Where
B. Landau
similarity judgments (Smith et al. 1992); and when cues to animacy (eyes)
'
also pull children s attention to the texture or substanceof objects (Jones et
al. 1991) . A shapebias has been replicated in other labs and with school age
children (Becker and Ward 1991).
In contrast, the shape bias is weakenedor completely suppressedin other
syntactic contexts, even though the domain in question still concerns objects
(Landau et al. 1992a, Smith et al. 1992) . For example, we found that when
'
objects were introduced as membersof a more inclusive category (i.e., This is
'
a kind of dax ), young children and adults showed only a weak preferencefor
same shape, and no strong preferencefor either size or texture. This makes
sense, as membersof more inclusive object categoriesare often lesssimilar in
shape (and other dimensions) than members of their subsets. (For example,
members of the animal category are less similar to each other than members
of the dog category; and dogs are lesssimilar to each other than Dalmatians) .
We also found that when objects were introduced to learners using an
' '
adjectival context ( This is a daxy one), they showed no preferenceat all for
same shape, but rather, a strong preferencefor samesurface texture - which
is encoded by adjectivesin English and other languages(Schachter 1985; see
also Waxman, this volume).
The results of both syntactic manipulations confirm the notion that the
shape bias is confined to the count noun context. This provides further '
evidencefor the importance of syntactic context in directing young children s
interpretations of novel words to different parts of the object representation
system.
3.2. Artifacts , natural kinds, and shape.. Influencesof perceptionand knowledge
The existence of a shape bias should certainly aid the child in learning
new object names and generalizing them to new instances. However , if the
bias were too rigid , children would fail to generalize in cases where they
should. Although many artifacts are rigid , others regularly undergo transformation
of shape - changes in their configuration - because they are
jointed (e.g. tools , vehicles) . Still other objects, especially natural kinds ,
6
undergo changes of configuration as they move, grow , are squashed, etc.
6 I omit from this discussionthe importanceof perspective transformations , to which young
language learners are surely .
sensitive Evidence shows that infants are sensitive to shape
constancy (see Banks and Salapatek 1983). I that
assume 2-year- olds will generalizea novelname
' '
to different perspectivetransformationsof an object (although not necessarilyaccidental
perspectives, i.e. thosethat obtain from unusualviewingperspectives ).
B. Landau / Where's what and what's where 273
Does a bias for same shape mean that shape is preserved in a static
. '
snapshot -like fashion , corresponding to the configuration shown by an
object in just one pose? Or is the bias for same shape responsive to the
different kinds of shape transformations a given object might normally
undergo?
The objects used by Landau et al. ( 1988) all were made of wood and
most had hard straight edges and sharp angles, suggesting the rigidity
characteristic of artifacts . Thus the strong shape bias among children
might have been due to their understanding that objects possessingthese
properties could not undergo shape transformations . Such an understanding
could stem from perceptually -based or knowledge-based causes.
Perceptual processes might specify the kinds of transformations normally
expected from objects possessing properties such as straight edges and
sharp angles. Knowledge about different object kinds might also affect
judgments ; for example, knowing that artifacts normally do not undergo
massive shape transformations might lead the child to reject shape
changes. And these perception -driven and knowledge-based causes might
well interact .
To determine whether perceptual causescould modulate children' s judgments
about named objects, Landau et al. ( 1992b, 1993) first sought to vary
suggestedmalleability by purely perceptual means. Using the same overall
method .as in previous studies, we first created outline drawings of the
original shapes, including the standard plus the three shapechangesand three
new size changes(seefigure 4A for the shape changes). Three-year-olds and
adults who were tested using thesestimuli showed a strong shapebias, just as
before.
In a second series, we tried to suggestmalleability by drawing the same
shapes but with curved contours (figure 48 ) . Contour curvature generally
correlates with malleability in the physical world , and the question was
whether this change would suggesta greater potential for transformation to
the children. In a third series, we added another cue to malleability by
imposing wrinkles on the curved contours (figure 4C) .
In the fourth and final series, we added a single perceptual property that
powerfully suggestsa particular onto logical kind . Following Jones et al.
( 1991), we drew eyeson the wrinkled curved drawings (figure 4D ) . Although
eyes are a perceptual property , they clearly are powerful in suggesting
animate beings. In fact, Jones et al. found that when eyeswere placed on the
original wooden objects, 3-year-olds generalized on the basis of same shape
' '
274 B. Landau I Wheres what and what s where
Staadard !
Shape Sbape2 S
Shape
C1: O~ M
QD ~ ~
Q:D~ ~
aD~ ~
Fig. 4A-D. Drawingsusedin studiesof rigidity, malleability, objectkind, and naming. The first
the ' standard'
objectin eachrow represents objectthat wasnamedwith a countnoun. Subjectsin
eachof four experiments saweitherA , B, C, or D. Testitemsincludedthe corresponding shape
changesin eachrow. Objectsin the first row possess straightedgesand sharpcomers. Thosein
the second , third, and fourth rows vary the basicshapeso as to suggestmalleabilityby curves ,
'
wrinkles, andeyes . Subjects
, respectively judgmentsof whichshapechanges belongin the named
categoryvariedconsider ablyin ~ rd with suggested malleability.
' ' '

and texture , as if an animate object s stuff mattered in generalizing its
name.7
7 This findingsuggests that youngchildrenaresensitiveto the importanceof texture(or ' stuff' )

of whichanimatesare made, but alsosuggests of
that childrenare as rigid in their preservation
shapefor animatesas for artifacts. Thedifferencein findingsbetweenJoneset aI. and Landauet
aI. ( 1993 the importantrole of materialas it interactswith objectshapein determining
) suggests
relativemalleability.
B. Landau I Where's what and what's where
Subjectsshowed a strong shape bias for the drawn versions of the original
stimuli (4A ) - the ones with straight edges and sharp comers - but this
restriction to the original shape was progressively weakened with the other
manipulations. With the curved contour st subjects accepted some shape
changesand with the wrinkled and curved contour st they accepted slightly
more. The most powerful change occurred with the combination of wrinkled
and curved contours topped by eyes; in this casetsubjectsacceptedall of the
shape changes. There were no age differencesin the overall pattern : 3-year-
olds showed the samedistribution of choices as adults.
Thesefindings make two points. Firstt they show that the shapebias is not a
bias for accepting only objects having precisely the same static configuration.
Children as young as 3 yearsold appreciatethat an objecttsshapeis definedwith
respectto the range of shapetransformationsit can undergo- over transforma-
'
tiont the same shapetwill undergo changesin its configuration. Although the
rangeof acceptableconfigurationsbroadenswith suggestedmalleabilityt it still is
constrainedwithin a clearly delimited range of possibilities. We think it unlikely
that children would have accepteda radical topological transformation (e.g. an
irregulart roundish shape) as an instanceof a dax.
The secondpoint is that perceptualinformation (suchas curvinessor wrinkles
or eyes) can playa rich role in engagingchildrents and adultst knowledge of
different object kinds and their potential for shapetransformation. This information
may concern the objecttsshapeitself (i.e.t its contours) or it may concern
other properties that signal certain categories(e.g.t eyes). Although 3-year-olds
do not have mature biological theoriesof conceptssuch as ' animaltt ' mammaltt
or ' primate' (Johnsonet al. 1992)t perceptualinformation can engageknowledge
of different object kindst allowing young children to make predictions about
what an object will look like over spaceand time. Thesepredictionsserveas an
important foundation for the extensionof object names.
3.3 Summary : Object shape and object name
The foregoing evidencesuggeststhat shape - properly defined - is critical

in young children' s extensions of novel object names. Sensitivity to ' same
'
shape is clearly complex, with the range of possible shape transformations
varying as a function of properties such as malleability and animacy; these
properties can be suggested by perceptual information . However, other
properties such as size, texture, or material do not appear to play the same
role in extension of object names. What underlies the critical role of shapein
object naming?
One factor is that shape appears to be a privileged dimension of object

representation in the human spatial-cognitive system: Objects are recognized
largely on the basis of their shape (see, e.g. Biederman 1987) . Shape makes
sense as a privileged dimension, because of the spatial constraints under
which objects (as opposed to substances ) operate. Normally , under internal
or external motion , objects remain rigid (locally , in the case of jointed or
semi-malleable objects; globally in the case of non-jointed objects). Infants
are sensitive to the intermodal consequencesof rigid vs. non-rigid motions
'
(Gibson and Walker 1984) and sensitivity to rigidity appearsto guide infants
8
perception of object unity (Spelke 1990).
One important consequenceof rigidity is that an object' s shape remains
constant over motion through space: Objects typically do not deform randomly
as they move. In contrast, substancesdo not obey such a constraint ;
to the extent that they are arranged into a shape when static, this shape
changes radically over motion through space, both locally and globally .
Indeed, the special status of shape does not generalizeto substances: When
we observe paint or sand, shape is not salient at all ; rather, it is the ' stuff '
that is most immediately apprehended.9 The distinction between objects and
substancesexists quite early in development, certainly prior to productive
control of count/ mass syntax (Sola et al. 1991; seeCarey, this volume); and
this no doubt servesas one important constraint on word learning.
But how does such a shape-based object recognition system become linked
to object naming - and to a shape bias - in the child ? One possibility is that
children assume(natively) that object namesare linked to object kinds; when
' '
they are told This is an X , children may assumethat the name of that thing
refers to the kind of object it is (seealso Markman , this volume ; Carey, this
volume) . Given the fact that object kinds in the world often are differ~ntiated
' '
by object shape, the child will often hear This is an X referring to some kind
that is highly correlated with the shape of the object they are observing. In
such event, a bias to represent objects in terms of their shapeswill lead the
8 To be '
specific, Spelke ( 1990) proposes that infants object perception is guided by four
principles: cohesion, boundedness, rigidity , and no action at a distance. Together, theseprinciples
specify which surfacesbelong to the same object and which belong to separateobjects. Spelke
further proposes that theseprinciples of object perception are deeply related to basic constraints
on the motions of physical bodies: we perceiveobjects according to certain perceptual principles
such as rigidity becausebodies move as they do , i.e. they do not deform as they move.
9 We obviously can construe what we seein terms of shape, but then we would describewhat we
' '
see as a ' splotch of paint or a ' pile of sand , drawing attention to the individuated entity .
' ' or ' ' seeP. Bloom this volume for discussion of related issues.
splotch pile ( , , )
B. Landau I Where's what and what's where 277
child to link two pairs of relationships: object name and object kind on the
one hand, object name and object shape on the other hand. Such a linking
could occur on just one or two exposures(in effect, a kind of ' triggering' in
Fodor ' s, 1981, sense), although the evidencereviewedabove does suggestthat
the shape bias becomes sharper over time. In any case, once this link is
established, children hearing an object' s name would generalizethat name on
the basis of object shape.
The reliance on object shape in extending object names does not entail
that shape is definitional for object kind , nor that it exhausts the possible
cues to kind . Obviously , objects sharing the same shape are sometimes
members of different kinds (e.g. whales and fish), which means that
sometimes a shape bias will lead to incorrect extension of an object name.
However , it is significant that in these cases, children ' s errors may be longlived
and require specific tutoring before they are corrected. Shape may
"
remain at the top of a preference hierarchy even for adults , although
additional computational resources and brute - force knowledge of the
world will allow adults to use other sources of information more easily
than young children , thus leading to more complex modulations of any
shape bias.
The strong reliance on object shape in object naming points to an intricate
' '
system of representation which is specializedfor the whats : object recognition
, object naming. This specialization does not appear to be engagedin the
systemunderlying the languageof places.
4. How named places are represented
Like names for objects, names for places emerge quite early in language
learning: Among the earliest words acquired by children learning English are
up and down, in and out. By the age of two and a half , children have a
respectablestock of spatial prepositions and by age four , they have learned
even some of the most complex English prepositions, such as in front of and
behind (Johnston and Slobin 1978, Tanz 1980). The early acquisition of
spatial terms equivalent to English prepositions has been documented among
children learning languages other than English (Gentner 1982, Bowerman
1991, Johnston and Slobin 1978, Choi and Bowerman 1991), as well as
among children whose learning experienceis clearly different from normal -
those born deaf (Supalla 1988, Feldman et al. 1978) or blind ( Landau and
Gleitman 1985, Mulford 1985) .
' '
Given that spatial locational terms are acquired early and with little
difficulty , the question arises how learners come to know just what spatial
properties of the world are relevant to these terms. Having just seen that
object shape is a privileged property for learning object names, one might
supposethat learnersshow a shapebias even when learning namesfor places.
For example, lerners might assume that something can be in only those
objects that are shapedlike a box or bottle. Yet cross-linguistic study of place
expressionsrevealsthat locationallanguage does not , in general, preservethe
details of object shape. What , then, is the structure of spatiallocational terms
that renders them so easy to learn? And how precisely do young learners
acquire this structure?
4.1. The structure of place expressions
In English, the standard expression for place is the prepositional phrase

( ) . The central element in the place expressionis the spatial preposition -
PP
words like on, in, off, and around. Sincean object' s location is often defined in
terms of other objects, the spatial preposition usually is joined by at least
'
two NP arguments, one representing the object being located (the ' figure
according to Talmy 1983) and the other representingthe referenceobject (the
' ' ' '
ground ) . For example, in the sentence The cat is on the mat , the preposition
Qn is a place-function that defines a region (the surface) of the reference
object (the mat) where the figure object (the cat) is located.
Each preposition has a characteristic geometry that specifiesthe relevant
'
region of the referenceobject (e.g. within the object s boundaries for in ; in
'
contact with its surface for on) . The preposition s geometry also specifiesthe
kinds of geometric entities that can play the role of figure and reference
object (Talmy 1983, Jackendoff 1983, Miller and Johnson-Laird 1976, Hers-
kovits 1986) . For example, the geometry of in roughly specifiesa region of
' containment' . This
region then imposes selection restrictions on the arguments
of the preposition : In order to qualify as an appropriate reference
'
object for the term in, an object must be potentially construable as container-
'
like , e.g. in a bowl , in a carton , or even in a tree, where the tree is an
*
enclosing volume; but not in a point (since a point , by definition , cannot
contain anything) . There are no geometric restrictions at all on the figure
object for this term - that is, any object of any geometric classcan be located
in a suitable ' container' .
Note that the ' suit ability ' of a reference object is almost completely
dependenton coercion by the preposition: Things that are not really containers
B. Landau 's whatandwhat's where
I Where 279
can easily be suitable arguments for in. This fact has led many to emphasize
that spatial language draws on ' schematic' representations - that what
matters is one' s mental representation of an object, and not necessarilyits
physical properties (Talmy 1983, Herskovits 1986).
Given the geometric restrictions on prepositions, violations (usually, grossly
unsuitable arguments) result in anomaly. For example, since in requires an
enclosingareaor volume, a sentencesuchas ( la ) is permissiblewhile ( 1b) is not.
( I a) The fly is in the circle.

( I b) *The fly is in the point.
As a more complicated case, the English words across, along, and around
seem to require that the figure object be construable as having a principal
linear axis . For example ,
( 2a) The snake lay across (along) the road .
is fine , because the snake has a clear principal axis which can either intersect
( for across) or lie parallel to (for along) the road . However ,
(2b) * The ball lay acrossthe road.
is anomalous, except on the reading that the ball lies on some path leading
from the observer ' s viewpoint to some point on the other side of the road .
(2c) ?The ba111ay

alongthe road.
similarly is somewhat odd, although it can be repaired easily by substituting

'
alongsideoj, an expressionthat picks out a small section of the road s edgeas
the referenceobject. Now the ball can be construed as having an axis that lies
parallel to this section.
Cross-linguistic studies of spatial meanings have revealed universals in the
geometries underlying regions, figure and reference objects (Talmy 1983,
Jackendoffand Landau 1991, Landau and Jackendoff 1993) . Most important
for the present discussion are the geometries of the figure and reference
object.
Unlike the representationsunderlying object names, the figure and reference
objects tend to be represented in quite sparse geometric terms. Across
languages , they typically are representedas points, areas, surfaces, or volumes,
' '
at most preserving quite restricted aspectsof object shape such as the three
orthogonal sets of axescorresponding to up/ down, front / back, and right/ left
(Talmy 1983, Landau and Jackendoff 1993) . Objects are not representedby
precise metric descriptions of shape, even though shape is critical to the
representation of objects as category members (but see section 4.4 for some
possible exceptions) .
For example, as we noted above, the preposition in must be used with a
' '
referenceobject that can be potentially construed as a container , e.g. in a
bowl , in a carton, or even in a tree, where the tree is an enclosing volume.
Although what is selectedby the preposition is a geometric volumecommon
to all three acceptable objects, there clearly are enormous shape differences
among bowls, cartons, and trees which are critical in assigning these objects
to different named categories. Similarly, on selectsfor a referenceobject that
can be thought of as a surface, e.g. on my nose, on the field, on the earth, but
not . on the hole. Again , each of thesecan function as a surface, though their
individual shapeparametersdiffer greatly.
Other than volume and surface, the main elements of shape that are
'
preservedconcern the object s three setsof axes. Some terms require that the
reference object be construed as having at least one directed axis, either
vertical or horizontal (up, down, above, below) . Others call for the reference
object to be construed as having two orthogonal axes in the horizontal plane
(in front of, behind, beside). Both of these sets of terms leave the geometry of
the figure object completely unspecified, while the referenceobject can vary
indefinitely in shape as long as its axes are preserved. Terms like acrossand
along are among the most geometrically complex prepositions in English, as
they require a linear axis for both figure and referenceobjects.
Drawing on thesegeometries, only a relatively small set of region types are
expressed. At the most general level, all prepositions appear to describe
regions that preservenon-metric properties; for example, there is no spatial
preposition that describesregions extendingjust 48 degreesto the right of an
"
object or 2 around its border. Rather, prepositions representproperties such
as containment (in, with the referenceobject a volume), support or attachment
(on, with the reference object a surface), intersection (across, with
reference object an axis), co-linearity (along, the reference object again an
axis), and relative proximity (near, in front of, the reference object either a
point or a set of axes) .
Landau and Jackendoff ( 1993) suggest that these properties may factor
into several levels of direction and distance. The direction component relies
on analysis of the reference object into the three sets of orthogonal axes
describedabove (up/ down, front / behind, right/ left ) . The distance component
chunks continuous space into a small set of discrete categories which vary
somewhat from language to language. In English there are four such levels:
(a) internal to the reference object (e.g. in, inside), (b) in contact with the
object (e.g., on), (c) proximal to it (e.g. near, in front oj) , (d) distal from it
(e.g. far and beyond) .
Thus, the geometric system for representingfigure and referenceobjects is
rather tight and rather ' sparse'. What do these restrictive geometric descriptions
portend for the languagelearner? On the one hand, strict limitations in
the range of object geometriesmight be a positive force in learning: If the
representations are limited , there is less to learn. On the other hand, the
object geometriesthat are relevant to prepositional meanings might create a
serious problem for the learner, for these geometries are qualitatively different
from those used when naming objects. Although detailed object shapeis
relevant when learning an object' s name, most or all of an object' s shape is
irrelevant when learning the meaning of a spatial preposition.
4.2. Lack % bject shape in spatial term learning
Given the salience of object shape in object naming, one might suppose
that children would require considerable time to learn to ignore object shape
in the context of prepositions. For example, children might find it easiestto
learn terms drawing on richer shape representations (like across or along)
than sparser ones. Or , children' s earliest use of terms with sparse shape
descriptions might occur only with referenceobjects of a certain shape: The
word in might be used only with objects that are canonical ' containers' - fully
closing, opaque-sided objects such as boxes and drawers.
To my knowledge, there are no reports describing such patterns among
young children learning spatial prepositions. What evidence does exist on
early usage suggeststhe opposite. For example, experimental studies on the
cross-linguistic order of acquisition of spatial prepositions suggestthat terms
requiring objects with very little geometric restriction (e.g. near, on) are
acquired before those requiring objects with more complex restrictions (e.g. in
front of, across, seeJohnston and Slobin 1978) .
Similarly, evidence from spontaneous speechsuggeststhat children represent
objects schematically- that is, preserving little shapeinformation - when
using them as the arguments of prepositions. Landau et al. ( 1990) analyzed
'
young children s spontaneoususes of prepositional phrases headed by in or
on, asking what kinds of objects served as the reference objects for these
' '
prepositions. The children ranged from 21 to 40 months with mean length of

utterance (in morphemes) ranging from 1.0-2.8 (younger group) or 3.0- 5.5
(older group) .
We found that not even the youngest children confined their production to
' '
reference objects considered canonical containers (for in) or horizontal
surfaces providing gravitational support (for on) . For PPs headed by in,
children in the younger group produced referenceobjeCtsthat were enclosures
of sometype ; but theseincluded ones that were solid-sided and fully closeable
(e.g., house, closet, plane, bottle) , partial volumes open on at least one side
-
(e.g., cup, basket), bounded volumes with non solid sides(e.g. crib, cage), and
partially bounded volumes open on two or more sides (e.g. chair, stroller) .
Older children also used referenceobjects conceivedas solid objects affording
embedding (e.g. a tick in the ear), homogeneoussubstancesconceived as a
mass(e.g. in . the woods, rain, hair), and apertures (e.g., window, door) .
The same generality held for referenceobjects used with on. The children
used referenceobjects that included 2-dimensional horizontal planar surfaces
-
(e.g. paper, fl ()or), horizontal surfacesthat were parts of 3 dimensional objects
(e.g. train , bike, chair), and outer surfacesof objects that were not necessarily
horizontal (e.g. baby, dolly, fingers, face) . All of thesecould furnish a basefor
support, but not only gravitational support.
Such patterns of generalization suggestthat young children learning their
.
first prepositions can represent many objects properly as affording either
' containment' in a
( highly abstract sense) or support/ attachment.
Converging evidence from cross-linguistic studies shows that young children
learning other languagesalso can represent object classesthat abstract away
from exact shape as in English; but they can also schematizeobjects along
dimensionsthat are somewhat different from those relevant to English spatial
prepositions. Bowerman and Choi (reported in Bowerman 1991) have noted
that while English has separateterms for putting objects in, on, or together,
Korean collapses these together under the verb kkita , and opposes them to
relationships English classifies as taking out, off, or apart, collapsing these
under the verb ppayta. While these verbs collapse distinctions that English
'
makes, they also cross-cut the English spatial terms with a dimension of tight
'
fit / loose fit . For example, while English distinguishes putting a ring onfinger
from putting a button in pocket from putting beadstogether, Korean collapses
them together as joining relations of tight fit . Other verbs are used for
relationships of loose fit , such as cup on table, apple in bowl, or tables
together. Bowerman and Choi have reported striking evidence that children
learning Korean appear to observe this distinction in their earliest speech,
suggestingthat they can represent objects in tenDs of certain force dynamic

notions (i.e., degree of fit ) as well as object geometries such as volume or
supporting surface.
'
Finally , recall Landau and Steckers ( 1990) findings (seesection 2) . Three-
year-olds who were shown an object being placed on the top right -hand
corner of a box and told ' This is acorp my box' generalizedthe tenD acorp to
objects of very different shapesas long as they occupied a location on the
' '
upper surface of the box. In contrast, children who were told This is a corp
generalizedto objects of the sameshape, regardlessof position . The results of
the preposition condition concur with the findings from spontaneousspeech
in showing that young children ignore detailed object shapewhen acquiring a
new preposition.
As a whole, these results suggest that there may not be much learning
required by the child in order to ignore the full shape specification of an
object. Children might be able to representobjects schematically (in tenDS of
certain limited geometric properties) but also more fully (in tenDS of a
complete geometric description of shape, for the purposes of object naming) .
Critically , however, the schematic representations are engaged only when
learning place terms.
4.3. Axesin spatialtermlearning
If children ignore object shape when learning place tenDs, when and how
do they come to representan object in tenDs of its axes, as would be critical
for learning tenDs such as up, down, top, bottom, in front of, behind, and
across? Much of the literature on acquisition order for spatial prepositions
(and comparable tenDs across languages) suggeststhat the axial system is
acquired rather late. For example, Johnston and globin ( 1985) reported that
terms such as in front of and behind are mastered substantially later than
terms such as in or on. However, the conditions for application of in front of
and behindare rather complex, involving more than an axial representationof
the referenceobject. For example, one must understand the particular pattern
of deictic usageof one' s language- for instance, which portion of the object' s
axis is mapped onto each tenD (see, e.g. H . Clark 1973, Herskovits 1986) .
If we confine ourselves to the question of when children are able to
representobjects in tenDS of their axes - regardlessof whether the particular
mapping for individual spatial tenDS is correct - we find that children from
age 2 on can represent the axial system. One piece of evidence comes from
Tanz ( 1980), who asked children from 2Y2 to 5 years of age to place objects
' '
' in front of ' ' in back of ' and ' at the side of ' reference
, objects. Tanz found a
great many errors through age 4. However , despite the errors, 96% of the
' '
placementswere made at the cardinal directions: in line with the two axes
that divide the referenceobject, front from back and side from side.
Additional evidencecomes from some current work in our laboratory on
'
the nature of young children s regions mapped to in front of In three studies,
we have shown 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults an array with a single
'
reference object, and have asked them to judge when a small object is in
front of ' it . In one study, the reference object is V -shaped - essentially, a
' '
largish version of the dax we have used in our object naming studies. This
object has a clear vertical axis, and when it is placed horizontally on a table,
it has a clear principal axis that runs from front to back, at least for adults. In
another study, the referenceobject is round , lacking clear axes. In the third
study, the referenceobject is still round , but now is adorned with plastic eyes
'
and a small tail , rendering clear the location of this object s principal axis.
' '
Adults , not surprisingly, tend to judge one object in front of the reference
object when it falls within a quadrant surrounding the half-axis closest to the
viewer. Five-year-olds do the same. Three-year-olds - who might be least
'
likely to understand an object s axial system - perform randomly when
judging what is in front of the round unmarked object. However, they follow
the samepattern as older children and adults when judging what is in front of
either the V -shapedobject or the round object with eyesand tail . When they
'
perform differently , they follow the reference object s projected axis more
closely than either five-year-olds or adults. For example, some of them judge
that only objects falling exactly on the relevant half axis are in front of the
referenceobject.
A last piece of evidencefor early representation of object axescomes from
an experiment by Landau ( 1991) on the understanding of spatial part terms
(top, bottom, front , back, and side) in 3- to 4- year-olds, one of whom was
congenitally blind . Children were shown novel objects, and were specifically
told that one region (indicated by the experimenter) was either the top ,
bottom , front , back, or side of the object. Children now had to identify the
regions corresponding to the remaining four terms. Correct responding would
have required the children to identify the three major axes, and anchor them
with the single term provided by the experimenter.
In order to determine whether the terms corresponded to only the canoni-
cal position of an object, children were shown regions in each of two
conditions : In the Canonical condition , the region was designated as if the
object was upright - for example, top was the uppermost region, bottom the
lowermost. In the non-canonical condition , the regions were designatedas if

the object was not upright - for example, now top was the lowermost region
or the region corresponding to the canonical side.
Children performedquite well on this task, identifying the querled regionswell
above chance. The blind child performed similarly to the sighted children who
viewed the objects. The children performed above chancein both the canonical
and non-canonicalconditions, indicating that they could parsethe object into its
three orthogonal axes, and that the regionscorrespondingto eachhalf-axis were
definedin an object-centeredfashion. That is, the top was at the oppositeend of
the bottom, regardlessof the overall orientation of the object.
In sum, children from about age 2 appear to be capable of representingan
object in terms of its axes. This representation- sparseas it is - may contain the
richestgeometricpropertiesnecessaryfor learning placeterms. Although the axes
are not physically' present, young children possessobject representationsthat
contain axes; and theseaxescan be engagedduring the learning of place terms.
4.4. Some challenges : How much shape, and when?
Although the foregoing description of spatial terms relies largely on

analysis of English spatial terms, a number of investigators have concluded
that the geometric properties on which I have focussed also capture place
terms in other languages(Talmy 1983, Landau and Jackendoff 1993). There
is, however, some disagreementon this issue, and this paper would not be
complete without mentioning some dissenting views that raise interesting
empirical questions.
A number of investigators have suggestedthat there exist languageswhose
place terms incorporate much richer object shape than I have described.
Specifically, Bowerman ( 1991), Levinson ( 1992) and Brown ( 1993) argue that
Tzeltal (and related Mayan languages) exhibit a large class of predicates
(several hundred) that include shape as a crucial feature. According to
Brown, Tzeltal has but one preposition (roughly meaning ' at' ) . Most detail of
the relationship between figure and reference object is expressed by two
systems. One draws on body-part terms using a possessiveconstruction: The
figure object is located with respect to a named part of the referenceobject,
for example, ' The frying pan is at the waterpot' s butt ' , where the ' butt ' is the
bottom of the waterpot (independent of its orientation ) This system also is
used in English: We can say, for example, ' Mary was at the / oot of the table'
or ' The ball was at the bottom of the tree' . Although the number of usable
body parts is larger in Tzeltal than in English, neither caseseemsto genuinely
' '
'
depend on analysis of the object s shape: The butt of the waterpot is where it
'
is in virtue of the object s axial system, not its rotund shape.
The second system uses locational predicates that appear to describe the
location of objects with particular shapes. For example, according to Brown,
' '
pachal describesa wide-mouthed container canonically sitting , waxal describes
' '
a tall oblong-shapedobject canonically standing , lechel describesa wide flat
object lying flat , pakal describesa blob-type object with a clear flat surface
' '
lying face-down . Again , English does share some of these restrictions in its
verb system: Stand usually is restricted to objects in their vertical orientation ,
lie to objects in their horizontal orientation , and numerous denominal verbs
(to bottle, to house, to jar ) incorporate specific object categories.
Is the Tzeltal system an exception to the sparserepresentation of shape in
place naming? It is difficult to tell , since the items in question are verbs,
lexical items that can incorporate all kinds of information . But even Tzeltal
locational verbs do not appear to incorporate object-shapedistinctions as fine
as the vocabulary of object nouns in that language or any other. In fact, the
Tzeltal shape distinctions seem to fit with the kinds of distinctions made by
classifier systems in other languages (Allan 1973.) Shape classifiers group
' ' ' ' ' - - '
objects in terms of such parametersas lump , flat , and long thin thing . But
classifiersdo not group objects in terms of specific basic-level (shape-based)
object categories- this is what object namesare for . It remains an interesting
empirical question whether the children learning Tzeltal readily incorporate
the so-called richer elementsof shape in their place expressions.
5. What and Where: Spatial languageand spatial cognition
Landau and Jackendoff ( 1993; Jackendoffand Landau 1991) have proposed

two complementary hypothesesfor the differences in the object geometries
underlying the language of object vs. place. One hypothesis focusses on
general design features of language, highlighting the fact that vocabulary
must filter out detail in some fashion. The second hypothesis focusseson the
remaining question of why object representationsare filtered so differently in
the two domains of object and place.
5.1. The Design of LanguageHypothesis: Vocabularymustfilter out detail
By design, languagesmust filter out a great deal of detail in the translation

from perception to word . This is just a consequenceof mapping from the
'
B. Landau I Where's what and what s where 287
infinite detail in the observable world to the finite vocabulary. Of course,

critical in this filtering is removing just the right kind of detail - and this
detail differs for named object vs. located objects.
In the case of objects, count nouns group together sets of objects that
cohere in a number of respects. Samenessin shape (properly defined) seems
to be an important dimension for such categories, while color or texture is
not. However, even members of a category named by a basic level noun,
though similar in shape, are not identical in shape: Members of the category
dog include things as diverse as Dalmatians and Pekinese, Great Danes and
Chihuahuas.1OMany of these distinctions are captured at the subordinate
level ( Waxman , this volume), but even there, category namescover a multitude
of variation .
Thus, language filters out a good deal of the perceptual variability among
objects, as it must if words are to repres(;nt categories. Although we can
perceiveand remember the differencesamong membersof a named category,
the design of language does not allow representation in its basic vocabulary
for all these differences. Our perceptual rep.resentations of objects seem to
preservea good deal more detail than languageencodes. A picture is worth a
thousand words.
This filtering is even more dramatic in the caseof prepositions. Recall that
cross-linguistic studies have shown that a very small number of geometric
properties are preserved in the representation of figure and ground objects
(Talmy 1983). In English, the geometriesboil down to treating the figure as a
' blob' or ' line' and the reference ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
object as a point , volume , surface , line
or set of axes (as well as a few others, see Landau and Jackendoff 1993) . As
demonstrated earlier, this sparse treatment of objects in the spatial domain
does not causedifficulties for young children learning spatial prepositions or
spatial verbs (see Bowerman 1991) . The filtering of object properties in the
place domain is more extreme than it is in the object domain.
Could the extreme filtering for prepositions be due to the fact that
prepositions are closedclass(function words) ? That is, all closed classitems -
by virtue of their small number - must categorize perceptual and conceptual
spaceto a great degree. Perhaps the need for stretching a very small number
of words to cover a large number of potential distinctions inevitably gives rise
to such drastic filtering .
10 We find it
interesting that children can be resistant to labelling the more unusual looking of
thesewith the word dog. The daughter of a friend insisted for a long time that a Pekinesewas a
cal, presumably in virtue of its flat face.
' '
B. Landau / Wheres what and what s where
This is unlikely to be the whole story. The fundamental question is not why
spatial prepositions filter out detail at all , for all linguistic categoriesfilter as
they must, given the fact that their memberships are finite. Rather, the
fundamental question is why spatial prepositionsfilter as they do, preserving
only certain shape-based qualities. If the requirement were simply to filter -
without further specification - spatial prepositions could representobjects by
gross variation in size, brightness, texture, or any of the other infinite possible
properties.
A telling comparison involves the noun classifiersfound in many languages
such as Japanese, Chinese, and American Sign Language. Noun classifiersare
' '
morphemesthat classify or describethe noun they accompany, and in many
languagesthey are obligatory in certain contexts (such as counting) . They are
closed class, are relatively few in number, and expressjust a few distinctions
among objects. Universally, these distinctions include properties such as
' '
shapeand size of objects (Allan 1973), for example, long and straight thing ,
' small round ' ' flat ' . These
thing , thing properties appear quite similar to the
kinds of geometric properties described in conjunction with figure and
referenceobject and might seemto suggestthat it is the closed class nature of
the prepositions - and not their pertinence to location - that forces them to
draw on the properties they do.
However, there are a number of differencesbetweenthe properties engaged
by noun classifiers vs. spatial prepositions. First , classifiers do not describe
only object geometries. They also often mark animacy, texture or substance,
physical integrity (e.g., broken), arrangement (e.g. pleats, loops), and other
properties that do not seem to appear in expressionsof pure location (see
Allan 1973) . Second, they can be much more specific than preposition
geometries, for example, marking certain function -related categories (e.g. in
Mandarin Chinese, ' handled things' ; in ASL , ' tools' ), basic level or subordinate
' ' ' '
categories(e.g. in Mandarin , book , rifle ), and even unique"honorific object
' '
categoriessuch as horse (Erbaugh 1986). This suggeststhat there is actually
a fair amount of latitude in how closed classelementscan abstract away from
object representations. The particular geometric object properties preservedin
the spatial preposition meaningsdo not follow necessarily(or solely) from the
'
prepositions status as closed class elements.
So, although languagesmust filter out detail from spatial and perceptual
representations, such filtering cannot by itself account for why objects being
named are representedin terms of their detailed shapeswhile objects playing
the role of figure or referenceobject are representedin terms of geometries
such as point , blob , volume, or axes.
5.2. The Designof Spatial Representations : Languages

Hypothesis draw on
spatial representations of object and place
The great differences in how objects are representedfor the purposes of

naming vs. location might reflect differences in the non-linguistic spatial
representationsof object and place. If so, then these representationsmight
impose a fundamental constraint on the words representingobject and place,
and might also impose a critical constraint on the learner who must sort out
the correct geometric descriptions for the two domains.
A variety of non-linguistic evidencesuggeststhat there are indeed interesting
constraints on the spatial representationsof objects in the two domains of
object and place. Studies of object recognition emphasizethe important role
played by object shape(e.g. Biederman 1987) and correctly disregard location
as a defining element in recognizing an object (except for con~ext effects,
which suggestbetter retrieval in familiar contexts) . Studies of spatial cognition
have traditionally emphasizedthe important role played by elementsthat
' stand for '
objects in the environment, and the characteristics of the regions
within which these objects are located. For example, in his classic study of
'
people s understanding of spatial layouts in three major U .S. cities, Kevin
' '
Lynch ( 1960) proposesthat our representationsof layout contain nodes and
' landmarks' ' '
(representing critical objects such as buildings), and paths ,
' ' and ' '
edges districts (representing the spatial regions and links among
. '
objects) Peoples representation of location does not include detail on the
particular objects being related; rather, those objects are represented by
abstract elementswhich are often shape-less, or at best, a line or intersection
(seeLandau and Jackendoff, 1993, for discussionand related literature).
The idea that there are separatesystemsfor representingobjects and places
has receivedsupport from other literatures as well. Specifically, neurological
and psychological evidence converges on the existence of two qualitatively
different kinds of spatial representation- the 'what' system, devotedprimarily to
' '
objects and their identification and the where system devoted to locating
objects in space relative to each other and the observer (Ungerleider and
Mishkin 1982; Farah 1988, for a review) . These systemsrepresentthe spatial
world in different ways, preserving distinct properties for objects vs. places.
Evidence for the two systems has been found in studies of lesioning in
animals as well as brain damage in humans. The animal evidence shows
selectivedeficit of object identification following damage to one area of the
brain together with selectivedeficit of object localization following damageto
a different area. As an example, work reviewed by Ungerleider and Mishkin
shows that damage to the inferior temporal cortex often impairs an animal' s
ability to identify an object (often by its shape) in order to obtain food. In
contrast, damage to the posterior parietal cortex appears to impair the
animal' s ability to identify the location an object occupies, again, in order to
obtain food. In the former case, object recognition is impaired while object
location is spared; in the latter case, the ability to locate an object is impaired
while object recognition is spared.
This general dissociation of ' what ' and ' where' has also received support
from human psychophysical studies and from studies of brain damage in
humans. The psychophysical studies indicate that two separate streams of
visual processing exist from lower visual levels up to higher levels. These
streams appear to segregatethose properties relevant to object identification
(primarily shapeand color ) from those relevant to locating objects (primarily
motion , depth, and location ; see Living stone and Hubel 1989) . The human
clinical evidencealso showsdissociationof object and place through individual
casesin which brain damagecan selectivelyimpair either object recognitionwhile
sparing object localization or the converse(Farah et al. 1988) .
What do these findings imply for our studies of spatial language? We
conjecture that the two kinds of object representation we have uncovered in
studies of language learning may be rooted in the larger design of the spatial
representational system. The reason that detailed shape matters for object
naming is that the count nouns naming objects draw on representationsin the
' what'
system. And the reason that sparse shape - only point , line, volume,
-
etc. matter for object location is that spatial prepositions draw on representations
in the ' where' system, a systemthat does not representobject shapein
detail. We speculatethat the relatively simple shapespecificationsobservedin
the preposition system reveal the extent of detail possible in object descriptions
within the ' where' system. That is, the degreeof filtering seenfor objects
when they play the role of figure or ground is rooted in the fact that the
spatiallocational systemsimply does not , by itself, representobject shapesin
detailed fashion.
This hypothesis is compatible with the view put forth by Talmy ( 1983) in
his explanation of why prepositions - and other closed class elements- have
the sparse structure that they do. Talmy proposes that the structure of the
closed class reflects much of the fundamental structure of cognition ; for
example, that the cognitive system itself represents location in relatively
qualitative (non-metric) terms. The present proposal further points to a
reason why certain members of the closed class - spatial prepositions -
abstract away from shape as they do. We propose that , in part , they do
reflectthe organizationof spatialcognition, and we haveprovidedconverging

evidencefrom non-linguisticstudiesthat this characterizationof the spatial
locational systemis correct. It is an empirical question whether similar
correspondences canbe found within otherclosedclasssets- suchasmarkers
of time, aspect
, number, etc.
This view suggestsa reasonfor the fact that children find it easy to
'
preserveshapewhen learning an objects name, but preserveshapeonly
schematically whenlearninga term for an object's place. Theydo so because
objectand placeare represented separatelyand distinctly, engagingdifferent
schematizations of the world.
6. Conclusions : Observation , object , and word in first language learning
This lengthy foray into the representation and acquisition of object and
place terms seemsto have taken us far from the question set out in the
beginning: Given the potentially massiveproblems of indeterminacy derived
from learning words ' from observation' , how do children manage to map
many words onto meanings in a relatively short period of time? The work
summarized in this paper suggests that the spatial-cognitive system may
impose significant limitations on the kinds of hypotheseschildren will entertain
about the meaning of a new word for an object vs. a place.
The limitations that I have emphasizedare domain -specific constraints on
the kinds of geometric representations that can be engaged. When learning
a novel word representing an object, learners will view shape as important ,
but not location . When learning a novel word representing an object' s place,
learners will view location as important , and critically , they will selectively
view only certain geometric object properties as r~levant. Some of these
limitations will be set in place during the course of early language learning -
for children learning Korean must focus on somewhat different properties
than children learning English. However, on a more general level, the
fundamental limitations may precede language learning and serve as a
critical boost into the system. Such early predispositions are probably
universal, perhaps reflecting the fact that languagesare designed to be set in
correspondencewith our spatial representations. Presumably, rich specifications
of object shape will be critical in object naming for children learning
all languages. Similarly , schematic specifications of object shape will be
critical in learning locational expressions, regardless of the language to be
learned.
' '
At the most general level, this view emphasizesthe role of observational

context , for what the child observes under different linguistic conditions
does seemto guide his inferences about the meaning of a new word . But in
detail , the evidenceand arguments presented in this paper should serve as a
sobering reminder that to note the importance of observational context is
not to solve the problems of exactly how this context is engaged during
language learning . Our challenge in solving that problem is to discover in
detail how learners do represent the world for the purposes of language
learning . The study of spatial language appears to provide fertile ground for
meeting these challenges.
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Lingua92 ( 1994 297
Possible names:
The role of syntax - semantics mappings
in the acquisition of nominals *
Paul Bloom
Departmentof Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
Many scholars have posited constraints on how children construe the meaningsof new words.
These include the restriction that new words refer to kinds of whole objects ( Markman and
Hutchinson 1984), that words describing solid objects refer to individuated objects while words
describing non-solid substancesrefer to portions of substance(Sola et al. 1991), and that count
nouns that name objects are generalizedon the basis of shape (Landau et aI. 1988). There are
theoretical and empirical problems with theseproposals, however. Most importantly , they fail to
explain the fact that children rapidly acquire words that violate these constraints, such as
pronouns and proper names, names. for substances , and names for non-material entities. The
theory defended here is that children and adults possessmappings from grammatical categories
' ' ' ' ' '
( count noun , mass noun , and noun phrase ) to abstract semantic categories; thesemappings
serveto CQnstraininferencesabout word meaning. Evidencefrom developmental psychology and
linguistic theory is presentedthat suggeststhat even very young children possesssuch mappings
and use them in the course of lexical development. Further issues- such as the possibility of
developmental change, the precise nature of these semantic categories, and how children learn
words prior to the acquisition of syntax - are also discussed. It is concluded that although these
'
syntax-semanticsmappings are not by themselvessufficient to explain children s successat word
learning, they playa crucial role in lexical .
development As such a
, only theory that posits a deep
relationship betweensyntax and semanticscan explain the acquisition and representationof word
meanings.
'
Language ... must have its perfectly exclusivepigeon-holes
and will tolerate no flying vagrants. Any concept that asks
for expressionmust submit to the classificatory rules of the
game ... It is almost as though at some period in the past
. I amgratefulto FeliceBedford, Susan

Carey, Frank Keil, EllenMarkman, JanetNicol, Mary
Peterson
. NancySola. an anonymousreviewer , andespeciallyKarenWynnfor their veryhelpful
commentson earlierversionsof this paper. This work was supportedby a NIH Biomedical
Research SupportGrant.
0024 / 94/$07.00 @ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

- 3841
SSDI0024- 3841( 93) EO042- 6
298 P. Bloom I Possiblenames
the unconsciousmind of the race had made a hasty inventory

of experience, committed itself to a premature classification
that allowed of no revision, and saddled the inheritors of its
language with a sciencethat they no longer quite believed
in nor had the strength to overthrow. Dogma, rigidly
prescribed by tradition , stiffens into fonnalism. Linguistic
categories make up a system of surviving dogma - dogma
of the unconscious.'
Edward Sapir, Language( 1921: 99- 100)
Introduction
One of the deepestmysteries in the study of languagedevelopment is how

'
children learn' the meanings of words. A child s vocabulary grows at an
extraordinary rate - one estimate is that children acquire about nine new
words a day from the age of 18 months to six years (Carey 1978) - and there
is little understanding of how this processtakes place. This ignorance is due
at least in part to the fact that there is no consensuson what it is for someone
'
to possess' the meaning of a word (for discussion, see Carey 1982, Lakoff
1987, Premack 1990) . In general, no theory of acquisition can be complete
without some understanding of the nature of what must be acquired.
A further difficulty concerns the nature of the learning problem itself.
Word learning is standardly viewed as an inductive processand, as Goodman
( 1983) has stressed, there is an infinity of logically possible generalizations
that one can make on the basis of a finite set of instances. To take a specific
'
example, consider an adult pointing to Fido and saying to a child Look at
'
the dog . Imagine that somehow the child is capable of determining what the
word is intended to describe, i .e., it describes Fido , not the child , or the
finger, or the act of pointing , etc. Imagine further that the child can segment ' '
the utterance into words and can determine that the relevant word is dog ,
'
not ' look ' , ' at' , or ' the . Still , there are countless possible meanings of this
novel word. It could refer to the basic-level kind (dogs), but it could also refer
to a subordinate kind (poodle), or a superordinate kind (animal), or to the
individual (Fido ) . It could refer to the color of the entity being pointed to
(brown), to its shape(oblong), or its size (large) . It could refer to a part of the
dog (tail ) . It could refer to the front half of the dog, to dogs until the year
2000 and then to pigs, to all dogs and all pencils, to all dogs and also to
Richard Nixon . To modify an example from Quine ( 1960), it could even refer
to undetacheddog parts.
P. Bloom / Possiblenames 299
From a logical standpoint, all of theseexamplesare possible, since they are

all consistent with the ostensive act. From a psychological standpoint,
however, some of these possibilities are ludicrous - no child would ever
construe the word ' dog' as referring to just the front half of Fido , or to the
' '
category of dogs and pencils . Any theory of word learning must explain why
some word meanings are more natural than others, and how children
determine which of the set of natural meanings that a word could have
actually corresponds to its meaning in a given language.
More generally, any succesfulinductive procedure requires that hypotheses
be somehow ordered or ranked (Fodor 1975, Goodman 1983) and one
possibility is that there exist constraints that rule out (or bias against) entire
classesof hypotheses. In the domain of languagedevelopment, Markman and
her colleagueshave presentedthe following two constraints, which are argued
to be special to the domain of word learning (e.g., Markman and Hutchinson
1984, seeMarkman 1990for a review) :
Whole Object constraint:

' ... a novel label is
likely to refer to the whole object and not to its parts,
substance, or other properties.' (Markman 1990: 59)
Taxonomic constraint:
' ... labels refer to
objects of the same kind rather than to objects that
are thematically related' ( Markman 1990: 59) . Thematically related
entities include those that fall into ' spatial , causal, temporal , or other
relations ' such as a dog and its bone, a dog and the tree that it is under ,
a dog and the person who is petting it , and so on. Although children are
sensitive to these sorts of relations in non -linguistic tasks (for instance,
they will put a dog and a bone together when asked to sort objects into
different piles), this constraint forces them to attend to taxonomies
' '
(such as the kind dog ) when faced with the task of inferring the
meaning of a new word .
Another proposal, advanced by Sola et ale ( 1991: 182- 183), is that the
following two proceduresapply in the processof word learning :
Procedure1:
Step I : Test to seeif the speakercould be talking about a solid object; if yes,
Step 2: Conclude that the word refers to individual whole objects of the
sametype as the referent.
300 P. Bloom / Possiblenames
Procedure 2 ..
-
Step I : Test to see if the speaker could be talking about a non solid
substance ; if yes,
Step 2: Conclude that the word refers to ,portions of substance of the same
type as the referent.
) posit the following bias in lexical

Finally, Landau et al. ( 1988, 1992
acquisition :
Shapebias;
' ... the biasto of a novelcountnoun
group objectsby shapein thepresence
...' (Landauet al. 1992: 87)
There is by now a large body of evidenceshowing that 2- and 3-year-olds

behavein accordancewith theseposited constraints. When taught a ~ 9rd for
a novel object, children tend to categorize the word as referring to other
whole objects of the same kind ; they will not extend the word to entities
' '
sharing a thematic relation (Markman and Hutchinson 1984, Waxman and
Gelman 1986) and will not initially interpret it as referring to a part of the
object, a property of the object, or the stuff that the object is made of
(Baldwin 1989, Clark 1973, Macnamara 1982, Markman and Wachtel 1988,
Sola et al. 1991, Taylor and Gelman 1988) . In contrast, when taught a word
for a novel non-solid substance, they will tend to generalizethe word on the
basis of the kind of substance(perhaps using texture and color as cues), and
ignore properties such as shape and size (Sola 1987, 1992; Sola et al. 1991) .
Finally , when taught count nouns that describe objects, children will tend to
generalize these nouns on the basis of shape, not color , size, or texture
(Baldwin 1989, Landau et al. 1988) .
Nevertheless, there are reasonsto doubt that these precise constraints are
present in the minds of young children. For one thing , they are false of adult
language- all languageshave words that do not refer to taxonomies, words
that do not refer to whole objects, and count nouns that name kinds of
objects that do not share a common shape. Below it is argued that these
counterexamplesare also present in the language of very young children. A
further concern is that the sole motivation for positing these constraints is
their role in solving the word learning problem. It would be preferable to
derive these constraints from deeper properties of language and cognition ,
instead of having to simply stipulate them.
In this paper, I present a theory of where constraints on word meaning
P. Bloom / Possiblenames
comefrom. It is oftenmaintained thatchildrenpossess mappings between

syntaxandsemantics whichfacilitategrammatical andlexicaldevelopment
(e.g., BloomI990a ,b; I994a,b; Brown1957 , Carey1982 , Gleitman1990 ,
Grimshaw 1981, Katzetal. 1974 , Landau andGleitman 1985, Landau etal.
1988 , 1992
; Macnamara 1982, 1986 ; Macnamara andReyes1990 , Naigles
1990 , Pinker1984 , 1989; Taylor and Gelman 1988, Waxman1990 ). It is
argued herethattheexistence of certainsyntax -semanticsmappings in the
domainof nominals makesit unnecessary to positspecialword-learning
constraintsandthata theorybased on suchmappings allowsfor a better
explanation of how young children learnwords .!
2. Problems with proposed constraints
2.1. Description of adult language
As Markman ( 1990) notes, the whole object constraint is false at least for
the lexicons of older children and adults. There exist words that refer to
' ' ' ' ' '
properties ( happy ), to actions ( hit ), to spatial relations ( under ), to substances
' water' and
( ) so on. In general, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, and
massnouns do not refer to whole objects.
One apparent solution would be to redescribe the constraint as only
applying to count nouns, and thus exclude examplesfrom other grammatical
categories. But the generalization still does not hold. Some count nouns
describewhole objects (' dog' ), but most do not. Within the domain of count
nouns that describe material entities, some refer to collections of objects
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
( forest , bikini , flock ), while others refer to parts of objects ( finger , foot ,
1 Otherconstraintson word
learningthat havebeenproposedincludemutualexclusivity , which
is that wordscannothaveoverlappingextensions (MarkmanandWachtel1988 ), andtheprinciple
of contrast(Clark 1987 ), whichstatesthat thereare no synonymous fonDSin language . As with
theconstraintsdiscussed above,mutualexclusivityis clearlyfalseof adult language(asit excludes
' ' ' '
pairs of words suchas dog and animal) and thereis considerable debateover how well it
.
appliesto the languageof youngchildren(seeAu andGlusman1990 , Gathercole1987 , Merviset
al. 1991 , Nelson1988 ). The principleof contrastmay be correctfor adult languagebut it is not
by itself sufficientto constrain . the child' s inferencesand must work in aa: ord with other
principles . Neitherof theseconstraintscan becapturedin tenDS of the sortsof syntax-semantics
mappingsdiscussed here, but it is possible , as suggested
by both Clark ( 1990) and Gathercole
( 1987), that theseconstraintsmightalsoreduceto deeperpropertiesof language andcognition. In
particular, a prohibition on certainfonDS of lexicaloverlapmay be derivablefrom children's
knowledgeof pragmaticprinciples , e.g., of Griceanmaximsof communication .
' handle' . In fact some nouns refer to

) ( , parts of objects that can neverappear
' ' ' '
as discrete entities, such as surface or coating .) The largest class of
' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
exceptions are count nouns like nap , idea , race , and dream , which do
not refer to material entities at all.
Given that the shape bias is intended to apply only to count nouns that
name objects, words like ' nap' do not violate this bias. But other nouns do ,
' ' '
such as names for collections (' army' , ' family ), superordinates ( animal ,
' ' ' ' ' '
weapon ) and relationship terms ( brother , friend ) . In fact, it is far from
clear that shape is the crucial dimension even for count nouns that refer to
basic-level discretewhole objects, which are those consideredby Landau et al.
( 1988). As Sola et al. ( 1991, 1992) argue, even for young children, shapeis not
' ' . '
criterial in determining the extension of count nouns like dog or skunk ;
something can be thought of as a dog even if it is shaped like a cat (Keil
1989). What Landau et al. have found is that children prefer to generalize
novel nouns referring to discrete material objects on the basis of shape as
opposed to size or texture. But this is a far weaker conclusion than the claim
'
that count nouns, or even count nouns referring to objects, correspond to
'
categorieswhose membershave similar shapes ( Landau et al. 1988: 316) . On
' ' ' '
the contrary , there is only a small number of nouns, such as square , globe ,
' '
and pyramid , where shape is an essentialproperty of how they are used.
The taxonomic constraint is also false for adults. While it is true that words
cannot refer to chains of thematically related categories, there are nominals
that do not refer to taxonomies; these include pronouns and proper names
' ' ' ' ' '
( he , Fred , Canada ), which refer to particular individuals, and do not
generalizeto other entities.
Of all of the constraints proposed above, only those advancedby Sola et al.
( 1991) are largely correct with regard to adult language - but (once again)
' ' ' '
only when we replace word with noun (as they themselvessuggest, p . 203).
It is clearly false that any word used to describea solid object can be extended
to objects of the same type, since the word could be describing a property of
' '
the object (' red' ), the state of the object ( resting ) , and so on, and the same
observation applies to the claim that any word U'sedto describe a non-solid
substancecan be extended to that type of substance. But although these
procedureswork better when their domain is restricted to nouns , there are still
' ' ' '
caseswhere they fail. Somemassnouns, like wood and metal , describesolid
objects but are not extendedto objects of the sametype; they are extendedto
objects composedof the same material. The opposite sort of counterexample
' ' '
concernscount nouns like ' pile and puddle ; they describesubstances , but are
extendedon the basisof configuration, not substancekind. -
2.2. Descriptionof child language
The same counterexamplesfound in adult language also show up in the

spontaneousspeechof young children. As Nelson ( 1988, 1990) has stressed,
although nouns (or nominals) may be the largest single class of words in the
beginning vocabulary of some young children (Gentner 1982), it is false that
all , or even most, of children' s first words are nouns. Children ' s early lexicons
include expressionslike ' more' , ' bye' , ' hit ' , ' want' , ' up' , and ' no' and these
'
clearly refute any claim that children s first words must refer to kinds of
whole objects (seealso Benedict 1979, Gopnik and Choi 1990) .
What about the more specific claim that all of the nomina/s used by young
children refer to kinds of whole objects? This still leavesus with constraints
that are descriptively inadequate, however. One problem concerns words like
' milk ' and ' water'
, which refer to kinds, but to kinds of substances , not
objects. A second problem concerns pronouns and proper names, which do
not refer to kinds. Given thesecounterexamples, one could further revise the
constraint proposal as follows :
Constraint hypothesis:
In the lexicons of young children, count nouns refer to kinds of whole
objects
In some discussionsof the taxonomic and whole object constraints, this is

alluded to as the most descriptively adequateversion of the constraint theory
and Markman ( 1989), although usually defining the constraints as applying
to ~labels' , sometimesdescribesit in this manner, as limited to count nouns.
This revision still has difficulties, however. Even two -year-olds possess
names for collections like ~forest' and ~family ' , despite the fact that these
count nouns violate the whole object constraint (Bloom and Kelemen, under
review; Callanan and Markman 1982). Nelson ( 1990: 335) gives as a further
~
example the many abstract social and cultural conceptsthat are incorporated
into the language and presented in passing to children, who pick them up
'
seemingly without effort and she lists some words found in the speech of
20-month-old children ; theseinclude count nouns such as: ' bath' , ' breakfast' ,
~friend' ' week' and '
, , uncle' . Finally , Nelson et al. ( 1993) analyzed the speech
of 45 20-month-olds and found that , although thesechildren possessedmore
nouns than any other category, only about half of these nouns referred to
basic-level classesof objects; many referred to locations (' beach'), temporal
entities (~day' ), and events (~party ' ) .
The rapid acquisition of such words is clearly problematic for the whole
object constraint and the taxonomic constraint. It also poses a difficulty for
the shape bias. As noted by Sola et al. ( 1991, 1992), it would be surprising
' ' ' '
indeed if children extended words like uncle and clock on the basis of
shape; if they did , they would be unable to use thesewords in any way similar
to adults.
Finally consider the Sola et al. ( 1991) procedures, which state that words
describing objects refer to kinds of individual whole objects and words
describing substancesrefer to portions of substance. Revising their proposal
so that it applies only to nouns, this predicts that children should be unable
'
to acquire solid substancenames(' wood ) and namesfor bounded substances
' ' . But in fact even 2-
( puddle ) year-olds can learn solid substancesnames
(Prasada 1993), and there is evidence from Sola ( 1992) suggestingthat they
can also acquire namesfor bounded entities (seesection 4.2 for discussion) . It
'
is worth noting, however, that these are not children s first guessesas to a
'
word s meaning. For instance, when a word is used to describe a novel
'
bounded entity , children s first interpretation of its meaning is that it refers to
the kind of object, not the stuff that the object is made out of , and this holds
regardlessof the syntax in which the word is presented (Au and Markman
1987, Dickinson 1988, Markman and Wachtel 1988, Sola 1987) . Nevertheless,
'
the fact that words like ' wood are acquired at all militates against the claim
that children possessthe proceduresposited by Sola et al. ( 1991).
None of the counterexamplesdiscussedabove necessarilyrefutes the hypothesis
that these constraints exist. One possibility, discussed in detail by
Markman ( 1989), is that although they are present at the start of lexical
' '
development, the constraints can be abandoned or overridden in the course
of language development (possibly as the result of the application of other
constraints; see footnote 1) . More generally, they can be viewed as default
conditions which only apply in the absenceof certain countervailing circumstances
, and such circumstances may be present at any stage of lexical
development. .
Under this interpretation of what constraints are, however, it is unclear
whether any degree of understanding on the part of young children could
refute theseproposals. For instance, pronouns and proper namesare acquired
very early, often before children have learned any other noun that describes
' ' ' ' ' '
people (such as person , man , and woman ) . As such, constraints such as'
'
Mutual Exclusivity cannot block the child from interpreting words like Fred
' '
and she incorrectly, as namesfor kinds of whole objects. In fact, thesesorts
of errors do not occur (see Macnamara 1982) - but a reasonablereply by a
constraint -theorist is that the special status of what pronouns and proper
names refer to (i .e., people) causes children to override the taxonomic
assumption in such cases. In general, the fact that these constraints are
posited as default conditions makes it important to provide some theory of
what other rules and constraints can override them. Without such a
theory , the constraint proposal runs the risk of begging all of the difficult
questions.
In sum, the theories of Markman , Landau et al., and Sola et al. cannot
account for most of the words that children acquire. But the very same
induction problem that exists for the acquisition of a word such as ' dog' also
exists for words such as ' Fred' , ' water' , and ' forest' , and thus the very same
arguments for the necessityof constraints also apply. The goal of a theory of
lexical development is to account for the acquisition of all words, not just
names for kinds of objects, and this motivates an effort to explain the
acquisition of object names in the context of a more general theory of word
learning.
2.3. Learning issues
Where do constraints on word learning come from ? In this regard, it is

worth echoing Nelson' s ( 1988) complaint that some of the theorists who posit
these constraints are vague as to whether or not they are presumed to be
unlearned. There is a strong argument, however, that the only claim consistent
with the idea of such constraints is that at least some of them are present
prior to the onset of word learning. The motivation for positing constraints in
the first place is to explain how children solve the induction problem and
learn words. From this perspective, it would be contradictory to claim that
(for example) children learn that words describe kinds of whole objects, as
this would requir~ that they first learn the meaningsof some words and then
notice that they tend to refer to whole objects. This would imply that children
are able to acquire words without this constraint, and thus one could not
appeal to its existenceas an explanation of how children initially solve the
word learning problem.
Consider also the specific proposal that children induce that members of
certain grammatical categories tend to share certain meaningful properties,
and that this is the origin of some of the constraints. Landau et ale ( 1988:
317) suggest that ' the development of a same-shape preference in children
may originate in language learning, specifically in the process of learning
count nouns. Many of the words acquired by early language learners do in
P. Bloom I Possiblenames
fact partition the world according to the shapes of the objects in it ...
young children very quickly realize this , abstracting a rule from their early
word learning experience that says shape is the critical factor in decisions
about the extensions of these nouns. Then they use this rule when
encountering new nouns and new classes, thus immensely simplifying and
'
speeding up the mapping of the one onto the other . While possible, this
assumes that children are able to learn the correct meanings of count
nouns (and can thus infer that they tend to refer to shape) prior to the
onset of the shape bias. Thus although this bias might facilitate word
learning later on , we are still left with the problem of what constrains
children ' s inferences in the first place.
If the constraints are unlearned, what is their precise nature? Do they
constitute a subpart of a distinct language acquisition mechanism that exists
solely to facilitate the learning of words? This is certainly conceivable, but it
would be preferable to motivate these constraints on word learning in terms
'
of more general properties of children s linguistic and cognitive competence.
One specific proposal, advanced below, is that theseconstraints emergefrom
' '
other properties of children s knowledge; in particular , from children s grasp
of syntax-semanticsmappings.
3. Syntax - semantics mappings as a theory of constraints on word learning
Below, I discusscertain mappings betweensyntax and semanticsand argue

that they effectively subsumethe constraints reviewedabove. These mappings
have two advantagesover the constraints: (i ) they have independentlinguistic
and psychological support and (ii ) they provide a framework to explain the
' ' ' ' ' '
acquisition of all nominals, including those such as dog , water , wood ,
' forest' and ' Fred' and also
, , including those count nouns that are not names
for material entities.
3.1. Lexical categoriesvs. phrases
Markman ( 1990) briefly discusses a theory of the origin of the taxonomic

constraint, which is based on Di Sciullo and Williams ( 1987) and states that
' words are '
generic in meaning in a way that phrasesare not ; words do not
make reference to specific things, times, or places. She suggeststhat the
taxonomic constraint may be a consequenceof this property of words. This
insight seemsfundamentally correct, but the explanation needsto be modified
P. Bloom I Possiblenames 307
in order to account for words like ' Fred' and ' she' which refer to individuals
and are not ' generic' in the sensediscussedby Di Sciullo and Williams .
An alternative is that the relevant distinction is grammatical, and related to
how languages use syntactic categories to express meaningful notions and
relations ( Bloom 1990a, Jackendoff 1983) . In particular , it is not words that
have generic reference- it is categoriessuch as nouns and verbs. Nouns like
' ' ' '
dog and water are generic in the sensethat they can be extended to an
indefinite number of novel instances(an infinity of different dogs, an infinity
of different portions of water). Put differently, they refer to kinds, not to
particular individuals or entities.
In contrast , noun phrases (NPs) like ' the big dog' can be conceptualized
as referring to individuals , and not to kinds. The standard examples of this
are when nouns combine with quantifiers to become NPs. Thus ' a dog' can
' '
pick out a particular individual that happens to be a dog, those big dogs
picks out those dogs that have the property of being big , and so on. (See
Parsons, 1990, for a discussion of how a similar analysis can apply to verbs
and V Ps.)
The distinction betweenwords and nouns is crucial here, since some words
are NPs, not nouns. This allows us to explain the peculiar status of pronouns
and proper names. From the standpoint of grammar, they are lexical NPs
(seeBloom 1990b). With regard to their role in syntactic structure, words like
"Fred' and "he' behave like ' '
phrasal NPs such as the dog and thus cannot
appear with adjectivesand determiners. Under the hypothesis that pronouns
and proper namesare NPs, we can posit the following mappings:
Mapping 1.. NPs refer to individuals.
Mapping 2.. Count nouns and mass nouns refer to kinds.
It is likely , however that Mapping I is too strong; there are NPs that
appear not to refer at all. In a language like English, these include expletive
' ' ' ' ' ' '
pronouns, such as it as in it is raining or there as in there is trouble
' , One
brewing theory of why such semantically empty NPs exist is becauseof
a requirement in English that all tensed sentencesmust have overt subjects
(Chomsky 1981), even if thesesubjectsplay no meaningful role. In languages
like Italian , where overt subjectsare not necessary , one can say the equivalent
of ' is raining' , while in English, it is necessaryto add the meaninglessNP ' it '
in order to satisfy the grammatical requirement (but see Bolinger, 1973, for
evidence that even expletives have some semantic content) . This class of
counterexamples(and many others; see Bloom, under review) suggeststhat
the mapping from NPs to individuals does not hold in all cases. These
exceptions must somehow be learnable by children through something other
than the mapping posited above.
One possibility, first advanced by Nishigauchi and Roeper ( 1987), is that
children must initially acquirea given NP by using the syntax-semanticsmapping
' '
(e.g., referential it ), and only after having done so, can they understand the
sameword or string of words in a semanticallyempty context (e.g., expletive' it ' ).
This makesthe prediction that acrossdifferent languages , all words and phrases
that are NP expletivesmust also be NPs of the semanticallywell-behavedtype
( NPsthat refer), becauseotherwisechildren would not be able to acquire them.
There is someevidencethat this is the case( Nishigauchiand Roeper 1987), and
one could make the further prediction that children can only categorizea string
of words within an idiom as an NP (e.g., ' the bucket' as in ' kick the bucket') if
they are already capable of construing that string of words as having some
referentialmeaningwhen it is outside of the idiom. A theory along theselines is
discussedin Bloom (under review); for the purposeshere, it should be noted that
a completeaccountof lexical acquisitionmust explain how children acquirethese
sorts of non-referentialNPs.2
3 .2 . Count nouns VS. mass nouns
If we restrict their domain to count nouns, we can collapse the whole object
constraint, the taxonomic constraint , and the shapebias as follows :
Count nouns refer to kinds of whole objects (Markman and Hutchinson

1984) and children are biased to extend them on the basisof shape( Landau
et ale1988
).
This generalization connects with a sizable literature that attempts to
discover the semantic basis of the grammatical count/ mass distinction (e.g.,
2 A different sort of
puzzle concernsNPs that apparently refer to kinds, as with the subject NPs
' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
dogs and water in the sentencesDogs are friendly animals and Water is good to drink . These
NPs can be construed as referring not to actual dogs or actual portions of water, but to abstract
kinds - to the speciesDOG and the substanceWATER . Under one analysis, they serveas proper
namesfor these kinds, and thus refer to kinds in a very different way than do nouns (Carlson
1977). In any case, the acquisition and representationof theseNPs constitute a further domain of
study from the standpoint of syntax-semanticsmappings.
Bach 1986, Bloom I 990a, I 994a; Bloomfield 1933, Gordon 1985, 1988;
Jackendoff 1991, Langacker 1987, Levy 1988, McCawley 1975, McPherson
1991, Mufwene 1984, Quine 1960, Ware 1979, Weinrich 1966, Whorf 1956,
Wierzbicka 1985, seeGathercole 1986for a review) . In general, it is clear that
' ' ' '
objects tend to be described by count nouns ( a dog , five tables ) and nonsolid
substancestend to be described by mass nouns ( much water' , ' less
'
'
sand ). This holds for languagesother than English; acrossdifferent language
families, names for entities like dogs and tables are always count nouns, and
names for entities like water and sand are always mass nouns (Markman
1985, M ufwene 1984, Wierzbicka 1985). This pattern is unlikely to be a
coincidence, and it might lead one to the hypothesis that entities describedby
count nouns have perceptually salient boundaries, and thus are countable,
while mass nouns describeeverything else.
Nevertheless, the sameobjections discussedearlier against the whole object
constraint have also beenmade against this theory of count/ masssyntax (e.g.,
by Ware 1979) . One objection is that many count nouns do not describe
' '
whole objects; there exist abstract words like ' nap and 'joke , as well as
collective nouns like ' forest' and ' anny ' . If one is to retain the notion that the
grammatical count/ mass contrast maps systematically onto some cognitive
division , the cognition side of the mapping must be considerably more
' '
abstract than ' whole object and ' non-solid substance.
As a result of theseconsiderations, many scholars have proposed that the
grammatical count/ massdistinction maps onto the semanticcontrast between
nouns that refer to kinds of individuals vs. those that refer to kinds of nonindividuated
'
entities, which we can view as ' portions (seeBach 1986, Bloom
1990a, 1994a; Bloom and Keleman, under review; Gordon 1982, 1985, 1988;
Jackendoff 1983, 1990, 1991; Langacker 1987, 1990; Macnamara 1986,
Macnamara and Reyes 1990). The cognitive notion of inviduals is related to
properties such as countability , indivisibility , and boundedness , and is roughly
to ' discretebounded ' . Within the domain of material entities
equivalent entity ,
this usually corresponds to whole objects, though it can also correspond to
entities such as a forest, a puddle, and a pile. Outside of the domain of material
' ' ' '
entities, an event that takes a bounded interval of time ( a race , a conference)
' ' '
can be construed as an individual , as can a mental state ( a headache, a
' ' ' ' '
nightmare ) or a period of time ( a day , an hour ). (Some speculationsabout
' '
the precisenotion of individual will be discussedin section 6.2.)
What support is there for the claim that count/ mass syntax actually
corresponds to these aspectsof abstract cognition ? One source of support is
from linguistic analyses (e.g., Barwise and Cooper 1981, Jackendoff 1991,
Langacker 1987). Unless one assumesthat there is some consistent semantic

property holding acrossboth material count nouns and abstract count nouns,
it is difficult to provide a consistent theory of quantification. In many
' '
important regards, an NP such as a dog is semanticallyequivalent to an NP
' '
suchas a nightmare , and one way to capture this is by describing' a' as having
the semanticrole of combining with nouns that refer to kinds of individuals to
form an NP that can denote a single individual. Nouns such as ' dog' and
' ' ' ' ' '
nightmare - but not nouns such as water and advice - refer to kinds of
individuals and, thus can be usedwith count noun syntax.
There also exists empirical evidenceconcerning the productive use of these
syntax-semanticsmappings in adults. In one study, adults were taught novel
words referring to sensationsor sounds(Bloom 1994a). The syntax of the word
was kept neutral with regard to its count/ massstatus; what varied was whether
the new wor~ was describedas referring to something that occurs in discrete
units of time (temporal individuals) or to somethingoccurring over continuous
periods of time (temporal portions). This had the predicted effect on adult
categorizationof the new word: Names for temporal individuals tended to be
categorizedas count nouns, while names for temporal portions tended to be
categorizedas massnouns.
We can now posit the following three mappings:
Mapping1: NPs refer to individuals
Mapping2: Count nounsrefer to kinds of individuals
Mapping3: Massnounsrefer to kinds of portions
Before turning to the question of precisely how these three mappings

enablechildren to acquire new words - and how they fare relative to the sorts
of hypothesesadvancedby Markman and others - it is necessaryto consider
whether young children actually possessthis understanding of the relation-
ship between syntax and semantics.
4. Syntax-semanticsmappingsin young children
4.1. Argumentsagainst early competence
What is the evidence regarding children' s knowledge? With regard to the

count/ mass distinction , it is often argued that children are insensitive to the
semanticbasis of this distinction until a relatively late age. For instance, Levy
( 1988: 186) reviews the work of Gordon and Gathercole and concludes as
follows :
' Thus Gathercole' s conclusions are in

, complete agreement with the conclusions reached by
Gordon ( 1985); namely, that children first learn the linguistic distinction as a morphosyntactic
'
rather than a semantic distinction .
Others have reached similar conclusions . Thus Schlesinger ( 1988: 147), in

his discussion of domains in which his semantic assimilation theory does not
apply , states:
' ... Gordon 1985 and Gathercole 1985 have shown that the count- massdistinction is
( ) ( )
acquiredthroughformal cluesrather than via the semanticobject-substance distinction. The
reasonseems correlationbetweenthesetwo
to be that, in English,thereis not a veryconsistent
.'
distinctions
'
These findings have been taken as strong evidence for a distributional
' of
theory language development. Levy ( 1988) argues, following Karmiloff -
Smith ( 1979), that children view the acquisition of grammar as a formal
' '
puzzle, a problem space per se , and semantics is irr .elevant. This is also
'
Gathercole s ( 1985) conclusion, but Gordon ( 1985, 1988) proposes a quite
different view, maintaining that count/ masssyntax is basedon quantificational
semantics from the very start. What young children lack, according to
Gordon , is knowledge of how this semantic contrast maps onto perception.
That is, they understand that the contrast between count nouns and mass
nouns corresponds to the distinction between words that refer to kinds of
individuals vs. words that refer to kinds of portions - but they lack an
understanding that physical objects are canonical individuals and non-solid
substancesare canonical portions . If this were correct, then these mappings
would be uselessas a source of constraint in word learning.
The specific studies of Gathercole and Gordon are critically reviewed in
considerabledetail in Bloom ( 1990a) ; it will suffice here to raise a conceptual
' s understanding
point . All of the experiments purportedly showing that children '
of count/ mass is not semantic involve studying children s sensitivity
to linguistic cues. Thus one finding is that if 3- and 4- year-olds hear (e.g.,)
' This is a blicket ' ' '
they tend to grammatically categorize blicket as a count
' '
noun, while if they hear This is some blicket , they tend to grammatically
' '
categorize blicket as a mass noun. Further , children will give these '
syntactic
" '
cues priority over referential cues. If they hear This is a blicket they are
likely to interpret the word as a count noun regardlessof whether they are
being shown an object or a substance(Gordon 1985) .
One interpretatio~ of this result is that children' s understanding of count/
mass is not semantic. Instead children possesssome generalization of the
form : ' Everything following the word " a" is a count noun' , and this is
distinct from any semantic understanding, which has to be learned at some
later point . This assumesa dichotomy between' linguistic cues' and ' semantic
cues', where the latter is restricted to information that children receive
through perception of the external world . An alternative, however, is to reject
this dichotomy altogether. Semantic information can be conveyed through
' ' ' '
language; when children hear a blicket and categorize blicket as a count
noun, they may be drawing a semanticinference. Specifically, children might
encodethe determiner ' a' as having the semanticpotential of interacting with
a noun that 'refers to a kind of individual to pick out a single individual -
becausethis is what it means- and it follows from this that any noun that
follows ' a' must refer to a kind of individual and thus must be a count noun.
In fact, linguistic cues are a more reliable cue to the semantic' status of a
novel word than perceptual cues are. This is becausea given percept can be
construed in different ways; if a solid object is describedas ' blicket' , it is quite
' '
possiblethat blicket is actually a massnoun, becauseit could refer to the stuff
that the object is made out of. But linguistic cuesare flawless; every noun that
can co-occur with a quantifier that has the semanticrole of individuation has
to be a count noun. Given this, the child' s early sensitivity to linguistic
information actually supports a semantictheory; it does not refute it .
4.2. Argumentsfor early competence
What positive evidence exists that children possessthe requisite syntax-

semantics mappings? Gordon ( 1982t 1985t 1988) provides a learnability
argument: Children must be capable of using semantic information when
acquiring the grammatical count/ mass distinctiont becausea non-semantic
distributional analysis would have to sift through several billion possibilitiest
and children have productive command of count/ mass syntax by about the
age of 2-and-a-half. More generallyt the argument is that some semantic
categorization would have to be done by children in order for them to so
rapidly converge on the correct linguistic generalizationst becauseno other
source of information servesto distinguish count nouns from mass nouns in
the input they receive(seealso Bloom 1994a) .
Children' s errors provide further evidencethat they are exploiting syntax-

semanticsmappings. Words that are mass nouns in English but which refer to
entities that can be construed as discrete objects, like ' money' , ' furniture ' , and
' bacon' are
, occasionally misencodedas count nouns, e.g., young children will
sometimes say things such as ' a money' (Bloom 1994a). These errors are
' '
significantly more frequent than errors with more canonical mass nouns,
' ' ' '
such as water and milk , which refer to substances . This suggeststhat the
categorization of new words as either count or mass is facilitated (and
sometimeshampered by) children' s use of mappings from syntax toseman -
tics.
A further source of support is experimental. In a classic study, Brown
( 1957) showed 3- to 5-year-olds sets of pictures, one that depicted an object,
another that depicted a substance, and told them to either ' show me a sib' or
~show me sib' . Children
tended to point differently as a function of the
syntax; when given a count noun they would tend to point to the object;
when given a mass noun, they would tend to point to the substance.
More recently, Sola ( 1992) found a sensi~ivity to syntax-semantics map-
pings as soon as children start to productively use count/ mass syntax in their
spontaneous speech. When these 2-year-olds are taught a mass noun that
describesa pile of stuff, they tend to construe it as a name for that kind of
stuff (i.e., as having a similar meaning to ' clay' ), but when taught a count
noun that describesa pile of stuff, many appear to construe it as referring not
to the stuff itself, but to the bounded pile (i.e., as having a similar meaning to
words like ' puddle' or ' pile' ) . Interestingly, this effect of syntax was limited to
the stuff-condition : when children were taught count nouns and mass nouns
describing a novel object, few of the children construed the mass noun as
referring to the stuff that the object was made of (i.e., they would not
construe it as having the same meaning as words like ' wood' or ' metal' ) .
Regardlessof the count/ massstatus of the noun, they would tend to interpret
it as a name for that kind of object. An explanation for this asymmetry will
be discussedin section 5.
There is lessevidencethat young children can extend the semantic implications
of count/ mass syntax to non-material entities, but there is one relevant
study (Bloom 1994a) . Here, 3- and 4- year-olds were taught names for
perceptually ambiguous stimuli , which could be construed as either a set of
individuals or as an unindividuated portion . In one condition , the stimulus
was food , either lentils or colored pieces of spaghetti, and was the sort of
entity that could be easily named with either a count noun or a massnoun. In
another condition , the stimulus was a string of bell sounds from a tape-
recorder, presented one after the other at a very fast rate, which could be
construed either as a set of discrete bells or as an undifferentiated noise and
therefore could also be describedwith either a count noun or a mass noun.
' ' ' '
All children were presentedwith both the food and the bell stimuli. One
' - '
group was told : These are feps there really are a lot of feps here (count
'
noun condition ); the other group was told : this is fep - there really is a lot of
' were taught the word
fep here (massnoun condition ) . Then the children who '
'
as a count noun were told to give the puppet a fep for the food condition
'
and, in the sound condition , were given a stick and a bell and asked to make
'
a fep . The children who were taught the word as a mass noun were told to
' '
give the puppet fep in the food condition or , in the sound condition , to
' make '
fep with the stick and the bell. If children are sensitiveto the semantic
properties of count/ mass syntax, they should act differently in the count
' '
condition than in the mass condition . When asked for a fep , they should
' '
tend to give one object or make one sound, and when asked for fep , they
should tend to give a handful of objects or make a lot of sounds.
These were the results obtained: Both 3- and 4-year-olds performed
significantly above chance on both the food and sound conditions. This
finding provides further support for the hypothesis that there is a semantic
basisto count/ masssyntax evenfor non-material entities, and indicates that an
-
understanding of mappings betweensyntax and semanticsis present in 3 and
-
4- year olds.
Sensitivity to the semanticsof the noun/ NP contrast is evident at an even
earlier age than is an understanding of the semantic basis of count/ mass. The
mapping hypothesis is that young children should understand that the
grammatical contrast betweenwords that are nouns and words that are NPs
correspondsto the contrast betweenwords that refer to kinds and words that
refer to individuals. In a classic study by Katz et al. ( 1974), the experimenter
taught young children new words by pointing to an object and saying either
' This is a ' count noun context or ' This is '
wug ( ) wug ( NP context). Even some
- -
17 months olds were sensitive to this grammatical difference; when the word
was presentedas a noun they tended to construe the word as the name for a
kind , but when it was presented as an NP , they .tended to construe it as a
name for a particular individual (see Gelman and Taylor , 1984, for a
replication with slightly older children) . The findings that children younger
than two treat nouns and NPs differently with regard to how they interact
with determiners and adjectives, and that they categorize pronouns and
proper namesas NPs (Bloom 1990b) constitute further evidencethat children
possesssome grasp of syntax-semanticsmappings.
S. Subsuming the co. - traints
At this point , we can return to the constraints discussedin section I and

examine the extent to which they can be replaced by the hypothesizedsyntax-
semanticsmappings. The taxonomic constraint is subsumed by Mappings 2
and 3, which specify that both count nouns and mass nouns refer to ' kinds'
and thus have generic referencein the sensediscussedby Markman . Proper
names and pronouns, as they fall into the grammatical class of NPs, are in
the domain of Mapping I and thus refer to particular individuals.
The whole object constraint - that novel words refer to whole objects- can
be argued to result from the interaction betweenMapping 2 (which statesthat
count nouns refer to kinds of individuals) and a non-linguistic bias to construe
discretephysical objects (DPOs) as individuals (Shipley and Shepper son1990).
That is, independentof grammar, children are very strongly biased to encode
objects as individuals. When shown a display of objects and asked to count
kinds (' How many kinds of animals?' ) or properties (' How many colors?' ), they
will show a strong tendency to ignore the question and to only count the
discrete objects (Shipley and Shepperson 1990). Note that children are quite
able to count individuals that are not objects, such as sounds and actions
(Wynn 1990). What the Shipley and Shepperson study shows, however, is that
in the material domain, objects stand out as individuals.
This is apparently a cognitive phenomenon, having to do with the nature of
the category ' individual ' ; it does not directly result from the syntax-semantics
mappings. But when the DPO interacts with Mapping 2, it leads to a
tendency to construe count nouns as names for whole objects. This relates to
'
young children s unwillingness to initially interpret a noun, either count or
mass, that refers to a novel bounded entity as naming the stuff that the entity
is made of (e.g., Dickinson 1988) . In other words, the DPO causeschildren to
strongly favor interpreting a word that describes an object as having a
' ' ' '
meaning like desk (and not wood ), even if the word is presentedwith mass
noun syntax. Although children show some evidence for a parallel bias to
construe words describing substancesas kinds of portions, this is not as
powerful and will not override syntactic cues to the contrary . Thus 2-year-
olds are quite willing to interpret a count noun that describesa substanceas
' '
referring to that kind of bounded entity (as having a meaning like puddle ),
even though their default assumption is that a word describing a substance
will name the kind of portion (as having a meaning like ' water' ) (Sola 1992) .
The shape bias posited by Landau et al. ( 1988) can be recast as a claim
about how children think about objects; at least for some sorts of objects,
they tend to initially view the appropriate dimensionfor generalizationsas being

madeon the basisof shape, and this is viewedas a better basisfor extendingthe
noun usagethan propertiessuch as color, size, or texture. (Recall that this does
not apply for namesfor substances , where propertiessuch as texture and color
are more relevant; Sola et al. 1991.) The appealto count nouns is relevantonly
insofar as count nouns are the only linguistic category that specificallypick out
whole objectsin the material domain, and thus any bias to favor shapeis most
likely to apply for this set of nouns. But the nature of the bias has to do with
children's understandingof object kinds, not of count nouns.3 Somesupport for
this interpretation comesfrom the finding that the bias towards shapeappearsto
'
shift in the course of development, presumably as the result of the child s
-
expandingunderstandingof how different categoriesof objectsmight begener
alized in different ways (Beckerand Ward 1991, Macario 1991) .
Finally , consider the proceduresof Sola et al. ( 1991) . A solid object is likely
to be construed as an individual , and thus a noun (but not an NP , adjective,
or verb) that describessuch an object is likely to be a count noun and refer to
that kind of object. Similarly, a substance is likely to be construed as a
portion and thus any noun that describessuch a substanceis likely to be a
' '
massnoun and refer to that kind of portion . Exceptional casessuch as wood
'
and ' puddle are fully consistent with Mappings 2 and 3, but , as discussed
above, the mapping from mass nouns to kinds of portions may be difficult
for children to exploit in caseswhere the portions are solid substances , as it
runs afoul of the general cognitive bias to treat objects as individuals. Put
' '
differently, to learn a word like wood the child must construe an object as a
unit of stuff, rather than as a single individual , and this violates the bias to
construe discrete physical objects as individuals.
~
6. Openquestio
6.1. Is there developmental change ?
The claim above is that 1- and 2- year - olds possess unlearned

mappIngs
from count nounsto individualsand massnounsto non-individuatedentities,
3 Landau et al. ( 1988) argue that children' s different responseson linguistic and non-linguistic
tasks (they treat shape as more relevant for the former) suggeststhat the shape bias is special to
language. As suggestedabove, however, an alternative is that the use of the count noun informs
the children that the task has to do with objects (where shapeis very relevant); when the noun is
not present the children might just as well assumethat the task has to do with properties (where
as well as the bias to construe whole objects as individuals. Is it necessaryto

posit this sort of abstract knowledge, or might children start off with a
simpler representation, linking up the count/ mass distinction directly to the
contrast between bounded and unbounded physical entities, and only later
developing the more abstract adult understanding? It appears that even 2-
' '
year-olds possessa cognitive understanding of count noun that includes
bounded substancesand is thus not limited to the category of ' whole object'
(Sola 1992), but the question remains of whether this understanding is
initially restricted to the material domain, or whether it can extend to sounds,
events, collections, and so on.
In the absenceof any evidencefor developmental change, one might argue
that lack of a child - adult difference should be viewed as the null hypothesis
in psychology (Fodor 1975, Macnamara 1982) - an argument that gains force
from the fact that we have as yet no understanding of how a cognitive notion
can become ' more abstract' . But casesof representational change do appear
to exist (seeCarey 1986, 1988), and so it remains an open question whether
syntax-semantics mappings are yet another domain where children differ
from adults.
No decisive evidence exists at this point , but there are three sources of
evidence suggesting that the abstract adult-like understanding is present in
very young children.
First , some evidenceconcerning early possessionof the notion of ,oindivi-
dual' emergesfrom the researchof Starkey et al. ( 1990), who found that 6- to
8-month-olds possessa unified concept containing both whole objects and
temporally bounded sounds. In one study, infants were exposedto either two
sounds or three sounds. Immediately following this, two pictures were
simultaneously shown to the infants, one with two objects and one with three
objects. The subjects tended to look longer at the picture which showed the
same number of objects as there were sounds, providing some evidencethat
infants possessnotions of ' two individuals ' and of ' three individuals' , where
' individual ' es both sounds and objects. Along the same lines,
encompass
Wynn ( 1990) discovered that almost immediately after children are able to
use the linguistic counting system to count objects, they can also use it to
count sounds and events. These studies suggestthat , quite independently of
' '
syntax, children do havethe appropriateabstractsemanticnotion of individual .
Second, as noted above, children appear to be capable, even at a very early

age, of productively and appropriately using words that refer to non-material
' ' ' ' events ' bath' ' '
entities, such as temporal intervals ( day , minute ) ( , nap ) and
' ' ' '
abstract entities ( story , joke ) . If it turns out that (i ) they encode these
' '
words as falling into the grammatical category of count noun and (ii ) they
understand them in the same way that adults do, then this would show that
the abstract understanding of the count/ massdistinction is present in 2-year-
olds. But there is no strong support at present for either of these claims, at
least not for children younger than three.
Finally , there is the experimental study noted above (Bloom 1994a), which
showed that 3- and 4- year-olds are sensitiveto the application of quantificational
syntax in a domain of non-material entities (sounds) . Once again,
however, evidence for this sort of capacity on the part of younger children
does not yet exist. At this point , then, it remains possible that the semantic
' '
category individual emergesfrom some sort of simpler representation, such
' '
as bounded physical entity .
' '
6.2. What is the nature of kind of individual ?
This brings us to the second concern. Without a substantive theory of the

' '
precisenature of kind of individual , the sort of account proposed here runs
the risk of being empty. Despite the central role of this notion in semantic
theories of quantification and reference, we have as yet little understanding of
how it links up with perception and non-linguistic cognition , and how it
servesto constrain the extent of possible word meanings.
If we assumethat count nouns refer to kinds of individuals , it is apparent
that the reference of such nouns includes bounded substances , periods of
time, events, mental states
, collections of objects, and abstract social constructs
. There are severalhypothesesabout what all of these referents have in
common, and thus what the core of this semanticnotion is. Some suggestions
include boundedness, having a single functional role, and proximity or
connectednessof parts (see e.g., Hirsch 1982, Jackendoff 1991, Langacker
1987, 1990) .
' '
Consider, for instance, count nouns that name collections, such as forest ,
' ' ' '
family and army . Although they describe material entities, they violate
the generalization that a count noun refers to a kind of object. As such, they
are problematic for theories that posit a privileged link between words (or
count nouns) and kinds of whole objects. The premise of the mapping theory
.sketched out above is that although there exist semantic constraints on what
P. Bloom/ Possible
names 319
can be a possiblecount noun, theseare basedon the semanticcategory ' kind

of individual ' , not ' kind of object' . One could thus describethe acquisition of
words such as ' forest' by assumingthat a collection of trees is construable by
children as being a single individual and therefore a word that refers to that
kind of individual is learnable as a count noun. But what is it about forests
that makes them construable by children and adults as individuals? Why do
children readily construe a group of trees as a possible individual (' a forest' ),
and yet do not construe all of the leavesof a tree as a single individual (see
Chomsky and Walker 1978) ?
One tentative proposal is as follows :
Hypothesisabout possibleindividuals:
Something (e.g., an object or set of objects) can be encoded as an
' individual ' if we can construe it as
playing an independent causal role in
some conceptual domain.
The intuition underlying this is as Folio~ s: We view something as an

individual only if doing so allows us to better understand and predict the
causal relationships that hold within a given conceptual domain . The
strongest example is the case of bounded objects; these are the canonical
' '
example of individuals within the physical domain and are highly privileged
in .the course of development. Infants are predisposed to analyze
their chaotic sensory input into a world of distinct bounded objects that
persist over time and space (e.g. Spelke 1988) . This mode of interpretation
is likely to have evolved becauseconstruing the environment in these tenDS
is the best way to make senseof what is going on , and allows for the most
predictive power . Any primate that lacked this conceptual scheme would
fail to respond to the world in a timely and effective manner - it would not
be able to track prey and avoid predators, for example - and would not
survive.
The bias to construe objects as individuals is the result of evolution, not
learning, and this may hold as well for individuation within other domains,
such as social cognition or naive theories of mind. For instance, humans and
other primates might be predisposed to classify certain social groups as
individuals for the purpose of inference and prediction ; as such, notions like
' ' ' '
family and social group might be innate (Hirschfeld 1987, Jackendoff
1992). But for most domains, we have to discover the relevant individuals in
the course of understanding the nature of the domain. One would have a
difficult time understanding geography or politics , for instance, without the
' ' ' '

ability to understandentities like Canada and France as discreteindividuals
that causally interact with each other.
'
Returning to names for collections, it is clear that one s conceptual
framework also determines the specific conditions under which a set of
objects can be construed as forming a collection. The adult understanding of
' forest' is of a
group of trees growing together in a certain environment - for
the word to apply, there have to be a sufficient number of treesand they must
be bunched together, but they need not form a precise shape. Nouns such as
' '
family have an even looser spatial restriction: they can apply even if the
elementsthat make up the collection bear no non-trivial spatial relationship
'
at all ; it is sensibleto say ' that family is scatteredaround the world (compare
' '
the semantic oddnessof that forest is scatteredaround the world .) But now
'
consider Donald Judd' s sculpture ' untitled ( 1928), composed of 10 Plexiglas
piecesmounted vertically on a wall , separated from one another by exactly
the same distance. In this case, the precise configuration does matter ; the
intuition would be that two rows of five Plexiglas piecesstacked on a table
would be different from ' untitled ' and Judd might reasonably view this
modification as a destruction of his artwork .
If the notion of ' individual ' can be related to notions of intentionality and
social interaction, it follows that, in principle, any set of objects can be
construedas a singleindividual and thus namedwith a count noun. There is no
count noun in English referring to a single shoe and a single glove (i.e., such
'
that exactly one shoeand one glove would be ' one fizzbit ) but if such a pair of
objects was exactly what one neededin order to participate in some kind of
religious ceremony, such a name would probably be learnable by someone
trying to make senseof that ceremony. One intriguing example of this again
'
involves artwork ; a proper name (e.g., 'January Angst ) might describe six
concrete columns surrounded by broken glass. Although this set of objects is
'
an individual solely by virtue of the artist s intention, this fact is sufficient for
adults (and possibly children) to acquire and understand this new name.
Current research addresses these issues by exploring the circumstances
under which people will give a collective interpretation for a set of discrete
objects. One methodology used is to show adults a set of four identical
' ' '
objects and tell them either this is a fendIe (count syntax) or the new
'
word for this is : fendle (neutral syntax) . Thus the novel word could either
be a collective noun , like ' forest ' , and refer to all four objects, or it could
be an object name, like ' tree' , and refer to a single object . Then the adults
are shown other displays with the same kind of objects used in the training
phrase, such as a display with one object and a display with eight
objects, and asked to describe these using the new word . Their responses
indicate whether they think the word refers to a collection or to an individual
' '
object. For instance, if they interpret fendle as a collective noun, they should
describe eight objects as either one fendle' or ' two fendles' (depending on
'
how crucial numerosity is in their collective interpretation) and should
describeone object as ' part of a fendle' . If they interpret it as an object name,
' ' '
they should describe eight objects as eight fendles and one object as one
fendle .'
In a pilot study with a group of 36 adults, we tested the effects of syntax
' '
(singular count vs. neutral) and intentional integrity on their interpretation
of novel words. This second manipulation went as follows : For half of the
trials, the objects were placed in front of the subject slowly and carefully ; for
the other half , the objects were casually dumped in front of the subject. The
prediction was that this simple manipulation would have an effect on whether
the subjects construe the novel word as a collective noun. The mere act of
purposefully and intentionally setting out the stimuli in a given configuration
should be sufficient to emphasizeto the subject that the set itself is relevant as
a single individual .
This prediction was confirmed: When the novel word was presentedas a
singular count noun, there was a bias towards interpreting it as referring to
the entire collection. The bias increased(though not significantly so) when the
objects were placed in front of the subject, rather than dumped. When the
novel word was presentedwithout syntactic support, however, there was an
actual switch in the favored interpretation : In the dumping condition , almost
all subjectsconstrued the word as a name for a single object (like ' tree' ), but
for the placing condition , the collection interpretation (like ' forest' ) was
strongly favored.
Further research will explore whether young children can also acquire a
collective noun through this sort of intentional cue, and will also focus on the
' '
precisenature of adults and children s construal of the new word. The hope
is that by studying the acquisition and understanding of nominals referring to
sets of discrete objects - including collective nouns and names for artwork -
we will gain some insight into the nature and development of the notion
' individual ' and how it relates to
cognition and perception.
6.3. How can thesemappingsapply prior to the acquisition % vert syntax?
The proposal here is that the constraints children use when acquiring
words are the result of their understanding of the mappings from syntactic
categoriesto categoriesof cognition . But productive command of count/ mass

syntax comes in at roughly the age of 2-and-a-half and children have begun
to learn words over a year prior to this. To make matters worse, there exist
languageswhich do not appear to exploit the count/ massdistinction in either
syntax or morphology (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), and yet children acquiring
theselanguageshave no difficulty learning words.
Also , many scholars have argued that children use properties of word
meaning to determine the syntactic categories that their very first words
belong to ( Bloom 1990a, 1994a, under review; Grimshaw 1981, Macnamara
1982, 1986; Pinker 1984), a proposal that has been dubbed ' semantic
'
bootstrapping . Thus these syntax-semantics mappings might work in both
directions, to facilitate both lexical and syntactic development. But if this is
correct, then very young children must have the capacity to learn at least
some aspectsof word meaning in the absenceof syntax.
Finally , we know that syntax is not essential for adults. One can learn a
word like ' pencil' perfectly well without hearing it used with count syntax
' ' ' '
(e.g., without it being preceded by a quantifier like a or many ) . This
proves that overt syntax cannot be essential for word learning .
Nevertheles, even where there is no specific syntactic information , the
existenceof the mappings still servesto narrow down the possible construals
of what a word can mean. This is becauseany novel word must belong to a
syntactic category, and as such it must fall into one of a limited set of
semantic classes. For instance, there are no words that refer to chains of
thematically-related entities - no natural language could have a word that
refers both to dogs and to everything that dogs standardly interact with - and
the reason for this could be that there is no syntactic category that encodes
such a notion . More generally, there may be no constraints on word meaning
per se; there might only be constraints on possiblecount nouns, possiblemass
nouns, possible intransitive verbs, and so on. But since any word has to be
either a count noun or a mass noun or an intransitive verb and so on, any
word is thereby constrained as to what it can mean.
For example, Mappings 2 and 3 limit possible word meanings even before
children can distinguish the grammatical markings of count nouns from those
of mass nouns, becauseonce children know that the word is a noun, they
know it must be either count or mass, and the mappings limit its meaning to
two semantic classes- either it refers to a kind of individual or it refers to a
kind of portion . Of course, the mappings are lesseffective at this point , since
any ambiguities (caseswhere children cannot tell whether the adult intends t .o
describe an object or a substance) cannot be resolved through attention to
overt grammatical cues. This may be one explanation for the well-known
finding that 3-year-olds show a greater sensitivity to the constraints than 2-
year-olds (e.g., Landau et al. 1988, Markman 1989, Nelson 1988) - children
can use the constraints to their fullest only once they have some facility with
the grammatical and morphological structure of their language.
The view that thesemappings provide constraints on children' s word meanings
evenprior to the acquisition of surfacesyntax may be counterintuitive, but
there is some support for it . In an extended analysis of the production and
comprehensionabilities of children in the one-word stage, Huttenlocher and
'
Smiley ( 1987: 84) state, Taken as a group, the object words in the single-word
period form a broad semanticclasswhich contrasts with other semanticclasses
emerging at the same time. That is, the pattern of usage of object words
contrasts with that of words for events ..., words for persons ..., words for
'
temporary states, greetings, and negation, and so on . They go on to suggest
that this early demarcation of words into these classesprovides a semantic
foundation for the later acquisition of syntactic categories. A more radical
interpretation is that thesechildren have already classifiedthesewords into the
relevant grammatical classes , and all they have left to do is learn how (or if )
their languageexpresses theseclassesin the grammar and morphology. (Does
their languagemark the contrast betweencount nouns and massnouns? Is the
morphology different for verbs than for adjectives?) Once they have acquired
these surface expressionsof the linguistic categories, children can use the
mappings to further facilitate the acquisition of word meanings.
7. Limitationsof syntax-semantics
mappings
One might be tempted to view the constraints that emerge from these
syntax-semanticsmappings as constituting a solution to the problem of word
' '
learning. For instance, once the child knows that dog is a count noun, she
can infer that the word refers to a kind of individual , and this excludes
innumerable other possible interpretations. If knowing the grammatical class
that a word belongs to is tantamount to knowing what it means, then these
mappings could effectively solve the induction problem. Unfortunately , there
are two main reasonswhy this optimism is misguided.
First , we have been assuming throughout that the child is able to infer
what the novel word is being used to describe, leaving only the question of
how sheencodesthe meaning and appropriately extendsit to novel instances.
As Gleitman ( 1990) has argued, however, there are many caseswhere children
are exposed to words in the absenceof the entities that they describe. An
adult , for example, might point to a bowl of cereal and say ' Do you want
milk with that ?' even when no milk is present. Consider also words for nonmaterial
entities, like ' nap' and 'joke ' , where the notion of inferring what an
adult is pointing to or looking at does not apply. One could also note the
successof blind children at learning words ( Landau and Gleitman 1985) in
order to appreciate the mystery here. A complete theory must explain how
children grasp the adult ' s intention to refer - how they somehow make the
correct guessas to what adults are talking about when they use novel names
(for researchalong these lines, seeBaldwin 1991) . More generally, no theory
of the acquisition of words can be complete without a prior theory of how
children can pick up the intended reference of language-users (Macnamara
1982) .
Second, even with the aid of grammar-cognition mappings, there is still an
infinity of possible meanings of the new word and children are stuck with
' '
sorting them out. The count noun dog could refer to dogs, but it could also
refer to dogs and pencils, to dogs until the year 2000 and then to cats, and so
on. Knowing that a given word refers to a kind of individual is only a small
part of the word learning puzzle; children must also determine which kind of
individual the word refers to , and it is here that the induction problem runs
' '
deep, particularly given how the notion of kind of individual interacts with
conceptual systems such as social cognition (see section 6.2) . Crucially , an
explanation of how children learn words involves a theory of psychologically
' ' ' ' '
possible kinds (one that includes dogs and tails , but excludes dogs and
'
pencils ) . In sum, while syntax-semantics mappings may be part of the
solution to how children learn new words, they are not sufficient. Not only
does a complete account of the acquisition of word meaning require an
explanation of how people understand the intended referenceof others, it also
requires a theory of conceptual representation.
8. Concludingcomments
If one were to follow the standard course in the study of word learning,
' ' ' '
and only consider the acquisition of words like dog and cup , it would be
hard to empirically distinguish the claim that children possessspecial word
learning constraints from the alternative that they apply syntax-semantics
-
mappings. Both theories avoid the same hard questions how do children
determine what a new word is meant to describe, and what constitutes a
psychologically possible kind - and both can capture the same simple
phenomenon; if a child hears a single object describedwith a word , he or she
will tend to take the word as referring to that kind of object. Within this
domain, the advantage of the syntax-semantics mapping theory is solely
theoretical; it only posits aspectsof children' s psychology (a mapping from
count nouns to kinds of individuals and a bias to view discrete physical
objects as individuals) that have independent empirical support and have
been previously proposed in adults for reasonsthat have nothing to do with
lexical acquisition. This is preferable to having to posit special unlearned
constraints that exist solely to help children acquire words and which have no
other motivation or support.
The empirical differences between the two theories become more obvious
when we consider words that do not describe whole objects. The constraints
advancedby Ma ,rkman ( 1990), Sola et al. ( 1991), and Landau et al. ( 1988) do
not apply to words like ' Fred' , ' she' , ' map' , ' foot ' , and ' forest' - and these
sorts of words are present in the speech of 1- and 2-year-old children. By
shifting the focus to mappings between grammar and abstract cognition, we
have a framework in which to deal with the acquisition of pronouns and
proper names, words for substances , words for material entities that are not
whole objects (like parts and collections), and words for abstract entities.
With the notable exception of research on the development of verb
"
meaning (e.g., Gleitman 1990, Pinker 1989) , most scholars have viewed word
learning as an independent issue from the nature and development of
grammatical knowledge. It is also often assumed that the theoretically
interesting casesof word learning are limited to the acquisition of words for
material entities, usually names for whole objects. ~ is article has presented
reasons for abandoning both of these assumptions, and for exploring how
' '
mappingsbetweensyntactic categorieslike count noUJ) and abstract semantic
' '
categorieslike kind of individual facilitate the acquisition of word meaning.
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Section 5
The caseof verbs

Lingua92(1994
) 333
- 375 -Holland
. North
When it is better to receive than to give :

Syntactic and conceptual constraints on
*
vocabulary growth
. .. C and Lila
Cynthia Fisher ' , D . Geoffrey Hallb , Susan Rakowitz
Gleitman d
. Department , University
of Psychology , 603E. DanielStreet
of Illinois , Champaign, /L 61820
, USA
b Medical
ResearchCouncil
, CognitiveDevelopment Unit
, 4 Taviton
Street
, LondonWC1 H OBT, UK
CDepartmentof Psychology, FairfieldUniversity ,
, Fairfield CT06430, USA
d Department
of Psychology , University of Pennsylvania , 3815WalnutStreet , PA
, Philadelphia
19104, USA
We askhow childrensolvethe mappingproblemfor verbacquistion: how they pair concepts

with their phonologicalrealizationsin their language . Thereis evidencethat nounsbut not verbs
can be acquiredby pairingeachsound(e.g., ' elephant ' with a
) conceptinferredfrom the world
circumstances in which that soundoccurs. Verb meaningsposeproblemsfor this word-world
mappingprocedure , motivatinga modelof verbmappingmediatedby attentionto the syntactic
structuresin which verbsoccur (Landauand Gleitman 1985 , Gleitman 1990 ). We presentan
experimentexamining the interaction between a conceptual influence (the bias to interpret
observedsituationsas involving a causal agent) and syntacticinfluences , as thesejointly
contributeto children's conjecturesabout new verb meanings . Children were shown scenes
ambiguous as to two e. .,
interpretations( g giving and gelling chasingandfleeing) and were
or
askedto guessthe meaningof novel verbsusedto describethe scenes , presentedin varying
syntacticcontexts . Both conceptualand syntacticconstraintsinfluencedchildren's responses , but
syntactic infonnation largely overwhelmed the conceptual bias . This finding , with collatoral
evidence, supportsa syntax-mediatedprocedurefor verbacquisition .
. Thanksare due to Stevenand Marcia Roth for funding that supportedthe experimental
work, througha grant to Lila Gleitman. Preparationof this paperwasalsosupportedby NSF
grant DBC 9113580to C. Fisher. We wishto thank ReneeBaillargeon , Judy DeLoache , Henry
Gleitman, JaneGrimshaw , AravindJoshi, MichaelKelly, BarbaraLandau, Anne Lederer , Ellen
Markman, Kevin Miller, Letty Naigies. ElissaNewport, Brian Ross, and SandyWaxmanfor
helpfulcommentson earlierdrafts. NoamChomskyis alsothankedfor continuingcommentary
on this line of work. Finally, we wishto thank the children, staff, and parentsof the SaintFaith
NurserySchoolin Philadelphiafor their cooperation .
. . Corresponding author.
/94/$07.00 @ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rights reserved

- 3841
0024
SSDI0024- 3841( 93) EOOSO -H
334 C. Fisher et at. I Syntactic constraints
1. Introduction
Every standard text in psychology (or in education or linguistics for that

matter) assertsthat children aged 18 months to 6 years acquire 5 to 10 new
words a day. How do they manage to do so?
We concentrate here on a single aspect of the word -learning problem :
Granted that children can hypothesizesome appropriate set of concepts, how
do they decide which sound segmentcorresponds to each such concept? For
instance, granted that they can entertain the concepts ' elephant' and ' give' ,
how do they come to select the sound /elephant/ for elephants and /give/ for
giving ? This aspect of acquisition is called the mapping problem for the
lexicon.1
Solution of the mapping problem has traditionally been assigned to a
word -towor ~d pairing procedure in which the learner lines up the utterance
of a word with the co-occurring extralinguistic contexts. Thus elephantcomes
to mean ' elephant' just becauseit is standardly uttered by caregivers in the
presenceof elephants.
Gillette and Gleitman (forthcoming) have begun to document just how well
the word-to -world pairing procedure works in practice for simple nouns. In
these manipulations, adult subjects watch a video, five or ten minutes in
length, of mothers and their young children (MLU < 2) at play, but with the
audio turned off. These lengthy situational segmentsallow the subjects to
pick up whatever clues are available from the pragmatic concomitants of the
speechevent. They are told that , at the instant some particular noun is being
uttered by the mother, they will hear a beep, their task being to guesswhat
noun that was. For the nouns most frequently used in these mother/ child
interchanges, the subjects are almost at ceiling. Usually, even a single scene/
beep pair is enough for the subject to identify the noun the mother was
uttering .
These findings imply two things. The first concerns the input situation
itself: Evidently, mothers of very young children usually say nouns just when
the objects that these label are the focus of conversation and are being
manipulated by the participants. This makes their recovery from context easy
(seeBruner, 1975, and Slobin, 1975, for prior evidenceof this here-and-now
' '
property of maternal speech to children) . The second concerns natural
interpretations of situational information : The observer seems efficient at
1 In our notation , ' ' " "

Islashesl represent sound, single quotes the concept, double quotes the
utterance, and italics the word as an abstract object.
C. Fisheret aJ. I Syntacticconstraints
guessing the level of specificity at which the speaker is making reference -

elephants rather than animals or puppets - despite the fact that all of these
interpretations fit the observed scenesequally well (pace Quine 1960; for
evidence from child word learning , see Hall 1993; Hall and Waxman
1993) .
So far so good : One can learn that the word for ' elephant' is /elephant/ (or
/beepf) becauseit is said in the presenceof elephants. However, when we turn
to the acquisition of lexical categories other than the noun, this promising
story appears to fall apart. Subjects cannot correctly guess which verb the
mother is saying under the same circumstances- obseryation of the mother/
child sceneswithout audio other than the beep. Though the subjects do
choose as their guessesthe most common maternal verbs of all (e.g., come
and put as opposed to arrive and situate), they fail to selectthe one that the
mother was actually uttering at the sound of the beep. Their successrate is
between.0 and 7% , depending on details of the manipulation .
Why is the observed sceneso decisive for nouns and so uninformative for
verbs? One factor proposed by Gentner ( 1978, 1982) has to do with the
concepts that these lexical classesstandardly encode, namely the difference
between object-reference concepts and relational concepts (see also Nelson
1974). The referenceof many nouns can apparently be extracted by appeal to
principles of object perception and pragmatic inference, but even the home-
liest verb meanings express relations among such concepts. Which such
relation the speaker has in mind to convey is rarely accessiblefrom observation
alone. Moreover, the nouns are frequently used in deictic-ostensive
contexts to young learners: " This is a ball " ( Ninio 1980, Bruner 1983), while
verbs are much rarer in such contexts as " This is hopping" .
Another important factor is that the verbs are not uttered even to young
learners in a tight time-lock with the events (Tomasello and Kruger 1992,
Lederer et al. 1991) . Even when the events and verb utterances are relatively
close in time, their seriation differs, a problem we have called interleaving.
For instance, consider a scenein which the child is pushing a car, and then
upon request from his mother .carries it over to show to his grandmother,
who beams. The serial order of events here is push, go, show, beam. But the
mother actually says " Go show Granny what you' re doing, she'll think you
"
push the car so well . Little problem arises for these adult subjects (or , we
presume, for children) in getting the gist of the conversation, but the gist is
very far from explicit identification of the verbs. The problem posed for
identification is that the number and order of verb utterance (go, show, do,
think, push) do not line up with the event sequence . Notice, as well, that
336 C. Fisher et alI Syntactic constraints
certain verbs commonly used by the caregivers are so general (do) or so

'
abstract (think) as to be difficult to relate at all to what s actually going on (in
this latter example, beaming) . 2
All thesecomplexities bear on an extremely robust finding in the language
learning literature : Verbs are very rare in the first spoken (or comprehended)
50 words of child vocabularies, rather most items are nouns with a scattering
" "
of social items ( bye-bye ) and spatial prepositions (Goldin -Meadow et ale
1976, Nelson 1974, Bowerman 1976, Dromi 1987). This striking dominance
of nouns (above their type frequency in maternal speech) persists until the
third year of life (Gentner 1982) .
We will contend here that , owing to the kinds of problems just sketched,
verbs must be learned by a procedure that differs from the early noun-
-
learning procedure that pairs isolated words (or beeps) to their real world
contingencies. According to our hypothesis, verb learners recruit evidence
from the syntactic structure in which new verbs appear, and pair this
structural evidence with the information present in the scene. Thus we
postulate a sentence-to -world mapping procedure for verbs rather than the
word -to -world procedure that is satisfactory for explaining first nouns (for
earlier statementsof this position , see Landau and Gleitman 1985, Fisher et
ale 1991, Gleitman 1990). This would begin to explain the noun-before-verb
developmental findings : It takes time to acquire structural knowledge, and
nouns but not verbs can be acquired efficiently in the absence of such
knowledge. Moreover, knowledge of the noun meaningsis, as we shall see, a
prerequisite to extracting the verb meanings. '
We will present here an experiment that assess es children s use of situational
and syntactic evidence for solving the mapping problem. But before
-
doing so, we want to describeinformally the ideas behind the syntax sensitive
learning procedure we have in mind. Fuller discussion is reserved until the
experimental findings have been presented.
2 Of course it is easy to think of nouns that are similarly ' abstract ' , such as liberty , so
relative ease of learning via extralinguistic observation is not theoretically identifiable with
the noun / verb distinction . But it is as a practical matter : Abstract verbs are common in usage
to children ( 5 of the most frequent verbs in maternal use to children under two years refer to
mental states and acts, want, like , think , know, and see) but all the most frequent nouns in our
corpus refer to visible object classesor names, e.g., Mommy . The more important point is that
subjects cannot reconstruct even the maternal verbs that refer to observable actions (go, eat,
catch, etc.) by watching the scenein the presenceof evidence (the beep) of just when they were
uttered.
C. Fisher et a/. I Syntactic constraints
2. Syntactic supports for verb learning
As just discussed, observation of the pragmatics of scenes appears to

underdetermine verb construals. The latitude for interpretation seemsmuch
too broad if we grant (as we must) formidable perceptual, conceptual, and
pragmatic interpretive capacitiesto youngsters. Though it is clear (seePinker,
this volume) that there are severeconstraints on what can be lexicalized as a
verb, and on just how humans conceptualize a scenein view, within these
limits the hypothesis spaceis still vast. It is often and truly said that a picture
'
is worth a thousand words, but evidently that s just the problem for verb
vocabulary acquisition.
One plausible way to distentangle verbs in ambiguous circumstancesis to
note which known nouns occurred in construction with the verb ( Wasthe
patient mentioned?) and the structural positions of these nouns ( Which one
was the subject of the sentence?) . In principle this information can be useful
becausethe surface-structural properties of sentencesare well correlated with
"
(in fact, are projections from ) certain aspectsof their semantics. To use such
clues, the learning device must analyze the structure within which the novel
verb is being heard. We have termed such a structure-dependent learning
3
procedure syntactic bootstrapping.
This approach is similar to prior proposals for solving the mapping
problem-in many regards. It posits that learners inspect ongoing events for
clues to the verb meanings, armed with sophisticated perceptual, conceptual,
and pragmatic knowledge.4 In addition , and in accord with the known facts
3 Pinker(this volume) hasobjectedto this terminology '

, but whats in a name? We meanby it
that the learner is presumedto convergeon verb meaningby joint use of structural and
situationalevidence . Semantic bootstrap ping, a termcoinedby Pinker( 1984 ), ultimatelyconcerns
acquisitionof a phrase -structure grammar. The first steps in this procedureextract word
interpretations solelyby observingthe contingencies for their use- by word-to-world pairing. If
thiscanbedonefor verbs(whichwecontendit cannot) aswell asfor nouns(whichwecontendit
can), thenthe nextstepin Pinker's procedureis to assignthe itemsto lexicalcategories basedon
theacquiredmeanings (e.g., a thing is likely to be labeledby a nounwhilean actionis likely to be
labeledby a verb, a generalization that holdscross-linguistically; Grimshaw1981 ). So the terms
syntacticand semanticbootstrap ping are not really parallel. The questionremainswhetherthe
backgroundassumptionof semanticbootstrap ping can be satisfied , namely, whetherthe verb
meanings can be acquiredsolelyfrom extralinguisticevidence , prior to acquisitionof the phrase
structure.
4 Pinker ( 1989 '
, this volume) assertsthat our position has limited the infant s conceptual
' '
repertoireto sensoryproperties a la Locke. Quite the contrary. It is the latitude of the
hypothesisspacein the conceptuallywell- endowedinfant that opensthe door to multiple
interpretationsof singlewords and sentences (Chomsky1957 ). Of course, if learnerswereas
C. Fisherel al. / Syntact; constraints
about languagelearning, it posits that verb learning occurs in the presenceof

a priorly learned vocabulary of nominal items (Lenneberg 1967, Gentner
1978, 1982) .
The innovation has to do with the way learnersare posited to representthe
linguistic input that is to be paired with the extralinguistic input : as a parse
tree within which the novel verb occurs. The structured sentencerepresentation
can help in acquiring the novel verb just becauseit is revealing of the
'
argument-taking aspects of that verb s interpretation . If phrase-structural
knowledge of the exposure language facilitates verb learning, then the developmenta
priority of nouns begins to be understandable; and, so does the
explosion verb vocabulary acquisition simultaneouswith the appearanceof
of
rudimentary sentencesin speech(Lenneberg 1967) .
In the experiment that follows we examine an example of this problem and
its proposed solution : There are many meaningfully distinct paired verbs that
occur in virtually all and only the samereal-world contexts, for example, give
and receive, or chase and flee, lead and follow . When John gives a ball to
Mary , Mary receives the ball from John. Movie directors make an art of
'
distinguishing such notions visually. They can zoom in on the recipient s
grateful mien, the giver out of focus or off the screencompletely. Using the
word receive rather than give is a linguistic way of making the same
distinction. But only for a listener who understandstheir meanings. Without
a zoom lens, how is a learner to acquire the distinction in the first placeiS
If the learner considers the novel verb use within a syntactic structure, and
requires an interpretation that is congruent both with the scene and the
Locke proposed , they would fail to acquirelanguagefor quite differentreasons ; namely, that
almostno wordsreferto sensorypropertiesor combinationsof these(Fodor 1981 , Armstronget
at. 1983).
5 For all theseperspective - changingverbpairs, distinguishing environmental conditionsarenot
reallynonexistent , but arevery rare. For instance, it is reasonable to say Thepeoplefled thecity
but not so reasonableto say The city chasedthe people(examplefrom Pinker, personal
communication ). Soin principleonecanfleewithout beingchased . Thequestionis whetherthese
'
raredissociatingenvironments playa role in the child s differentiationof thesepairedverbs. We
know that closeto a third of verb usesto youngchildrenare in the absence of their referents-
not aboutthe here-and-now (Beckwithet al. 1989 as in " "
), Granny coming visit nextweek ,
is to
whichoccursin the absence of visiblecoming(or visibleGranny). This meansthat the learning
devicemustbe quite tolerantin evaluatingscene -to-world conjectures . /Come/ mustbe mapped
onto ' come' thoughit is oftensaidwhennothingis coming, and oftennot saidwhensomethingis
coming. No learningprocedurewilling to discountthe large percentageof scene /usagemis-
matchesfor comecould treat the vanishinglyrare mismatch es for give/receiveor chaselftee as
anythingbut noise.
C. Fisheret alI Syntacticconstraints 339
structure , there is a solution to the mapping problem for these verbs .

Considera listenerhearingoneof thesesentences
:
( I ) Look, biffing!
(2) The rabbit is biffing the ball to the elephant.
(3) The elephantis biffing the ball from the rabbit.
while watching a rabbit give and an elephant receivea ball. As we will show,
if the listener has no accessto the syntactic framework, as in ( I ), she will
probably interpret / biff / as related in meaning to English give. Hearing
sentence(2) bolsters this choice. But a learner who inspects sentence (3)
favors receive.
There are two clues to this choice in sentences(2) and (3) . First is the to/
from distinction , which indicated which entity is source and which is goal of
the moving ball. Second is the placement of rabbit and elephant within the
structure, for whatever entity showed up as the subject of the sentencehas
been selected, in the utterance, as the one that the sentenceis ' about' - the
entity of whom the act is predicated. The notional interpretation of / biff /
must be one that still fits the sceneobservedbut castsit in a different light : If
the subject of the predication was " rabbit " , then the act was giving; if it was
'. "
elephant , then the act was receiving. In essence , for a listener sensitive to
the full sentence, the interpretation of the observed scene will have been
affected by the linguistic observation that accompaniesit .6
The difficulty of the mapping problem is not restricted to the perspective-
changing verbs that we have just discussed. Consider a learner observing a
scenein which a rabbit pushesa duck, who falls ; and hearing one of these
three sentences:
6
Presaging later discussion, note that a discovery procedure that implicates semantic
deductions from surface structure must confront the fact that the relation between surface
syntax and argument structure , even within a single language, is complex at best and can be
misleading in some cases. Consider the case of gel, a near relative of the two verbs ( give and
receive) just discussed. Gel is subject to two interpretations . When we say " Emmanuel got a
book from the library " , the subject (Emmanuel) is certainly the causal agent in the book ' s
" "
moving out of the library . But when we say Emmanuel got the flu from Aaron , Aaron was
the intended causal agent, assuming that Emmanuel wanted no part of the flu . Thus surface
position of the nominals does not uniformly reflect distinctions in their thematic roles.
"
Moreover, gel can appear in two -argument sentencessuch as " Emmanuel got the flu in which
its transfer-of -possessionsenseis masked (if intended) and may not be intended in the first
place. We will return to these issues.
340 C. Fisheret al. / Syntacticconstraints
(4) Look, ziking!

(5) The rabbit is ziking the duck.
(6) The duck is ziking.
' ' ' '
Hearing (4) should not support the selection of push -like vs. fall -like
' ' ' '
interpretations . But ( 5) must be push and (6) must be fall . This time it
is the number of noun phrases (in separate argument positions) in the
sentencesthat bears on the interpretation of the verb item ; the intransitive
sentence(6) simply will not support the causal property of push.
For this latter pair (as opposed to give/ receive), cross-situational observation
is available as an alternate route for acquiring the distinction between
them, requiring no attention to syntax : Eventually there will be falling
sceneswithout a pusher, allowing their disentanglement (Pinker 1984) . All
the same, in the real case learners may recruit syntactic cues to facilitate the
choice.
3. Salient interpretations of the action
Though we have just conjectured that linguistic observation will affect

listeners' interpretation of scenes, we also mentioned in passing that -
syntax all aside - there are bound to be blases in how any event is most
naturally represented. Thus in a ball -exchange by rabbit and elephant, its
giving turns out to be more salient than its receipt. This differential salience
of two interpretations of a scene is the second topic that will be taken up
experimentally here.
Specifically, we will consider a distinction in plausibility that we term the
' '
agency bias . Even infants appear to be inclined to interpret action scenes
as involving a causal agent and an affected entity , or patient (Michotte 1963,
Fritz and Suci 1981, Leslie 1982, Leslie and Keeble 1987, Mandler 1991) .
This is in preference to an interpretation which excludes reference to the
'
agent. As an example, consider a scene in which a rabbit is feeding an
' ' ' '
elephant, who eats. The notions feed and eat appear to be equally likely
interpretations of a novel verb then uttered. Yet as we will demonstrate,
observers usually interpret the novel verb in such a scenario as expressing
' feed' a causal act rather than ' eat' the noncausal
,( ) ( option ) .
By hypothesis, this bias operates as well for the choice between give and
receive even tho Qgh both these verbs occur in sentencesthat mention the
agent, i .e., in sentence (2) the rabbit is agent of giving and in sentence
constraints
C. Fisheret al. / Syntactic 341
(3) the elephant is agent of receiving. But there may be a preference between
them all the same. In most give/ receive scenarios, the giver seems more
volitional and thus is the plausible candidate for the agent role - the cause,
first -mover, or instigator (Dowty 1991) .
Our experiment will examine the joint effects of preferences in event
representation (the agency bias) and syntactic deduction. Sometimes these
'
factors work together to reveal the verb s meaning. For example, causal
agent is linked to subject position in the sentencein all known languages
(Clark and Begun 1971, Grimshaw 1981, Bates and MacWhinney 1982,
Pinker 1984, Givon 1986, Schlesinger 1988, Dowty 1991) . Thus in sentence
'
(5) the listener s event bias will mesh with syntactic deduction. In contrast ,
sentence (6) pits the two evidentiary sources against each other , for the
' '
preferred causal interpretation ( push ) is in this case incompatible with the
intransitive syntax. 7
Experiment
We have proposed that perspective-changing verb pairs like give/ receive

and chase/flee (which are legion in the verb lexicon) pose a special problem
for an observational word -mapping schemeand hence offer a useful testing
ground for determining whether learners might be sensitive to other kinds
of evidence. Specifically, we asked whether young children show sensitivity
to syntactic structure in disentangling the sensesof such pairs of verbs, as
well as other pairs which might be learned via cross-situational observation.
To find out , we taught 3- and 4-year-olds novel (nonsense) verbs by using
them to describe action scenes. These scenesdepicted single events which
could be interpreted in two complementary ways.
The manipulations of interest concerned the linguistic context in which
the novel verb was presented. A child whose attention is directed to a
7 For adults,
feed can occur intransitively , e.g., The callie arefeeding. But as predicted, it then
is synonymous with eat. The wary reader will have noticed, as well , that eat often occurs
transitively , as in The cattle eat thefodder , but does not mean that the cattle causethe fodder to
eat. In short , eat can drop its object while feed can omit its causative subject. Then the two
verbs share their licensed syntactic environments, as both can be both transitive and intransitive
. It is the positioning of nominals in the structures, as mapped against the scene in view,
that reveals the difference in their argument structures (see Levin and Rappaport , this volume,
for a discussion of theseverb types) . The mapping problem can no more be solved by attention
to syntax alone than by attention to observation alone. It is the joint operation of the two
evidentiary sources that does the work .
342 C. Fisher et a/. I Syntactic constraints
relevant sceneshould be more likely to interpret a novel verb then heard as

notionally resembling give if it is presented in sentence (2) than if it is
presentedin sentence(3) . Symmetrically, taking a novel verb to resembleget
or receiveshould be more likely upon hearing sentence(3) than upon hearing
sentence(2) .
To test these predictions, we needed some way of assessinghow our
subjectsinterpreted novel verbs. The method used was a straightforward one:
We simply asked the children what they thought the words meant. This
method has two main advantages. The first is its very straightforwardness.
When children can provide a paraphraseof a novel word , it is unnecessaryto
attempt to infer from some less obviously relevant aspect of their behavior
what they consider the novel word to mean. The second advantage is more
central to our question: The essenceof the problem we addressin this work is
that there are pairs of verbs that will be difficult or impossible to differentiate
from observational evidence alone. By our own argument there will be no
event we could show subjects that would isolate giving from receiving or
chasing from fleeing. Thus we could not assesswhat children learned about
the novel verbs by, for example, asking them to choose among pictured
events(as in Brown 1957). The paraphrasemethod allowed us to examinejust
those casesthat we have argued pose the knottiest problem for verb mapping.
This method has one disadvantage as well, in that two-year-olds learning
first "Verbscannot be induced to provide glossesor paraphrasesfor made-up
words, so our youngest subjects are three-year-olds. As we will show, these
children are capable of answering the question " What does biffing mean1" in
revealing ways. No doubt can arise as to the relevance of three- and four -
year-olds to the question posed, for the bulk of the basic verb vocabulary is
acquired by theseage groups.
4.1. Method
Video-taped sceneswere shown to preschoolersand to adult controls. Each

scenewas described by the experimenter with a sentencethat contained a
nonsenseverb. The subjects' task was to paraphrase the verb.
4.1.1. Subjects
The child subjects were twenty-four 3-year-old children (mean age 3;8,
range 3; 1- 4;0), and thirty 4- year-old children (mean age 4;8, range 4;3- 5;0) .
Nine children (five 3-year-olds and four 4- year-olds) were replaced in the
C. Fisheret at. / Syntacticconstraints 343
design for failure to respond (see the Procedure section below) . Eighteen
adults were included to provide a baselinemeasureof competent performance
in this task. A third of the subjectsin each age group were randomly assigned
to each of three introducing context conditions (seeProcedure, below) .
4.1.2. Stimuli
Six brief motion sceneswith puppet actors were video-taped. The scenes
were designedto be naturally describablewith two English verbs that differed
in their semantic and syntactic properties. One of the sentencecontexts that
could accompany each scenewas arbitrarily called the ' X ' context, and the
other was called the ' V ' context. Descriptions of the scenesand thesesentence
contexts are shown in table I .
Table I
Scenes
/sentence
pairs
Scene Sentences
I : A rabbit is feedingan elephant X: The elephantis -- ing. (eat)
with a spoon. Y: The bunnyis - -ing the elephant . (feed)
2: A rabbit comesup and pushes X: The bunnyis - -ing the monkey. (push)
a monkeyoff a box. Y: The monkeyis - -ing. (fall)
3: A rabbit runsacrossthe screen , X: The bunnyis ---ing the skunk. (flee)
followedby a skunk. Y: The skunkis ---ing the bunny. (chase )
4: A monk :ey is riding piggy-back X: The monkeyis - -ing the bunny. (ride)
on a rabbit. Y: The bunnyis ---ing the monkey. (carry)
An elephanthandsa ball to a rabbit. X: The elephant is -- ing the ball to the
bunny. (give)
Y : The bunny is ---ing the ball from the elephant
. (take)
6: A rabbit putsa blanketovera monkey. X : The bunny is ---ing the blanketonto the
monkey. (put)
Y : The bunny is -- ing the monkeywith the
blanket. (cover)
For the first two scenesin table 1 (feed/eat and push/ fal/), the syntax of the
two sentencesdiffers in the number of noun phrases, i.e., transitive feed
expresses the causal relationship w~ile intransitive .eat does not. For the next
two scenes(chaselfleeand .carry/ ride), the number of noun phrases is equal
but the order of the nouns encodes two perspectives on the event and,
8
consequently, who is the agent.
8 Notice tha~ride/carry and choselfleedon' t differ syntactically
, i.c., in their subcatcgorlzation
frames; both appearin simpletransitivesentences . Moreover, both membersof thesepairshave
In the last two scenes(give/ receiveand put/ cover), the sentencesfor the two
standard choicesdiffer in the order of NP argumentsin the sentenceas well as
in the preposition used to mark the indirect object (to vs. from and onto vs.
with) . These last two casescan be subdivided into one pair relevant to the
choice of agent (give/ receive), thus subject (elephant vs. rabbit ), and one pair
relevant to the choice of goal and located object (put/ cover) , thus direct object
(blanket vs. monkey) . Thus the stimuli overall can provide some indication of
the kinds of syntactic-semantic linkages that young children can recruit for
verb mapping.
Each sentence structure was randomly paired with one of six nonsense
"
syllables for each subject (zike, blick , pilk , dack, moke, node) . All sentences
were presentedwith the verb in the progressiveform (blicking) to maximiz@
intelligibility and pragmatic felicity as descriptions of ongoing actions.
4.1.3. Procedure
Two experimenters tested each child individually ; one showed the videotapes
and uttered the stimulus sentences , while the other recorded the
' were also audio -taped, to allow later
subjects responses. The sessions
checking of the accuracy of the recording experimenter.
"
A puppet (Mac) was introduced to the child who was then told Mac
'
doesnt speak English very well, so sometimeshe usespuppet words. Can you
"
help us figure out what the puppet words mean? . Assent received, the child
was then given a practice trial in which Mac said " Look ! The elephant is
"
zorping ! as an experimenter made a hand-held elephant puppet laugh. The
"
child was then asked, " What does zorping mean? and prompted by asking
" What is the "
elephant doing ? This latter prompt was used only in the
practice trial , to help the child understand the task. For the adult subjects,
Mac the puppet was omitted for obvious reasons. They were simply informed
that their task would be to guessthe meanings of nonsensewords.
On each test trial , the subject first heard the stimulus sentenceand then
saw the video-taped scene. The scenewas repeated for up to one minute as
the subject watched. The experimenter repeatedthe stimulus sentenceat least
the same thematic-role assignmentto syntactic position : the subject is agent, the object is theme
' '
(or patient) . What we mean by attention to the syntax in solving the mapping problem for the
' ' '
membersof thesepairs is that the observers conjecture about whether the verb means chase or
' flee' is -
consequenton noticing which observedentity receivesthe subject agent slot. As we have
emphasizedearlier, this is one reason why a priorly acquired nominal vocabulary is prerequisite
to acquiring verb meanings.
C. Fisher et al. / Syntactic constraints 34S
once while the videotape played. The subject was asked " What does gorping
rnean?" . Additional prompts were " What ' s happening?" or " What ' s going
on?" . Subjects were encouraged to guess. Subjects who said nothing during
the practice trial and during the first two experimental trials were dropped
frorn the study. Sceneswere presented in two orders, chosen to allow all
subjects to begin with less difficult items (as revealed during pilot testing) .
The first order was feed/ eat, give/ receive, chaselfiee, cover/put , carry/ ride,
push/fall . The secondorder was its reverse.
The nonsenseverbs were presentedto the subjectsin one of three linguistic
contexts:
' '
Neutral syntax ( No sentence) trials. A third of the subjects in each age
group heard the nonsensewords in the syntactically uninformative context
" Look ! "
Ziking ! . These subjects were cued (by the -inK suffix, Brown 1957)
that the novel word was a verb but receivedno infonnation about its specific
syntactic behavior. Even if young children use syntactic evidencein real-life
verb learning, this experimental condition withheld such evidence, allowing us
to assessany blases subjects might show .in interpreting the scenes and
providing a baselineagainst which to compare their perfonnance when given
syntactic information .
Sentencetrials. The remaining two -thirds of the subjects saw the scenes
accompaniedby one of two introducing sentential contexts ( X or Y in table
1, for each scene). Each subject heard only one of the two sentencesfor a
' '
single scene. One group of subjectsheard the sentencesdesignated X in table
' '
1, and the other group heard those designated V . We reiterate that the
assignment of sentencesto the categories X and Y was entirely arbitrary .
Thus, e.g., transitive feed was assignedto the Y category while transitive push
was assignedto the X category. This arbitrary assignmentassuredthat each
subject group heard some sentencesof both kinds.
4.1.4. Coding and scoring

'
Subjects paraphrases were sorted into three categories :
( I ) ResponseX : Responsesthat fit sentence X (shown in table 1), both

syntactically and in describing the scene, were coded as X responses . For
I " ' "
example, for scene , eat, or a phrasal equivalent ( He s drinking soup ), is
congruent with the sceneand with the construal implied by the structure of
sentenceX . Notice that a subject might be exposedto a Y sentence( The
bunny is gorping the elephant) but give the X responseall the same. If so,
the syntax of the input sentencehas failed to influence that response.
C. Fisher et alI Syntactic constraints
(2) ResponseY: Responsesthat fit sentenceY (table 1), both syntactically

and in describing the scene, were coded as Y responses . For example, for
scene1, feed, or a phrasal equivalent ( He s giving him medicine" ) would
" '
be congruent both with the scene and with the (causative) construal
implied by sentenceY of this pair .
( ) Other ( 0 ) : Failures to respond and responsesthat fit neither sentenceX
3
nor Y were coded as Other. These were almost always relevant to the
scene in some way (e.g., the response " They' re playing" for the give/
receivescene), but incongruent with the ditransitive syntax. Also included
in this category were responsesthat fit both X and Y contexts, and
therefore could not demonstrate sensitivity to the sentencestructure.
4.2. Resu
/ts
To assessthe reliability of the coding, all of the responsesfrom the 3-year-

old subjects were recoded by an independent coder who was blind to
introducing context. The two coders agreedwith each other in 94% of coding
decisions. Residual disagreements were resolved through discussion. The
'
subjects responsesare summarized in table 2. This table shows the proportion
of subjects in each age group who produced each type of responsefor
each scene. We now discussthesefindings under severalrubrics:
4.2.1. Breadth of the hypothesisspace

The scenarioswere designedto be quite simple, containing few distracting
properties. Even so, as table 2 shows, child subjects gave a response that
had to be relegated to the ' Other ' category in a substantial proportion of the
trials (29% across all conditions for 3-year-olds, 23% for 4-year-olds) . This
finding constitutes yet one more demonstration of the many- many relations
between scene observation and verb interpretation . In several casescoded
' Other ' the
, subjects explicitly mentioned both of the standard choices (e.g.,
' '
giving and getting) . These responseswere quite common in the No sentence
' '
condition (36% of adults and 20% of children s total responses) but
' '
extremely rare in the sentencecontexts ( 3% of adults and 5% of children s
responses). When a sentencecontext was provided, both children ( t ( 52) =
3.64, p < 0.001) and adults ( t ( 16) = 5.89, p < 0.001) were much less likely
to propose both readings for the novel verb. This is a first indication that
the syntactic contexts rein in the many interpretations made available by
scene inspection, focusing subjects' attention on specific aspects of our
scenanos.
C. Fisher et aI. I Syntactic constraints 347
Table
2
each
Proportion foreach
response scene
, byageandintroducing
context
Three -year-olds(n = 24) :

eat/ feed 0.25 0.38 0.38 o.so 0.13 0.38 0.2.5 0.7S 0.00
push/fall 0.38 0.13 0.50 0.88 0.13 0.00 0.2.5 0.7S 0.00
ftee/chase 0.00 0.63 0.38 0.38 0.13 0.50 0.00 0.88 0.13
ride/carry 0.25 0.75 0.00 0.63 0.25 0.13 0.2.5 O.SO 0.25
give/take 0.50 0.25 0.25 0.50 0.00 0.50 0.2.5 0.25 0.50
put/cover 0.25 0.13 0.63 0.38 0.25 0.38 0.38 0.25 0.38
Mean 0.27 0.38 0.35 0.54 O.IS 0.31 0.23 0.56 0.21
Four-year-o/ds (n= 30j :
eat/ feed 0.10 0.70 0.20 0.60 0.20 0.20 0.10 0. 80 0.10
push/fall 0.70 0.00 0.30 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.50 0.40 0.10
flee/chase 0.00 0.70 0.30 0.40 0.10 0.50 0.00 0.90 0.10
ride/carry 0.00 0.80 0.20 0.40 0.20 0.40 0.20 0.70 0.10
give/ take 0.40 0.10 0.50 0.50 0.00 0.50 0.30 0.60 0.10
put/ cover 0.20 0.10 0.60 0.40 0.20 0.40 0.20 0.70 0.10
Mean 0.13 0.41 0.35 0.55 0.11 0.33 0.1.2 0.68 0.10
Adults( n= J8) :
eat/ feed 0.00 0.17 0.83 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.. 0.00
push/fall 0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.. 0.00
flee/chase 0.00 0.83 0.17 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.. 0.00
ride/carry 0.17 0.33 0.50 0.83 0.17 0.00 0.00 1.. 0.00
give/take 0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.. 0.00
put/cover 0.00 0.83 0.17 0.50 0.17 0.33 0.00 1.. 0.00
Mean 0. 19 0.36 0.44 0.89 0.06 0.06 0.. 1.. 0.00
4.2.2. Narrowing the hypothesisspaceby attention to the syntax

Each of the standard responseswas more frequent in the matching sentence
context than in either of the other two introducing contexts. For example,
' '
subjectsgave more give -like responsesto give syntax than to receivesyntax or
to the neutral condition. That is, X responseswere more likely in the context of
sentenceX than sentenceY (children: t(34) = 5.04, adults: 1( 10) = 14.56, p
< 0.001) or the ' No sentence ' context
(children: 1(34) = 4.19, adults: 1( 10) =
5.81, p < 0.00I ). Similarly, Y responseswere more frequent in the context of
sentenceY than sentenceX (children: t(34) = 8.83, adults: t( IO) = 16.14, p
< 0.001) or ' No sentence '
(children: t(34) = 5.16, adults: 1( 10) = 32.73, p
348 C. Fisher et aJ. / Syntactic constraints
< 0,001) .9 The effect of syntax on the interpretation of thesenonsensewords

- -
emergesin the same way for each scenewith one exception (the 3 year old
subjectsparaphraseda nonsenseverb describing put/ cover consistent with put
syntax more often than cover syntax in all three introducing contexts)'.
Overall, the result is that syntactic context had a powerful effect on subjects
construal of the nonsenseverb.
'
The children s behavior is epitomized most poignantly in several contrasting
responsesto the scenesin the presenceof syntactic context. Consider
the carry/ ride scene. Hearing the sentencethat treats the carrier (rabbit ) as
" ' "
subject, a child responds He s holding him on his back . But hearing the
sentencethat treats the rider (monkey) as subject, another child responds
" He' s ' "
sitting on him s [sic] back . Clearly thesechildren watch the sceneand
interpret what they seeto derive the verb meaning: They induce the meaning
from inspection ' of its real-world accompaniments. Perhaps unlike the adults,
they do not seemto be aware of a linguistic puzzle. All the same, the sentence
heard exerts a strong - albeit implicit - influence on just what they think the
' '
scenedepicts: whether it is about the one who holds/ carries or the one who
sits/ rides. This is the sensein which sentence-to -world pairing can sharply
limit the search-spacefor verb identification.
4.2.3. Semanticblasesin the interpretation of verbs

In addition to constituting a baseline for comparison to the sentence
'
trials in our task , the ' No sentence condition provides a chance to look
"
for semantic blases in verb interpretation . After all , in observing th e chase/
" "
flee scenewhile hearing Look ! Ziking ! , subjects are not really warranted
in preferring one of these interpretations over the other . The scene fits
them both . Our initial hypothesis was that subjects would therefore choose
"
chaseor flee ( " run away ) more or less at random in this condition , hence
our original arbitrary division of the sentences(and their responses) into
' ' '
the ' X and V categories. But our subjects were anything but open-
minded in their guesses, as table 2 shows. All age groups had a preferred
' '
responsein the No sentence condition for 5 of the 6 scenes. They tended to
9 Preliminary analyses indicated that there was no effect of order (which of the stimuli the
subjects saw first ) on the probability of sentence-congruent responses , so the two order groups
were combined in this and all further analyses. The effect of syntax on verb paraphraseswas
shown in a series of planned I -tailed I-testS. In each case the dependent variable was the
proportion (arcsine transformed) of each response( X or V ), examined across sentencecontexts.
Separateanalyses for the 3- and 4- year-olds yielded the same results in each case; to simplify
presentation of the results, the two groups of children are pooled in the analysespresentedhere.
C. Fisheret al. / Syntactic
constraints 349
describesceneI as one of feeding rather than eating, scene2 as pushing rather

than fal /ing, scene 3 as chasing, not fleeing or running away, scene 4 as
carrying rather than riding, and scene 5 as giving rather than taking or
receiving. The adults showed these blases even more regularly than the
children.
In each of these cases, subjects evidently selected a ' more causal' or
agentive participant in the scene, and took the verb to code the actions of
that participant, who thus became sentential subject. Scene 6 (put/ cover)
leavesthe agent choice unaffected and, interestingly enough, it is in this case
only that children show no preferenceof choice in the ' No sentence' condition
. Clearly, this unanticipated agency factor was strongly affecting our
'
subjects responses .
To study this semantic bias, we now recoded the X and Y sentences
according to whether they matched or mismatchedthis agencybias. For feed/
eat and push/fal /, no difficulty in doing so arises: Only the feed and push
sentencesmention the causal agent so theseinterpretations should be favored
if there is a bias to conceivescenesas an agent acting on a thing affected. For
chaselfteeand give/ receive, this agent- act- patient interpretation applies to
both members of the pairs. For these, we relied on Dowty ' s ( 1991) ' proto -
'
agent classification schemein which several factors are postulated to lead to
the choice of plausible agent: animacy (which does not distinguish for our
stimuli), a-ctivity, and instigator of the action. Thus necessarilyit is chasingthat
precedesand causesfleeing, and giving that precedesand causesreceiving.
For the case of carry/ ride, no such principled distinction in the verb
meaningsthemselvesexists for choosing the plausible agent. However, in our
particular depiction of this act, the carrier (the rabbit ) was actively running
across the screen with an inert monkey sitting on his back. Apparently this
distinction of relative activity vs. passivenessled subjectsto choose the rabbit
as instigator, thus plausible agent. (Had our sceneinstead shown, say, a child
riding a mechanical bull , doubtless this choice would have been reversedfor
this verb pair .)
Table 3 reorganizes the findings according to this distinction between
' '
Agentive (A ) versusNon Agentive and lessplausible agent (NA ) responses .lo
The table shows the proportion of subjects in each age group and intro -
10 Because theagencyeffectwasunanticipated , theexperimentwasnot balancedsuchthat each

subjectwould hear an equal numberof A and NA sentences . So that this differencewill not
contaminatethestatisticalassessments
here, all comparisons betweenthe A and NA contextsare
within-subjects
. All othercomparisons
are betweensubjects , as before.
350 C. Fisheret alI Syntacticconstraints
ducing context who produced A (e.g., feed, carry) and NA (e.g., eat, ride)
responses, as defined above. These values are shown only for the five relevant
scenarios(that is, excluding the put/ cover scenewhich cast the same participant
as subject in both context sentences ) . Across all presentation conditions
and all age groups, A 187
responses( ) outnumber NA responses(91) two to
one. There is an agency bias.
Means: 0.53 0.18 0.70 0.13 0.20 0.50
Four-year-olds(n = 30) :
. 0.80 0.10 0.20 0.60
feed eat 0.10 0.10
push fall 0.10 0.00 1 0.00 0.50 0.40
chase flee 0.10 0.00 0.90 0.00 0.10 0.40
carry ride 0.80 0.00 0.70 0.20 0.20 0.40
give take 0.40 0.10 0.50 0.00 0.30 0.60
Means: 0.66 0.04 0.78 0.06 0.26 0.48
Adults(n = 18) :
feed eat 0.17 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00
push fall 0.50 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00
chase flee 0.83 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00
carry ride 0.33 0.17 1.00 0.00 0.17 0.83
give take 0.50 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00
Means: 0.47 0.03 1.00 0.00 0.03 0.97
. Since ' Other ' within each scene/ context cell may
responses are left out of this table , proportions
not sum to I .
Not surprisingly, this effectof the natural interpretationof the scenesis

most powerfulwhereit is not contaminatedby mismatchingsyntacticinfor-
C. Fisher et at. / Syntactic constraints
mation. Thus the preferencefor agentive responsesappears most strongly in

the ' No ' sentence' condition in table 3. This effect was assessedin post-hoc
(Bonferroni adjusted) matched-pairs I-tests, which revealed that A choices
were more frequent than NA ones in the ' No sentence' context for both
children (t( 17) = 6.18, p < 0.001) and adults (1(5) = 5.93, p < 0.01) .
4.2.4. The interaction of syntax and semantics

So far we have shown (table 2) that structure affects Ss' guesseswhen it is
made available, in the X and Y (sentential) conditions of presentation; and
that the agency bias (for which responseswere recoded as A and NA ) affects
Ss' guessesheavily in ~he absenceof syntactic information (the ' No sentence'
condition of table 3) . The question remains how these factors interact when
(as in the real world of maternal speech) the new word is presentedin a full
sentencecontext.
To find out , we now look more closely at the finding (table 2) that , while
the effects of syntactic context were very strong and reliable, they were
nowhere near categorical for the child subj~ ts (though they were nearly so
for the adults) . The reason is that while the syntactic introducing circumstances
"
supported the agencybias in some cases(as when the subject heard The
"
rabbit is biffing the elephant while watching a feed/ eat scene), the syntactic
and semantic cues pulled in opposing directions in other cases(as when the
" "
subject heard The elephant is biffing while watching this same scene). To
repeat, subjects tend to view this scene as a feeding scene (the semantic-
interpretive influence), but to encode the intransitive sentencestructure as
favoring eat (the syntactic influence).
The joint action of thesetwo variables can be seenin table 4, which repeats
the data of table 3, but summarizing across the five relevant scenarios. Thus
table 4 shows the proportion of subjects in each group and introducing
context who produced A and NA responses.Column 1 of this table shows the
bias toward agentive responseswhich we have just documented. Column 2
shows a slight enhancementof this preference(slight, becausethe preference
in this direction was already strong) when it is supported by the syntactic
evidence; that is, in agentive syntactic contexts. Column 3 shows that the
agencybias is heavily mitigated by mismatching syntactic evidence: When the
syntax demands the NA interpretation, the A responseis actually disprefer-
red, no longer the modal responsefor any age group . That is, we seethe same
effect of sentencecontext on verb interpretation when the normally disfavored
non-agentive responsesare examined separately: These responsesare
more frequent in the non-agentive than the agentive sentencecontext (chil -
C. Fisher et a/ . / Syntactic constraints
Table4
Proportion. agentive(A) and non-agentive( NA) responses
, by ageand introducingcontext
Age group - context

Introducing
No sentence Agentive Non - agentive
A NA A NA A
Threes 0.53 0.18 0.70 0.13 0.20 0.50

Fours 0.66 0.04 0.78 0.06 0.26 0.48
Adults 0.47 0.03 1.00 0.00 0.03 0.97
Overall 0.57 0.08 0.81 0.07 0.18 0.61
. Since ' Other ' within each scene/ context cell may
responses are left out of this table , proportions
not sum to 1.
4.2.5. The effect of age

Inspection of table 4 also shows that there is an age effect on these
response patterns , with adult responses almost categorical and child responses
probabilistic with respect to the variables under investigation . The
effect of age on the likelihood of producing frame-congruent responsesin
the two sentence contexts was shown in an ANDV A with age group as a
between-subjects effect, and sentence context (A versus NA ) as awithin -
subjects factor . The main effect of age was significant (F(2,45) = 17.36, P
< 0.001) : adults were more likely than children to produce a response that
fit the frame , but the two groups of children did not differ significantly
from each other . There was also a significant main effect of sentence
context (F( 1,45) = 5.33, p < 0.05) : Frame-congruent responseswere more
likely in the A than the NA context for all age groups, the interaction of
situation and syntax that we discussed earlier . However , the effects of age
and sentencecontext did not interact (F(2,45) < 1) . Thus the effect of age
is a simple one - adult performance was more stable with regard to both
the syntactic and saliencevariables, but all groups took syntactic information
into account when it conflicted with the agency bias as well as when it did
not.
C. Fisheret alI Syntacticconstraints
4.2.6. Summary of thefindings

The findings support the claim that a scene observed is insufficient for
'
fixing the meaning of a new verb, for subjects construal was often one that
mismatched the interpretations we had in mind. But in these stripped-down
puppet scenarios, the kinds of interpretation we had expectedwere the most
frequent ones for each age group and for each scenario (table 2). A bias in
event representationinfluenced the subjects' choice of the plausible ' doer' vs.
' done-to ' in these scenes
, independent of the syntactic introducing contexts
(tables 3 and 4) . But the most powerful influence on the choice of responsein
this regard was the structure of the sentenceheard, for the sentencesthat
'
pitted syntax against semantics reversed what had been subjects modal
preferencein the neutral contexts (tables 2 and 4) . As we hypothesized, the
syntactic structure led to a principled choice of interpretation among those
that were compatible with the scenein view.
4.2.7. An alternative interpretation of thefindings

Before discussing a theory of verb mapping that comports with these
findings, we digress to consider a persistent difficulty in interpreting experimental
studies of word-learning. It is hard to rule out the hypothesis that
subjects are relying solely on preexisting lexical knowledge in such tasks
(Pinker this volume) . That is, children could take the nonsensewords to be
synonyms for existing words, and respond with eat when appropriate in our
task becausethey already know both the meaning and the syntax of that
particular lexical item, rather than by interpreting the novel term in asyntax -
sensitive learning procedure. The standard remedy for this problem is to
teach young children new words for novel objects or actions (e.g., Markman
1989, Gropen et al. 1991) . Many studies of syntactic bootstrapping use this
strategy as well (Naigles 1990, Hirsh -Paseket al. 1988) .
In the current experiment, even though it allowed for the possibility of
glossing the nonsenseterm with a known verb, our child subjectsrejectedthis
option in a substantial percentageof cases. Thirty -five percent of the 3-year-
olds' and 48% of the 4-year-olds' responseswere phrasal descriptions rather
than single words (e.g., 441ickingit off the spoon" instead of 44eating
"
, 44giving
" " "
him medicine rather than 44feeding, 44trying to smell him rather than
" '
44chasing) . This is not to say that thesechildren didn t know the wordsfeed,
eat, and chase. Rather, they seem to have taken the novel verbs to have
specific meanings that were not equivalent to known verbs. This outcome is
in line with much current work on the . uses of lexical contrast in the
acquisition of word meaning. Young children seemdetermined to assign new
354 C. Fisher et al. / Syntactic constraints
meaningsto new words. They do not expect there to be exact synonyms. (For
this effect with nouns, seee.g., Clark 1987, and Markman , this volume ; and
for the analogous effects with verbs, Golinkoff et al., in prep. ; Kako , in
prep.)
We now ask whether the samepattern of syntactic effectson verb interpretation
occurs for the phrasal responsestaken alone. If so, it is unlikely that
'
the children were merely ' filling in the blank in the stimulus sentenceswith a
known verb that fit , but were engaging in something more like the syntax-
guided mapping procedure proposed here.
Table 5 shows the obtained responsepatterns for the phrasal responses ,
. Three 3- - olds and one 4- - old contributed
omitting all single-verb glosses year year
no data to this analysis. Given the reduction in the data entailed by
'
recoding the responses in this way, the 3- and 4-year-olds data were
combined. Inspection of table 5 shows that the same pattern of structural
effects on verb interpretation remains. This pattern was reliable in independent
I -tests on the (arcsine transformed) proportion of X and Y responses .
ResponseX was more likely in the context of sentence X than sentenceY
' '
(1(30) = 2.94, p < 0.01) and the No sentence context (1(32) = 4.11, p
< 0.001) . Similarly , responseY was more frequent given sentenceY than
either of the other two introducing contexts (sentenceX : 1(30) = 6.59, p
< 0.001; no sentence: 1(32) = 3.61, p < 0.001) . In sum, even when the
children evidently did not interpret the nonsensewords as puppet synonyms
for verbs in their known lexicon, there are strong and reliable effects of
sentencestructure on construal.
5. DiseI RiOD
We now outline a verb mapping procedure that comports with the

findings just described, and with related effects in the language acquisition
literature .
5.1. Extraction of linguistic formatives
A vexed problem in understanding language learning concerns how the

child finds such units as word and phrase in the continuously varying sound
' "
stream: how Henny-Penny s listeners interpreted her as saying The sky is
" " "
falling rather than This guy is falling . A vast literature now supports the
C. Fisheret al. / Syntacticconstraints 355
Table5
Proportion of X and Y responsesby introducing context ; phrasal responsesonly (3- and 4- year-
aids together, n = 50)
Scene ' No sentence' SentenceX SentenceY

(n = 18) (n = 16) (n = 16)
eat/ feed 0.00 0.17 0.13 0.00 0.00 0.13

push/ fall 0.33 0.06 0.75 0.00 0.31 0.50
flee/ chase 0.00 0.17 0.38 0.06 0.00 0.56
ride/carry 0.11 0.28 0.38 0.06 0.25 0.50
give/ take 0.00 0.11 0.13 0.00 0.00 0.19
put/ cover 0.00 0.06 0.00 0.13 0.13 0.25
Mean 0.07 0. 14 0.29 0.04 0. 11 0.35
view that thesesegmentationdecisionsare made by infants basedon prosodic

and distributional cues in caretaker speech(for recent evidence and discussion
, see Gleitman et al. 1988, Gerken et al. 1993, Fisher and Tokura , in
11
press; Kelly , this volume; Cutler , this volume; Brent, this volume) . In what
follows, we presuppose these approaches to solving the segmentation problem
, concentrating attention on acquisition of the phrase structure (which
requires ~abeling as well as segmentationof phrases) and the word meanings.
5.2. Word- towor /d pairing and the acquisition of first nouns
We take as given that the human learner expects sentencesto convey

predicate/argument structure as organized by a phrase-structure grammar
that conforms to X -bar principles. However, universal grammar leavesopen
someparametersof the phrase structure of the exposUrelanguage; thesemust
be set by experience. Before this learning occurs, the novice can recruit only
the exigenciesof word use - the pairing of words to their extralinguistic
contexts - to solve the mapping problem.
11 For evidenceon infant attentionto clauseboundingcuesseeHirsh-Paseket at. 1987; for

phrase-boundingcues,seeJusczyket al. 1992;and for word-boundingcuesseeGrosjeanandGee
1987, Kelly, this volume. Thereis alsoa literatureon adult speechproductionand perception
investigatingthe physicalbasesof theseprosody-syntaxmappings , too vast for us to cite here
(but for seminalarticles, seeKlatt 1975, Cooperand Paccia -Cooper 1980 , Lehisteet at. 1976 ,
Cutler, this volume) and the availability of suchcuesin infant- directedspeech(Fernaldand
Simon1984 , Fisherand Tokura, in press; Ledererand Kelly 1991).
By default , the effect should be that youngest children can acquire only
object tenDs (nouns, in the adult language) . This is because, as we
described in introductory remarks, only the nouns occur in maternal
speech in a tight time -lock with the situational contexts, and in ostensive
contexts. And indeed one of the most striking findings in the language-
learning literature is that first words are nouns despite the fact that from
the beginning the learner is exposed to words from every lexical category .
We assume that these first words are assigned to the formal category noun
on a semantic basis, as conjectured by Grimshaw ( 1981) and Pinker
( 1984) .
5.3. Setting the phrase structure , and first verbs
Our findings suggest that verb learning implicates a sentence -to-world

pairing procedure and cannot in general be accomplished, as Pinker ( 1984)
and others have advocated (seefootnote 3), by pairing the isolated verb to its
observational contingencies. But then how much grammatical knowledge is
required as input to verb learning? And how might children acquire this?
We propose that the meanings of the first verbs, as well as relevant
components of the phrase structure, are acquired by bootstrapping from a
parti .al sentential representation (henceforth, PSR) that becomes available
once some nouns have been learned: This consists of the known nouns and
the unknown verb, as sequencedin the input sentence, e.g.
[ ... baby ... eat ... cookie ...]
By hypothesis, it is this richer-than-the-word , poorer-than-the-phrase-structure

, representationthat learners past the one-word (noun) stagefirst attempt
to pair with the scenein view.
There is some evidence that the PSR can aid in verb identification in
two ways. First , the identity of the nouns can provide information about
the selectional properties of the verb. Lederer et al. ( 199] ) showed that
adults can identify about 28% of the verbs that mothers are uttering if , in
addition to the sceneinformation , they are also told which nouns occurred
with the verb in the maternal utterances. This level of performance is not
great, but is a significant improvement over the 7% success rate that
subjects achieve if shown only the video-taped scene. It is easy to seewhy
having the nouns is so helpful : If you are told that baby and cookie
C. Fisher et alI Syntactic constraints 357
occurred in construction with the mystery verb, eat becames a plausible

' '
conjecturejust becauseverbs that mean eat should selectfor edibles.12
The PSR yields a second advantage for verb mapping, provided that the
learner also has implicit accessto the Projection Principle (roughly, that every
argument position required by the verb will be reflected as a noun phrase in
the surface sentence; Chomsky 1981) . So armed, the learner can make a
secureconjecture as between an intended unary relation (such as fa //) vs. a
binary relation (such as push), simply by counting the number of noun
phrases
- in the sentence.13
Early use of this machinery is suggestedby findings from Naigles ( 1990),
with babies 23- 25 months of age. They were shown a video-taped scenein
which (a) a duck who by pushing on a rabbit ' s head forces the latter into a
squatting position whilst (b) both the duck and the rabbit wheel their free
arms in a circle.' Half the subjects were introduced to the scene with the
sentence" The d uck is gorping the rabbit " and the other half heard " The
duck and the rabbit are gorping " . Thereafter , two new videos were shown,
one to the child ' s left and one to her right , along with the prompt " Find
"
gorping now ! . One of the new videos showed the duck forcing the rabbit
to squat (but no arm -wheeling) and the other showed the two side by side
wheeling their arms (but no forcing -to -squat) . The children who had been
introduced to gorping within the transitive sentence now gazed longest at
the causal scene while those who had heard the intransitive sentence
looked longer at the noncausal scene. Here, as in the push/fall and feed/ eat
scenesinvestigated in the present experiment, the one-argument structure
did not substain a causal interpretation despite the agency bias in event
representation.
A related point is made by Fisher ( 1993), who showed unfamiliar agent-
patient events to children aged three and five yeary but with the entities
named only by pronouns. For instance, they saw one person causing another
to rotate on a swiveling stool by alternately pulling on the ends of a scarf
around the victim ' s waist. Half the subjects heard " She's blicking her
around" and the other half heard " She' s blicking around" . The child ' s task
was to point out , in a still photograph of the event, the one whose action was
12 We must acknowledge , however , that the Gleitman-Landau archiveof maternalspeech

includesmanyexamples like " Don' t eat that paper!" , " We don' t eat the book, Bonnie" .
13 Of coursethis canonly work for simplesentences for, e.g., " Therabbit in thegrasshopped
" containstwo NPswithin an
away argumentposition. But sentences to novicesarecharacteristically
short (approximately5 wordslong, on average ; Newport 1977 ) and so rarelyembodythis
problem.
'
labelled by the novel verb (" Point to the one who s blicking the other one
"
around" or " Point to the one who' s blicking around ) . The intent here was to
put the children into the position of much younger learners who have access
only to the PSR: They knew how many arguments were supplied to the new
verb, but not which was which. Those who had heard the transitive frame
confidently chose the causal agent as the blicker , while those shown the
intransitive frame were willing to select the patient as blicker. Thus without
being told which event participant has been cast as sentencesubject, preschooler
interpreted a one-argument structure as incompatible with a causal
interpretation .
The PSR taken together with the scene observed will allow learners to
acquire a crucial aspect of the phrase structure itself. Supposea child hears
" kick " for the first time in the frame " The "
bunny kicked the monkey . The
agency bias,- as constrained by the minimal structure given by the PSR
-
(namely, a 2-argument structure), will lead the learner to seek an agent
patient interpretation of the scene. Provided that she knows the nouns bunny
and monkey, she can annotate the phrase structure as shown in figure 1,
marking bunny, the first noun in the structure, as the agent (Joshi and
Rambow, in prep.) . This representation now matches two of the quasiuniversa
-
properties of the category subject of transitive sentence there is
one noun which is both the agent and the leftmost noun in a transitive
14
structure. There is a strong tendency for languagesto place subjectsbefore
objects (Keenan 1976, Kayne 1992) . Further phrase-structure options can
then be set based on this initial assignment.
///""
""""
KICK
BUNNY
(agent)
MONKE
Fig. 1
14 Notice that this claim differs from the subject -agentlink which has beeninvokedin the
literatureto supportan initially asyntacticverb-learningprocedure(e.g., Grimshaw1981 , Draine
andHardy 1982 , Pinker1984 . It is
, andothers). In fact, subjectsareoftenpatientsor experiencers
the transitivesentence whoseagentjust about universallysurfacesas subject . To recognizethis
distinction requires, at minimum, PSR knowledgethat will revealthe numberof argument
positions.
C. Fisher et aI. / Syntactic constraints 359
Notice finally that if there are languagesin which objects precedesubjects,

the assignmentof subject of the sentence(the NP immediately dominated by
S) to the serially second NP is still possible, based on the PSR. In that case,
the learner would have heard " Kicked the monkey the bunny" in the
presence of a bunny-kicking -monkey scene. The observed scene identifies
bunny as agent (hence subject of the transitive verb), consistent only with
template (b) of figure 2.
~
~u~ ~0~=
f
-structure
Fig. 2. (a) anSVOphrase ; (b) a VOSphrase
template -structure .
template
Severalother kinds of cue to the phrase-structure of the exposurelanguage
;
have been suggested , and have plausibility . For instance, Mazuka ( 1993)
suggests that branching direction in Japanesecan be deduced by observing
intonational markings of moved relative clauses. Further , subject and object
=zz>~~ ~0ZZ
NP ' s vary strongly in maternal speech(the former is usually a monosyllabic

A~
pronoun and is often omitted even in non-prodrop languageslike English;

Fisher and Tokura , in press; Gerken et ale 1993), and learners may be
>A
sensitiveto such probabilistic patterns (for discussion, seeKelly , this volume) .

Hirsh -Pasekand Golinkot T( 1991) showed that 17-month -old children who
utter only isolated nouns appreciate at least the rudiments of English word
f
order and the way this maps onto thematic roles. If they heard a voice saying
" "
Big Bird tickles Cookie Monster they looked primarily at a video screen
" "
depicting this event, but if the voice said Cookie Monster tickles Big Bird ,
they looked at another video screen which depicted this latter event. These
toddlers evidently were sensitiveto (something like) the idea that the doer of
the action is the subject of the transitive sentence; and that in English the
serially first noun is that subject.
5.4. Structural information narrows the searchspacefor verb mapping
We have so far argued that PSR taken together with scenerepresentation

allows the child a bootstrap into the phrase structure of the exposure
C. Fisheret oJ. I Syntacticconstraints
language. Once the full phrase structure is acquired, the learner can approach
the perspective-changing verbs that we have studied. Disentanglement of the
membersof thesepairs requires more than counting NP positions (which are
the same for both interpretations) and fitting these to the logic of the
observedsituation (which suits either choice) .
Once the phrase structure has been bootstrapped from PSR, the learner
can make this decision by inspecting the geometry of the tree to determine
which noun is sentencesubject. If the plausible agent appears as subject with
the give/ receive scene, then the situational and syntactic cues converge on
give. But if the plausible agent appears in nonsubject position then it is not
the agent, despite appearances. In the present experiment, we showed child
responsivenessto these implications of structure for verb interpretation even
in caseswhere they had to overcome a semantic bias in event interpretation
to use it .
5.5. The informativeness of multiple frames
In principle, attention to the licensedrange of syntactic environments for a

verb can provide converging evidence about its interpretation, just because
these several environments are projections from the range of argument
structures associatedwith that verb. This feature of syntactic bootstrapping is
controversial (as opposed to the ' zoom lens' notion which appears to have
gained wide currency) . So after describing the potential usefulness of frame-
range information for solving the mapping problem, we will discussavailable
experimental evidence in its favor. Specifically, we will discuss the experimental
manipulations deemedcritical by some skeptics (particularly , Pinker,
this volume) for confirming the hypothesis.
5.5.1. The resolvingpower of frame rangesfor verb mapping
In very many cases, a surface-structure/ situation pair is insufficient or even

'
misleading about a verb s interpretation . One such case is the eat example
that we mentioned earlier. The phrase structure is the same when the adult
" " " "
says Did you eat your cookie? as when he says Do you want the cookie? ,
and the two verbs are used by caretakers in situations where their interpretations
can easily be mistaken. Subjects always come up with an action term
that fits the observed sceneand the structure, and guesseat instead of want.
In responseto the fact that the next sceneobservation does not support the
eat conjecture (it may show, say, the mother offering a toy rather than a
cookie to the child ), subjects now come up with yet another physical term
(e.g., take) . They are mulishly resistant to conjecturing any mental term.
While successiveobservations force them to change their minds about which
physical-action term is the right one, they never seemto get the idea that this
bias should be overridden altogether. This effect was shown by Lederer et al.
( 1991) with adults, and by Gillette ( 1992) with children.
Examination of the further syntactic privileges of eat and want can
resolve this problem . Eat occurs intransitively and in the progressive form
while want does not . Want also occurs with tenseless sentence complements
(Do you want to eat the apple?) . These distinctions are sufficient to
disentangle the two verb construals , for only mental activity verbs license
these constructions . (Note that force verbs, which also accept sentence
complements, require an additional nominal position , e.g., Make him eat
the apple! , but not . Make eat the apple.' ). As we will discuss presently,
subjects seize upon this disambiguating structural information to find the
right construal .
A second example of residual problems unresolved by single frames, even
'
though theseare paired with differing events, concernsa blind child s learning
of the distinction between touch and see. Blind learners receiveobservational
evidenceabout the meanings of both terms though it is perforce haptic and
not visual. The blind child ' s first uses of see at age two were in the sense
' touch' e. . she commanded " Don ' t see that !"
, g, , while pushing her brother
away from her record- player. The confusion arose, doubtless, becauseevery
scenein which the blind child can see(' ascertain by perceptual inspection' ) is
a scenein which she can touch. And both verbs occur most often in maternal
" ' '
speechas simple transitives. Further syntactic experience( Let s seeif there s
"
cheesein the refrigerator ) can account for how the blind child could, as she
did , come to distinguish between the two construals by age three (Landau
and Gleitman 1985).
As a more general example of the convergencethat frame ranges make
available for verb mapping, consider the four verbs give, explain, go, and
think. These verbs are cross-classified both conceptually and syntactically.
Give and explain, different as they are in many regards, both describe the
transfer of entities between two parties. Accordingly, they can appear in
structures with three noun-phrase positions :
(7) Ed gavethe horseto Sally.

(8) Ed explainedthe factsto Sally.
In (7), a physical object (the horse) is transferred from Ed' s to Sally' s hand
and in (8) abstract objects (the facts) are transferred from Ed' s to Sally' s
mind. A noun phrase is required for each of the entities involved: the giver,
the receiver, and that which is transferred betweenthem. It is this similarity in
their meanings that accounts for the similarity in the structures that they
accept. Verbs that describe no such transfer are odd in theseconstructions:
.
(9) Philip went the horse to Libby .
.
( 10) Philip thought the facts to Libby .
But there is another semantic dimension for these four verbs in which the
facts line up differently . Explain and think concern mental events while give
and go concern physical events. There is a typical surface reflex of this
distinction also, namely, mental verbs accept sentencecomplements(expressa
relation betweenan actor and a proposition) :
( 11) Jane thinks/explains that there is a mongoosein the parlor .

( 12) * Jane goes/gives that there is a mongoose in the parlor .
The learner who appreciatesboth of thesemapping relations can deducefrom

the range of syntactic environments that give expresses physical transfer while
explain expresses mental transfer (that is to say, communication ; Zwicky
1971, Fisher et al. 1991) . Potentially there can be a rapid convergenceon the
meaning of a verb from examination of the several structures in which it
appearsin speech. Though there are hundreds of transfer verbs and scoresof
cognition-perception verbs, there is a much smaller number of verbs whose
meaningsare compatible with both these structures, and which therefore can
expresscommunication (e.g., tell, shout, whisper) . Thus acrossuses, the syntax
can significantly narrow the hypothesis spacefor the verb meaning.
Perhaps the most important reason for postulating this cross-sentence
' '
procedure has to do with open roles . Though eat is logically a two -argument
predicate, with an eater and an eatee, still one can say The baby is eating. It is
often supposedthat learners would unerringly interpret a co-occurring scene
as one of eating, and simply refuse this scene/sentenceas a learning opportunity
becausethe scenedoesn' t line up with the required argument structure
for eat (assuming, of course, that the child can' t ' hear traces') . But unfortunately
, scenesare complex and thereforealmost always support falseconstruals
if a single scene/sentencepair is to be decisive. For instance, the baby is
sitting , smiling, and so forth , while she eats. Why not map one of these
inalienable acts onto the observed intransitive sentence? The advantage of

cross-sentenceanalysis taken together with cross-sceneanalysis is that it can
reveal the argument structure associatedwith the verb overall. Attention to
severalstructural environments becomesan even more important capacity of
the learning devicewhen we consider languagessuch as Chinese, which allows
rampant omission of arguments in the surface structure.15
We have now hypothesized that the lexical entry for the verb is derived
from observing its range of syntactic environments (which reveal the verb' s
argument-taking properties) taken together with the observational environments
' '
(which reveal everything else.) This does not mean that each use of
the verb instantiates each argument-taking component of the lexical entry .
For instance, verbs like open and sink express a causal relation in some
environments but not others (Carol opensthe door vs. The door opens). The
gloss assignedto lopenl in the lexicon must be one that is compatible with
both licensed semantic-syntactic environments. In contrast, die is noncausal
(intransitive) only and kill is causal (transitive) only . Following Grimshaw
( 1992), we might render the entry for open as
(x CAUSE (y OPEN
I I
AGENT THEME
' '
decomposing the meaning only to the level required to state the argument
structure and thus to predict the surface structures. The semantic distinction
between opening and closing is then derived from examining situational
factors, though only God and little children know just how. There is no
opening-vs.-closing syntactic reflex to aid them.
This schemecertainly does not imply that open is interpreted as meaning
' an event which is
causal and noncausal at the same time' . If that were true,
then the larger a verb' s syntactic range the less it would mean. Rather, the
lexical description predicts that open is causal when transitive, noncausal
when intransitive. The interpretive choice among those made available by the
lexical entry is (on any single use of the verb) derived computationally from
the truth value of the sentencestructure.
15 To mention one more

example pertinent to the verbs studied in our experiment, note that
both eat and get can occur in transitive environments. But a clue to the transfer- of-possession
senseof get is manifest in ditransitive Emily gets Jacquesan ice cream cone vs. . Emily eats
Jacquesan ice cream cone. Similarly , there is a semantic correlate of object dropping (eat vs.
want), see Resnik ( 1993).
C. Fisher et al. / Syntactic constraints
5.5.2. Documentationof the use of frame rangesin acquisition

Theory all aside, the questions remain whether speech to novices, which
tends to be quite simple, is sufficiently rich in structural information to
support learning ; and whether observerswill use such information even if it
is there in the input . The answer to both questions appears to be yes.
The database provided by mothers to their young children is refined
enough to support learning from frame ranges. Lederer et al. (in press)
examined lengthy conversations of 8 mothers with their young children
(MLU < 2.0) to find the verbs used most frequently within and across
mothers. For the 24 most common verbs, a verb by syntactic-environment
'
matrix was developed for each mother s speech. Within and across mothers,
each verb was found to be unique in its syntactic range. Using a procedure
devised by Fisher et al. ( 1991), it was determined that overlap in the
syntactic environments predicted their semantic overlap to a striking degree.
Much more important , there is also evidence that observers (at least
adults in the laboratory ) will use this cross-sentence information for verb
identification . This was shown by Lederer et al. ( 1991) with a version of the
experiment that Pinker (this volume) has acknowledged would put frame-
range learning to the crucial test.
Adult subjects were shown lists of actual syntactic structures used by
mothers to their infants (MLU < 2.0) with all nouns and verbs converted
" "
to nonsense(e.g., " Rom GORPS that the rivenftak is grum , Can vany
GORP the blicket ?" ) . Thus the input stimuli were designed to permit a
strong test of the frame range hypothesis - no scenes, no content words , just
syntactic frames. The subjects correctly identified 52% of the maternal
verbs under this condition . This level of performance compares very favor -
ably to the 7% correct performance based on scene observation, the 13%
level achieved by knowing only the nouns in the sentence, and the 28%
correct performance achieved in the presence of nouns-plus-scenes. Not
' '
only does this show that some ideal frame range is informative for verb
identification (as in Fisher et al. 1991) . It shows - by using as the stimulus
set real maternal sentenceswhose content words have been converted to
nonsense- that the frame range provided by mothers to infants under age
two is sufficient to support a good measure of verb identification . In
particular , subjects provided with frame-range information had no difficulty
in conjecturing mental verbs. For these (e.g., want), the structural information
is particularly useful while , as we discussedearlier, the sceneinformation
is misleading owing to the bias to interpret scenesas depicting concrete
actions.
C. Fisher et al. / Syntactic constraints 365
A difficulty with interpreting these results onto the child learning situation
is that thesesubjects(when correct) were identifying old verbs that they knew,
by definition : Perhaps they just looked up the frame ranges for these known
verbs in their mental lexicons rather than using the frames to make semantic
deductions. Becauseof this possibility , the pertinence of the findings is much
more easily interpreted by inspecting the 48% of cases where the subjects
failed to identify the maternal verb, guessingsomething else.16 The finding is
that false guessesgiven in responseto frame-range information are semantically
close to the actual verb the mother said (as assessedby the Fisher et al.
semantic-similarity procedure) while false guessesin responseto sceneswere
semantically unrelated to the verb the mother actually uttered. As syntactic
'
bootstrapping predicts, the frame range put the subjects into the semantic
' even when
neighborhood they did not allow convergenceto a unique verb
construal.
Note that 52% percent correct identification , while a significant improvement
over 7% or 28% , is not good enough if we want to model the fact that
verb learning by three-year-olds is a snap. They do not make 48% errors so
far as we know , even errors close to the semantic mark. But as we have
repeatedly stressed, syntactic bootstrapping is not a procedure in which the
child is assumedto forget about the scene, or the co-occurring nominals, and
attend to syntax alone (as Lederer et al. forced their subjects to do in this
manipulation by withholding all other evidence). It is a sentence -to-world
pairing procedure. Indeed, adding the real nouns to the frames without video
in this experiment led to over 80% correct verb identification ; adding back
the sceneyielded almost perfect performance. So if the child has available (as
she does, in real life ) multiple paired scenesand sentences , we can at last
understand why verb learning is easy.
Collateral evidence from children for the use of multiple frames is at
present thin , largely becauseit is difficult to get young children to cooperate
while a lengthy set of structures/ scenesis introduced. (For this reason, the
experiment presented in this article settled for studying the effect of single
structures on the interpretation of single scenes , though we interpret the
findings as a snapshot of an iterative process.) Supportive evidence comes
from Naigles et al. ( 1993), who found that young children will alter their
interpretation of known verbs in responseto hearing them in novel syntactic
16 This is analogousto the

findingsof our experimentasorganizedin table5. Therewe looked
only at instanceswherethe childrendid not comeup with the known verb, but indicatedsome
newconstrualthrougha paraphrase . The findingswerethe sameas for the single-word glosses
.
366 C. Fisher et a/. / Syntactic constraints
, while
environments older
children
and
adults willnot(forareplication
usually
and extension
, see ). Evidently
etale1992
Naigles ,expansionoftheframe
istaken
range asevidence oftheconstrual
foralteration early
' inthelearning
for
process that word, but
after
extensive the
experience word s meaningisset
thesyntax
and losesitspotency
tochange .
theconstrual
5.3. Whatsemanticcluesresidein thesyntax?
We have suggestedthat the fonnal medium of phrase structure constrains

the semantic content that the sentenceis expressing, thus providing crucial
clues to the meaning of its verb. One such clue resides in the number of
arguments: A noun phrase position is assignedto each verb argument; this
will differentiate push from fall . Another concerns the positioning of the
arguments: the subject of transitives is the agent, differentiating chasefrom
flee . The case-marking and type of the argument also matters, e.g., verbs
whose meaning allows expression of paths and locations typically accept
prepositional phrases( The rabbit puts the blanket on the monkey; Jackendoff
1978, Landau and Jackendoff, in press), and verbs that expressmental acts
and statesaccept sentential complements(John thinks that Bill is tall , Vendier
1972) .
Of course one cannot converge on a unique construal from syntactic
properties alone. Since the subcategorization properties of verbs are the
'
syntactic expressionsof their arguments, it is only those aspectsof a verb s
meaning that have consequencesfor its argument structure that could be
- semantic distinctions are not
represented in the syntax. Many - most
fonnally expressedwith this machinery. An important example involves the
manner in which an act is accomplished, e.g., the distinctions between slide,
roll and bounce, which are not mapped onto differences in their syntactic
behavior (Fillmore 1970) . All theseverbs require as one argument the moving
entity and allow the causal agent and path of motion as other arguments;
hence, The ball slid. rolled. bounced ( down the hill ) .. Kimberley slid. rolled.
bouncedthe ball ( down the hill ) . The specificmanners of motion are expressed
within the verb rather than surfacing as distinctions in their syntactic ranges.
In sum, it is only th~ meaning of a verb as an argument-taking predicate
that can be representedby the surface phrase structures (Rappaport et ale
1987, Fisher et ale 1991, Fisher, in press) . The structures can therefore reveal
only certain global properties of the construal, such as whether the verb can
express inalienable (intransitive) , transfer (ditransitive ), mental/perceptual
(inflected sentencecomplement), and symmetrical (sensitivity of the frame to
C. Fisher et aI. I Syntactic constraints
the number of one of its arguments) contents, and whether it expresses an

activity (progressive) or a state (simple present) .
Overall, our view is not that there are ' verb classes', each of which has
semantic components and (therefore) licensescertain structures. Rather we
suggestthat verb frames have semantic implications (truth values), and verbs
have meanings. Owing to the meaning of the verb, it will be uncomfortable -
and thus rarely or never uttered - in some frame, e.g., we don ' t say " Barbara
looked the ball on the table" becauseno external agent can cause a ball to
move just by looking at it (that would be psychokinesis). If the circumstances
warrant , however, look can and will be used unexceptionally in this frame; for
example, the rules of baseball make it possible to say (and sports announcers
do say) " The shortstop looked the runner back to third base" . As for
learners, we believe they note the frame environments in which verbs characteristically
occur, and thus the argument structures with which their meanings
' '
typically comport . These ranges of typical structures are compatible with
only small sets of verb meanings.
Because the formal medium of phrase structure is revealing only of a
restricted set of semantic properties, we cannot and have not argued that the
verb mappings are learned ' from ' the syntax. Indeed we have just made clear
that what most people think of as the ' meaning' (that open concerns being
ajar while closeconcerns being shut) is nowhere to be found in the syntax of
sentences . Rather, we have shown that the initial narrowing of the search-
spacefor that meaning, by attention to the argument structure as revealedby
the syntax, is the precondition for using the sceneinformation efficiently to
derive the meaning. When babiesdo not appear to know the phrase structure,
they learn few verbs; when adults and young children are required to identify
verbs without phrase structure cues (as when told " Look ! Ziking !" or when
presentedwith silent videos of mother- child conversation) again they do not
convergeto a unique interpretation . We conclude that the phrase structure is
the leamer' s version of a zoom lens for verb vocabulary acquisition.l '
17 Pinker(1984 ) hypothesized that, in therelativelyadvanced child, phrasestructuralinformation
couldbeusedfor anotherpurpose : to assign abstractwords , thosethatareneitherthings
noracts(e.g., situation , know) to lexicalcategories suchasnounandverb: a newitemthatoccun
in a verbpositionin thestructure is, in virtueof thatposition , a verb; andsoforth. Pinkertermed
this procedure 'structure distributionallearning ' . This seems . But this
dependent plausible
procedure will giveno clueto theverbmeaning , otherthanthat thewordmeans'something
'
verby. In contrast , thepositionweadoptallowssemantic distinctions withintheverbclassto be
extracted . Knowcanbe assigned to theclassof 'mental ' verbs because
just it ~ pts tensed
sentence complements . Thisgrosssemantic classificationaccomplished , the burdenon observation
is still to distinguishamongthink,know , realizeandsoforth.
368 C. Fisher et at. I Syntactic constraints
5.4. Quirks , provisos , and limitations
The usefulness of form - to - meaning correspondences for verb learning is

limited by several factors :
5.4.1. Language-specific linkages of syntax to semantics

By no means all functions from syntax to semanticsare universal. There
are within -languagequirks in thesemappings; for example, paths are usually
encoded via prepositional phrases in English (e.g., come into the room) but
occasionally not (e.g., enter the room) ; seeGruber 1965. Moreover, there are
some systematic differencesin the mappings across languages(Talmy 1985) .
It would be incoherent to suppose that language-specific correspondences
(which themselvesmust be learned) could serve as input to verb learning at
early stages. But linguistic- descriptivefindings due to Gruber ( 1965), Fillmore
( 1968), Levin ( 1985), Jackendoff ( 1972, 1978, 1990), Talmy ( 1985), Pinker
( 1989), and experimental evidencefrom Fisher et al. ( 1991) and Geyer et al.
(forthcoming ) suggestthat the correspondencerules are broad in scope and
-
sufficiently stable cross-linguistically to support a good measure of verb
vocabulary learning.
5.4.2. Arguments, adjuncts, and phrase boundaries

Another severe problem for our approach has to do with the syntactic
analysis that children could perform on the sentencesheard. After all , I saw
the book on the table must be analyzed differently from I put the book on the
table. Otherwise see and put will be assumed to have the same number of
argument positions, falsely suggestinga similarity in their conceptual structure
. How is the correct parse of an utterance to be achieved? Practically
speaking, the very short sentencesused to novices contain such structural
ambiguities only very rarely. Moreover, there is evidence that height of
attachment is robustly cued by prosody in speech to novices (Lederer and
Kelly 1991) . All the same, the principled difficulty of deriving the intended
parse from observation of a spoken sentence certainly complicates the
proposed learning procedure (seeGrimshaw, this volume) .
5.4.3. Theproblem of polysemy

If a single phonological object has more than one, and unrelated, senses,
this createsanother problem for the procedure we have envisaged. Consider
' ' ' '
relate in the sensestell and conceptually connect . Such an item will have a
variety of subcategorizationframes, but some of thesewill be consequencesof
C. Fisher et at. / Syntactic constraints
one of the meanings and others the consequenceof the other. Putting them
together as a single frame-range should lead to chaos. The degree to which
polysemy reducesthe plausibility of the use of multiple frames is unknown in
detail (seeGrimshaw, this volume, for a pessimisticview) . However, there is
some suggestiveevidence that the frame-ranges of verbs are well-correlated
with their meaningsin the general case, despite this problem.
The manipulations of interest in this regard were carried out in English by
Fisher et al. ( 1991) and in Hebrew by Geyer et al. (forthcoming) . One group
of subjects provided the frame ranges for a set of common verbs (they gave
judgments of grammaticality of all the verbs in various syntactic environments
) . A second group of subjectsprovided semantic-relatednessjudgments
for these verbs presented in isolation (with no syntactic context) . The
question was whether the overlap in frame-ranges predicted the semantic
relatednessamong the verbs. The answer is yes, massively- and in materially
'
the same way for English and for Hebrew. The more any two verbs
overlapped in their syntactic privileges, the closer they were judged to be in
their meanings. Evidently , overlap in frame range provides a guide to
semanticrelatednessthat (though probabilistic) is stable enough to contribute
to the verb-learning feat.
The three problems just described - variability of the mapping relations,
alternate parsesfor input sentences , and polysemy - limit or at least complicate
the. potential effectivenessof the procedure we have called syntactic
bootstrapping. Thus any linguist or psychologist worth his or her salt can
find counterexamples to the claim that frame-information , or frame-range
information , always and perfectly predicts the relevant (argument-taking)
properties of the verbs - just as counterexamples to the usefulness of
situational information are easy to find.
We must suppose, in consequence , that the learner draws on convergent
cuesfrom prosody, syntax, and situation , as available, jiggling them all across
instances to achieve the best fit to a lexical entry . That is, the internal
structure of the child ' s learning procedure is likely to be quite mixed in the
information recruited and probabilistic in how such information is exploited,
sad as this seems. In the work presented, we could show only that syntactic
evidence is on theoretical grounds crucial for working out certain mapping
problems (those that involve perspective-taking verbs) and indeed is used by
youngsters solving for these under some exquisitely constrained laboratory
conditions. We take the outcomesto lend plausibility to the overall approach.
C. Fisher et al. / Syntactic constraints
6. Concl _ io-
We have proposed a learning procedure for verbs which requires that

children be armed with at least some innate semantic/syntactic correspondence
rules, and considerable abilities and dispositions to perform formal
analyses on the speech they hear. As such, these ideas have often been
-
rejected as too formidable to be used by babies sometimes by the same
commentators who invoke highly abstract formal principles to account for
'
the child ' s acquisition of syntax. In Pinker s ( 1989: 263- 264) words, if the
' mechanismis used at all it is used ... as a
syntactic bootstrapping , sophisticated
form of cognitive problem solving rather than a general interpretive
' ' '
linguistic scheme, a kind of riddle solving . In contrast, there is something so
tangible and appealing to introspection about the idea of parsing of ongoing
events that this is widely acceptedas a sufficient basis for lexical learning.
But theseIntuition -derived theoretical blasescannot so lightly be accepted.
-
They have fooled us before. For example, there is strong cross linguistic
evidence that two year- - olds are at least as quick - probably quicker - to
extract the formal aspectsof gender as to extract their semanticaspects(Levy
1983) . Gordon ( 1985) has shown that young children are more attentive to
the formal distinction between mass and count nouns in English than to the
semanticcorrelates of this distinction .
' '
The present experiment documented only the focusing ( zoom lens ) aspect
of the syntactic bootstrapping procedure. The successivenarrowing of the
'
semanticconjecture that derives from observation of a verb s severallicensed
structural environments was not tested, though prior experimentation we
have cited demonstrates both the strength of these relations and use of this
procedure by adults and children in verb identification .
It is rather more surprising that there is little systematic evidence for the
word -to-world pairing procedure either. An interesting exception is Gropen et
al. ( 1991) . Children in this experiment heard new motion verbs while shown
several example scenesalong with the syntactically uninformative sentence
" This is "
pilking . Most of them learned the verb meanings(though some did
not) . Unfortunately , the teaching procedure included negative instances
" "
( This is not pilking ) and specific correction wheneverthe children erred. So
far as we know , such explicit negative evidence is not usually available to
learners.is Still , no one can doubt that a salient motion (e.g., zigzagging in
18 For Gropenet aIls purposesthis unusualteachingenvironmentdid not matter, Their aim

wasto showthat if the childrendid learnthe verb, theycouldprojectits argumentstructureand
C. Fisher et af. I Syntactic constraints
this experiment) can sometimesbe mappedagainst a spokenverb from the

bare evidenceof observation.
It is the overwhelming fallibility of such a word -to-sceneprocedure that we
have emphasizedin this article. Therefore we have challenged the logic of
observation alone as the input to verb learning. One such challenge is that
too many verbs come in pairs that are just about always mapped onto the
same situations, so cross-situational observation will never distinguish between
them. Another is that some verbs encode concepts that are not
observable at all , e.g., know or want. Another is that considerations of
salience(the agencybias) are fatal to the possibility of verb learning in all the
'
caseswhere the caretaker happensto utter some word which is not the most
'
salient of all for the scenethen in view.
To help redress these logical and practical problems we have shown that
children can make significant use of structural information . At the sametime
their construals of new verb meanings are affected by blases as to how to
represent an event. But this influence from plausibility considerations acknowledged
, the influence of structure is materially stronger and wins out in
the majority of cases. Toddlers know that it is better to receive than to give
when Santa is the indirect object of the sentence.
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Levy, Y., 1983.It s frogsall the way down. Cognition15, 75-93.
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Lingua92 ( 1994
How could a child use verb syntax

to learn verb semantics?*
Steven Pinker
Departmentof Brain and CognitiveSciences
, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
, 10-016,
" MA02139
Cambridge , USA
I examine Gleitman' s ( 1990) arguments that children rely on a verb' s syntactic subcategorization
frames to learn its meaning (e.g., they learn that seemeans ' perceivevisually' becauseit can
appear with a direct object, a clausal complement, or a directional phrase). First , Gleitman argues
that the verbs cannot be learned by observing the situations in which they are used, becausemany
verbs refer to overlapping situations, and becauseparents do not invariably use a verb when its
perceptual correlates are present. I suggestthat these arguments speak only against a narrow
associationist view in which the child is sensitive to the temporal contiguity of sensory features
and spoken verb. If the child can hypothesizestructured semantic representationscorresponding
to what parents are likely to be referring to , and can refine such representationsacross multiple
situations, the objections are blunted ; indeed, Gleitman ' s theory requires such a learning process
despite her objections to it . Second, Gleitman suggeststhat there is enough information in a
'
verb s subcategorization frames to predict its meaning ' quite closely' . Evaluating this argument
'
requires distinguishing a verb s root plus its semantic content (what She boiled the water shares
with The water boiled and does not share with She broke the glass), and a verb frame plus its
semanticperspective(what Sheboiled the water shareswith Shebroke the glassand does not share
with The water boiled) . I show that hearing a verb in a single frame only gives a learner coarse
information about its semantic perspective in that frame (e.g., number of arguments, type of
'
arguments); it tells the learner nothing about the verb root s content across frames (e.g., hot
bubbling liquid ) . Moreover , hearing a verb across all its frames also revealslittle about the verb
root ' s content. Finally , I show that Gleitman ' s empirical argumentsall involve experimentswhere
children are exposed to a single verb frame, and therefore all involve learning the frame' s
'
perspectivemeaning, not the root s content meaning, which in all the experiments was acquired
'
by observing the accompanying scene. I conclude that attention to a verb s syntactic frame can
'
help narrow down the child s interpretation of the perspectivemeaning of the verb in that frame,
but disagreewith the claim that there is some in-principle limitation in learning a verb' s content
. Preparationof this paperwassupportedby NIH Grant HD 18381and NSF Grant BNS 91-
09766
. The ideasand organizationof this paper wereworked out in collaborationwith Jane
Grimshaw , and werepresented jointly at the 1990BostonUniversityConference
on Language
Development . I thank Paul Bloom , JessGropen, Gary Marcus, an anonymousreviewer
, and
especiallyLila Gleitmanfor helpfuldiscussions and comments
.
- 3841/94/ $07.00 @ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved

0024
SSDJO024 - 3841( 93) EO044- 8
378 S. Pinker / Verb syntax and verb semantics
'
from its ~ituatinn ~ of use that could only be resolved by using the verb s set of subcategorization
frames.
'
1. Introduction: The problem of learning words meanings
When children learn what a word means, clearly they must take note of the
circumstancesin which other speakersuse the word . That is, children must
learn rabbit becausetheir parents use rabbit in circumstancesin which the
child can infer that they are referring to rabbits. Equally obviously, learning
word meaningsfrom circumstancesis not a simple problem. As Quine ( 1960),
among others, has noted, there are an infinite set of meanings compatible
with any situation , so the child has an infinite number of perceptually
indistinguishable hypothesesabout meaning to choose among. For example,
all situations in which a rabbit is present are also situations in which an
animal is present, an object is present, a furry thing is present, a set of
undetachedrabbit parts are 'present, a something-that -is-either-a-rabbit -ora -
Buick is present, and so on. So how does the child figure out that rabbit
'
means ' rabbit ' , not ' undetachedrabbit part ?
Word learning is a good example of an induction problem, where a finite
set of data is consistent with an infinite number of hypotheses, only one of
them correct, and a learner or perceiver must guess which it is. The usual
explanation for how people do so well at the induction problems they face is
that their hypotheses are inherently constrained: not all logically possible
hypothesesare psychologically possible. For example, Chomsky ( 1965) noted
that children must solve an induction problem in learning a language: there
are an infinite number of grammars compatible with any finite set of parental
sentences . They succeed, he suggested , because their language acquisition
circuitry constrains them to hypothesize only certain kinds of grammatical
rules and structures, those actually found in human languages, and because
the kinds of sentenceschildren hear are sufficient to discriminate among this
small set of possibilities.
In the case of learning word meanings, too , .not all logically possible
construals of a situation can be psychologically possible candidates for the
'
meaning of a word . Instead, the hypotheses that a child s word learning
mechanismsmake available are constrained in two ways. The first constraint
comes from the representational machinery available to build the semantic
'
structures that constitute mental representations of a word s meaning: a
'
Universal Lexical Semantics, analogous to Chomsky s Universal Grammar
S. Pinker / Verb syntax and verb semantics 379
(see, e.g., Moravscik 1981, Markman 1989, 1990; Jackendoff 1990) . For
' '
example, this representational system would allow object with shapeX and
' ' '
object with function X as possibleword meanings, but not all the undetached
' '
parts of an object with shapeX , object with shapeX or a Buick' , and ' object
'
and the surfacesit contacts . The second constraint comes from the way in
which a child ' s entire lexicon may be built up ; on how one word ' s meaning
'
may be related to another word s meaning (see Miller 1991, Miller and
Fellbaum 1992). For example, the lexicons of the world ' s languages freely
allow meronyms (words whose meanings stand in a part- whole relationship,
like body- arm) and hyponyms (words that stand in a subset- superset relationship
, like animal- mamma/), but do not easily admit true synonyms
Bo
( linger 1977, Clark 1987, Miller and Fellbaum 1991) . A child would
therefore not posit a particular meaning for a new word if it was identical to
some existing word '
' s meaning. Finally , the child would have to be equipped
with a procedure for testing the possible hypotheses about word meaning
against the situations in which adults use the words. For example, if a child
' '
thought that pet meant dog , he or she will be disabusedof the error the first
time the word is used to refer to a fish.
Although the problem of learning word meaningsis usually discussedwith
regard to learning nouns, identical problems arise with verbs (Landau and
Gleitman 1985, Pinker 1988, 1989; Gleitman 1990) . When a parent comments
on a dog chasing a cat by using the word chase, how is the child to know that
it means ' chase' as opposed to ' flee' , ' move' , ' go' , ' run ' , ' be a dog chasing' ,
' chaseon a warm '
day , and so on?
As in the case of learning noun meanings (indeed, learning in general),
there must be constraints on the child ' s possible hypotheses. For example,
manner-of -motion should be considered a possible component of a verb' s
mental dictionary entry, but temperature-during -motion should not be. (See
Talmy 1985, 1988; Pinker 1989, Jackendoff 1990, and Dowty 1991, for
inventories of the semantic elements and their configurations that may
constitute a verb' s semantic representation.) Moreover, there appear to be
constraints on lexical organization (Miller 1991, Miller and Fellbaum 1991) .
For example, verb lexicons often admit of co-troponyms (words that describe
different manners of perfonning a similar act or motion , such as walk-skip-
jog) but , like noun lexicons, rarely admit of exact synonyms ( Bolinger 1977,
Clark 1987, Pinker 1989, Miller and Fellbaum 1991) . Finally , the child must
be equipped with a learning mechanism that constructs, tests, and modifies
semantic representationsby comparing infonnation about the uses of verbs
by other speakersacrossspeechevents (Pinker 1989) .
380 S. Pinker/ Verbsyntaxandverbsemantics
1.1. A novel solution to the word-learning problem
In recent years Lila Gleitman and her collaborators have presenteda series
of thorough and insightful discussionsof the inherent problems of learning
verbs' meanings (Landau and Gleitman 1985, Hirsh -Pasek et ale 1988,
Gleitman 1990, Naigles 1990, Lederer et ale 1989, Fisher et ale 1991and this
volume) . Interestingly, Gleitman and her collaborators depart from the usual
'
solution to induction problems, namely, seeking constraints on the learner s
'
hypotheses and their relation to the learner s input data as the primary
explanation. Rather, they argue that the learner succeedsat learning verb
semanticsby using a channel of information that is not directly semantic at
'
all. Specifically, they suggestthat the child infers a verb s meaning by using
the kinds of syntactic arguments (direct object, clause, prepositional phrase)
that appear with the verb when it is used in a sentence. Such syntactic
properties (e.g., whether a verb is transitive or intransitive ) are referred to in
' ' ' ' '
various literatures as the verb s argument structure , argument frame ,
' ' ' '
syntactic format , and subcategorization frame . 'Indeed, Gleitman and her
collaborators argue that information about a verb s semantics, gleaned from
observing the circumstances in which other speakers use the verb (e.g.,
' '
learning that open means opening becauseparents use the verb to refer to
opening things) is in principle inadequate to support the acquisition of the
verb' s semantics; cues from the syntactic properties of the verb phrase are
essential.
This position has its roots in Brown ( 1957) and Katz et ale ( 1974), who
showed empirically how children use grammatical information to help learn
certain aspectsof word meanings. But it was given a stronger form in Landau
'
and Gleitman s ( 1985) book Language and Experience: Evidencefrom the
Blind Child. Landau and Gleitman point out that a blind child they studied
acquired verbs, even perceptual verbs like look and see, rapidly and with few
'
errors, despite the child s severeimpairment in being able to witnessdetails of
the scenesin which the verbs are used. Moreover, they noted that a sighted
'
child ' s task in learning verbs is different from the blind child s task only in
degree, not in kind . Since the learning of verbs like see and know cannot
critically rely on information from vision, Landau and Gleitman presented
the following hypothesis:
'In essence formatsfor a verbprovides
ourpositionwill bethatthesetof syntactic crucialcues
to theverbmeanings theseformatsareabstract
just because surface esof themeanings
reflex .
... thereis verylittle informationin ' formatthatis for
attested some verb
,
anysinglesyntactic
for that formatserves manydistinctuses. However... thesetof subcategorizationframes
S. Pinker / Verb syntax and verb semantics
associated witha verbis highlyinformativeaboutthemeaning it conveys . In fact, sincethe

surface formsarethecarriersof criticalsemantic
information, theconstrual of verbsis partly
indeterminant withoutthe subcategorization
information . Hence , in the end, a successful
learningprocedure for verbmeaning mustrecruitinformation frominspection of themany
grammatical formatsin whicheachverbparticipates.' ( 1985: 138 - 139)
For example, here's how a child hearing the verb glip in a variety of syntactic
frames could infer various components of its meaning from the characteristic
semantic correlates of those frames. Hearing I glipped the book (transitive
frame, with a direct object), a child could guessthat glipping is something that
can be done to a physical object. Hearing I glipped that the book is on the table
(frame with a sentential complement), the child could infer that glipping
involves some relation to a full proposition. Hearing I glipped the book from
acrossthe room (frame with an object and a directional complement) tells him
or her that glipping can involve a direction. Moreover, the absenceof Glip that
the book is on the table! (imperative construction) suggeststhat glipping is
involuntary, and the absenceof What John did wasglip the book (pseudocleft
construction) suggeststhat it is not an action. With this information , the child
could figure out that glip means ' see', becauseseeingis an involuntary nonaction
that can be done to an object or a proposition from a direction. Note
that the child could make this inference without seeinga thing, and without
seeinganyone seeinganything. In her 1990paper laying out this hypothesisin
detail and -discussingthe motivation for it , Gleitman calls this learning procedure
' '
syntactic bootstrapping , and offers it as a major mechanismresponsible
'
for the child s successat learning verb meanings.
The goal of the present paper is to examine the general question of how a
child could use the syntactic properties of a verb to figure out its semantic
properties. I will discuss several kinds of mechanisms that infer semantics
from syntax, attempting to distinguish what kinds of inputs they take, how
they work , what they can learn, and what kind of evidencewould tell us that
children use them. I will focus on Gleitman' s ( 1990) thorough and forceful
arguments for the importance of syntax-guided verb learning. After she puts
theseargumentsin particularly strong form in order to make the best casefor
them and to find the limits as to what they can accomplish, Gleitman settles
on an eclectic view in which a set of learning mechanisms, some driven by
syntax and some not , complement each other. I agree with this eclectic view
and will try to layout the underlying division of labor among learning
mechanismsmore precisely. In doing so, I will , however, be disagreeingwith
some of the particular strong claims that Gleitman makes about syntax-
guided learning of meaning in the main part of her paper.
S. Pinker I Verb syntax and verb semantics
2. What is learnedfrom what: Two preliminary clarifications
Sentencescontain a great deal of information, and the child is learning many

things at once from them. To understand how syntax can help in learning
semantics, it is essentialto be clear on what kinds of information in a sentence
' '
are and are not syntactic, and what kinds of things that a child is learning are
' ' '
and are not semantic. Before examining Gleitman s arguments, then, I make
someessentialdistinctions, without which the issuesare very difficult to study.
2.1. Linguistically-conveyedsemanticcontent is not the sameas syntacticform
Gleitman' s hypothesesliterally refer to the acquisition of verb meaningsvia

the use of syntactic information , specifically, the syntactic properties of the
arguments that the verb appears with (e.g., whether it takes a grammatical
object, a prepositional object, a sentential complement, or various combinations
of thesearguments in different sentences ) . Note that this is not the same
as claiming that the child uses semantic information that happens to be
communicated by the linguistic channel.
-
Sentences , obviously, are used to convey real world information , and
children surely can infer much about what a verb means from the meanings
'
of the other words in the sentenceand from however much of the sentences
structure they are able to parse. For example, if someone were to hear I
'
glipped the paper to shredsor I fliped the delicioussandwichand now I m' full ,'
presumably he or she could figure out that glip means something like tear
' '
and flip means something like eat . But although these inferencesare highly
'
specificand accurate, no thanks are due to the verbs syntactic frames (in this
case, transitive) . Rather, we know what those verbs mean becauseof the
semanticsof paper, shreds, sandwich, delicious, full , and the partial syntactic
analysis that links them together (partial , because it can proceed in the
absenceof knowledge of the specific subcategorization requirements of the
verb, which is the data source appealed to by Gleitman) . In other words,
' '
inferring that tear means tear from hearing paper and shreds is a kind of
- contigencies, the same one
cognitive inference using knowledge of real world ' tear' when
that could be used to infer that tear means seeing paper being
's
torn to shreds. It is not an example of learning a verb meaning from its
syntactic properties, the processGleitman is concerned with . For this reason,
'
a blind (or sighted) child can learn a great deal about a verb s meaning from
the sentences the verb is used in , without learning anything about the
' .
meaning from the verb s syntax in those sentences
Moreover, some of the information about how a verb is used in a sentence

is based on universal features of semantics. For example, the sentenceI am
' ' '
glipping applescould inform a learner that glip can t mean like , becausethe
progressiveaspect marked on the verb is semantically incompatible with the
'
stativity of liking . Here, too , one can learn something about a verb s meaning
from the sentencein which the verb is used, as opposed to the situation in
which the verb is used, but the learning is driven by semantic information (in
this example, that liking does not inherently involve changesover time), not
syntactic information .
Gleitman ( 1990) does not contest this distinction ; in footnote 8 on p . 27
and in footnote 26 (p. 379) of Fisher et al. ( 1991), she states that her
arguments are not about the use of linguistically -conveyed information in
general, but about the use of the syntactic properties of verbs per se.
Nonetheless, the .distinction has implications that bear on her arguments in
ways she does not make explicit .
First , the distinction blunts the intuitive impact of two of Gleitman' s
recurring arguments for the importance of syntactic infoimation : that blind
children learn verbs' meanings without seeingtheir referent events, and that
parents do not invariably use verbs in unique situations (e.g., they do not say
opensimultaneously with opening something) . These phenomenasuggestthat
children must attend to what parents say, not just what they do. The
phenomena do not , however, lead by some process of elimination ; to the
hypothesis that children are using the syntactic subcategorization properties
of individual verbs. The children may just be figuring out the content of the
sentences '
, and inferring a verb s semantics from its role in the events
conveyed.
Second, many of the supposedly syntactically-cued inferences that Gleit -
man appeals to may actually be ~ediantically cued in the same sensethat
hearing a verb used with sandwich suggests that it involves eating. The
' '
subcategorization frames that Landau and Gleitman ( 1985), Gleitman
( 1990), and Fisher et al. ( 1991) appeal to are distinguished more by the
semantic content of particular words in them than by their purely syntactic
(i.e., categorical) properties. Indeed, most of the entries are not syntactically
distinct subcategorization frames in the linguist ' s sense at all. Of the 33
entries listed in Appendix A of Fisher et al. ( 1991), two thirds are actually not
syntactically distinct subcategorizationframes. Seventeenframes are syntactically
identical V -PP frames differing only in the choice of preposition (e.g., in
NP versus on NP) . (Fisher et al. did , to be sure, collapse these prepositions
into a single frame type in the data analysis of their study.) Three are V -S'
384 S. Pinker I Verb syntax and verb semantics
frames differing only in the choice of complementizers(e.g., that S versus if

S). There are V -NP -PP frames differing only in the choice of preposition (e.g.,
NP to NP versus NP from NP ; these were, however, collapsed in the
analysis) . And three are not subcategorization frames at all but the morpho-
syntactic constructions imperative, progressive, and pseudo-cleft, which are
syntactically well-formed with any verb (though some are awkward because
of semantic clashes, such as involuntary verbs in the imperative) . The
'
problem is that even if learners can use verbs patterning across these
linguistic contexts, it is misleading to say that they would be relying on
'
syntactic information . In most modem theories of verbs compatibility with
prepositions and complementizers (see Jackendoff 1987, 1990; Pinker 1989,
Grimshaw 1979, 1981, 1990), the selection is made on semantic grounds: for
example, verbs involving motion in a direction can selectany preposition that
involves a d~rection. There are verb- specific idiosyncrasies, to be sure (such as
rely on and put up with), but even these may be treated as involving
idiosyncratic semantic properties of the verb. Thus if a child notices that a
verb takes across and over but not with or about, and infers that the verb
involves motion , the child is not using syntactic information , but figuring out
that an event involving the traversal of paths (inherent to the meaning of
across and over) is likely to involve motion , just as an event that involves
sandwiches and hunger is likely to involve eating.1
' ' ' '

2.2. The term syntactic bootstrapping and the opposition of syntactic and
' '
semantic bootstrap ping are inR
mislead
' '
It is unfortunate that Gleitrnan chose the term syntactic bootstrapping to
' -
refer to the processof inferring a verb s meaning from its set of subcategoriza
1 Note that some of the other linguistic contexts that Landau and Gleitman call ' subcategorization
frames' are not subcategorizationframes either, but frozen expressionsand collocations that
are probably idiosyncratic to English and henceno basis for learning. Theseinclude Look !, See?,
Look! The doggie is running!, See? The doggie is running!, Come see lhe doggie, and look like in
'
the senseof ' resemble. Since look and see are the only two verbs that Landau, Gleitman , and
their collaborators discussin detail, if their learning scenariosfor thesetwo verbs adventitiously
exploit particular properties of English, one has to be suspicious about the' feasibility of the
scenario in the general case. More generally, Fisher, Gleitman, and Gleitman s claim that there
are something like 100 distinct syntactic subcategorization frames, hence, in principle, 2100
syntactically distinguishable verbs, appears to be a severe overestimate. I think most linguists
would estimate the number of syntactically distinct frames as an order of magnitude lower, which
would make the estimated number of syntactically distinguishable verbs a tiny fraction of what
Fisher et aI. estimate.
tion frames. She intended the term to suggestan opposition to my ' semantic
'
bootstrapping (Pinker 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989), and one of the sectionsin her
1990paper is even entitled ' Deciding betweenthe bootstrapping hypotheses'.
' '
Though the opposition semantic versus syntactic bootstrapping is catchy, I
suggestit be dropped. The opposition is a false one, becausethe theories are
theories about different things. Moreover, there is no relationship between
what Gleitman calls ' syntactic bootstrapping' and the metaphor of bootstraps
, so the term makes little sense.
Gleitman usesthe term ' semantic bootstrapping' to refer to the hypothesis
that children learn verbs' meanings by observing the situations in which the
verbs are used. But this is not accurate. ' Semantic bootstrapping' is not even
a theory about how the child learns word meanings. It is a theory about how
the child begins learning syntax. ' The bootstrapping problem' in grammar
acquisition (see Pinker 1987) arises becausea grammar is a formal system
consisting of a set of abstract elements, each of which is defined with respect
to other elements. For example, the ' subject' of a sentenceis defined by a set
of formal properties, such as its geometric position in the tree with respectto
the Sand VP nodes, its ability to force agreement with the verb, its
intersubstitutability with pronouns of nominative case, and so on. It cannot
be identified with any semantic role, sound pattern, or serial position . The
bootstrapping problem is: How do children break into the systemat the very
outset, when they know nothing about the particular language? If you know
that verbs agree with their subjects, you can learn where the subjects go by
seeingwhat agreeswith the verb - but how could you have learned that verbs
'
agree with their subjects to begin with , if you don t yet know where the
' '
subjectsgo? How can children lift themselvesup by their bootstraps at the
very outset of languageacquisition, and make the first basic discoveriesabout
the grammar of their languagethat are prerequisite to any further learning?
Pinker ( 1982), following earlier suggestionsof Grimshaw ( 1981), suggested
that certain contingenciesbetweenperceptualcategoriesand syntacticcategories ,
mediated by semantic categories, could help the child get syntax acquisition
started. For example, if the child was built with the universal linking rule that
agentsof actions were subjectsof active sentences , and they could infer from
a sentence's perceptual context and the meaningsof some of its content words
that a particular word referred to the agent of an action, the child could infer
that that word was in subject position . Once the position of the subject is
established as a rule or parameter of the child ' s nascent grammar, further
kinds of learning can proceed. For example, the child could now infer that
any new word in this newly-identified position must be a subject, regardless
of whether it is an agent; he or she could also infer that verbs must agree in
person and n':1mberwith the element in that position . SeePinker ( 1984) and
( 1987) for a more precisepresentation of the hypothesis.
The semantic bootstrapping hypothesis does require, as a background
assumption, the idea that the semantics of at least some verbs have been
acquired without relying on syntax. That is becausethe theory is about how
' '
syntax gets bootstrapped at the very beginning of learning; if all word
meaningswere acquired via knowledge of syntax, and if syntax were acquired
'
via knowledge of words meanings, we would be faced with a vicious circle.
The semantic bootstrapping hypothesis is agnostic about how children have
attained knowledge of these word meanings. Logically speaking, they could
have used telepathy, surgery, phonetic symbolism, or innate knowledge of the
English lexicon, but the most plausible suggestion is that the children had
attended to the contexts in which the words are used. Gleitman takes this
'
latter assumption (that the child s first word meanings are acquired by
attending to their situational contexts), generalizesit to a claim that all verb
meanings are acquired by attending to their situational contexts (i.e., even
verbs acquired after syntax acquisition is underway), and refers to the
' '
generalizedclaim as semantic bootstrapping . But this is a large departure
from its intended meaning.
' '
And what Gleitman calls, in contrast , syntactic bootstrapping , is not a
different theory of how the child begins to learn syntax . Thus it is not an
alternative to the semantic bootstrap ping hypothesis. (The only reason
they could be construed as competitors is that semantic bootstrap ping
assumesthat at least some verb meanings can be acquired before syntax,
'
so a very extreme form of Gleitman s negative argument , that no verb
meaning can be learned without syntax, is incompatible with it .) Moreover
' '
, since syntactic bootstrapping is a theory of how the child learns the
meanings of specific verbs, and since it can only apply at the point at
which the child has already acquired the syntax of verb phrases, it is not
' '
clear what it has to do with the bootstrap ping problem or the metaphor
'
of lifting oneself up by one s bootstraps . For these reasons, I suggest that
the term be avoided.
Here is a somewhat cumbersome, but trans~arent and accurate set of
'
replacements . ' Semanticcueing of syntax refers to the semanticbootstrapping
' '
hypothesis. Semantic cueing of word meaning refers to the commonplace
assumption that meaningsare learned via their semantic contexts (perceptual
' '
or linguistic) . Syntactic cueing of word meaning is the hypothesis defended
by Gleitman and her collaborators.
Now , in some contexts Gleitman does present a genuine alternative to the

semantic bootstrapping hypothesis. She suggeststhat the child can use the
prosody of a sentenceto parse it into a syntactic tree. Though she never
specifiesexactly how this could be done, presumably the child would assume
that pausesor falling intonation contours signal phrase boundaries. Having
thus inferred a syntactic tree, the child could infer a verb' s meaning from the
trees it appears in. Note , though, that the information that the child usesto
get syntax acquisition started is not itself syntactic, but prosodic; the hypothesis
can thus sensibly be called ' prosodic bootstrapping' . If both prosodic
bootstrapping, and syntactic cueing of word meaning were possible, semantic
bootstrapping would be otiose.
But while it is plausible that the infant usesprosodic information to help in
sentence analysis at the outset of language acquisition (e.g., to identify
utterance boundaries), it is completely implausible that this information is
sufficient to build a full syntactic tree for an input sentence(seePinker 1987) .
The prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis, taken literally , is quite extraordinary .
It is tantamount to the suggestion that there is a computational procedure
that can parse sentencesfrom any of the world ' s 5,000 languageswhen the
sentencesare spoken from behind a closeddoor (i.e., the sentencesare filtered
so that only prosodic information remains) . Among the surprising corollaries
to this claim is that it should be fairly easy for a person or machine to give a
full parse to an English sentenceheard from behind a closed door , because
the listener can use both the universal and the English-specific mappings
between prosody and syntax, whereas the child supposedly is capable of
doing it using only the universal mappings. If , on the contrary , we, knowing
English, cannot parse a sentencefrom behind a closed door , it suggeststhat
the young child , not knowing English, is unlikely to be able to do so either.
Thus the claim that infants can bootstrap syntax from prosody must be
viewed with considerableskepticism.2
'
Overviewof Gleitmans argumentsfor the syntactic cueingof verb semantics.
With theseindependentissuesout of the way, we can now turn to Gleitman' s
arguments for the importance of the syntactic cueing of verb meaning. These
arguments fall into three categories. There are negative arguments: verb
meanings cannot be learned from observation of situational contexts alone;
therefore some other source of information is required. There is a positive
2 Moreover, ' '
many of the syntactic frames that Gleitman assumesthe child is discriminating in
'
order to infer verbs meanings are prosodically identical, such as frames differing only in the
specificprepositions or complementizersthey contain, like in versuson or that versus if (see, e.g.,
Gleitman 1990: table 2).
hypothetical argument: verb meanings could be learned from verb syntax;

therefore verb syntax probably is that other source. And there are empirical
arguments: Children in fact learn verb meaning from verb syntax. I will
examine thesearguments separately.
3. The negative arguments : Verb meaDings can' t be learned from observation
Gleitman presentssix argumentswhy attending to the situations in which a

verb is used (what she calls ' observation' ) is in principle inadequate to learn
the verb' s meaning. I believe that none of the argumentsestablishes her main
point , that there is an in -principle gap in observational learning that only
syntactic subcategorization information can fill . There are two problems in
the argument.
'
3.1. Arguments directed against 'observationlearning only refute learning by
associative pairing
The first problem is that Gleitman' s arguments are not aimed at ' observa-
tion ' in general. They are aimed at a particular straw theory of observation.
This foil , a version of one-trial associative pairing , has the child identify a
verb~s meaning with the sensory features activated by the situation at the
moment when a verb is uttered. But no one believesthis particular theory, so
refuting it is ineffective in establishing in -principle limitations on observation;
a few uncontroversial assumptionsmake Gleitman' s objections moot. Let me
examine the arguments in order.
3.1.1. Multiply -interpretableevents
Any single event is multiply -ambiguous as to which verb it exemplifies.

Gleitman ( 1990) notes, for example, that most situations of pushing also
entail moving. If a situation is describedas (say) The boy is pushing the truck,
' ' '
the child cannot know whether push means ' push or move .
This point , however, only shows that children cannot learn the meaning of
a verb from a single situation. But no one, not even the British associationists
and their descendants , has ever suggestedthey do. Simply allow the child to
observe how a verb is used across multiple situations (see, e.g., Pinker 1989:
ch. 6), and the problem disappears. Sooner or later, push will be used for
instancesof pushing without moving (e.g., pushing against a wall , or pushing
someone who holds his ground), and move will be used for instances of
moving without pushing (e.g., sliding or walking) . To take another one of
Gleitman' s examples ( 1990: 14), even though a single event may be describable
as pushing, as rolling, and as speeding, most events are not. The child
need merely wait for an instance of rolling without pushing or speeding,
speedingwithout pushing or rolling , and pushing without rolling or speeding.
SeeGropen et al. ( 1991a) for experimental demonstrations that children use
this kind of information .
3.1.2. Pairedverbsthat describesingleevents
Gleitman ( 1990: 16; seealso Fisher et al. 1991: 380) suggeststhat there are
pairs of verbs that overlap 100% in the situations they refer to. For example,
there can be no giving without receiving, no winning without beating, no
buying without selling, and no chasingwithout fleeing.
In fact, I doubt that pairs of verbs that refer to exactly the same set of
situations exist (or if they do , they must be extremely rare.) Such pairs would
be exact synonyms, and there is good reason to believe that there are few if
any exact synonyms (Clark 1987, Bolinger 1977, Miller and Fellbaum 1991).
To take just theseexamples, I can receivea packageeven if no one gave it to
me; perhaps I wasn' t home. John, running unopposed, can win the election,
'
though he didn t beat anyone, and the second-place Celtics beat the last-place
Nets in the standings last year, though neither won anything. Several of my
gullible college friends sold encyclopediasdoor to door for an entire summer,
but in many cases, no one bought any; I just bought a Coke from the machine
across the hall, but no one sold it to me. If John fled the city , no one had to
be chasinghim ; Bill can chaseFred even if Fred isn' t fleeing but hiding in the
garbagecan.
I would certainly not claim that the learning of all thesedistinctions awaits
the child ' s experienceof the crucially disambiguating situation. But a lot of it
could, and more important , the in-principle arguments for an alternative that
are based on putative total overlap among verb meanings are not valid if
meaningsrarely overlap totally .
3.1.3. Thesubsetproblem
In some cases, Gleitman suggests , verb learning is impossible even if verbs

do not totally overlap in the situations to which they refer. If the situations
referred to by Verb A are a supersetof the situations referred to by Verb B, a
child who mistakenly thought that Verb B had the same meaning as Verb A
could never reject that hypothesis by observing how Verb B is used; all
instances would fit the A meaning, too. The only disconfirming experience
would be overt correction by parents, and there is good reason to believe that
children cannot rely on such corrections. This argument is parallel to one
commonly made in the acquisition of syntax (see, e.g., Pinker 1984, 1989;
Wexier and Culicover 1980; Berwick 1985, Marcus 1993) . For example, move,
walk, and saunter are in a superset relation ; any child that thought that
saunter meant walk would do so forever, becauseall examplesof sauntering
are also examplesof walking .
But this is only a problem if the child is allowed to maintain synonyms in
his or her vocabulary. If children do not like to keep synonyms around (see
Carey 1982, Clark 1987, Markman 1989, for evidencethat they do not ), then
if they have a verb A (e.g., walk), and also a verb B (saunter) that seemsto
mean the same thing, they know something is wrong . They can look for
additional meaning elementsfrom a circumscribed set to make the meaning
of B more specific (like the manner of motion ) . Pinker ( 1989: ch. 6) outlines a
mechanismfor how this procedure could work .
3.1.4. Thepoorfit of wordto world
Gleitrnan suggeststhat even when a verb corresponds in principle to a

unique set of situations, it is not , in practice, reliably ' used in that set of
situations, so the child has no way of figuring out a verb s meaning based on
the situations it actually is used in.
For example, Landau and Gleitman showed that the blind child they
' '
studied learned haptic equivalents of the verbs look (roughly, palpate or
' ' ' '
explore haptically ) and see(roughly , sensehaptically ) . But , they found , her
'
mother didn t use look and seemore often when object was near than when
object was far. '
The point of this argument is unclear. Of course, the mother didn t
' '
necessarilyuse look when an object was near. Look doesnt mean an object is
'
near~; it means ' look . The lack of correlation between some easily sensed
property like nearness and use of a verb is only relevant if the child is
confined to considering"lists of sensory properties as possible verb meanings.
'
If children can entertain the concept of looking , in something like the adults
'
sense(and Gleitman 1990: 4, assumesthey can), it doesnt matter how many
sensoryproperties a verb fails to correlate with if those properties define only
'
a crude approximation of the verb s actual meaning. ( This is a problem, for
example, with the conclusionsdrawn by Lederer et ale 1989.) All that matters
is whether a child can recognize situations in which that correct concept
applies.
Gleitman ( 1990) then turns to a stronger argument. Even when one
examinesgenuineinstancesof the concept corresponding to a verb' s meaning,
one finds a poor correlation with instances of the parent uttering the verb.
For example, in one study put was found to be used 10% of the time when
there was no putting going on. Similarly , open was used when there was no
opening 37% of the time. As Gleitman notes, this is not a surprise when one
realistically considers how parents interact with their children. When a
mother, arriving home from work , opens the door , she is likely to say, What
'
did you do today?, not I m openingthe door. Similarly , she is likely to say Eat
your peas when her child is, say, looking at the dog, and certainly not when
the child is already eating peas. Indeed, Gleitman ( 1990: 15) claims that
'
positive imperatives pose one of the most devastating challenges to any
schemethat works by constructing word -to-world pairings' .
The problem with this argument is that it , too , only refutes the nonviable
theory of learning by associatepairing , in which verb meanings are acquired
via temporal contiguity of sensory features and utterances of the verb. It
doesn't refute any reasonableaccount, in which the child keeps an updated
mental model of the current situation (created by multisensory object- and
event-pe~ception faculties), including the likely communicative intentions of
other humans. The child could use this knowledge, plus the lexical content of
the sentence, to infer what the parent probably meant. That is, chldren need
not assumethat the meaning of a verb consists of those sensoryfeatures that
are activated simultaneously with a parental utterance of the verb ; they can
assume that the meaning of a verb consists of what the parent probably
meant when he or she uttered the word. Thus imperatives, where the child is
'
not performing the act that the parent is naming, are not ' devastating .
Certainly when a parent directs an imperative at a child and takes steps to
enforce it , the child cannot be in much doubt that the content of the
' '
imperative pertains to the parents wishes, not the child s current activities.
3.1.5. Semantic properties closed to observation
'
Gleitman considers this the ' most serious challenge to the idea that
children learn verb meanings by attending to their nonsyntactic contexts.
Mental verbs like think, know, guess, wonder, know, hope, suppose , and
understandinvolve private events and states that have no external perceptual
correlates . Therefore children could not possibly infer their meanings obser -
vationally .
One problem I see with this argument is that although children may not be
able to observe other people thinking and the contents of others ' beliefs , they
can observe themselves thinking and the contents of their own beliefs .
Similarly , children may not know what their mothers are feeling , but they
certainly know what they are feeling . And crucially , in many circumstances so
do their mothers . When a parent comments on what a child is thinking or
feeling , that constitutes information about the meanings of the mental state
verbs they use.
'
Moreover , there surely are ways to infer a person s mental state from his or
her behavior . Indeed , the standard way that humans explain each other ' s
behavior is to assume that it is caused by beliefs and intentions , which can
only be inferred . This must be how adults , during ordinary speech production
, know when to use mental verbs based on their own mental state or
'
guessesabout others , even though there is no obvious referent event . There is
no principled reason that children could not infer meanings of new mental
verbs using exactly the same information that adults employ to use existing
mental verbs accurately .
3.1.6. Does a richer system of mental representation hurt or help the child ?
Gleitman suggeststhat if children are not temporal contiguity associators-

if they can entertain hypothesesabout causes, mental states, goals, speakers'
intentions, and so on - their learning task is even harder. For the very
richnessof such representational abilities yields a combinatorial explosion of
logically possible hypothesesfor the child to test.
This argument, however, seems to conftate two ideas: ' a rich set of
' ' '
hypotheses, and a set of rich hypotheses. Gleitman correctly points out that
a rich (i .e., numerous) set of hypothesesis a bad thing if you' re a learner. But
replacing her associative-pairing mechanismwith a cognitively more sophisticated
one results in a set of rich (i.e., structured) hypotheses, not a rich set of
hypotheses. And a set of rich hypothesesmay in fact be fewer in number than
a set of impoverished ones (e.g., combinations of sensory features) in any
given situation : creatures with complicated human brains see the world in
only a few of the logically possible ways. Presumably there are many more
hypothesesfor a learner who considersall subsetsof patchesof color and bits
of fur and whisker than there are for a learner with a sophisticated object-
recognition system who obligato rily perceives these patches as a single
S. Pinker I Verb syntax and verb semantics 393
' rabbit ' . The whole

point of a rich computational apparatus is to reduce the
interpretations of a sceneto the small number of correct ones. This is exactly
what is neededto help solve the learning problem.
3.2. Problemsin understandingobservationallearning do not constituteevidence

for syntactic cueing
In much of her discussion, Gleitman attempts to place the burden of proof

on anyone who believes that verb learning depends on observation, by
identifying many areas of ignorance and difficult puzzles regarding how it
could work . Indeed, anyone who thinks that a child can infer what a parent
means from the situation and the nonverb content of the sentence must
propose that a heterogeneouscollection of not -very-well specified routes to
knowing - indeed, the entirety of cognition - is available for use in the
'
learning of verb meanings. Moreover, any such proposal must deal with the
fact that even the most perceptive child and predictable parent cannot be
expectedto be in perfect synchrony all the time.
Gleitman' s discussion contains penetrating and valuable analyses that
clearly define central researchproblems in how children learn the meaningsof
words. But to support the alternative claim that verb subcategorization
information is crucial, it is necessaryto show that no theory of inferring
communicative intent could ever be adequate, not that we currently don' t
have one that is fully worked out .
Moreover, Gleitman' s attempt to shift the burden of proof ultimately fails,
becauseshe herself, at the end of the 1990 article and in Fisher et al. ( 1991
and this volume), concedes(in responseto some of the points I elaborate on
in the next section) that someform of observational learning in indispensable.
She notes that information about manner of motion , type of mental state,
nature of physical change undergone, and so on, are simply not available in
the syntax of subcategorization: ' the syntax is not going to give the learner
information delicate and specific enough, for example, to distinguish among
such semantically close items as break, tear, shatter, and crumble ... Luckily ,
these distinctions are almost surely of the kinds that can be culled from
transactions with the world of objects and events' (Gleitman 1990: 35) .
'
This concession, however, completely redirects the force of Gleitman s
criticisms of observational learning. For the meaning components that Gleit -
man agrees are learned by observation are the very components that she,
earlier in the article, claimed that observation cannot acquire! For example,
the fact that open is often used when opening is not taking place (e.g.,
imperatives), and that open is not used when opening is taking place (e.g.,
when someoneenters the house), if it is relevant at all , pertains in full force to
the ' delicate and specific' aspectsof the meaning of open (i.e., those aspects
that differentiate it from syntactically identical close). Similarly, parents
surely cannot be counted on to use break or tear when and only when
breaking or tearing are taking place, respectively. Nonetheless, Gleitman
concedesthat the meanings specific to open, break, and tear are somehow
learned by observation. Thus it is not true, as she suggests( 1990: 48), that
'
semantically relevant information in the syntactic structures can rescue
'
observational learning from the sundry experiential pitfalls that threaten it .
There are pitfalls , to be sure, but for most of the ones Gleitman originally
discussed , syntax offers no rescue. What we need is abetter , non-associationist
theory of observational learning.
'
3.3. Conclusionsabout Gleitmans argumentsagainst observationallearning
Gleitman convincingly refutes a classical associationist theory of semantic

learning, in which word meanings are acquired via temporal contiguity of
sensoryfeaturesof the sceneand utterancesof the word. She also convincingly
shows that to explain verb learning, we need a constrained representational
'
systemfor verbs meanings, principles constraining how one verb is related to
another in the lexicon, a learning mechanism that can construct and modify
semantic representations over a set of uses of the verb, and a greater
understanding of how children interpret events, actions, mental states, and
other speakers' communicative intentions. But the arguments do not show
that the full set of semanticcues to semanticsis so impoverished in principle
that the child must use sets of syntactic subcategorization frames as cues
instead, nor that syntactic cues provide just the information that semantic
cues fail to provide. Rather, Gleitman herself assumesthat there exists some
form of observationallearning powerful enough to acquire aspectsof meaning
that her own arguments show to be hard to acquire.3
3 PaulBloomhaspointedout to methat argumentssimilarto Gleitman's wereoriginallymade

'
by Chomsky( 1959 ) in his reviewof Skinners VerbalBehavior . For example, Chomskyshowed
that nounmeanings couldnot in generalbe learnedby hearingthe nounsin the presence of their
. But Chomskyusedexamples
referents like Eisenhower, a propername, whosemeaningcouldnot
possiblybe distinguishedusingsyntacticcuesfrom the thousandsof other proper namesthat
mustbe learned(e.g., Nixon). This suggeststhat observationand syntacticcuesare not the only
possiblemeansof learning. SeeBloom (this volume) for discussionof similar issuesin the
learningof noun meanings .
S. Pinker/ Verbsyntaxandverbsemantics 395
4. ne positive hY)M)tbeticaI argmnent: Semantic infonnatio D in subcategorization

frames
Gleitman and her collaboratorsgive a few specificexamplesof how a

learner might use a verb's syntactic propertiesto predict aspectsof its
meaning . Unfortunately, they do not relate theseexamplesto a general
'
theory of the relation of syntaxto semanticsin verbs lexicalentriesand of
how a learnercould exploit them. In this sectionI will attemptto fill this gap
'
by layingout the logic of verbs syntaxand semanticsand the implicationsof
that logic for learning.
4.1. Verb roots versus verb frames
The first question we must ask is, what do we mean by ' a verb' ? The term
is ambiguous in a critical way, becausein most languagesa verb can appear
in a family of forms, each with a distinct meaning component, plus a
common meaning component that runs throughout the family . For example,
many verbs can appear in transitive, intransitive , passive, double-object,
prepositional object, and other phrases. In some cases the verb actually
changesits morphological form acrossthesecontexts, though in English only
the passiveis marked in this way. Following standard usagein morphology ,
we can say that all the forms of a given verb share the same verb root. We
can then call the syntactically distinct forms of a given root its frames. For
example, consider the matrix of verb forms in figure 1, where the existenceof
a given root in a given frame is marked with an ' x' .
The meanings of the x ' s differ along two dimensions. Let me use the term
root meaningto refer to the aspectsof meaning that are preservedin a given
root across all the frames it appears in ; that is, whatever aspectsof meaning
The water boiled and I boiled the water have in common, and fail to share
with The door openedand I opened the door. Let me use the term frame
meaningto refer to the orthogonal dimension: the aspectsof meaning that are
shared across all the roots that appear in a given frame; that is, whatever
aspectsof meaning differentiate The water boiled from I boiled the water, and
that The water boiled and The door openedhave in common.
Note that root meanings are much closer to what people talk about when
worrying about acquisition of word meaning. That is, the main problem in
learning boil is learning that it is about hot liquid releasing bubbles of gas.
This is the aspect of boil that is found in both its transitive and intransitive
uses, that is, its root meaning. The root meaning corresponds to what we
396 S. Pinker I Verb syntax and ve.pbsemantics
Frames
NP- NP_NP NPJ NP--PP NP- NP-PP NP- NP-S
Roots
eat x x
move x x
boil x x
open x x
kill x
die x
think x
tell x
know x x x
see x x x
look x x
Fig. I
think of as the content of a verb. The frame meaning - the fact that there
must be an agent causing the physical change when the verb is used in the
transitive frame, and that the main event being referred to is the causation,
not the physical changeis just as important in understanding the sentence,
but it is not inherently linked to the verb root boil. It is linked to the
transitive syntactic construction, and would apply equally well to melt, freeze,
open, and the thousands of other verb roots that could appear in that frame.
This is a crucial distinction .
4.2. Learning about a verb in a single / rame
The first question that follows is, What can be learned from hearing a verb
in one frame? Something, clearly, for frame semanticsand frame syntax are
highly related. For example, it is a good bet that in A glips B to C, glip is a
verb of transfer. The regularities that licensethis inference are what linguists
call linking rules (Carter 1988, Jackendoff 1987, 1990; Pinker 1989, Gropen et
al. 199Ia) . For example, if A is a causal agent, A is the subject of a transitive
verb. Linking rules are an important inferential mechanism in semantic
bootstrapping (semantic cueing of syntax at the outset of language acquisition
), in predicting how one can use a verb once one knows what it means,
and in governing how verbs alternate between frames (see Gropen et al.
1991afor discussion) .
S. PinkerI Verbsyntaxandverbsemantics 397
One might now think : If syntax correlates with semantics, why not go both
'
ways? If one can infer a verb s syntax from its semantics(e.g., in semantic
'
bootstrapping), couldn t one just as easily infer its semanticsfrom its syntax?
As Gleitman puts it ( 1990: 30) :
' The
syntacticbootstrapping proposalin essence turns semanticbootstrapping on its head.
Accordingto this hypothesis, thechild who understandsthe mappingrulesfor semantics on to
syntaxcan usethe observedsyntacticstructuresas evidencefor deducingthe meanings . The
learnerobservesthe real-world situation but also observesthe structuresin which various
wordsappearin the speechof the caretakers . Suchan approachcan succeed because, if the
syntacticstructuresare truly correlatedwith the meanings , the rangeof structureswill be
informativefor deducingwhichword goeswith whichconcept .'
I believethis argument is problematic. The problem is that a correlation is not

the same thing as an implication. ' Correlation ' means ' many X ' s are Y ' s or
' ' ' ' ' '
many Y s are X s or both . Implication means if X , then Y , though not
- '
necessarilyvice versa . The asymmetry inherent in an implication is crucial to
understanding how it can be used predictively. For example, if I feed two
numbers (e.g., 3 and 5) into the sum-of function , the value must be 8. But if I
guesswhich inputs led to a value of 8, I cannot know that they were 3 and S.
Linking rules are implications . They cannot straightforwardly be used in
the reversedirection. If a verb means ' X causesY to shatter' , then X is the
subject of the verb. But if X is the subject of a verb, the verb does not
' '
necessarilymean X causesY to shatter . This asymmetry is inherent to the
design of language. A grammar is a mechanism that maps a huge set of
semantic distinctions onto a small set of syntactic distinctions (for example,
thousands of kinds of physical objects are all assignedto the same syntactic
' '
category noun ). And becausethis function is many-to- one, it is not invertible.
Now , if one castsaway most of the meaning of a verb (e.g., the part about
shattering), there may remain some abstract feature of meaning that could
map in one-to -one fashion to syntactic form . To the extent that that can be
done, one could learn some things about a verb form ' s meaning from the
frame that the verb appearsin. First , one can learn how many arguments the
verb relates in that form , as in the difference between The water boiled (one
argument) and She boiled the water (two arguments), or the difference
betweendie (one argument) and kill (two arguments) . Second, one can infer
' '
something about the logical type of some of the arguments, like proposition
' '
(if the verb appearswith a clause) versus thing (if the verb appears with an
NP) versus ' place/path' (if the verb appears with a PP) . That is, the syntax
can help one distinguish betweenthe meaning offind in find the book andfind
398 S. PinkerI Verbsyntaxandverbsemantics
that the book is interesting; between shoot the man and shoot at the man;
perhaps even between think, eat, and go. Third , the syntax of a sentencecan
help identify which argument can be construed as the agent (viz., the subject)
in caseswhere the inherent properties of the arguments (such as animacy)
leave it ambiguous, for example, in kill versus is killed by, and chaseversus
flee . Similarly , syntactic information can distinguish the experiencerfrom the
'
stimulus in ' psych-verbs with ambiguous roles, such as Bill feared Mary and
Mary frightened Bill . Fourth , syntactic information can help identify which
' '
argument is construed as affected (viz., the syntactic object) in events where
several entities are being affected in different ways. For example, in load the
hay and load the wagon, on cognitive grounds either the hay or the wagon
' '
could be interpreted as affected : the hay, becauseit changeslocation , or the
wagon, becauseit changesstate from not full to full (similar considerations
apply to the .pair of verbsfill and pour. The listener has to notice which of the
two arguments (content or container) appearsas the direct object of the verb
' '
to know which one to construe as the affected argument for the purpose of
understanding the verb in that frame. Gleitman and her colleaguesgive many '
'
examplesof these forms of learning, which I have called reverselinking (see
Pinker 1989 and Gropen et al. 1991a, b for relevant discussion and experimental
data) .
'
Unfortunately , while one can learn somethingabout a verb form s meaning
from the syntax of the frame it appears with , especially when there are a
small number of alternatives to selectamong, one cannot learn much, relative
to the full set of English verbs, becauseof the many-to -one mapping between
the meanings of specific verbs and the frames they appear in. For example,
one cannot learn the differences among slide, roll , bounce, skip, slip, skid,
tumble, spin, wiggle, shake, and so on, or the differencesamong hope, think,
pray , decide, say, and claim; among build, make, knit , bake, sew, and crochet;
among shout, whisper, mumble, murmur, yell , whimper, whine, and bluster;
among fill , cover, tile, block, stop up, chain, interleave, adorn, decorate and
face, and so on. Indeed, Gleitman herself ( 1990: 35) concedesthis point in the
quote reproduced above.
In sum, learning from one frame could help a learner distinguish frame
meanings, that is, what the water boiled has in common with the ball bounced
and does not have in common with I boiled the water. But it does not
distinguish root meanings, that is, the difference the water boiled and' the ball'
bounced. And the root meaningsare the ones that correspond to the content
' ' '
of a verb, what we think of as the verb s meaning , especially when a given
verb root appears in multiple frames.
The frame meanings (partly derivable from the frame) are closer to the
' '
perspective that one adopts relative to an event: whether to focus on one
actor or another, one affected entity or another, the cause or the effect.
Indeed in some restricted cases, differencesin perspectiveare most of what
distinguishes pairs of verb roots, such as kill and die, pour and fill , or
Gleitman' s example of chaseand flee . Gleitman ( 1990) and Fisher et al. (this
volume) adopt a metaphor in which the syntax of a verb frame servesas a
' zoom lens' for the
aspectsof the event referred to by the verb. This metaphor
is useful, becauseit highlights both what verb syntax can do and cannot do.
The operation of lens when aimed at a given scenegives the photographer
three degreesof freedom, pan, tilt , and zoom, which have clear effects on the
perspectivein the resulting picture. But no amount of lens fiddling can fix the
vastly greater number of degreesof freedom defined by the potential contents
of the picture - whether the lens is aimed at a still life , a nude, a ' 57 Chevy, or
one' s family standing in front of the Grand Canyon.
So I have no disagreement with Gleitman' s arguments that a syntactic
frame can serve as a zoom lens, helping a learner decide which of several
perspectiveson a given type of event (discernedby other means) a verb forces
on a speaker. But becausethis mechanismcontributes no information about
a verb' s content, it cannot offer significant help in explaining how children
learn a verb' s content despite blindness, nor in explaining how children learn
a verb' s content despite the complexity of the relationship between referent
event and parental usage.
4.3. Learning about a verbfrom its multiple frames
Gleitman recognizes the limitations of learning about a verb's meaning

froma single
frame
:
' To be sure the number of such clause structures is
, quite small compared to the number of
possible verb meanings: It is reasonable to assume that only a limited number of highly
general semantic categories and functions are exhibited in the organization that yields the
subcategorization frame distinctions. But each verb is associated with several of these
structures. Each such structure narrows down the choice of interpretations for the verb. Thus
these limited parameters of structural variation , operating jointly , can predict possible
'
meaning of an individual verb quite closely. (Gleitman 1990: 30- 32)
The claim that inspection of multiple frames can predict a verb' s meaning
' '
quite closely appearsto contradict the earlier quote in which Gleitman notes
that syntactic information in general is not ' delicate and specific enough to
" '
distinguish among ... semantically close items . To seeexactly how close the
'
syntax can get the learner to a correct meaning, we must ask, What can be
'
learned from hearing a verb in multiple frames? In particular , can a root
'
meaning - the verb s content - be inferred from its set of frames, and if so,
how?
Unfortunately , though Gleitman and her collaborators give examples of
how children might converge on a meaning from several frames, almost
always using the problematic example of see(seefn. 1), they never outline the
inferential procedure by which children do so in the general case. In Fisher et
al. (this volume) they suggest that the procedure is simply the zoom lens
' '
(single-frame) procedure applied iteratively . They give the procedure as
'
follows : In assigning a gloss to the verb, satisfy all semantic properties
'
implied by the truth conditions of all its observed syntactic frames . But this
cannot be right , for reasons they mention in the next paragraph. The truth
conditions (what I have been calling ' frame meaning' ) that belong to a verb
form in one frame do not belong to it in its other frames. So satisfying all of
them will not give the root meaning or verb' s content. If we interpret
' '
satisfying all semantic properties as referring to the conjunctionof the frame
meanings, we get the meaning of its most restrictive frame, which will be
incompatible with its lessrestrictive frames. For example, the truth conditions
for transitive boil include the presenceof a causal agent. But presenceof a
causal agent cannot be among the semantic properties of boil across the
board, for its intransitive version ( The water boiled) is perfectly compatible
with spontaneous boiling in the absenceof any agent. But if we interpret
' '
satisfying all semanticproperties to be the disjunctionof frame meanings, the
aggregation leads to virtually no inference at all. Consider again the frame
involved in The water boiled. This intransitive frame tells the learner that the
meaning of boil in the frame consists of a one-place predicate. Now consider
a second frame, the one involved in I boiled the water. This transitive frame
tells you (at most) that the meaning of boil in the frame consistsof causation
'
of some one-place predicate. What do they have in common? One-place
' . Which is not
predicate very useful. It says nothing whatsoever about the
root meaning of boil, that is, that it pertains to liquid , bubbles, heat, and so
on.
This is a problem even for verbs that appear in many frames, for which the
syntax would seem to provide a great deal of converging information (see
Levin 1985, Pinker 1989) . For example sew implies an activity . Sew the shirt
implies some activity performed on an object. Sew me a shirt implies an
activity creating an object to be transferred to a beneficiary. Sew a shirt out
of the rags implies an activity transforming material into some object. What
'
do theseframe meaningshave in common? Only ' activity ' . Not ' sewing .
' '
The conclusion is clear: you can t derive a verb s root meaning or content
by iterating the zoom lens procedure over multiple frames and taking the
resulting union or intersection of perspectives.
4.3.1. Can anything be learnedfrom multiple frames ?
I do not wish to deny that there is some semantic information implicit in

the set of frames a verb appearswith , nor that an astute learner could not , in
principle, use this information . The example Gleitman uses most often, see,
has clear intuitive appeal. But which general procedure is driving the inference
about seeand other such cases? I can think of two.
According to Gleitman, a set of argument frames implicitly poses the
'
question, What notion is compatible with involving a physical object,
'
involving a proposition, and involving a direction? The child deduces the
' ' .4 In other words this is a kind of
response seeing , cognitive riddle-solving
'
(Pinker 1989) ; it involves all of a leamer s knowledge, beliefs, and cognitive
inferential power.
I am not arguing either that children can or cannot solve such riddles. I am
simply pointing out what would be going on if they could do so. In
particular , note what they would not be doing . They would not be relying on
any grammatical principle , and hence would not be enjoying the putative
advantages of universal constrained linguistic principles to drive reliable
inferences. That is, if guessing a verb' s meaning from its set of frames
succeedsat all , it does so by virtue of the child ' s overall cognitive cleverness,
and hence could suffer from the same unreliability of overall clevernessas
'
inferring a speakers likely meaning from the knowledge of the situation. It is
not a straightforward mechanicalprocedure that succeedsbecausethe frames
' are abstract surfacereflexes of the '
meanings (Landau and Gleitman 1985: 138)
4 ' '
Actually , the question and answer should be stated in tenDs of a family of notions , not
' notion ' becauseverbs like seethat can take either
, objects or clausal complementsdo not exhibit
' ' ' '
a single content meaning across these frames: seeNP does not mean the same thing as see S .
The latter is not even a perception verb: [ seethat the meal is ready does not entail vision. (Clearly
'
not , becauseyou can t visually perceive a proposition .) Similarly , [ feel that the fabric is too
'
smooth does not entail palpation ; it s not even compatible with it . And Listen! [ hear that the
orchestrais playing is quite odd. ( Theseobservations are due to Jane Grimshaw.) Clearly there is
' '
a commonality running through each of thesesets, but it is a metaphorical one; knowing can be
' '
construed metaphorically as a kind of perceiving .
or because' rnuch of the [sernantic] information can be read off frorn the
subcategorization frarnes thernselvesby a general scheme for interpreting
thesesemantically' (Landau and Gleitman 1985: 142) . Moreover, the premises
that would drive this riddle-solving are far rnore irnpoverished than the
'
prernisesderived frorn inferring a speakers rneaning frorn the context. The
latter can include any concept the child is capable of entertaining (sewing,
boiling , and so on); the former are restricted to a srnaller set of abstract
concepts like causability and taking a propositional argument.
There is a second way that sets of syntactic frarnes could assist sernantic
learning. That is via narrow argument-structure alternations. Often the verbs
that can appear with a particular set of syntactic frarnes have surprisingly
specific rneanings (see Levin 1985, in press; Pinker 1989, for reviews) . For
exarnple, in English, the verbs that can appear in the double-object form but
not the to-object form are verbs of irnplied deprivation like envy, bet, and
.
begrudge(e.g., I envied him his good looks/ envied his good looks of him) .
Sirnilarly, verbs of rnanner of rnotion can alternate betweencausative-transitive
and inchoative-intransitive forms (e.g., I slid the puck/ The puck slid) , but
verbs of direction of rnotion cannot (e.g., I brought the book/ . The book
brought) . An astute learner, in principle, could infer , frorn hearing I glipped
him those things and frorn failing to hear I glipped those things of him, that
glip involves sorne intention or wish to deprive sorneoneof sornething. But
note ' that these regularities are highly specific to languagesand to dialects
within a language. (For exarnple, . 1 suggestedher somethingis grarnrnatical in
Dutch , and . I pushedhim the box is grammatical in sornedialects of English;
seePinker 1989.) Exploiting thern requires first having acquired these subtle
subclass esand their syntacticbehavior in the dialect, presumablyby abstracting
the subclass es frorn the sernanticsand syntax of individual verbs, acquired by
other rneans. This kind of inference dependson a good deal of prior learning
of verbs' rneaningsin a particular language, and thus is rnost definitely not a
'
caseof ' bootstrapping performed by a child to acquire the rneaningsof the
verbs to begin with .
'
In general, learning a verb s content or root rneaning frorn its set of
' '
syntactic frames ( syntactic bootstrapping ) is fundamentally different frorn '
'
learning its perspectiveor frame rneaning frorn a single frarne ( zoorn lens ) .
'
Thus I disagreewith Gleitman s ( 1990) suggestionthat they are versions of a
single procedure, or Fisher et alis suggestion(this volume) that one is sirnply
the iteration of the other. There is a clear' reason why they are different.
While there rnay be a universal rnapping betweenthe rneaning of a frarne and
the syntax of that frame (allowing the lens to zoorn), there.is no universal
mapping betweenthe meaning of a root and the set of frames it occurs in (see
Talmy 1985 and Pinker 1989 for reviews) . For examplet universal linking
rules impl Yt roughlYt that an inchoative verb can appear in an intransitive
framet and a causativeverb can appear in a transitive frame. And itts clearly
possible for some roots to be able to have both causative and inchoative
meanings (and hence to appear in both frames) . But itts an accident of
English that slide appears in both framest but come and bring appear in one
each. Thus the kinds of learning that are licensed by universalt reliablet
grammatical linking regularities are restricted to differencesin perspective. A
verbts content is not cued by anyone of its syntactic framest and at best
might be related to its entire set of frames in a tenuoust language-specific
way.
S. Experimental evidence on children ' s learning of verb meanings from verb

syntax
Gleitman ( 1990) reviews three ingenious experimental studies intended to

'
support the claim that children can and do use a verb s syntax to learn its
meanings. Though the experiments are important contributions to our
understanding of the acquisition of verb meaning, they do not speak to
Gleitman' s proposals about ' syntactic bootstrapping' , becausenone of the
experiments involved the presentation of multiple frames to a child . Let me
review them.
5.1. Hirsh-Paseket a/. ( 1988)
One set of studies (Hirsh -Pasek et ale 1988) presented27-month -olds with
two video screens. One showed a pair of puppets performing a simple action
like flexing their own arms; the other showed one puppet causing the second
to perform the action, by manipulating its arms. A recorded voice used a verb
unknown to the child in one of two syntactic frames, either the intransitive
' ' '
Big Bird is flexing with Cookie Monster or the transitive Big Bird is flexing
'
Cookie Monster . Children looked at the screenshowing the noncausal scene
more often when the sentence was intransitive, and looked at the screen
showing the causal scenemore often when the sentencewas transitive.
Note that this study provided children with only a single frame, not
multiple frames. And note as well that what the children were sensitiveto was
a frame-specific perspective (causation by an agent), not a root -specific
content (flexing) . The content (flexing) was acquired through observation, not
syntax; it was depicted on the video screen, and the child was watching it .
Thus at best the children were demonstrating use of the zoom lens procedure;
'
there was no opportunity for multiple frames to cue the verb s content. (At
worst, the children were not acquiring any information about the verb at all ,
but were ignoring the verb and merely responding to the transitive and
intransitive sentenceframes themselveswhen directing their attention.)
5.2. Naig/es( 1990

)
'
A secondstudy appearsto show children learning a verb s content from a
single frame. In Naigles ( 1990), 24-month-olds first saw a video of a rabbit
pushing a duck up and down, while both made large circleswith one arm. One
' '
group of children heard a voice saying The rabbit is gorping the duck ; another
'
heard 'The rabbit and the duck are gorping . Then both groups saw a pair of
screens , one showing the rabbit pushing the duck up and down, neither making
arm circles, the other showing the two charactersmaking arm circles, neither
' '
pushing down the other. In responseto the command Wheres gorping now?
'
Find gorping! , the children who heard the transitive sentencelooked at the
screen showing the up- and-down action, and the children who heard the
intransitive sentencelooked at the screenshowing the making-circlesaction.s
What have the children learned, and from what source? Clearly, they
'
learned most of the verb root s content - that gorp means pushing and/ or
-
making circles, but not sliding or boiling or killing or dancing not by
' the video
attending to the syntax, but by observing the scene; that s what
depicted. Without the video, the children would have learned little if anything
. What the children learned from the sentencesyntax was, once again,
5 Unfortunately , the Naigics experiment had a confound, commentedon by Gleitman, 1990, in

footnote 13 on p . 43. The difference between the gorps could have been cued by the conjoined
versussingular subjects, disregarding the verb syntax entirely . That is, the difference between The
rabbit is gorping and The rabbit and the duck are gorping, with identical verb syntax, could have
been sufficient for children to pick out a screento look at. In the first case, the children would
look at what the rabbit alone was doing ; in the secondcase, they could look at what the rabbit
and duck were doing simultaneously. This would be sufficient to direct their attention in testing
to the push-down screenin the first case, the make-circles screenin the second. This confound, a
good example of the difference between using linguistically - conveyed content as opposed to
verbal syntax, could be eliminated by using the sentencesof Hirsh -Pasek et al. The voice-over
' ' '
would say either ' the rabbit is gorping the duck or the rabbit is gorping near the duck , Children
in the first condition , if they could useverb syntax as a cue, would still find gorping in the up- and-
down screen, children in the secondwould find it in the make-circles screen.
the meaning of the verb in its particular frame. The sentenceplayed to the
first group of children told them that gorp is a two-place predicate, presumably
a causative. It means either 'cause to pop up and down' or ' cause to make
arm circles' . The sentenceplayed to the secondgroup told them that gorp is a
one-place predicate, presumably an activity . It means either ' make arm
circles' or ' pop up and down' . Once again, the syntactic frame cued only the
coarse information of how many arguments were immediately related by the
verb; the rest came from observation.
One might object at this point that Naigles' s experiment has demonstrated
what I have been arguing is impossible: children appear to have learned
about a verb' s content (in the case, up-and-down versus make-circles) from
the sentencein which it is used, and could not have learned that content from
observation alone. But this is misleading. Successdependedcompletely on the
fact that Naigles engineeredan imaginary world in which perspective and
content were confounded, so that when children were using syntax to choose
the right perspective, they got the right content, too , by happy accident. Note
there is no grammatical constraint forcing or preventing either ' popping up
and down' or ' making arm circles' from being exclusively transitive, exclusively
intransitive, or alternating. Nor is there any real-world constraint that
could cause creatures to make arm circles and to pop up and down in
tandem. But Naigles' s teaching example exemplified both such constraints:
only popping up-and-down was causable, and such causation took place in
the presenceof arm circles. It was only these artificial contingencies that
made the forms learnable by syntax rather than observation. Consider what
would have happenedif the children had been shown a scenedepicting circles
without pushing up and down or vice-versa. In that case, observation would
have been sufficient to distinguish the two actions, with no syntax required.
Now consider what would happen if the children had been shown an arm-
circling rabbit causing the duck simultaneously to pop up and down and to
make arm circles. This is no more or less bizarre than the conjunction that
Naigles did show children, where causation of popping up and down was
simultaneous with uncaused arm-circling . In that case, neither the sentence
The duck is gorping the rabbit nor the sentence The duck and rabbit are
gorping would have distinguished the two kinds of motion . This shows that
syntax is neither necessarynor sufficient- to distinguish the alternative content
meanings of gorp, across all the different scenesin which it can be used;
observation, in contrast, is sufficient. In sum, Naigles simply selected a
contrived set of exposure conditions that penalized observation while letting
syntax lead to the right answer by coincidence.
5.3. Fisheret a/. ( 1994)
The third experiment is reported by Fisher et ale(this volume) . Here 4- year-

olds viewed scenesthat were consistent with two verbal descriptions, like eat
and feed, chaseand flee, ride and carry, give and take, or put and carry. A
puppet described the action using a novel verb root like zorp. For each
sentence, different children heard the verb used in one of two syntactic forms.
Depending on the action, the forms differed in transitivity , in which animal
was named as the subject or object, or in whether an animal or a thing was
named as the direct object. The child was asked to describe the event for the
puppet by providing it with the English translation of the puppet word . The
children tended to provide the English word that corresponded to the
syntactic frame that the puppet used.
There is a problem, though, with interpreting this experiment as evidence
'
for syntactically-cued verb learning : the children didn t learn any verbs. They
simply had to select existing English verbs that were the translation of the
puppet words (this is literally how the task was described to the children) .
'
That is, the children weren t learing what eat or feed mean; they were simply
demonstrating that by the time they had walked into the lab, they had
previously learned (through whatever means) that eat can have a sole, actor
argument whereasfeed can have an agent and a beneficiary/goal argument.
The-task was: ' which English verb is consistent with the videos and has an
' ' does a verb mean if it
agent subject and a beneficiary/goal object? not , what ' '
has an agent subject and a beneficiary/goal object? It s not surprising that
children can be shown to know the answer to the first question, because
that ' s exactly the knowledge they depend on every time they use the verb
correctly in their speech. So the experiments show what children already
know about English verbs, not how they learn English verbs.
Gleitman ( 1990) and Fisher et ale (this volume) recognizethis problem but
suggestthat it provides indirect evidencein favor of their position . I think it
might show little or nothing about verb learning at all , becausethe knowledge
being used could be specific to what the children know about English.
Suppose someone were to advance the (obviously wrong) hypothesis that
- with ' ' are
people learn what a word means by' its sound words beginning p
'
causative, words beginning with f are inchoative. To test it , they show a
'
scene that is ambiguous between falling and pushing, and say the puppet
' ' '
calls this f .... or the puppet calls this p .... . Subjectsguessfalling and pushing
accordingly. But obviously they do it by tapping particular facts of English
acquired beforehand, with no utility in learning any other language. That is,
S. Pinker I Verb syntax and verb i Pcmallti
~., 407
there is no reason to think that the retrieval cue that the experimenter
provides now, for existing knowledge, was ever used as a learning cue, in
order to acquire that knowledge originally . Substitute ' transitive syntax' and
' intransitive ' ' ' ' '
syntax for p .... and f .... and one has the Fisher et al.
experiment (this volume) - a test of whether children can use transitivity
correctly as a retrieval cue for previously learned words when the content of
the words is available observationally.
5.4. What experiment would show syntactic cueing of verb semantics?
There is an extremely simple experiment that could test whether children

can learn a verb root ' s semanticcontent from multiple frames. There could be
no TV screen, or content words, just syntactic frames. For example, children
would hear only . She;'pi /ked; She pi /ked me something; She pi /ked the thing
from the other things; Shepi /ked the other things into the thing; Shepi /ked one
'
thing to another, and so on. If children can acquire a verb s content from
multiple frames, they should be able to infer that the verb basically means
'create '
by attaching (Levin 1985). (Of course, one would have to ensure that
the child was learning a new meaning and not simply using the frames to
retrieve an existing word , for reasonsmentioned in the preceding subsection.)
Lest one think that this set of inputs is way too impoverished and boring for
'
a child to attend to , let alone for the child to draw semanticconclusionsfrom ,
in the absenceof perceiving some accompanying real-world event, recall that
this is exactly the situation that Landau and Gleitman assumethe blind child
is in. It would be an interesting finding if children (or adults) could learn
'
significant aspectsof a verb s content from syntactic cues, as this experiment
would demonstrate. If Gleitman and her collaborators are correct, they
should be able to do so.
6. Conclusions
I have gone over Gleitman' s arguments against the sufficiency of learning

verb semantics by observation of semantic cues in the situations in which
a verb is used, and her arguments for the utility and use of syntactic subcategorizatio
information. I suggestthat a careful appraisalof thesearguments
leads to the following conclusions.
As Gleitman shows, temporal contiguity betweensensoryfeaturesand verb
usagescannot explain the acquisition of verb meaning. What this suggestsis
408 S. PinkerI Verbsyntaxandverbsemantics
that the explanation of verb learning requires a constrained universal apparatus

for representing verb meanings, principles governing the organization of
the lexicon, a perceptual and conceptual system acute enough to infer which
elementsof verb meaningsan adult in a situation is intending to refer to , and
a learning procedure that can compare hypothesizedsemanticrepresentations
acrosssituations.
Gleitman has also convincingly demonstrated that single syntactic frames
provide information about aspectsof the meaning of the verb in that frame
' '
(the zoom lens hypothesis) . This information is largely about the perspective
that a verb forces a speaker to take with regard to an event. It includes the
number of arguments, the type of argument, a focus on the cause or effect,
and the choice of agent and affected entity when more than one is cognitively
possible. As Gleitman points out , these are exactly the kinds of information
that are difficult or impossible to infer from observing the situations in which
a verb is used.
I disagree, however, that multiple syntactic frames provide crucial information
about the semantic content of a verb root across its different frames
(what Gleitman calls ' syntactic bootstrapping' ) . There is no syntactically-
driven general inferential schemeby which such learning could work ; there is
no empirical evidencethat children use it ; and it does not make up for any of
the problems Gleitman notes in understanding how children learn about a
verb' s meaning from observing the situations in which it is used. Indeed, the
suggestion is incompatible with one of the basic design features of human
language: a vast set of concepts is mapped onto a much smaller set of
grammatical categories.
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MIT Press .
Lingua92 ( 1994
*
Lexicalreconciliation
Jane Grimshaw
Departmentqf Linguisticsand Centerfor CognitiveScience . 18 Seminary
. RutgersUniversity
Place. NeM' BrunsM'ick. NJO8903
. USA
In the context of current research in lexical representation there are two fundamental ideas
about lexical learning. One holds that the semantics of a word is critically involved in the
acquisition of its syntax, another holds that the syntax of the word is critically involved in the
acquisition of its semantics. This paper examines the positive results and limitations of the two
views, and proposes a reconciliation of the two in which a hypothesized meaning based on
observation is the input to the linguistic mapping principles. Thesederive a predicted s-structure,
checkedagainst observedsyntax. Learning occurs when the two match.
1. Introduction
The now standard lines of reasoning concerning universal properties of

languageand languagelearnability lead inexorably to the conclusion that the
lexicon that is eventually masteredby a languagelearner is every bit as much
a function of the systemmastering it as it is of the linguistic data the learner
is exposed to. This represents something of a change - in earlier days of
generativegrammar, the lexicon was often defined as a collection of idiosyncratic
information . The assumption was that lexical information was simply
what was unpredictable and unprincipled, and what therefore must be learned
about the language. Since the lexicon was in no way determined by VG , its
properties dependedonly on what was observed.
In the past ten or fifteen years, we have achievedgreater understanding of
the structure of lexical systems, as a result of work on the representation of
. This paper grew out of joint work with Steve Pinker, which was presented at the Boston
University Language Development Conference in 1990, and owes much to his input and
influence. Many discussionswith Lila Gleitman helped to clarify the arguments immensely, as did
conversations with Barbara Landau. Thanks are also due to Alan Prince, the Rutgers-Penn
lexicon group. participants at the University of Pennsylvania Lexical Learning Conference in
1992. and the Workshop on Thematic Roles in Linguistic Theory and LanguageAcquisition held
at the University of Kansas in 1993, and an anonymous reviewer.
. Science8 .v . All
- 3841/94/$07.00 @ 1994- Elsevier
0024 rights reserved
-
SSDI 0024 3841( 93) EO045 9-
412 J. GrimshawI Lexical reconciliation
lexical items, and the grammatical processes which involve them (Grimshaw
1990, Jackendoff 1990, Levin and Rappaport 1992, Pinker 1989, Williams , in
press, Zu bizarreta 1987). With this has come the recognition that lexical
systems,just like other linguistic domains, are subject to universal constraints
and a high degree of language-internal consistencey. ( For a particularly
interesting perspectiveon the relationship between the theory of words and
the notion of lexical listing , seeWilliams 1992.) A change in perspectivehas
resulted. If the endpoint of the acquisition processis highly principled, then
the acquisition processitself must be interesting.
The acquisition issuesthat have been addressedin recent researchseemto
fall into two subgroups. First , especiallysince Baker ( 1979) there has been an
important seriesof studies which attempt to uncover the principles behind the
acquisition of patterns of alternation shown by verbs: including Bowerman
( 1974, 1990), Choi and Bowennan ( 1991), Grimshaw ( 1989), Gropen et al.
( 1991), Pinker ( 1989), Randall ( 1990). These questions have been the concern
in particular of theories which attempt to make use of mapping between
semanticsand syntax. Second, some recent work has investigatedthe question
of how the relatively gross meaning of a word can be acquired (Landau and
Gleitman 1985, Gleitman 1990, Naigles 1990, Fisher et al. 1991), looking into
theories which make use of mapping of some kind between syntax and
meaning. Research of the first kind asks how learners determine that give
' '
participates in the dative alternation ( We gave a book to someone , We gave
someonea book) whereas donate does not ( We donated a book to someone ,
* We donatedsomonea book) . Researchof the second kind asks how learners
' ' ' '
detennine that a particular morpheme means give , rather than hold .
Whether these are ultimately different questions, with different answers,
remains to be seen.
The linguisticsof the lexicon
The claim that observation of the world is inadequate for the acquisition of
lexical syntax is no surprise - the argument here is just the same as the
argument for any other kind of syntax. The theory of lexical syntax involves
well-formedness principles for argument structure and its interface with
lexical semantics and d-structure: the principles are universal, and not
plausibly learned. With respect to lexical meaning, though, this position is
perhaps more surprising, although arguments from lexical semantic universals
, patterns of errors in learning and so forth , show the effects of va in
J. Grimsha~' I Lexical reconciliation 413
lexical semanticsas elsewhere. The theory of lexical semanticsplays the same

role in constraining possible word meanings and the range of solutions that
the child will entertain, as the theory of Universal Grammar plays in syntax.
For example, it seemsto be the case that while a causative meaning can be
expressedeither by a single morpheme, as in ( I a), or by a phrase, as in ( I b), a
causative-of -a-causative meaning can never be expressedby a single morpheme
, even though it can be expressedby a phrase, as in (c) .
( Ia ) The chemical killed the grass.

cause-to -die
( I b) The chemical causedthe grass to die.
cause-to-die
( ) Overapplication causedthe chemical to kill the grass.
lc
cause-to-cause-to -die
This restriction is a consequenceof the principles which organize lexical

semantic structure and argument structure, some of which are discussedin
the work cited above. Thus linguistic theory provides a constrained representational
system which limits the solutions available to the learner of the
lexicon, along lines familar from other domains.
Starting from the simplest point of view, for each morpheme in the lexicon,
there are- two sorts of information to be detennined by a learner. These are
the syntax of the lexical item, which includes its syntactic category and its
subcategorization properties, however they are expressed, and its semantics.
Minimally , for example, a learner must detennine that hope is a verb which
occurs with a sentential complement, and that it expresses a relation of a
certain kind betweenan individual , the hoper, and a proposition or situation
'
( We hope that it won t rain tomorrow, We hope/ or rain tomorrow) .
Much current work on lexical theory attempts to uncover the principles of
UG which constrain the relationships among various aspects of the lexical
representation of predicates and between the lexical representation and the
syntactic realization. (On the latter seeespeciallyBaker 1988, Pesetsky1992.)
The picture that emergesfrom this researchprogram is one in which the
range of syntactic configurations associatedwith a verb is highly predictable
from its semantics, once parametric syntactic variation is taken into account.
The lexical semantic representation of a predicate determines its argument
structures, its argument structures plus parametric properties of phrase
structure entail the d-structure configurations of the predicate, and the
d-structure plus further parametric effectsentail the s-structure configurations

the predicate appearsin. The existenceof principles of thesekinds guarantees
that certain relationships will obtain betweenthe s-structure of a verb, noun,
or adjective, and its meaning.
This basic point is fundamental to almost all current ideas about lexical
learning. However, the principled character of the relationship between
meaning and syntax is sometimes questioned (for a recent example see
Bowennan 1990), so it is important to clarify the nature of the claim that the
relationship is indeed principled . The key point is that the notion of mapping
is a highly abstract one, in two important respects.
First , mapping from lexical semantics is onto d-structure, not s-structure,
although all that the language learner and the linguist can observe is the s-
structureS -structure of course is affected by other considerations also, some
cross-linguistically variable, and thus reflects linking only quite indirectly . In
fact, it is not possible to draw conclusions about linking directly from d-
structure either, since d-structure itself is subject to parametric variation . All
predictions of a mapping theory are made modulo parametric properties,
both lexical and grammatical, of the language.
Second, mapping does not take as its input an event, but a semantic
representation. That is to say, the theory of UG does not say anything at all
about how events are described syntactically. What it does say something
about is how particular semantic representationsare expressedsyntactically
(modulo the parametric properties of the language, asjust discussed). To say,
'
then, that a verb which ' means x will map into the syntax in a particular
way, is to say that a verb with a particular lexico-semantic representationwill
have a particular syntax. Another verb which superficially appears to have
the same meaning, in that it describes (at least) approximately the same
events, may have a very different syntax. A particularly neat example of this
type is the contrast discussedby Levin and Rappaport Hovav ( 1992) between
the English blush and Italian arrossire. Both are used to describe the same
event, and in this sense they mean the same, yet the Italian verb has
unaccusativesyntax while the English verb has unergative syntax. Levin and
Rappaport Hovav show that the semantic representations of the verbs are
different: arrossire is a change of state predicate, while blush is not. Thus
despite their similarity in tenDS of the events they describe, the verbs have
different lexical semantic representations, and this is what determines their
syntax. The principles which relate one level of representation to another
relate the lexical semanticsof a predicate to its (lexical) syntax : they do not
relate events in the world to (lexical) syntax.
J. GrimshawI Lexical reconciliation 415
3. Situations and sentences
consider
Idealizing ably, wecanpose
thelearning asin (2):
problem
(2) SITUATION\ OBSERVER > WORD
REPRESENTATION
SENTENCE /
The input to the learning systemis a pair of an s-structure, and a representation
of a world situation. This representation will be an interpretation of a
perceived event, for example, based on observation, previous observations,
surrounding discourse, etc. How then does a learner arrive at the lexical
representation for the verb in the sentence, given this kind of learning
situation? Two ideas form the focus of a large amount of current researchon
the question.
The first idea is that analysis of the situation can make it possible to
determine the meaning of a word , and that the meaning of a word in turn
makes it possible to determine its lexicals Yl:ltax. This type of proposal has
been very fully developed by Pinker ( 1989), in an important extension of
earlier work , which concentrated on the question of how meaning might play
a role in allowing the child to perform an initial syntactic analysis upon which
the syntactic system of the languagecould be erected, and on ways in which
the meaning of a verb could make aspects of its syntax predictable to a
learner; Grimshaw ( 1981), Pinker ( 1984, 1989) . The second idea which has
emerged on how linguistic relations play their part in acuisition, is that
analysis of the sentencemakes it possible ta determine (parts of) its semantics
(seeLandau and Gleitman 1985, Fisher et al. 1991, Fisher et al., this volume,
Gleitman 1990) . These two ideas about mapping are sometimes contrasted
'
under the rubrics ' semantic bootstrapping' and ' syntactic bootstrapping (but
seePinker, this volume, for discussion) .
' Semantic '
bootstrapping has one extremely important property : it makes
direct use of the principles mapping from lexical meaning to lexical syntax
discussedearlier. I will not illustrate this in detail - the works referred to
above contain many examples. Nonetheless, it would probably be incorrect to
maintain that an analysis of the situation a/one is the input to the learner.
Becauseof the indirect relationship between events and semantic representations
of verbs, discussedin the previous section, it is not easy for an observer
'
to determine a verb s meaning from an event. Gleitman and colleagues(see
Gleitman 1990and Fisher et al., this volume, for examples) have looked into
this point , showing that eventstypically have multiple construals, hencemany
verb meaningswill be compatible with most events. As an example, consider

a verb which has a causedchange of state interpretation, with a semantic
' '
representationof the form : x causesy to become- . Such verbs often have a
changeof state counterpart, which can utilize the same morpheme, as with
melt, or a different morpheme, as in kill / die. The change-of -state version has a
semantic representation of the form : ' y becomes- ' .
(3) Wemelted the ice/ the ice melted

We killed the dragon/ the dragon died
The problem for word learning from world situations is that circumstances
that can be described by one member of the pair of verbs, can often be
describedequally well by the other: seethe discussion of give and receivein
Fisher et al. ,(this volume) for example. The causative entails the change of
state, hencewheneverthe causativedescription is true of some state of affairs
in the world , the change-of -state description is true also (although not vice
versa) . So if a learner guessesthe causative (kill ) when in fact the verb has a
change-of -state meaning (die), and if word learning is based on world
observation alone, recovery is only possible if some situation tells the learner
that even when there is no possibility of construing the event as involving an
' '
agent, die is still used. If a learner choosesthe change-of -state meaning ( die )
' '
for a: morpheme which is in fact the causative ( kill ), there is no way to
correct the mistake, becausethere is no world situation where the inchoative
is inappropriate and the causative appropriate. The correct meanings must
therefore be assignedto the membersof the pairs by some other means, since
learning by world observation seemsat worst to be impossible, and at best to
require that juvenile speakershave accessto a disambiguating situation for
every pair of meanings like this.
But if observation of the world is not enough, other means must be
available for lexical learning. This is where key information contained in the
sentencein (2) offers the most promising avenue for successfulword learning,
very roughly along the lines sketched by Gleitman ( 1990). The fundamental
idea is that the linguistics of words itself makes learning words possible. It is
the language, and not the world , that supports the processof word learning.
Returning to the kill / die problem, although the situations in which the two
morphemesare used are not good sourcesof information about the meanings
of the verbs, the two are linguistically different in a crucial respect, and this
linguistic difference makes word learning possible. What I will for now
term, loosely, the ' transitivity ' of kill and causative melt contrasts with the
" '
intransitivity of die and inchoative mell, and this property is correlated with
the meaningsin a way that can be exploited by a languagelearner.
What aspects of verbal meaning can in principle be deduced from the
.
syntactic context a verb appears in ? The proposal advanced by Landau and
Gleitman ( 1985) is that learners use information about the surface syntax of a
clause to determine (aspects of) the meaning of the verb in the clause.
Specifically, they suggestthat the subcategorization frame of a verb contains
the critical information . It is easyto seethat this idea will be useful in solving
the kill / die problem : since kill is subcategorizedfor an NP complement and
die is not , a learner who knew the subcategorizationsin advance could use
them to choose the right morpheme for the right meaning. (Presumably
variability resulting from parametric variation can be factored out of the
situation, and a sufficiently abstract view of the subcategorization sets will
make it possible to treat the subcategorization of a verb in one language as
being the same as the subcategorization of a verb with the same meaning in
another language, despite superficial differencesin the syntactic systemsin the
two cases.) When the issueis consideredin a more precisefashion, however, a
number of considerations suggestthat subcategorization frames are not the
optimal source of information . (See Pinker, this volume, and Fisher et al.,
this volume, for additional remarks on the limitations of frames for learning
semantics.)
First , -observable context alone cannot determine what the subcategorization
frames of a verb are. Arguments figure in subcategorization frames,
adjuncts do not. However both occur on the same side of the verb in a
languagelike English, hencethere is no positional evidenceto distinguish one
from the other. This problem arises wherever adjuncts and arguments have
the same form , e.g. with PPs. Consider the examplesin (4) : while write takes
an optional PP adjunct, put has an obligatory PP argument. Similarly , last
has a temporal argument, while wriggle occurs with a temporal adjunct.
(4a) He wrote a book in his room.

(4b) He put a book in his room.
(4c) The performance lasted for an hour.
(4d) The performer wriggled for an hour.
Without knowing which expressionsare arguments it is not possible to know

what frames the verb appearsin , but in order to know which expressionsare
arguments it is necessaryto know what the verb means. Thus it is not clear
what role the subcategorizationframes could have in the acquisition of verbal
418 J. Grimshaw/ Lexical reconciliation
meanings in cases where there is no clear independent indication of the

argument or adjunct status of a phrase associatedwith the verb.
A secondkind of limitation arisesbecauseof the existenceof large numbers
of many-to -one semantics-to -syntax mappings. For example, the set of verbs
which subcategorizesfor NP is both enormous and extremely disparate
semantically:
(5a) He weighedthe tomatoes.

(5b) He weighed300pounds.
(6a) He becamea doctor.
(6b) He shot a doctor.
(7a) He asked someonethe time.
(7b) He asked someonea question.
So the fact that a verb takes an NP complement is not very informative as far
as its meaning is concerned. (Of course it is not completely uninformative ,
since it does make it possible to eliminate a number of candidates: ' put ' and
' die' for
, example, are not possible meanings for any of the verbs in (5H7 ) .)
The reason that the syntax here is comparatively uninformative is that many
different meaningsare mapped onto a syntactic expressionlike NP.
Syntactic mapping based on a single subcategorization frame will be
maximally effective when the mapping is one-to-one or just few-to -one. This
is probably the casewith , for example, sentential complements. A verb with a
sentential complement must draw its meaning from a relatively small set of
possibilities, which include verbs of communication (say, announce, state),
verbs of logical relation (entail, presuppose ), and verbs of propositional
attitude (hope, believe) .
Being aware of the limitations and problems of mapping from subcategorization
frames to meaning in cases such as the ones just discussed, the
researchersworking on syntactic mapping have investigated the idea that sets
of subcategorizationframes, and not just single frames, playa role in the
acquisition of verbal meaning (see especially Landau and Gleitman 1985,
Fisher et al. 1991, and the discussion of ' frame range' in Fisher et al., this
volume) . The learner will examine the set of subcategorizationsthat a verb
appearsin , and discover properties of its meaning in this way.
Note that one strong disadvantageof this position is that it is not possible
to learn a meaning for a morpheme on exposure, even repeatedexposure, to a
single sentencetype. Analysis acrosssentencetypes will be required, since the
J. Grimshaw/ Lexical reconciliation 419
entire set of frames that the verb appearsin , or some approximation thereof,
must be observedbefore its meaning can be detennined.
There is an important precondition for the successof the ' sets of frames'
idea. In order for learners to be able to use a verb' s subcategorizationset to
determine its meaning, the learner must know in advancewhich set goeswith
which meaning. This is possible only to the extent that the subcategorization
set/ meaning mapping is cross-linguistically stable, or shows only parametric
variation. So the question is whether UG detenninesthe subcategorizationset
associatedwith a verb, or not. This issueturns out to be highly problematic -
the reason is that the total subcategorizationset of a verb is a function of the
set of subcategorizationsin which each senseof the verb participates. And the
way sensesare distributed acrossmorphemesis not unifonn acrosslanguages.
(This point is also made in Pinker, this volume.)
Let us consider why this should be so. The relevant principles of UG
govern the mapping between the meaning of a verb and its syntax in that
meaning. In addition , UG regulates the set of possible semantic alternations
that a morpheme may participate in , such as the causative/change-of -state
relation. If each morpheme had exactly one sense, or if the alternative senses
of a morpheme were always regulated by UG , this would exhaust the
situation. But in fact, a morpheme can have severalsenses , each with its own
UG detennined syntax. and each participating in alternations in the ways
prescribedby UG . UG says little or nothing about the complete set of senses
the verb has, and therefore little or nothing about the total set of subcategori-
lations of the morpheme. UG only detennines the properties of the individual
sensesand those that are related grammatically.
As an example, consider the verb shoot. It has at least two senses: one
exemplified in She shot the burg/ar , and one in The burglar shot out of the
room. In the first sense, shoot takes an NP complement, in the second a PP.
In both casesthe subcategorizations are highly predictable. shoot- l is like,
say, stab, and takes an individual / NP as its complement, while shoot-2 is like ,
say raced, and takes a directional PP as its complement. The subcategorization
of each senseis completely in accordancewith the theory of grammar,
but nothing about the theory of grammar determines that shoot will have
these two senses . Hence the theory of grammar cannot possibly predict that
shoot will have these two subcategorization frames, and a learner could not
know this in advance.
In caseslike these, the sensesof the verb do not seemto be related by UG
at all , even though they are all realized by a single morpheme. Presumably
they are related by association, which depends on semantic field and other
420 J. GrimshawI Lexicalreconciliation
cognitively real but grammatically irrelevant factors. Thus it is probably not

an accident that shoot has a verb-of-motion meaning, and stab does not , since
shooting involves a rapidly moving bullet. The point is that the relationship is
associativein character, and not UG determined. Similarly, consider the case
of know as in I know her and in I know that she is here. The two usesof the
verb are cognitively close - both are state predicatesand both are psychological
. Hence it is presumably much more likely that these two senseswill be
clustered together into a single morpheme than that say, eat and one of the
two sensesof know will be clustered together. The probabilities involved are
not a matter of UG , however, and of course the clustering of sensestogether
under a single morpheme is notoriously variable cross-linguistically . The two
sensesof know correspond to different morphemes in many other languages:
French for one. What is involved in these effects is the spreading of
morphemes across
' meanings. The results range in character from pure
homonyms w here no significant semantic relation can be seenat all , through
relations that seem cognitively natural , and that probably reflect various
clustering effects, to relations that are grammatical in character.
The point is, though, that the entire subcategorizationset associatedwith a
morpheme is simply the sum of the subcategorization sets for each meaning
of the morpheme. While it is true that the subcategorization set for each
meaning is highly principled and strongly related to the meaning, the same is
not true for the entire set. Each individual subcategorization frame reflects
the systematicproperties of the form -meaning correspondences , but the entire
set of subcategorizationsalso reflects accidental combinations of subcategorizations
'
, which result from a single morpheme s appearing in severaldifferent
senses . It follows that there is no stable mapping between the full set of
subcategorizations that a morpheme appears in and the meaning of the
morpheme. The full set of subcategorizationswill depend, not just on UG ,
but also on the range of meanings that the morpheme assumesin a given
language.
The conclusion is, then, that a predictable relationship betweensubcategorizations
and morphemes does not hold : the predictable relationship is
between subcategorizations and a particular sense of the morpheme. It
follows that it is not possible to use the entire subcategorization to learn
meaning, becausethe entire subcategorizationset is not associatedwith a single
meaningin thefirst place.
As a result, a learning mechanismbasedon subcategorization setswill give
poor results on morphemes with many senses , typically the most common
ones. It will predict many errors, or failure of learning. Suppose that the
J. Grimshaw/ Lexical reconciliation
learning device tracks the syntactic context of the morpheme and attempts to
determine its meaning based on t.his information . It will collect up all
observed subcategorizationsfor a morpheme, disregarding the fact, which it
'
cannot by definition be sensitive to , that verb s meaning differs across these
subcategorizations. It will then assign to the verb the meaning that would be
assigned to a verb which, under a single meaning, occurred in this set of
frames. But this will be incorrect, except in the caseof a verb with exactly one
sense. For verbs with multiple senses , if the procedure succeedsin assigninga
meaning at all , it will give one meaning to the verb instead of several, and the
meaning it gives might well be completely unrelated to any actual meaning of
the verb being learned. Without knowing about meaning it is not possible to
know which subcategorizationsshould be grouped ,ogether, and which shouldbe
kept separate.
What of lexical entries in which the relationship betweenthe alternatives is
regulated by UG , such as the causative/change of state examples discussed
above (e.g. melt/ melt) ? Supposethat there are two subcategorization frames
associatedwith each of these verbs, one transitive and one intransitive. Can
this set of frames be exploited to learn the meaning of the verb? (Note that
the existenceof the alternation cannot be crucial for learning the meaningsof
the members, becausemany verbs, such as kill and die do not alternate, but
are still learned.) Here again the answer is negative, becausethe two occur-
rencesof the morpheme have different meanings, under standard assumptions
about lexical representation. 1 So there cannot be a single sensespecified by
UG as associatedwith this subcategorization set. Note that it also cannot be
the casethat the shared meaning, i.e. what the two casesof the verb have in
common, is learned from the subcategorization set either, becauseall causative
/change of state pairs have the same subcategorization set, even though
each pair has its own meaning.
Clearly what we must aim for is a learning procedure that uses the
alternation as a clue to the semantic analysis of the verbs, that might tell the
learner that these verbs have changeand causedchangemeanings. However,
1 However, Grimshaw in work in

progress ( 1993) denies these assumptions for all cases of
alternations involving no overt morphology , proposing instead that there is only one meaning for
'
e.g. melt in its causative and inchoative uses. The ' alternation is just the result of the meaning
interacting with clausal structure. Further work is required to seehow this ultimately bearson the
' '
learning questions addressedhere, but it seemsthat in this senseof meaning , observation of the
two clause structures associatedwith melt is essential for arriving at the correct analysis. This
conclusion will hold for the UG -governed alternations only .
422 J. GrimshawI Lexicalreconciliation
just observing subcategorization alternations will not achieve this result,

becausethere are other transitive/ intransitive alternations like eat and leave.
(8a) We. meltedthe ice.

(8b) The ice melted.
(9a) We left the room.
(9b) We left.
(9c) . The room left.
( l Oa) We ate the ice.

( lOb) We ate.
( I Oc) * The ice ate.
What will guarantee successis to take into account the properties of the
arguments, and not subcategorization alone; it is the fact that the subject of
one caseof the verb correspondsto the object of the other casesthat reliably
distinguishes change/ causedchange pairs from eat and leave.
One final point concerning the causative/change-of -state pairs. In fact both
are ' transitive' in d-structure, according to the unaccusativehypothesis (Perl-
mutter 1978, Burzio 1986), which means that technically they both have
transitive subcategorizations. Again , this suggests that subcategorization
frames are not exactly the right place for the child to look for help in figuring
out verb meaning.
We can summarizethe conclusionsso far as follows. Mapping from meaning
onto syntax can success fully exploit a set of principles of Universal Grammar
which relate lexical meaning ultimately to surface syntax. However, determining
the meaningjust from observation of the world seemsto require multiple
exposuresacrosssituations in many cases, and may be impossibleunder certain
circumstances , when the world is particularly uninformative. On the other hand,
mapping from syntax onto meaning promises to success fully exploit linguistically
encodedinformation about a verb' s meaning. However as formulated so
far, it seemsto require multiple exposuresacross sentences , and also may be
in
impossible many cases, when syntax is uninformative.
4. Reconciliation
Clearly then we seeka model which preservesthe advantagesof both kinds

of ideas: which makes it possible to use va mapping principles to regulate
syntax, and to use surface syntax to regulate the semantic analysis. One way
in which it is possible to combine the essentialgood effects of both types of
mapping gives them different roles in the learning process: the semantics-to-
syntax mapping principles provide a predictive mechanism, and the observed
s-structure provides a checking mechanism. This is the basisof Reconciliation.
(Wilkins 1993 explores a rather similar model for lexical learning, with
particular emphasison the acquisition of morphology .)
Reconciliation
(1) The learner interprets a scene or situation , hears a sentence and detects the
verb.
(2) The learner finds a relationship R among participants in the situation
( entities , propositions etc.) that is sensible given the interpretation of the
observed situation .
The learner checks that R involves participants consistent with the content
of the ( candidate argument ) expressions in the sentence, and rejects an R
that does not meet this requirement .
The learner constructs a lexical conceptual structure which is consistent
with R , and assigns candidate argument expressions in the sentence to
argument positions in the lexical conceptual structure .
This lexical conceptual structure is fed through the semantics- to -syntax
mapping principles of UG in their language particular instantiation .
(6) The s-structure predicted by step 5 is compared to the observed s-structure .
( 7) If they do not match then no learning takes place .
(8) If they do match then the morpheme is entered into the lexicon with the
hypothesized lexical conceptual structure .
A few comments are required about the steps involved in reconciliation.

Step 2 excludes situations where the interpretation of the event is one of
throwing , say, and R is a relationship betweenpropositions. Step 3 constrains
the device to considering Rs that expressrelationships betweenthe right kind
of entitities: if the sentencecontains two NPs, and one is the ball, then a verb
' '
meaning say is not a candidate, since it is not a possible relationship
betweena ball and some other entity . Similarly , with the NPs John and the
hal/, R cannot be a verb meaning 'dress', although it could mean ' throw ' .
Whether this should depend on probabilities given real world knowledge, or
only on strictly linguistic selectional restrictions, I leave open. Note that step
3 is one way in which the sentenceconstrains the processof word learning,
not through the syntactic fonn of the arguments of the predicate but through
gross consistency between the (candidate) arguments and the relationship
expressedby a candidate R. This step is prelinguistic , in the sensethat it does
not rely on the linguistic representation of the arguments, just on their gross
meaning. It is quite different, then, from the effects of the linguistic mapping
and checking involved in later stages. An interesting question is whether some
' '
of the effectsdescribedin the literature on syntactic bootstrapping are really
due to this (non-linguistic) process, see Pinker (this volume) . At Step 4,
however, the procedure is now linguistic in character. If R is a causal
relationship between two entities, a causative lcs will be constructed. The
system is now working with a linguistic representation, rather than just with
construals of events, and conceptual properties of relationships and entities.
With respect to the final steps, note that an incorrect representation will be
entered into the lexicon, if the match discoveredin R6 is accidental. We must
assumethat general principles of decay will eventually result in eradication of
mistaken entries (cf. Draine 1971), since they will result in matches less often
'
than correct entries. Moreover, the notion of a ' match requires further
explication. The definition could require identity of fonn between the observed
sentence and the predicted sentence, or it could allow for limited
inconsistencies , in particular with respect to various ways of reducing the
number of arguments that are actually expressedin a clause. Imperatives lack
an overt subject, for example, there are elliptical fonns , and there are verbs
like wash and eat, which can be syntactically intransitive while apparently
' '
maintaining a two -place semantic structure. Cognate objects (e.g. to die a
' '
peaceful death) and fake reflexives (e.g. to behaveoneself) pose the opposite
problem, and a more detailed treatment is required than I will give here.
The reconciliation model incorporates aspectsof both semanticand syntactic
' '
bootstrapping . It crucially involves mapping from a posited meaning to a
syntactic fonn . It also exploits the surface syntax to constrain solutions.
A simple result of the model is that the number, the position , and the fonn
of the syntactic arguments of a predicate will constrain the semantic representation
it is given. This is becauseof the grammatical principles regulating the
lcs- syntax relation.
Suppose for example, that a learner hears a sentencecontaining the verb
give: Mary is giving the package to the boy, and observesan event in which
one individual hands a package to another individual . Suppose the learner
interprets the event as involving a three-place logical relationship of transfer
of possession . This ' R ' will be consistent with the content of the candidate
argument expressionsin the sentence: Mary , the package, and the boy, since
theseare the right kind of entities to participate in such a relationship. Now

the learner constructs an Ics for R (step 4), say x acts to transfery to z, and
assignsthe candidate argument expressionsin the sentenceto positions in the
lcs of the predicate. Supposethe learner assignsMary to x, the packageto y,
and the boy to z. Then given the semantics-to-syntax mapping principles as
they work out in English, the predicted s-structure is Mary verbsthe package
to the boy. Since this is the observed s-structure, this experienceyields an Ics
for give. (Note that the wrong assignmentof candidate argument expressions
to lcs positions would not have yielded a match, hence no learning would
have occurred.)
Suppose, on the other hand, that the learner construes the event as one of
holding or getting, interpretations that are equally consistent with gross
observation. Now the learner will posit a two-place ' R ' . At step 3 the
procedure might already break down, if the learner can decide that all of the
candidate arguments in the clausemust be actual arguments, since there are 3
candidate arguments but only two actual arguments. Perhaps this is not so
easy, however, since one or other of the phrases might be involved in some
adjunct role. Assuming then, that the procedure will not halt at step 3, what
'
happens? The learner now constructs one of the two Ics s, for hold or get, and
examines the predicted s-structures that correspond to them. Let us assume
that the Ics' s are something like : x havey , x come to havey . There is no way
for these Ics representationsto yield the observed s-structure. They have the
wrong number of arguments and since there is no way to treat the PP to the
boy as an adjunct there is no way to reconcile the observed s-structure with
the predicted s-structure. In addition , the arguments will be in the wrong
' '
syntactic position . Semantics-to-syntax mapping will place the getter or
'
' holder the
( boy) in subject position , but this will contradict the observed
s-structure which has the giver (Mary ) in subject position .
In general, the number of arguments in the observedsentencewill have to
match the number of arguments of R : if a predicate expresses an n-place
relationship it will have n syntactic arguments, and if it has n syntactic
argumentsit will be a logical n place predicate. (I set aside here the disruptions
to this generalizationmentioned above.) This is, more or less, what the Theta
Criterion and the Projection Principle guarantee(Chomsky 1981) : the number
of phrasal argumentsin the syntax is the sameas the number of (open) logical
positions in the lexical representation of the predicate, and the syntactic
derivation cannot changethe number of arguments.
By the samereasoningReconciliationresolvesthe kill / die problem discussed
above. A learner can conclude that die can be a change-of -state predicate but
not a causative, that kill can be causativebut not change-of -state, and that melt
can be both. This can be determinedjust on the basis of a single observation
each for kill and die, and two observationsof melt, one in each complement
structure. A verb which means to causesomething to change state must have
two arguments, a verb which means to change state must have one. Hence,
since kill has two syntactic arguments, it must have two semantic arguments
and cannot have a change-of-state meaning. Since die has one syntactic
argument it must have one semantic argument and cannot be causative. The
syntactic form provides the information that there are two semanticarguments,
which provides the necessaryinformation about possibleverb meanings.
As we saw in section 3, in order to properly identify instances of the
alternation betweencausativeand change-of -state meanings, it is necessaryto
take into account the fact that the subject of one caseof the verb corresponds
to the object of the other : We melted the ice, The ice melted. The properties of
the arguments are essentialto distinguishing theseverbs from verbs like leave
and eat. If intransitive eat is mistakenly analyzed as having a change of state
meaning, its predicted s-structure will have what is eaten in subject position
The ice ate. The observed s-structure will have the eater in subject position
We ate. Hence the wrong analysis will be rejected. Similarly , if a learner fails
to assigna change-of -state analysis to melt, treating it instead as having an lcs
like intransitive leave or eat, the predicted s-structure will have the agent in
- the
subject position ( We melted), while the observed s structure will have
entity undergoing the change of state in subject position ( The ice melted ).
Once again, the error will be avoided.
The syntactic form of an argument will similarly constrain meaning. The
the
syntactic form dependson the semantic properties of the argument, hence
can information about its semantics , and
syntax of an argument provide
hence about the semantics of a predicate. Sentential complements, for instance
, will occur with verbs of propositional attitude (e.g. believe), verbs of
logical relation (e.g. entail) and verbs of saying (e.g. announce ) . Reconciliation
has the desired effect that this fact will prevent certain types of errors by
learners. Supposethe event is one in which a child is playing roughly with a
dog and an adult says either I think that you are being mean to the dog or
' ' and the learner thinks it
That dog will kill you. If the verb means think
' ' - while
means kill , the predicted s structure will contain an NP complement
the observed s-structure will contain a clausal complement . Similarly if the
' kill ' and the learner thinks it means ' think ' , the predicted s-
verb means
-
structure will contain a sentential complement while the observed s structure
will contain an NP.
J. Grimshaw/ Lexical reconciliation 427
In sum, under Reconciliation, the number, position, and form of the

arguments of a predicate will all constrain the interpretations that can be
assignedto that predicate. Of course, the samegeneral point can be made for
many other kinds of linguistic infonnation : hearing a verb in the passive
form , in the progressive, with a particular aspectual modifier and so forth ,
will similarly provide constraining information about the verb' s semantics,
eliminating many posited, but incorrect, lexical semanticrepresentations. This
captures the essenceof the issue addressed by syntactic bootstrapping : it
provides a more precisecharacterization of the idea that the languagecan be
used to map from observation to verb meanings. In so doing, however, it
makes crucial use of the notions behind semantic bootstrapping, concerning
the mapping betweensemanticsand syntax.
S. Conclusion
The important properties of Reconciliation are these:
- It does not depend on exposuresto multiple sentence

types, in the sense
that neither cross-situational analysis, nor cross-sentential analysis is involved
in setting up the lcs representations. Therefore the problems posed
by the variable sensesof a morpheme discussedin section 3 do not arise.
- It usessemantics to predict syntax where Universal Grammar makes this
possible.
- It usessyntax to eliminate wrong semantic candidateswhere
possible.
I emphasize again that I have addressed here the question of learning

basic lexical semantic representations, and not the learnability problem
discussedin much of the literature , which concerns the problem of determining
which verbs participate in which ' alternations ' , see especially Pinker
( 1989) and referencestherein. Within the terms of the present discussion we
could see this as the question of how the system should proceed when a
single morpheme would be assignedmultiple representations, whether multiple
Ics' s, or multiple syntactic configurations , but I will not explore the
issue here. Also unexplored is the issue of how morphologically complex
items are analyzed.
Even with a procedure like Reconciliation, which exploits a full set of
grammatical principles, there is no way to savea learner from having to learn
some word meanings simply from observation. There are many are sets of
J. Grimshaw/ Lexical reconciliation
words which have absolutely identical linguistics. Such setsinclude the setsof
causative verbs (kill , melt, burn) and change-of -state verbs (die, melt, burn) .
Semantics-to -syntax mapping guaranteesthat each member of the set will be
syntactically indistinguishable (just as the names of animals, cat versus dog
for example, are not syntactically distinct ) . So examination of the surface
'
syntax will not inform a learner as to whether a verb means to become
' ' '
liquid or to becomesolid . The general situation is that it is possible to use
the surface syntax to constrain analysesof the semanticstructure of a verb,
but not its semanticcontent: the fact that a verb is a change-of -state verb, but
not the fact that it expresses a particular change of state. This is a matter of
semanticcontent only and is not reflected in the syntax of a verb at all.
Presumably, then, the semantic differences among members of these sets
must be learned from observation about the world in some sense. However,
this does not necessarilymean that the differencesare perceptual in character.
A vast quantity of information about the world can be encodedlinguistically
but is not linguistic itself. Thus a child can observe that melt is used of , for
example, ice, while burn is used of , for example, paper. This is sufficient for
the child to conclude that the meaningsare as they are rather than the other
way around. In this way, it is possiblefor a child to know what a word means
without ever having observed an event which would count as an occurrence
of what the verb describes. Indeed if this were not the case it would be
impo'Ssibleto understand how meaning differencesamong unobservableverbs
are acquired: think, hope, imagine.
For this reason, language is a source of essential information for lexical
learning in two respects. As just discussed, languagecan convey information
about word meaning which is orders of magnitude more informative than
observation of the world can be. Second, by virtue of the grammatical
principles that govern it , language constrains the possible representationsof
words in ways that learnerscan exploit in word learning. Reconciliationis one
way in which this might happen.
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. Levelsof representation
Section 6
Procedures
for verb learning
Lingua92 ( 1994 433
Surface cues and ro bust inference

as a basis for the early acquisition
of subcategorization frames *
M.R. Brent
Departmentoj Cognitive Science. Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore. MD 21218. USA
How could children possiblyacquiretheir first subcategorization frames? The hypothesis

that they directly observethe syntactic structuresof the utterancesthey hear raisestwo
questions. First, how can childrenparseinput utterancesreliably without alreadyknowingthe
syntacticpropertiesof all the wordsin them? Second , how do childrensurvivethe ungrammati -
calor misconstruedutterancesthey inevitably encounter ? This paper suggestsa specific
inferencealgorithm that substantiallyreducesthe effectsof ungrammaticalor misconstrued
input. Sincechildrenmusthavesomesuchinferenceprocedure , theycan useapproximatecues
to determinesyntacticstructure. In particular, theycanusestring-local surfacecuesratherthan
global constraints . Suchcuesmake it possibleto discoverrelevantsyntacticstructurein an
utterancewithout alreadyknowingall the wordsin it. This papersuggests a possiblesetof cues
for English subcategorizationframes that assumesonly the ability to detect the ends of
utterancesand knowledgeof a few function morphemesand proper names . Simulation
experiments on naturallyoccurring, child-directedEnglishshowthat thesecues, combinedwith
the proposedinferencemechanism , do surprisingly well at discoveringsubcategorization
frames.
1. Introduction
Individual words differ in the syntactic types of the phrases that can
representtheir semantic arguments. For example, watch takes a noun-phrase
argument while look does not.
( I a) JanewatchedBob
( I b) *Janelooked Bob
. This work benefited enormously from conversations with Bob Berwick, Lou Ann Gerken,
Lila Gleitman, Jane Grimshaw, and Elissa Newport . Any remaining faults ... they probably tried
to talk me out of.
. ScienceB.V. All
0024 > 1994- Elsevier
- 3841/94/ $07.00 ce rights reserved
SSDJ0024- 3841(93) EO046- A
434 M . R. Brent I Surface cuesand robust inference
Similarly , pretend takes a tensed clause or an infinitive argument while play

does not .
(2a) Jane is pretending to be grown up

* Jane is playing to be grown up
(2b)
(2c) Jane is pretending she is grown up
* Jane is
(2d) playing she is grown up
Chomsky ( 1965) referred to these properties of words as their subcategorization

frames. In general, a word may have several subcategorization frames,
just as it may have several syntactic categories.
Within a given language, the subcategorizationframes and the meaningsof
words are strongly correlated ( Fisher et al. 1991, Levin 1993, Zwicky 1970) .
For example, all English words that take three semantic arguments of which
"
one is realized as a direct object and one as a tensedclause, as in I told him
' "
I m happy , are verbs of communication (Zwicky 1970) . Examples include
tel/, write, fax , inform, warn, advise, and so on. It has been hypothesizedthat
the correlation between subcategorization frames and meanings plays an
important role in lexical acquisition. Pinker and colleagues have proposed
that children typically learn the meaning of a word first , then exploit the
regular correspondencebetween meaning and subcategorization to infer its
subcategorization frames (Pinker 1984, 1989) . Conversely, Gleitman and
colleagues have proposed that children often learn the subcategorization
frame first , then exploit the correspondenceto restrict their hypothesesabout
its possible meanings (Landau and Gleitman 1985, Gleitman 1990) . These
two proposals are known as the semantic bootstrapping and syntactic boot -
1
strapping hypotheses, respectively.
1.1. Theproblem
'
Both semanticand syntactic bootstrapping depend on two-year-olds ability
to learn the subcategorization frames of some words without relying on their
-
meanings. This is obvious in the caseof syntactic bootstrapping if children
are to rely on the subcategorizations of some particular word to infer its
meaning they cannot also rely on its meaning to infer its subcategorizations.
In the case of semantic bootstrapping, the problem is that languages vary
1 Semanticbootstrapping also refersto the more generalhypothesisthat lexical semantics

' , Pinker 1984
providesthe basisfor childrens acquisitionof lexicalsyntax(Grimshaw1981 ).
M. R. Brent/ Surfacecuesandrobustinference 435
substantially in which particular subcategorization frames correspond to

which particular meanings. This variation implies that children must learn the
language-particular correspondencebefore using it to infer the subcategorizations
from meanings. To learn the correspondence they must learn the
meaningsand subcategorizationsof some words independently (Pinker 1989,
Gropen et al. 1991).
Although the semantic and syntactic bootstrap ping hypotheses have
generated a substantial literature , no non-semantic procedure by which
children might learn subcategorizations has been developed. There have
been insightful proposals about the general type of cues that might be
exploited in such a procedure, notably prosodic cues to syntactic structure
such as voice pitch, pausing, and vowel duration ( Fisher and Tokura 1993,
Lederer and Kelly 1992, Morgan 1986, Fernald and Kuh11987, Hirsh -Pasek
et al. 1987, Jusczyk et al. 1993, Kemler -Nelson et al. 1989, Mehler et al.
1988) . This proposal, known as the prosodic bootstrap ping hypothesis,
holds that children can recover partial syntactic bracketing (but not category
labels) from prosodic cues. However, no explicit procedure has been
proposed for recovering bracketings nor for extracting linguistic regularities
from them on the basis of prosodic cues.
It seemsthat young children must infer some of the lexical syntax of their
languages- the syntactic facts about individual words - from larger syntactic
structures. But it is difficult to see how children could identify syntactic
structure in an utterance without already knowing the syntactic functions of
some of the words in the utterance. This posesan apparent paradox : to learn
lexical syntax, children must recover the syntactic structure of the input ; to
recover syntactic structure, they must already know lexical syntax - the
bootstraps need bootstraps.
1.2. Hypotheses
This paper investigatesthe possibility that children first learn the syntactic
functions of a few words that are extremely common and highly informative
about syntactic structure, then exploit these words as probabilistic cues to
key syntactic structures in the input utterances. The function morphemes
- prepositions, determiners, inflection , pronouns ,
auxiliary verbs, and
complementizers - are typically the shortest, most common , and most
syntactically informative words in a .language - ideal starting points for
learning syntax (Morgan et al. 1987, Valian and Coulson 1988) . The fact
that children do not use function morphemes consistently until quite late
436 M . R. Brent ! Surface cuesand robust inference
has suggestedto some that young children do not know them. Logically ,
however, children must know some function morphemes by the time they
are learning subcategorization frames - they cannot observe that look
subcategorizes for a prepositional phrase without the ability to recognize
even one preposition . Further , the next section reviews a substantial body of
empirical evidence that English-speaking children know the syntactic privileges
of a number of function morphemes before they are two -and-a-half
years old .
Although function morphemes provide a great deal of infonnation about
syntactic structure, they do not provide enough for complete, unambiguous
syntactic parsing. This paper investigatesthe hypothesis that young children
can learn lexical syntax on the basis of partial and uncertain syntactic
analyses of input utterances, and that they can cope with the resulting
misconstruals using statistical inference.
1.3. Context and methodology
From one perspective, the current approach resemblesparameter-setting

models (Chomsky 1981, 1986; Lightfoot 1991) : it assumesa fixed, finite
menu of subcategorization frames from which a lexical entry is selectedfor
each verb. For each verb V and each subcategorizationS , the presenceor
'
absence of S in V s lexical entry can be seen as a binary -valued lexical
parameter. The function -morpheme cues proposed here can be seen as
triggers for the subcategorization parameters. For present purposes it does
not matter whether the menu of possible subcategorizationframes is innate or
acquired- only that knowledgeof the menu is independentof the mechanisms
children use to selectfrom it. The statisticalinferencecomponent of the current
proposal can be seenas redeeminga promissory note left (often unsigned) by
work on parameter-setting models. As Lightfoot ( 1991: 19) puts it :
'We shall need to characterizethe robustnessof the data which may act as a trigger.
Robustnessis presumablya function of saliencyand frequency . One can be sure that
" "
parameters arenot alwayssetby singleevents;that wouldmakethechild too triggerhappy
and inclinedto draw long-tenDconclusions(a metaphor ) from insufficientdata. However
,
someparameters may requiremoretriggeringexperience than others.'
A precise algorithm for determining the amount of data required to set

' '
each parameter is represented in section 3 (and in the Appendix ) . This
appears to be the first explicit proposal in this domain . This work suggests
that weighing linguistic evidence is by no means a trivial problem ; indeed , as
M.R. Brent/ Surface
cuesandrobustinference 437
a major component of any realistic mechanism for language acquisition,

robust inference deservesmuch more attention t~an it has received to date.
Further , robust inference procedures make available new approaches to
languagelearning problems and new methods for evaluating them. Ultimately,
this gives the work presented here a character quite different from that of
both parameter-setting models and learnability models (e.g. Wexier and
Culicover 1980, Morgan 1986).
The ability to cope with occasional input errors implies the ability to use
probabilistic or approximate cues. In English, for example, the word to
followed by a word that can be interpreted as an uninflected verb usually
marks an infinitive . However, the sentenceJohn drove to fish markets allover
town is an exception to this generalization. If such exceptionsare rare enough
(and distributed appropriately) the generalization can still be used as a cue;
an inference procedure can discount evidence generated exclusively by the
exceptions. The infinitive cue is local, in the sensethat it can be used without
regard to the rest of the sentence, if there is a mechanism for handling the
resulting errors. It can also be thought of as a surface cue (Kimball 1973). By
proposing that children use surface cues, the present model comes closer to
contacting the actual input than parameter-setting and learnability models,
where it is typically assumed that the input to syntax learning includes
bracketeddeep-structure or surface-structure representations . Subcategorization
frames can be read directly off the deep structure, so assuming such inputs is
tantamount to assumingaway the problem under investigation here.
Closer contact with the input makes it natural to test models of this kind
by computer simulation on naturally occurring input ( Bever 1991). This
paper reports on a simulation using transcripts of the child-directed English
from the CHILDES database(~ acWhinney 1991). The resultsof the simulation
support the notion that it is possible to learn subcategorization frames
without parsing, without knowing much lexical syntax aside from a few
function words, and without relying on semantics.
As a method of investigation , simulation is quite different from the
theoretical arguments presented by Wexier and Culicover , Lightfoot ,
Morgan , and others. One important difference is that it takes account of
the quantitative structure of naturally occurring , child -directed language.
It has been suggestedthat the presence of a few, high -frequency syntactic
markers like the common function words may be a critical property that
makes languageslearnable (Morgan et al. 1987, Valian and Coulson 1988) .
For example, if English had fifty equally frequent determiners, fifty verbal
inflections , fifty complementizers, and so on , it might not be learnable.
438 M . R. Brent / Surface cuesand robust inference
Simulation experiments are responsive to such quantitative properties of

language, while learnability theory is not.
Similarly , child -directed speech tends to contain shorter sentencesand
more questionsthan adult-directed speech, and to contain repeatsof the same
phrase in different contexts (Morgan 1986, Newport et al. 1977) . It has been
suggestedthat this may either aid or disrupt language acquisition. In either
case, simulation experiments using transcripts of child -directed speechreflect
the distributional properties of child -directed sentences, whereas theoretical
arguments do not.
Although simulation has a number of advantages, no one mode of investigation
resolves all questions. While some of the strategies embodied in the
cues for English will carryover to some other languages, the cues themselves
are necessarilyspecific to English, and this limits the conclusions one can
draw from simulation experiments that use them. Further , the present
simulation takes as its input orthographic transcripts of child -directed speech.
Such transcripts are closer to the input children actually receive than deep-
structure trees, but they are much more abstract than an acoustic signal.
1.4. Organization
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the

evidence that children younger than two -and-a-half years old are able to
recognizespecific function morphemesand to exploit them in understanding,
despite their failure to use them reliably in speech. Section 3 develops one
possible implementation of the current proposals. Section 4 presents experiments
using a computer model and transcripts of child -directed speechfrom
the CHILDES corpus. Finally , section 5 summarizes the results of this
investigation and draws conclusions.
2. Children ' s resources
One of the major hypotheses advanced here is that children rely on the
distribution of function morphemesin the early acquisition of subcategorization
frames. This hypothesis is only plausible if young children recognize the
syntactic privileges of function morphemes. In addition , the model presented
in section 3 assumesthat young children know some proper names by the
time they need to learn syntactic frames. Finally , the model assumesthat
children can detect the ends of utterances using prosodic cues such as pause
M. R. Brent! Surface
length, pitch , vowel duration , and volume. This section reviews the empirical
basesfor theseassumptions.
2.1. Function morphemesand names
The fact that young children do not use function words reliably has
sometimesbeenexplainedby claiming their grammarslack function morphemes
'
( Radford 1988, 1991). It has been further proposed that children s putative
ignorance of function morphemesresults from a perceptual failure - they do
not hear or cannot distinguish function morphemes in most languages
becausethey are unstressed(Gleitman et al. 1988) . However, a substantial
body of convergentevidencehas accumulatedagainst eachof thesehypotheses .
Briefly, it has been shown that :
( I ) Even infants can distinguish unstressed syllables as well as stressed

syllables (Jusczyk and Thompson 1978, Williams and Bush 1978) . This
refutes the perceptual 4explanation' of children' s putative ignorance of
function morphemes.
'
(2) Constraints on the metrical and prosodic phonology of children s speech
provide better explanationsof their patterns of omission than simple ignorance
(Demuth 1993, Gerken and McIntosh 1993, Gerken 1992, Wilnen et
al. 1992). This removesthe motivation for the ignorancehypothesis.
(3) Children are sensitive to the presence and correct usage of function
morphemes in adult speech, as assessedby a variety of techniques (see
below). This directly refutes the ignorance hypothesis.
The direct evidence that children are sensitive to the presenceand correct
usageof function morphemesis summarized below:
( I ) On imitation tasks, young children (age 1; 11- 2;6, MLU 1.30- 2. 00, M =
1.73) omit English function morphemes more often than unstressed
nonsense syllables (Gerken et al. 1990) . This effect persists when the
sentencesare synthesizedautomatically to control for possible prosodic
differencesbetweengrammatical and ungrammatical sentencesspoken by
humans (age 2;0- 2;6, MLU 1.57- 2. 60, M = 2. 07), and when the nonsense
words are composed of phonemic segmentssimilar to those of English
function morphemes (age 2;0- 2;6, M MLU = 2.20) . This indicates that
children younger than two-and-a-half distinguish between English function
morphemes and similar nonsense syllables - i.e. they know the
440 M. R. BrentI Surfacecuesandrobustinference
specific segmental content English function morphemes, if not their

syntactic and semantic functions.
(2) Young children tend to interpret a novel noun as referring to a class of
" "
objectswhen it is taught with an article ( This is a dax ). When it is taught
" "
without an article ( This is dax ) they tend to interpret it as referring to a
unique individual (Katz et al. 1974, Gelman and Taylor 1984). (GT subjects
age2;2- 3;0, mean 2;6. KBM : girls, mean age 1;5.) This indicatesthat young
children recognize some English detenniners and that they distinguish
betweencommon and proper nouns both syntacticallyand semantically.
( ) Young children understand grammatical English sentencessignificantly
3
more often than sentencesin which the function morphemes are deleted
(Shipley et al. 1969, Petretic and Tweeney 1976), or in which function
words are replaced by nonsensesyllables (Petretic and Tweeney 1976)
(SSG: age 1;7- 2;5 mean 2; 1, median-LV I 1.85. PT: mean age 2;3, MLU
1.07- 1.66) . The effect persists when function morphemes are replaced by
others of the wrong category, as in * Find was bird for me, where was is
substituted for a determiner (Gerken and McIntosh 1993) . ( Least mature
group, MLU < 1.50, M = 1.15, produced no articles during session.)
This indicatesthat two-year-olds who almost never usefunction morphemes
can neverthelessdistinguish their syntactic privileges.
Taken together, these experiments demonstrate that ~hildren younger than

two-and-a-half years old, who almost never produce function words, know the
segmental, syntactic, and semanticproperties of determinersand auxiliaries. In
light of this evidence, there is no reason to doubt that they have similar
facility with pronouns and inflectional suffixes.
2.2. Prosody
The prosodic properties of a sentenceare linguistically significant properties

of its sound including intonation and rhythmic properties like vowel
duration , pausing, and volume. These properties are believed to be governed
by rules that are distinct from but sensitiveto syntactic structure (Nespor and
Vogel 1982, Selkirk 1981) .
It has been hypothesized(under the rubric of prosodic bootstrapping) that
young children recover a sybstantial amount of syntactic structure, perhaps
even an unlabeled bracketing of all major syntactic constituents, on the basis
of prosodic information (Morgan 1986). Substantiatingthis hypothesisrequires,
at least, establishingthat young children attend to prosody and that it is possible
M . R. Brent ! Surface cuesand robust inference
to recover syntactic structure from the prosodic properties of sentences

without already knowing the language. There is ample evidence for the
former ( Fernald and Kuh11987, Hirsh -Paseket al. 1987, Jusczyk et al. 1993,
Kemler-Nelson et al. 1989, Mehler et al. 1988), but little for the latter. A
number of studies have been done, but they used carefully constructed pairs
of ambiguous sentences , read aloud ( Lederer and Kelly 1992, Morgan 1986).
As Fisher (in press) points out , the prosodic properties of reading aloud may
well be different from those of fluent speech, and the syntactic properties of
the constructed sentencesare certainly different from those of the very short
sentencesthat typify speechdirected at young children. Further , the readers
in some of these experiments may have been aware that the sentenceswere
ambiguous, and hencetried to disambiguate them prosodically.
However, Fisher and Tokura ( 1993) have shown that the boundaries of
utterances - sentencesor sentencefragments - can be predicted from the
prosodic properties of natural , infant -directed speech in both English and
Japanese . For each syllable in samplesof natural speechby mothers to their
8- and l4 -month-old children, they measuredpauseduration , vowel duration ,
fundamental frequency excursion within each vowel, and average amplitude
within each vowel. Each syllable was labeled as utterance-final , phrase-final ,
word -final , or non-final and a discriminant analysis was performed on one-
half of the sample in each language. When the resulting classification was
applied to the other half of the sample, it correctly predicted 61% of all
utterance boundaries (false negative error 39% ) . More importantly , 93% of
all the utteranceboundariesit predicted were correct (false positive error 7 % ),
even though only 28% of all syllableswere utterance-final. Similar resultswere
obtained for predicting utterance-final syllablesin Japane~ , using a classifica-
tion function basedon the Japanesesample. Remarkably, the classifier based
on the English sample performed almost as well at predicting utterance-final
syllables in Japaneseas did the one based on the Japanesesample. It is
possible, then, that a single classification procedure for finding utterance
boundariesis innate and universal. When the samemethod was applied to find
a classificationfunction for predicting syllablesthat end either an NP or a VP,
but not a whole utterance, the results were roughly at chance.
3. An implementation
This section describesone possible implementation of a learning strategy

based on function morpheme cues and statistical error reduction. This
implementation servesas a carefully worked out example that clarifies some

of the implications of such a strategy. It also servesas the instrument for the
simulation experiment presentedin the next section.
3.1. Overview
This subsection explains how the model works in general terms ; the following
subsections fill in the details .
First , note that subcategorization frames , as described by Chomsky ( 1965),
do not distinguish between tensed clauses and infinitives - both are described
as sentences. Sentential complements are realized as tensed clauses or infinitives
as a result of lexical features and transformations . The cues described below ,
however , recover only the syntactic forms of arguments as they occur in
utterances . (Boguraev and Briscoe , 1987, provide evidence that it is usually
'
possible to recover the lexical features required in Chomsky s analysis from
surface argument types mechanically , but that question is not addressed
here.) In addition , this implementation recovers some information that is
-
usually thought of as function word selection , rather than subcategorization .
To avoid confusion , the representations recovered in this implementation are
referred to as syntactic frames , or simply frames . The syntactic frames
inves.tigated here , excluding selection for prepositions and complementizers ,
are shown in table I .
Table I
The syntacticframesstudiesin the simulation
SF description Good example Badexample

NP only * arrive them
greet them
' * tell he' ll attend
tensedclause hope he ll attend
*
infinitive hope attend
to greet to attend
*
PP only listen to me put on it
' * '
NP & clause tell him he s a fool yell him he s a fool
NP & infinitive want him to attend * him to attend
hope
NP & NP tell him the story * want him the story
* Iisten him to me
NP & PP put it on the table
The task of learning syntacticframes for verbs can be broken down as

follows :
M.R. Brent! Surface
( 1) Collect observations about the syntactic frames manifested in each input

utterance:
(a) Identify a verb, V , in the utterance
(b) Identify phrasesin positions where complementsof V can occur
(c) For each potential complement, C, determine whether C is in fact a
subcategorizedcomplement of V
2
( ) Make inferencesabout the lexicon by analyzing the observations in such
a way that the effects of ungrammatical and misconstrued input are
minimized
Step I and Step 2 could be interleaved, so the lexicon is potentially updated

after each input utterance, but the implementation presented here draws
conclusions only after a body of observations has been collected, since this
approach is con,ceptually simpler.
The implementation presented here includes cues for collecting observations
in English and a novel inference method that can be applied to other
cues and to other languages. The cues assumeno knowledge of lexical items
except for proper namesand a few function morphemes. Although they refer
to categorieslike determiner and pronoun , the initial lexicon of items in each
category need not be complete.
The cues used for detecting verbs in this implementation have two logically
separable components: one that identifies words that can be verbs, and
another that excludes occurrencesof such words in contexts where they are
unlikely to befunctioning as verbs. As each utterance is processed, any word
that has already occurred both with and without the suffixing is assumedto
have a verbal sense. All occurrencesof such a word are taken to be verbal
occurrencesexcept when preceded by a known determiner or . preposition -
verbs are very rare in those positions.
The cuesusedfor identifying phrasesin this implementationare as follows (see
table 3, page450). Proper nouns and pronouns are taken as noun phrases( NPs).
(This classof words is called lexical NP, or LNP , hereafter.) Detenniners are
also taken as signalingNPs. ( Theclassof detenninersand LNPs is referredto as
NPLE , for NP left- edge, in table 3.) Prepositionsfollowed by NPs are taken as
PPs. To followed by a word that has alreadyoccurredboth with and without the
suffixing is taken as marking an infinitive. A complementizer(such as that)
followed by a determineror NP is taken as the beginningof a tensedclause. So,
too, is an NP followed by a previouslyidentified verb.
Phrasesare only relevant when they are in a position to serve as part of a
syntactic frame that the learner is looking for . For example, there is no
444 M.R. Brent! Surfacecuesandrobustinference
frame that contains a tensedclausefollowed by an NP , so the implementation

does not look for that sequenceof phrases.
The problem of whether a phrase is in fact a subcategorizedcomplement of
a given verb is resolved in an approximate manner, leaving the errors to be
cleanedup by the inferencecomponent. In particular, a phrase is taken to be
a complement of a verb if it follows that verb immediately, or if it follows a
proper name or pronoun that follows the verb immediately. Further , NPs are
taken as complementsonly if they are unlikely to be subjects- specifically, if
they are followed by an utterance boundary or a cue for another complement
phrase. Although the details of this strategy are specific to English, there
appears to be a cross-linguistic tendency for subcategorizedcomplements to
occur near their verbs.
The statistical inference component takes as input the number of times
each verb has occurred with cues for each frame, along with the total number
of times each verb has occurred in any context. Thus, the implementation
keepstrack of three things as it collects observations:
( I ) Which words have occurred both with and without -inK, not counting
occurrencesprecededby a preposition or a detenniner. These words are
.
treated as having verbal senses
(2) How many times each word with a verbal sense has occurred, not
c' Ountingoccurrencesprecededby a preposition or a detenniner.
( ) How many of those occurrenceswere followed by cues for each of the
3
syntactic frames.
This infonnation is kept in a data structure called an observationstable. An

alphabetically contiguous portion of the observations table from an experimental
run is shown in table 2. Each row representsdata collected from one
pair of word fonns , an -ing fonn and its stem form . The first column, titled
V , contains the total number of times the word occurs in positions where it
could be functioning as a verb. Each subsequentcolumn representsa single
frame. ' CI' stands for a tensed clause argument with that or null Cornple-
' ' '
mentizer, ' in ' , ' on' , and ' to for PPs headed by those prepositions, inf for
' '
infinitive V Ps, and wh for clauses headed by what or where. The number
appearing in each row and column representsthe number of times that the
'
row' s verb co-occurred with cues for the column s frame. Zeros are omitted.
For example, pretend and pretending occurred a combined total of 14 times,
excluding those occurrencesthat followed detenninersor prepositions. Two of
those occurrenceswere followed by a cue for a tensedclauseand one by a cue
M . R. Brent ! Surface cuesand robust iliference 445
Table2
, for the first 7Sverbsin alphabeticalorder
, beforestatisticalprocessing
Rawobservations
V NP NPNPNPclNPinNPinfNPonNPtoNPwhcl in inf on to wh
add
21
-
ask
-
be 118
blow 17
bring 52
brush 54
button 25
buy 12
call 88 19
carry 6 3
catch 13 5
cheat 2 1
chew 15 1
clean 10
close 97 43
color 99 1
comb 25 6
come 298 6 2 1 1
cook 19 1
cry 42 5
cut 16 5
dance 21 1
do 142418410 162 1 2 7
draw 23 I
drink 33 4 1
drive 19 4 3
eat 254 64
even 13
fall 46
feed 25 4
feel 55 15
find 103 34 2
fish 17
fix 32 15
fly 6
forget 6 I
get 398 84 3 3 9 3 I
give 91 4 8 I
go 982 5 24 113 3 26
grow 3
have 506 59 3 S6 3
446 M.R. BrentI Surfacecuesandrobustinference
Table2 (Cont.)
V NP NPNP NPcl NPin NPinf NPon NPto NPwh cl in inf on to wh

hide 32
hold 48 23
hurt 27 5
invent 3
jump 24
keep 27
kick 3
knock 34
laugh 5
lay 2
leave 17 I
lick 13 7
lie 12 '
lift 15 6
listen 18 I
live 26 12
look 824 4 21
make 18342
meet 2 I
miss 31 II
move 30 5
mow 2
nap
open 123SS
pat 41 28
pick 66 3
pitch 2
play 228 I 9
pour 12 I
14
-
pretend
pull S7 9 I I
push 44 S I I
put 99S46 I 2S 5
rain 7
for an infinitive . The observations table is the input to the statistical inference
procedure.
The statistical inference component of this implementation has two parts :
one estimatesthe error rate for each frame, and the other usesthis estimate to
weigh the evidenceprovided about that frame by multiple occurrencesof each
verb. In particular , the latter component considers the number of times the
M . R. Brent I Surface cuesand robust inference 447
verb occurred with cues for the frame and the number of times it occurred
without , much as one would consider the number of headsand the number of
tails turned up by a coin to determine whether or not it is fair . The method of
estimating the error rate was designed specifically for this implementation,
while the method for weighing the evidence in light of the error rate is a
standard one.
The error estimation procedure is based on some simplifying approximations
. First , for each frame , a single source of error dominates all
others in terms of frequency. Second, errors from this source are distributed
evenly across verbs. Third , verbs that in fact have a given frame
occur with cues for that frame with significantly higher probability than
verbs that do not have it . Put another way, false alarms are less frequent
than true alarms. To the extent that these approximations hold , the verbs
whose co-occurrence
' with cues for a given frame consist entirely of false
alarms should have a relatively low rate of co-occurrence with those cpes,
and their rates of co-occurrence should be distributed binomially . These
facts can be used to identify a sample of verbs whose co-occurrence with
cues for a frame consist entirely of false alarms, or miscues. This sample
can then be used to estimate the error rate.
The remainder of this section provides a more detailed discussion of the
implementation and the rationale behind its design. Readers interested
primarily in the experimental results can proceed to section 4 without loss
of continuity .
3.2. Collecting observations
3.2.J. Finding verbs

Whyfind verbs? Although verbs are not the only words with subcategorization
frames, their syntactic properties are sufficiently different from those
of other words that they must be analyzed separately. One important
difference betweenverbs and nouns is illustrated in (3) :
(3a) John liked to pretend[cp he wasat the theater]

(3b) *John liked to play [cp he wasat the theater]
(3c) John liked the play [cp he sawat the theater]
(3a) is grammatical because the verb pretend takes a tensed clause (CP)
argument; (3b) is ungrammatical because the verb play does not ; (3c) is
grammatical becauseplay is functioning as a noun and the following clauseis
a relative clause rather than an argument of play . Any common noun can
have a relative clause, so noticing a tensedclauseis not informative about the
syntactic frames of a preceding noun, but it is informative about those of a
preceding verb.
A similar difficulty arises from the fact that , in English, verbs can take NP
complementsbut nouns cannot:
'
(4a) We plannedto [" purchase ] [NPthe world s largestbank]
'
(4b) . Our [N purchase
] [NPthe world s largestbank] wasprofitable
Further, the NP complementof a verb tendsto becomea PP headedby of in

the verb's nominalization:
' '
(5) Our [N purchase] of [NP the world s largest bank] was profitable
Thus if observations of purchase the noun and purchase the verb were not
distinguished, they would provide contradictory evidence about whether or
not purchasetakes an NP complement. This has consequencesfor nouns that
are not ambiguous as well - cues indicating that a word has an NP
complement should be disregarded in the presenceof evidencethat the word
is a noun.
The proposed statistical inference method adds to the importance of
distinguishing between nouns and verbs. It is based on the simplifying
assumption that miscuesfor a given frame are distributed fairly evenly across
words. This assumption is violated if data from nouns and verbs are pooled.
To see this, suppose that no discrimination were made between nouns and
verbs. Further , suppose that a clause following a word W were taken as
evidencethat W takes a tensedclause argument. Example (3) shows that the
likelihood of that evidencebeing incorrect is much higher if W is a noun than
if W is a verb. Thus, distinguishing betweennouns and verbs is important for
obtaining a relatively uniform distribution of errors. This would be true even
if there were no lexical ambiguity .
Cuesfor finding verbs. In English, there are several function -morpheme
cues that provide evidenceabout major category, but none of them is ideal.
In general, the simplest cues tend to be either less reliable or less common
than more complex ones. For example, a simple, reliable cue is that words
following a form of be and ending in - ing (progressives) are very likely to be
verbs. Unfortunately , a number of words occur in the progressiveconstruc-
.MR . Brent / Surface cuesand robust inference 449
tion very rarely, if ever. These include some of the most common and most
syntactically interesting words in child -directed speech, such as know, want,
like and see.
The following two-part procedure for identifying verbs is a reasonable
compromise among simplicity , frequency, and reliability : first , identify
words that occur as verbs ; second, when such a word occurs, assume it is
functioning as a verb , except in the presence of evidence to the contrary .
All words that can occur as verbs can occur both with and without the
final syllableing , and all but a few words with that property can occur as
verbs. Even mental state verbs like know, which rarely occur in the
progressive, have nominalizations ending in -ing (Knowing how to read a
map is useful) . A learner who has identified potential verbs can now
proceed by trying to weed out their non -verbal occurrences. Occurrences
following determiners
' , prepositions , or non -auxiliary verbs, for example,
are unlikely to be verbal .
The simulations are based on the -ing cue for potential verbs and the
determiner and preposition cues for non -yerbal occurrences.2 However ,
these cues are not without difficulties . Nominalizations of mental states
like knowing, linking , and wanting appear to be rare in child -directed
speech, perhaps becausethey are semantically abstract. A second problem
is that some ambiguous words occur as nouns more often than they occur
as verbs, even when occurrences following determiners and prepositions
are excluded.
3.2.2. Identifying potential complements

This implementation focuses on four complement types: Noun phrase
( ), prepositional phrase (PP), infinitive verb phrase (VP), and tensedclause
NP
'
or ' compleinentizer phrase (CP) . Within thesemajor categories, PPs and CPs
are distinguished by their head prepositions and complementizers, respec-
tively . For example, a CP headedby that is treated as a separatecomplement
type from one headed by what or where.
The goal is to find representativesof each complement type that occur
frequently in the input , and that can be identified without the need to know a
lot of other words. The words that must be known to identify these
2 In ' '
speechthere is only one allomorph of the morpheme ling / . In written English the ing
suffix can induce spelling changes at the end of the stem, and the simulation includes some
techniques for negotiating those spelling changes. Description of these techniques has been
omitted since the orthographic problem they solve does not occur in auralleaming .
450 M.R. Brent/ Surfacecues and robust inference
representatives should be very common and regular, preferably without

morphological variation . In terms of these criteria , pronouns and proper
names (i.e., lexical NPs) are ideal representatives of the noun phrases.
Determiners are also in identifying NPs. Given these NPs, a simple cue for
prepositional phrasesis a preposition followed by an NP.
The best cues for infinitive V Ps and tensedclauses(CPs) take advantageof
the verb list that is being learned from the -ing cue. Specifically, any verb that
follows to is interpreted as an infinitive . Similarly , any lexical NP followed by
a verb is taken to be the subject of a CP. In addition , a complementizer
followed by a lexical NP - as in that he or where it - is taken to head a CP.
The complementizer that is frequently omitted , so the first CP cue, which
does not rely on explicit complementizers, is important .
The English cues outlined above are summarized in table 3.3 NP left-edge
(NPLE ) refers to the class of lexical NPs and determiners.
Table3
The cues used by the simulation for identifying complements
. LNP (Lexical NP) includes
pronounsand personalnames. NPLE (NP left edge) includesLNP and the determiners
Phrasalcategory Cue Example

NP NPLE Don' t eat that.
I sawa eat.
pp P NPLE Put your toy on die ftoor.
VP(inf) 10V Do you like to dance?
CP C NPLE I hope that you like it .
(C) LNPV I know you drink vodka.
3.2.3. Determining subcategorization

Once the learner has found a verb and a potential complement phrase, it
must detennine whether the phrase is in fact a subcategorizedcomplement of
the verb. This implementation takes a phrase P as a complement of a verb V
if : ( 1) P is ' near' enough to V , and (2) P is unlikely to be the subject of
3 Thesecuesdo not distinguishbetweenthe headsof prepositionalphrasesand post-verbal

" "
, like the up in I looked up an obscureword yesterday. Particlescan appeareither
particles
betweenthe verband the NP or after the NP, as in I look themup everyday" . In the fonDer
"
casethe cueswould indicatea PP headedby up. It is not difficult to imagineproceduresfor
analyzingthe output. of the current systemto discoverthe particle alternation, but such
procedures exceedthe scopeof the currentpaper.
M .R. Brent ! Surface cuesand robust inference
anotherclause. P is near enoughto V if P follows V immediatelyor if one lexical

NP (LNP ) intervenes. It follows that a verb is recognized as taking two
complementsin a singlesentenceonly if the first is an NP. A phraseP is deemed
unlikely to be a subject if either, (i) it is an NP followed by an utterance
boundary or a cue for another argument phrasetype, or (ii ) if it is not an NP.
The sametwo- part strategymay be applicableto many languages , although the
specificcriteria for nearnessand non-subjecthoodmay be different.
Like all syntactic cues, the nearness criterion is imperfect. Indeed it is
incorrect for several types of grammatical sentences , such as:
(6) John put [NP the toy Mary wanted] on the floor
In (6) the nearnesscriterion classifies ' on the floor ' as a complement of

'anted, when in fact it is a
complement of put .
The argument-adjunct distinction poses another problem for the nearness
criterion.
(7a) John wanted ( * in order) to pursuea career in finance [Argument]

(7b) John resigned(in order) to pursuea career in finance [Adjunct ]
In (7a) the infinitive VP ' to pursue ...' is a subcategorizedcomplement of

" 'ant in the sensethat : (i ) removing it renders the sentenceungrammatical,
and (ii ) its semantic function as an aspiration is a special lexical property of
" 'ant and a few dozen other verbs. Thus, the nearnesscriterion gives the
correct result. The infinitive VP in (7b), by contrast, can be removed without
affecting the grammaticality of the sentence, and its semantic function as the
purpose for which an action was carried out is not special to a small class of
verbs. The infinitive in (7a) is called an argument while the one in (7b) is
called an adjunct. Purpose adjuncts can be diagnosed by inserting ' in order'
before the infinitive - if the infinitive is an argument the result will be very
bad. but if it is an adjunct the result will be a perfect paraphrase. The
nearnesscriterion fails to distinguish between subcategorizedarguments and
non-subcategorizedadjuncts. However, it should be noted that no syntactic
analysiscan distinguish arguments from adjuncts, unlessit already knows the
syntactic frames of the verbs in question.
Although purpose adjuncts can be easily diagnosed in most cases, it is
worth noting that there are no satisfactory, necessaryand sufficient conditions
for distinguishing between arguments and adjuncts in general (Adams and
Macfarland 1991).
M. R. Brent/ Surfacecuesandrobustinference
3.3. Robustinference
Children hear ungrammatical utterances, and probably misconstrue some

grammatical utterances, but these aberrations appear to have no impact on
their ultimate grammars. This would not be possible if they drew irrevocable
conclusions on the basis of single observations. This section suggests a
method that appears suitable for weighing evidence from multiple observations
. It exploits the standard method of hypothesis testing, along with a
novel method for estimatizing the necessaryparameters.
In the following discussion, verbs whose lexical entries permit some particular
syntactic frame S are described as +S verbs; the remainder are
describedas - S verbsS verbs may occur with cues for S either becauseof
ungrammatical input or becausethe cues are imperfect diagnostics. Both of
thesesituations are referred to as miscues.
The occurrence of miscuescan be thought of as a random process. Each
occurrenceof a verb V has some non-zero probability of being followed by a
cue for a frame S, even if V cannot grammatically occur in S. If this model is
accurate, the more times V occurs, the more likely it is to occur at least once
with a cue for S. The intransitive verb arrive, for example, will eventually
occur with a cue for an NP argument, if enough text is considered. A learner
that treats a single occurrence of a verb followed by a cue as conclusive
evidencewill eventually come to the false conclusion that arrive is transitive.
In other words, the information provided by the cues will eventually be
washed out by the noise. This problem is inherent in learning from naturally
occurring language, since infallible parsing is not possible. The only way to
prevent it is to consider the frequency with which each verb occurs with cues
for each frame. In other words, to consider each occurrence of V without a
cue for S as a small bit of evidenceagainst V being able to occur in frame S.
Given a syntactic frame S, the statistical model treats each verb V as
analogous to a biased coin, and each occurrence of V as a flip of that coin.
An occurrencethat is followed by a cue for S correspondsto one outcome of
the coin flip , say heads; an occurrence without a cue for S corresponds to
tails.4 The problem is to determine when a verb occurs with cues for Soften
enough that all those occurrencesare unlikely to be miscues.
4 Given a verb V , the outcomes of the coins for different S' s are treated as approximately
independent, even though they cannot be perfectly independent. Their dependencecould be
modeled using a multinomial rather than a binomial model.
3.3.1. Binomialfrequency data

The statistical model is basedon the following approximation : for fixed S,
all - S verbs have the sameprobability of being followed by a cue for S. Let
1l'- s stand for that probability . 1l'- s may vary from frame to frame, but not
from verb to verb. Thus, miscuesmight be more common for tensedclauses
than for NPs, but the working hypothesis is that all in transitives, such as
.\"aunter and arrive, are about equally likely to be followed by a cue for an NP
argument. If the miscue rate were known then we could use the standard
hypothesis testing method for inference from binomial frequency data. For
example, suppose1l'- s = 0.05 - on average, one in twenty occurrencesof aS
verb should be followed by a cue for S. If some verb V occurs 300 times
in the corpus, and 30 of those occurrencesare followed by cues for S, then V
is unlikely to have probability 0.05 of being followed by a cue for S, and
henceV is unlikely to be - SoSpecifically, the chance of flipping 30 or more
heads out of 300 tossesof a coin with a five percent chance of coming up
headseach time is less than three in 10,000. On the other hand, it is not all
that unusual to flip 3 or more heads out of 30 on such a coin - it happens
almost one time in five. If a verb occurs 30 times in the corpus and 3 of those
occurrencesare followed by cues for S, it is quite possible that V is - S and
that the occurrenceswith cues for S are explained by the five percent miscue
rate of - S verbs.
In order to use the hypothesistesting method we need to estimateils , the
probability that an occurrenceof a - S verb V will be followed by a cue for S.
For now, assumethat ils is known - a method for estimating 1l'_" is described
below. Also assumethat, for each +S verb, V , the probability that V will be
followed by a cue for S is greaterthan il _" . Other than that, no assumptionsare
made about the probability that a +S verb will be followed by a cue for S. For
example, two verbs with transitive senses , such as cut and walk, may have quite
different frequenciesof co-occurrencewith cuesfor NP. It does not matter what
thesefrequenciesare as long as they are greaterthan il - NP'
If a coin with probability p of flipping heads is flipped n times, the
probability of its coming up heads exactly m times is given by the binomial
distribution :
n '.
P (m,nip) = pm(lp ) n- m
m! (n - m) !
The probability of coming up heads m or more times is given by the obvious

sum :
454 M .R. Brent / Surface cuesand robust inference
n
P(m+ ,nip) = LP (i ,nip)
ism
Analogously, P(m + ,nix _s) gives the probability that m or more occurrences
of a - S verb V will be followed by a cue for S out of n occurrencestotal .
If m out of n occurrences of V are followed by cues for S, and if
P(m+ ,nix _s) is quite small, then it is unlikely that V is - So That is, the
observeddata would be quite unlikely if V were - S and hencehad probability
X- s of being followed by a cue for S. Traditionally , a threshold less than
or equal to 0.05 is set, such that a hypothesis is rejected if , assuming the
hypothesis were true, the probability of outcomes as extreme as the observed
outcome would be below the threshold. The confidence attached to this
conclusion increasesas the threshold decreases .
3.4. Estimating the miscue rate
As before, assumethat an occurrenceof a - S verb is followed by a cue for

S with probability 1t'- S' Also as before, assumethat for each +S verb V , the
probability that an occurrenceof V is followed by a cue for S is greater than
1t'- s'
It .is useful to think of the verbs in the corpus as analogous to a large bag
of coins with various blases, or probabilities of coming up heads. The only
assumption about the distribution of blasesis that there is some definite but
unknown minimum bias 1t'- s.s Determining whether a verb appears in frame
S is analogous to determining, for some randomly selectedcoin, whether its
bias is greater than 1t'- s' The only available evidencecomes from selecting a
number of coins at random and flipping them. The previous section showed
how this determination can be made given an estimate of 1t'- s'
Suppose a series of coins is drawn at random and flipped N times. Each
coin is assignedto a histogram bin representingthe number of times it comes
up heads. At the end of this sampling procedure bin i contains the number of
coins that came up headsexactly i times out of N. Such a histogram is shown
in figure I , where N = 40. If N is large enough and enough coins are flipped
N times, one would expect the following :
( I ) The coins whose probability of turning up heads is 1l'- s ( the minimum )

should cluster at the low - heads end of the histogram . That is , there
5 If the numberof coinsis takento be infinite thenthe blasesmustbe boundedaboveil -s'

Numbe
of
Coins
08Numb
16
24
of32
40
Head
Flipp
M . R. Brent / Surface cuesand robust inference 455
Fig. I. A histogramillustratinga binomiallyshapeddistributionin the first 8 bins.
should be some 0 :$ jo :$ N such that most of the coins that turn up jo

heads or fewer have probability ils , and, conversely, most coins with
probability ils turn upjo heads or fewer.
(2) Supposejo were ' known. Then the portion of the histogram belowjo should
havea roughly binomial shape. In figure I , for example, the first 8 bins have
roughly the shapeone would expectif jo were 8. By contrast, the first 16 bins
do not have the shapeone would expectif jo were 16- their height drops to
zero for two stretches before rising signifi"cantlyabove zero again. Specifically
, the shapeshould be roughly P( i,Nips ), wherei is the histogrambin, N
is the fixed samplesize, and Psis an estimateof ils .
(3) Supposeagain that jo were known. Then the averagerate at which the coins
in binsio or lower flip headsis a good estimateof 7Lc.
The estimation procedure tries out each bin as a possibleestimate of jo , the

point of separation between the - S verbs at the low frequency end and the
+S verbs at the high frequency end (Item 1) . Each estimate of jo leads to an
estimate of ils (Item 3), and hence to an expected shape for the first jo
histogram bins ( Item 2). Each estimatej of jo is evaluated by comparing the
predicted distribution in the first j bins to the observed distribution - the
better the fit , the better the estimate.
The actual situation with verbs is slightly more complex than the one
outlined above. The total number of occurrencesof each verb in any given
input varies widely - look may occur thousands of times in a corpus where
jostle occurs only once. Thus, the rates at which - S verbs co-occur with cues
for S are not distributed according to a single binomial curve with sample-size
N and mean Nx ils .6 Rather, they are distributed accordingto a superposition
6 In the context of machine

learning, Brent ( 1993), presents an inference procedure that
equalizesthe sample size by going through the input corpus twice, once for estimating it - . , and
456 M . R. Brent ! Surface cuesand robust inference
of binomial curves with different sample sizes N ( V) and means N( V) x X- S'

This affects the details of the method but the underlying idea is unchanged:
evaluate hypotheses about the :i :S boundary by comparing the observed
distribution of - S verbs to the expected distribution for each hypothesized
boundary. A formal specification of the estimation procedure is given in the
Appendix .
Verbs with various numbers of occurrencesin the input can be used to
estimate the miscue rates, but there must be some minimum number of
occurrencesbelow which verbs are not included in the estimation procedure.
If verbs that occur very few times were included then there would be large
-
sampling error and hence the +S verbs and the S verbs might overlap in
-
their rate of co occurrencewith cuesfor S. However , there is no way to know
the minimum sample size needed to keep the overlap betweenS and - S
verbs acceptably low. On the other hand, the number of observations of each
verb increases with time, so the learner can afford to keep raising its
minimum . As this minimum is raised the degreeof overlap betweenS andS
'
verbs will continue to decreaseand the leamer s conclusions will become
increasingly stable and reliable. The learner will not know how stable or
reliable its conclusions are at anyone time, but there is no reason to expect
that child learners know or care.
' '
Note that the child s inferenceproblem is quite different from the scientists.
Scientists need to know whether or not the sample is big enough that the
experiment can be stopped and the results published. Children learning
-
language do not face any analogous choice they never stop collecting data
and they may draw provisional conclusions as necesary, even when the
likelihood of error is not known. This continual raising of the minimum
'
samplesize resemblesGold s identification in the limit (Gold 1967), where the
learner always convergeson the right grammar but has no way to know when
it has done so.
4. Experiment
This experiment investigateswhether the implementation described in the

previous section, and by extension the hypothesis of surface functional cues
once for drawing lexical conclusions. On the first pass, a verb is ignored after some preset sample
size has been reached. Multiple passesare not possible for a child leamer, so a new variant of the
procedure was developed for the current problem.
M.R. Brent/ Surfacecuesandrobustinference 457
plus statistical inference, constitutes an effective strategy by which two -year-

olds could learn subcategorization frames. The method is to simulate the
proposed implementation on a computer. The input to the simulation is
transcripts of English speechby mothers to their young children.
4.1. Methods
The input corpus for the experiment consists of 31,782 utterancesby adult
caretakers to children between 1;0 and 2;6. The utterances were taken from
the CHILDES database(MacWhinney 1991). The particular trtanscripts were
as follows : all of Bates's ' free play' and ' snack' transcripts, but not the
reading aloud transcripts (Bates et al. 1988); all of the Bernstein- Ratner
transcripts ( Bernstein- Ratner 1987) ; all of the Higginson transcripts for
children betweenages 1;0 and 2;6 (Higginson 1985) ; and the Warren-Leubec-
ker (Warren- Leubecker and Bohannon 1984) transcripts for children 2;6 and
younger. In all cases, exactly one adult and one child were present throughout
. All lines except the adult ' s speechwere removed. The pause markers
( # ) were left in and taken as utterance boundaries, along with the ordinary
punctuation marks. All diacritics between square brackets were removed.
Angle brackets (used as scope markers for diacritics) were removed but the
words between them were not. A few changeswere made to enforce consistent
'
use of the compound marker ' + ' , including the placement of a ' + '
rather than a space between two-part names like Santa Claus and Mickey
Mouse. Otherwise, transcription errors were not corrected.
Collectingobservations
. The observations were collectedexactly as described
in section3.
Statistical inference. The algorithm given in the Appendix was used with I
= 40 and minsample = 40. Given the estimated error rate for each
syntactic frame, verbs are reported as + S if their rate of co-occurrencewith
cuesfor S would have probability below 0.02 under the null ( - S) hypothesis.
Vocabu/ary . I n order to make use of the cues, the learner needs to know
some function morphemes. In this experiment the program made use of an
initial vocabulary chosen from the most common words in the corpus
'' ' ' ' ' ''
(table 4) . Besidesthe four utterance-boundary markers, . , 1 , # , and ! ,
these include the pronouns you, that, it , this, I , we, he. and they; the
determiners the, a, and your ; the complementizerswhat, that, and where; and
Table 4
The SOmostcommonorthographicforms in the corpus
the prepositions to, in and on. Auxiliaries and some modals are also common,
and these can be exploited by cues. However, one of the goals of this
experiment was to determine how little lexical knowledge the child could
make do with , so these function morphemeswere not exploited. The demonstrative
' '
pro -PPs here and there were not exploited either, though they would
probably be very useful for learning about locative PPs. Interjections, negations
, and conjunctions are of little use. The fifty most frequent words also
include the open classverbs put , look, want, and like, but the simulation does
not know any open class words at the outset.
In addition , the simulation started with a lexicon of all 158 proper names
that occurred at least twice in the corpus.
4.2. Results
This simulation identified a total 126 verbs, of which 76 were assignedat

least one syntactic frame. The output of the simulation for those 76 verbs is
shown in table 5, while the 50 verbs that were not assignedany frame are
listed in table 6. Each row of table 5 representsa single verb. The symbols
' in
appearing in each row representthe frames assignedto that row s verb the
simulation . The symbol N P stands for an NP complement, , in on and to stand
-
for PPsheadedby those prepositions, wh stands for a tensedwh clause, c/ for
a tensed clause with that or a null complementizer, and if for a tensed if
clause. When one of these symbols follows NP , it signifies a two -argument
frame in which the first argument is realized as an NP. For easy referenceby
frame, all the symbols for a given frame are aligned in one column.
. ~c~ ~] ~t~~
~I0
Table5
The 76 verbs that were assignedat least one syntactic frame
QQ
~~~~-~~ l
NP Z NPNP NPin NPon NPto NPwh cl in inf on to wh
NPwh
~
Z
ZZZZ
:(~
z~0
ZQZQ
ZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Q Q
NPNP
z&0 z!0
.c
NPNP
ZZZ
Q
z ~0c
ZZQ
zzzz
~
"
Table5 (Coot
.)
NP NPNP NPin NPon NPto NPwh cl in inf on to wh
pull NP
push NP
put NP NPin NPon
read NP NPNP
record wh
ride NP in
rock NP
roll NP NPto
say NP
set NP
sew NP
show NP NPNP NPto
sing NP NPNP
sit in on
sleep on
smell NP
spill NP
NP in
splash
start inf
take NP
talk on to
tell NP NPwh
think . cl
throw NP NPto
touch NP
trot inf
NP inf
try
turn NP
understand NP wh
wait NP
walk in on
wash NP
watch NP wh
water on
wear NP
Table6
The 50 words that were identified as verbs but were not assignedany syntactic frames
add button clean color come cook dancefraw evenfall fish fly forget grow hide inventjump keep
kick knock laugh lay lie move mow nap pick pitch pour rain ring rub run scratch share shavesnow
stack stand star step stick swim swing umm wake wavework write zip
M . R. Brent / Surface cuesand robust inference
These results should be interpreted in light of the fact that the statistical
' or
inference technique does not answer 4yes 4no' as to whether a given verb
has a given frame. Rather, it answers4yes ' or 4noreliable indication of
yes so
'
far .
It should also be noted that a number of the verbs discovered have
auxiliary or modal functions, including be, do, go and have. These are
generally omitted from the following discussion, since they have special
properties that must in any case be learned by some process that does not
directly involve subcategorization frames.
Now consider the results for each syntactic frame.
Direct object ( N P) . 59 verbs of the 126 verbs were deemed acceptable

with a direct object and no other complement (NP ). Most of these are
correct. Most common transitive verbs were assignedNP , while most intran -
sitives, including come, fall , laugh, listen, lie, live, look, nap, pretend, rain, run,
.vit, sleep, snow, step, talk and trot , were not. Many other words that are
intransitive except in specializedsenses(swim the channel, work the metal) are
not assignedNP either. It may be that these sensesare rare in child -directed
speech.
The only error among the verbs assigned NP is put , which requires a
location phrase (typically a PP) . This is caused by extraction in where
questions. Cry is assignedNP for the wrong reasons: the cues do not detect
" "
. inversion ( Oh no, cried Pinocchio) ; and the transcripts are inconsistent
'
about pause marks before names used in address( The bug // cry June) .
Double-object ( NPNP ) and the dative alternation. Ask, buy, do, give, read,
show and sing are deemed acceptable with two NP complements (NPNP ).
These are all correct.
The other half of the dative alternation is the NPto frame, which is
correctly assigned to give, show, bring, roll , and throw. Thus, the dative
alternation is observedfor give and show. Bring, feed, roll , throw and read can
alternate, but they are assignedonly one of the two frames.
Infinitive VP (in/) . Feel, get, go, have, pretend, start , trot , and try are all
assignedthe inf frame. Of these, feel is clearly incorrect, resulting from six
'
repetitions of the sentenceYou don t know how good it feels to washmy ears
and scrub my heels. In fact, feel requires an adjective as well as an infinitive ,
but the adjective has been fronted with how in this sentence. The inclusion of
trot also results from repetition of an unusual nursery-rhyme construction -
as off we trot to play . The correct analysis of this utterance is not clear. The
remaining verbs appear to license an infinitive complement, although in
semanticallydiversecapacities. In particular, go, have, and possibly get license

an infinitive in their capacity as auxiliaries or modals.
Tensedclauses( NPwh, wh, cl) . TeJ/ and ask are both deemedacceptable
with both a direct object and a clauseheadedby a wh word , as in Ask Daddy
what he wantsfor lunch. As expected, theseare both communication verbs.
Find, look, record, understand and watch are deemed acceptable with a
clauseheadedby a wh word as their sole argument, as in Look what I 've got !
Look is interesting becauseit is in fact acceptablewith a wh clause but not
with a direct object nor with a that clause.
Do, make, pretendand think are judged to take a clauseheadedby that or a
clausewith no overt complementizer(cl). Pretendand think are canonicalmental
state verbs. The relative poverty of such verbs in the output is discussedbelow.
Make is mistaken as taking a tensedclausebecauseit takes an NP and a bare
infinitive, as in I can't make John eat his peas. Becausethe cues are check
agreement , John eat ... is mistaken for a tensed clause. In many casesthis
construction could be distinguishedfrom a tensedclause, using either pronoun
caseor subject-verb agreement . However, such knowledgewas not provided in
the cuesfor this simulation. Finally, do is judged to take a tensedclausebecause
inverted questions like Do you know how to swim? are mistaken for tensed
clauses .
NPin , NPon. The NPto frame was discussedunder the dative alternation.
Put .was assignedNPon and NPin , while leavewas assignedNPon. These are
correct, though leaveis acceptablewith NPin as well.
in , on, to. Go, listen and talk were correctly assignedthe to frame. For on
and in it is difficult to determine which cases represent subcategorized
argumentsand which representadjuncts. Some usesof on and in clearly mark
participants in the action, as in drive in the car and talk on the phone. Others
clearly representlocational adjuncts, as in sleepin the baby bed and splash in
the pool. A number of exampleswere difficult to classify.
4.3. Discussion
Overall, this experiment suggeststhat syntactic frames can be identified in

child-directedEnglish using relatively simplecuesbasedon function morphemes,
proper nouns, and utterance boundaries, in combination with statistical
inference. However, the cues suggestedin section 3 are slightly too simple to
achievehigh accuracy. Specifically, they do not distinguishbetweeninterrogative
and declarative sentences . This led to the erroneous assignmentof NP to put,
inf to / eel, and cl to do (although do is independentlymarked as idiosyncratic).
M . R. Brent / Surface cuesand robust inference
Since the declarative/interrogative distinction is clearly marked prosodically,

children probably have accessto it .
One potential problem is suggestedby the fact that locational adjuncts
were sometimesmistaken for arguments in the simulation. However, it is not
clear whether anyone can distinguish the two cases reliably in naturally
occurring sentences . Until the nature of the argument/adjunct distinction is
better understood, it is difficult to seehow the extent of the problem can be
assessedand cues for resolving it investigated.
In contrast to the generally positive results for identifying complements, this
simulation failed to demonstrate that simple cues based on function morphemes
can identify all verbs that occur frequently in child-directed English. A
number of high-frequency mental state verbs, notably know, want, see, hear,
like and love, are missing from tables 5 and 6. Thesewords were not detected
becausethey do not occur in the input corpus with the suffixing . Mental state
verbsdo not generallyoccur in the progressiveaspectand their nominalizations
(e.g. knowing, liking) appear to be very in child-directed speech.
The transcriptsusedin this experimentcompriseabout 56 hours of interaction,
so it is possible that more text would reveal that nominalizations of mental
state verbs are not intolerably rare. Further , for most of the transcripts the
child was under 2;0, and it seemslikely that the use of semantically abstract
words increaseswith the child ' s age. Nonetheless, the -ing suffix seems a
'
precarious basis on which to identify mental state verbs - children s true
strategiesfor identifying verbs are doubtless more complex. One possibility is
that they use more complex function -morpheme cues that exploit other
inflections, auxiliaries, modals, and pronoun case ( Brent 1991) . Since these
cues are not without exceptions, it would make sense to posit statistical
inferencemechanismfor lexical category cuesas well as for subcategorization
cues. In fact, such an inference system would be useful even in the current
simulation, where water and even are both erroneously recorded as having
verbal occurrences. ( Both have verbal senses , but they do not occur as verbs
in the input corpus.) Another possibility is that children understandutterances
well enough to recognizethat certain words stand for actions or states, and that
they have an innate predispositionto classifytheseas verbs (Grimshaw 1981).
The importance of the statistical inference component can be seenclearly
by comparing .its input , the raw observation shown in table 2, with its output ,
the lexicon shown in table 5. The segmentof the observation table shown in
table 2 contains a number of caseswhere a verb co-occurs with cues for a
frame that the verb does not in fact have in its lexical entry . These include
comeand look with a cue for NP , color, come and get with cues for a tensed
clause, and come with a cue for an infinitive . As a result of the inference
procedure, none of these miscues lead to errors in the lexicon shown in
table 5.
5. Summary and conclusions
This investigation began with the question, How could children possibly
acquire their first subcategorization frames? Knowing verb meanings does
not help until the language-particular correspondencebetween meaning and
subcategorizationalternations can be learned. Direct observation of syntactic
structures might work , except that it is difficult to imagine how children
could parse an utterance reliably without already knowing the syntactic
properties Qf the words in it . However, function morphemes are among the
most frequent morphemes, and they would seem to provide a good deal of
-
probabilistic information about syntactic structure. Further , English speaking
children appear to have passiveknowledge of the syntactic privileges of some
individual function morphemes by age two -and-a-half. The question is how
useful the information carried by function morphemes is and how it can be
exploited to learn subcategorization frames reliably .
To answer that question, a collection of simple cues was devised for
English, using a vocabulary of twenty frequent function morphemes, under
the assumption that children recognize the common proper names in their
environment as NPs and can detect utterance boundaries prosodically .
Becausethe information provided by these cues is probabilistic , inferences
must be drawn from multiple occurrencesof each verb. Thus, a statistical
inference procedure was developed. The cues and the inference procedure
were simulated on transcripts of child -directed speech. This experiment
showed that probabilistic surface cuescombined with statistical inference can
determine syntactic frames with surprisingly high accuracy. Thus, young
children could learn subcategorizationframes from sentenceswhosemeanings
-
they do not fully understand. There is no doubt that two- year olds comprehend
many utterances, and this probably helps them parse in some cases. However,
the current experimentssuggestthat they can also learn from utterancesthey
do not understand and cannot parse completely.
However, some important questions remain open. Specifically, the hypothesis
that young children can use their knowledge of function morphemesas
cues for specific phrasal categories remains unproven. Even if they can, one
would still want an explanation of how English-speaking children come to
M.R. BrentI Surface
know that , for example, to followed by an uninflected verb is usually an

infinitive , while I followed by an uninflected verb is not. In the simulation it
was assumedthat the learner knows a priori , perhaps even innately, which
sequencesof phrasesconstitute possible syntactic frames. To make use of this
knowledge, it is not enough to know that , for instance, to followed by an
uninflected verb is an instance of some linguistically significant category;
rather, it is essentialto know that it is an instanceof the category represented
. '
by infinitive in the a priori list of frames. An alternative possibility is that , at
least at this early stage, children are simply forming distributional classesof
verbs that reflect their ability to co-occur with various sequencesof function
morphemes. Thus, English-speakingchildren might not know that to followed
by an uninflected verb is an infinitive , per se. Rather, they might know only
that co-occurrence with this sequenceis a significant distributional property
of verbs, and that it is a different one from co-occurrencewith I followed by
an uninflected verb. To put this question in context, however, note that
English-speaking children do eventually come to know the relationship
between sequencesof function morphemes and syntactic structure. This
'
phenomenon needs explanation regardless of one s theory about the early
acquisition of subcategorization frames, so the current proposals incur no
extra explanatory burden.
Finally , note that statistical inferencemechanismsof the sort proposed here
have an important role to play in language acquisition research in general.
Developing such mechanismsis challenging becausethere is often no .a priori
basis for predicting frequency distributions in linguistic domains. This leaves
simulation as one of the only tools for determining when an inference
mechanism is adequate to a particular language learning problem. More
experimentswith inferenceproceduresare neededto help explain the robustness
of language acquisition, and to establish that individual learning strategies
can be implemented robustly .
Appendix : Error rate estimation
This appendixlays out the procedureusedfor estimatingthe error ratesXI in

the experiment. This presentationis designedfor clarity rather than efficiency.
Let N( V) be the total number of occurrencesof verb V, and letf ( ViS) be
the number of times V co-occurs with cues for S. The relative frequency of V
with cuesfor S is the ratiof ( Vis) fN ( V) , a number betweenzero and one. The
observed distribution of relative frequenciescan be plotted on a histogram
466 cuesandrobustinference
MR . Brent! Surface
whose bins correspond to equal-sized subintervals of the unit interval (e.g.

figure I , page 455) . By assumption, there is some bin jo such that verbs in
bins jo and lower are - S while those in bins abovejo are +S. The estimated
miscue rate is the weighted averageof the relative frequenciesof - S verbs -
by assumption, the verbs with relative frequency below jo .
The procedure ESTIMATE- MISCUE- RATE estimatesthe miscue rate for a
frame S by first estimating the :I: S separator, jo , for S. The inputs to the
- the list of observed verbs, N - a
procedure are S - the frame, verbs
function returning the total frequency for each verb, f - a function returning
the total frequency of each verb with cues for each frame, bin - count - the
number of histogram bins to use in plotting the relative frequencies, and
min - sample - the minimum number of times a verb must occur to be used
in this estimation. Each bin is evaluated as a possible value for jo , and the
one with tl1e highest evaluation is selected. The variable cutoff - bin stores
hypothesesabout jo while they are being evaluated. The estimation procedure
involves only the - S verbs - by hypothesis, those with relative frequency
below cutoff - bin . Thus, the variables total - verb - ocC':urrences and
total - cue - occurrences refer to the total counts for verbs with relative
frequency below cutoff - bin . Each hypothesis about jo (.stored in
cutoff - bin ) generatesa hypothesis about the miscue rate ils , which is
stored in the variable rate . In particular , the miscue rate is hypothesizedto
be the ratio of total - cue - occurrences to total - verb - occurren -
ces , where, again, theserefer only to the - S verbs. This hypothesis predicts
the shape of the distribution of relative frequenciesfor - S verbs. In particular
, it predicts that the distribution should be a mixture of binomial distributions
with a common mean, the miscue rate, but different different sample
sizes, corresponding to the number of times each verb occurs in the input .
The procedure evaluates each hypothesis about jo (and the consequent
hypothesisabout the miscue rate) by comparing the predicted distribution forS
verbs to the observeddistribution . The comparison is done by summing
the squares of the differences between the observed and predicted distributions
of - S verbs at each bin. At bins above cutoff - bin the observed
distribution of - S verbs is taken to be uniformly zero.
ESTl MATE- MISCUE- RATE( S, verbs , N, f , bin - count , min - sample )

total - verb - occurrences = O, total - cue - occurrences = O
best - sum- of - squares = infinity
For cutoff - bin = 1 to bin - count
observed - dist [ cutoff - bin ] = 0
Set up the Oth bin of the histogram of observed co - occurrence rates
For Veverbs
verb - bin = roundoff f (ViS

( bin - count *
N(V)
If ( verb - bin = 0 ) And ( N ( V ) ~ min - sample )
observed - dist [ O] = observed - dist [ O] + 1
total - cue - occurrences = total - cue - occurrences + f ( ViS )
total - verb - occurrences = total - verb - occurrences + N ( V )
Try each bin as a hypothesis about the ~ S cutoff
For cutoff - bin = 1 to bin - count
Add in verbs that were + 8 under the previous hypothesis about the ::i:Scutoff,
but are - 8 under the new hypothesis
For Veverbs
f (ViS
verb - bin = roundoff ( bin - count *
N( V )
If ( verb - bin = cutoff - bin ) And ( N ( V ) ~ min - sample )
observed - dist [ verb - bin ] = observed - dist [ verb - bin ] + 1
total - cue - occurrences = total - cue - occurrences + f ( V, S )
total - verb - occurrences = total - verb - occurrences + N(V )
Estimate error rate assuming cutoff - bin is :i:S separator
- -
raet = total - cue -occurrences
total verb occurrences
Compute expected distribution over - S verbs assuming 1C

- s = rate
For Veverbs
verb - bin = roundoff f (VtS

( bin - count *
N(V)
If ( verb - bin ~ cutoff - bin ) And ( N ( V ) ~ min - sample )
The expected distribution is a mixture of binomials with a common

mean, rate , but different sample sizes, N ( V) . Compute probability
M . R. Brent I Surface cuesand robust inference
distribution for verb V, scale it to bin - count bins, and add it to the
mixture.
For orig - bin = O toN ( V )

Scale orig - bin to the mixture histogram .
. . - bin
b in = roun d 0 ff t * Orig
( b incoun )
N(V)
Add the binomial distribution for rate , and N ( V ) to the mixture
expected - dist [ bin ] = expected - dist [ bin ] +
N(V) - bin - -
( ) * rateorig ( l - rate ) ( N ( V ) orig bin )
orig - bin
Compareobservedand expecteddistributions, assumingcutoff - bin is the
:i:Sseparator
sum- or - squares = 0
For bin :: 0 to bin - count
sum- of - squares = sum- of - squares + ( expected - dist [ bin ] -
observed - dist [ bin ] ) 2
If sum- or - squares < best - sum- of - squares
best - rate = rate , best - sum- of - squares = sum- or - squares
Return best - rate
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Zwicky, ,
92(1994
Lingua ) 471
- 480 -Holland
. North 471
Acquisition of verb categories *
Mark Steedman
Departmentof Computerand Information Science , 200 South
, Universityof Pennsylvania
33rdStreet, Philadelphia
, PA -
191046389, USA
The paper was deliveredas a commentaryupon Michael Brent's presentation'Acquisition

of subcategorizationframes using aggregatedevidencefrom local syntactic cues' to the
PennLanguageAcquisitionConference , IRCS, Universityof Pennsylvania . It arguesin
, 1992
'
supportof usingstatisticaltechniqueslike Brents to minimisethe consequences of errorsand
, but concludes
misanalyses that the casefor believingthat childrenacquiresubcategorisation
and
otheraspectsof syntaxon the basisof semanticand contextualcuesremainsstrong.
1. Introduction
The question of how children acquire lexical entries for verbs, and in
particula~ their subcategorisation frames is one of the central questions
'
concerning the child s acquisition of syntax. Its importance is enhanced by
the recent tendency in theories of grammar to gravitate to a lexicalist
position, and the role of verbs as the head of their clause. How do children
do it , given the non-determinacy and automata-theoretic complexity of the
syntax itself, and the unsystematic presentation and error-proneness of the
'
linguistic data that they apparently have to make do with ? Michael Brent s
paper in this volume shows how the statistical technique of binomial error
estimation can be used to minimise the effect of contamination in the data
available to the child languagelearner, arising either from errors in the input
itself or errors in the child ' s analysesof the input sentences
. The technique is
demonstratedby applying it to the sentencesof a corpus of actual adult- child
conversations, to derive subcategorisation frames for verbs from analyses
basedon imperfectly reliable local syntactic cues defined in terms of sequences
of inflectional morphemes, function words and lexical NPs. As Brent
. Thanksto Lila GleitmanandJeffSiskindfor readingthedraft. Theresearch wassupportedin

part by NSF grantnos. IRI90- 18SI3, IRI90- 16S92
, and CISEliP , CDA88-22719
, DARPA grant
no. NOOOI4-90-J- 1863
, and ARO grant no. DAALO3-89-COO31 .
- 3841/94/ $07.00 ~ 1994- ElsevierScienceB.V. All

0024 right~reserved
SSDI 0024- 3841( 93) EO047- B
472 M . SteedmanI Acquisition of verb categories
points out , these two aspects of the work are quite independent : binomial
error estimation could be used to minimise the influence of errors arising
from imperfect analysis procedures of any kind at all , including those
based on semantic and prosodic information , as well as syntactic . The
present paper considers the part that all of these sources of information
may play .
2. Syntax
The specific application of this technique to low -level syntactic cues,

rather than these richer sources of information , in this and related work in
Brent ' s ( 1991) thesis can be argued to deliver two further important
results. First , it demonstrates a practical technique that actually can be
used to automatically build lexicons on the basis of large volumes of text .
'
Although this point is not discussed in Brent s present paper, it is worth
emphasising. Hand -built dictionaries are inevitably very incomplete with
respect to the exhaustive listing of subcategorisation properties that are
needed for many computational applications . Techniques base~ on sim-
' '
plified syntactic properties which probabilistically compile out syntactic'
'
and semantic properties of what a linguist would regard as the grammar ,
and working on the basis of statistical properties of their distribution over
a large corpus , may well represent the only practicable possibility for
automatically extending such dictionaries . Full -blown deterministic parsing
of the corpora of the requisite size using linguistically respectable
grammars and/ or semantic interpretations and deterministic parsing , is
impracticably expensive computationally , using existing techniques, to the
extent that it is possible at all .
Second, the present study demonstrates the important fact that the information
needed to determine verb subcategorisationsactually is there in the
distribution of these very low-level properties in input of the kind that
children are actually exposedto. For example, one of the apparent problems
for acquisition of subcategorisationframes on the basis of syntactic information
alone is the systematicambiguity in all languagesbetweensubcategorised
arguments and nonsubcategorised adjuncts, illustrated for English by the
following pair of sentences:
( la) We put Harry on the bus

( 1b) We met Harry on the bus
M . Steedman/ Acquisition of verb categories 473
How can the child avoid erroneously subcategorising meet like put ? Brent
'
points out that it doesn t matter if they do, because it is (presumably
universally) the case that the relative frequency with which the sequence
V N P PPOll occurs will be significantly higher for verbs like put that
subcategorisefor NPs and on PPs than for those like meet which subcate-
gorise for NP and only allow PP as an adjunct. Binomial error estimation is
able to distinguish the two distributions , and reject the child ' s spurious
evidence from analyses suggesting that meet subcategorises for the PP.
Similar results seemto follow for spurious occurrencesof subcategorisations
arising from extraction, as in who did you put on the bus, which might appear
otherwise to suggestthat put might subcategorisefor PP alone.
It is therefore reasonableto ask whether the child languagelearner actually
makes use of such purely syntactic cues to learn the lexical categories of
verbs. Here Brent is extremely cautious, and goesout of his way to acknowledge
the possible involvement of prosodic and semanticcuesas well. He notes
in passing that there are a number of open questions that need answering
before we can be quite comfortable with the assumption that the child is
using the closed-class cues. The most important is that both the function
words themselvesand the cue sequencesbasedon them are language-specific.
The question arisesof how the child can possibly catch on to the fact that it ,
that and the are cue words, much lessthat the sequenceV it the suggeststhat
V is probably a ditransitive verb, while the sequenceV that the suggeststhat
V is probably a complement verb. It is hard to see that there is any
alternative to knowing , besidesthe set of possible subcategorisation frames,
(a) the precisesyntactic significanceof each closed class word as NP , Specof
CP, etc., and (b) some statistics about possible corpora, including facts such
as that complement-taking verbs are more common than ditransitives. 1
I shall remain equally cautious in the face of such open questions, and
certainly would not wish to claim that the child cannot be using such cues.
However, as long as these questions remain open, it also remains unclear
whether we have escapedwhat Brent identifies as the ' chicken-or -egg prob-
lem' of apparently needing to know some syntax to apply this procedure.
This suggeststhat there may be some point to asking ourselves what other
resources the child could call upon, and in particular whether the two
alternatives that Brent mentions, prosody and semantics, can help a child
1 It is not
enough to assumethat the child simply looks out for verbs followed by all possible
' ' ' '
sequences cue words, classifying verbs as ;t + the verbs , that + the verbs , etc. Such a
of
classification does not determine a subcategorisation.
474 M . SteedmanI Acquisition of verb categories
learn the first elements of syntax, including their first subcategorisations, in

the face of the kind of uncertainties in the input which he identifies.
3. Prosody
Although Brent shows how misanalysesarising from the argument/adjunct

ambiguity can be overcome, the consequencesof some other quite similar
sorts of ambiguity , such as that betweenprepositions and particles illustrated
below, are not so easily eliminable by distribution -basedmethods, since verbs
2
subcategorisefor ambiguous items like up in both its guises:
(2a) Werang up the hotel

(2b) Weran up the hill
In the case of particles and prepositions it seemsintuitively highly likely
that prosody disambiguates the two. Lederer and Kelly ( 1991) have shown
that adults can reliably identify which of the two a speakerhas uttered. They
have shown similar effects for the argument/adjunct alternation. Kelly ( 1992
and this volume) presents results which suggest that a number of further
apparent ambiguities are also correlated with prosodic distinctions. It is true
that none of theseprosodic discriminators are invariably present. Nor does it
seemat all likely that all the relevant ambiguities are marked in this way. For
-
example, I know of no evidence that the V PP sequence arising from
extraction in (a), below, differs in any prosodic repect from that in (b) :
(3a) Who did you put on the bus

(3b) Who did you run up the hill with
However, where the information is marked, it may well be reliable enough to

be used as evidenceunder appropriate distribution -based techniques such as
'
Brent' s own, especially when we recall that adult s speech to children is
characterisedby exaggeration of normal intonation contours.
Z Brent suggeststhat spurious analyses of verbs like ring as subcategorising for PP can be
eliminated by observing sets of subcategorisations, presumably meaning that we can reclassify
verbs that have been assigned subcategorisationsof both PP and NP + P. However, this is a
distinct (and language-specific) complication to the proposal, and appears likely to conflict with
the other usesthat have been proposed for such sets. The prosodic cues discussedbelow would
allow this particular complication to be eliminated from his account.
M . Steedman/ Acquisition o/ verb categories 475
However, a word of caution is in order here. Adult speakers do not

actually use intonation to indicate syntactic structure, but to convey the
distinctions of discourse meaning that are variously described in tenDS of
' focus' or of ' ' ' '
, oppositions such as topic/ comment , given/ new and the like.
While the elements that are marked in this way correlate with syntactic
structure, this is for semantic reasons, rather than for ease of processing.
When adults exaggerate intonation contours in speaking to children, it is
extremely unlikely that they are using the intonational markers in any very
different way. It is therefore quite possible that children use this infonnation
as a semantic, rather than syntactic, cue, as part of the third strategy under
consideration here.
4. Semantics
As soon as it was appreciated that even quite trivial classesof grammar

cannot be learned by mere exposureto their stringsets, and that there appears
to be little evidencethat any more explicit guidance is provided by adults, it
was obvious that some other source of infonnation , ' innate' in the sensethat
it is available to the child prelinguistically, must guide them in acquiring their
grammar. As has often beenpointed out , the only likely candidate is semantic
3
interpretation or the related conceptual representation. However inadequate
'
o~r formal (and even infonnal ) grasp on the child s prelinguistic conceptuali-
sation of the conversational situation , there can be no doubt that it has one,
for even non-linguistic animals have that much. There can therefore be no
doubt that this cognitive apparatus, for reasons which have nothing to do
with languageas such, partitions the world into functionally relevant ' natural
kinds' of the kind investigated by Landau in this volume, individual entities,
including events, propositions, and such grammatically relevant notions as
actual and potential participants and properties of those events, as well as the
attitudes and attentional focus of other conversational participants. Since the
main thing that syntax is for is passing concepts around, the belief that
syntactic structure keeps as close as possible to semantics, and that in both
J In thecontextof modernlinguistics goesbackat leastto Chomsky( 1965: 56-

, the suggestion
). But of courseit is a mucholder idea. SeePinker( 1979
59) and Miller ( 1967 ) for a reviewof
someproposedmechanisms , includingthe importantcomputationalwork of Anderson( 1977 ),
and seeGleitman( 1990 ) for somecogentwarningsagainstthe assumptionthat suchsemantic
representationshavetheir origin solelyin presentperceptionand thematerialworld in anysimple
senseof that term.
476 M . SteedmanI Acquisition l?f verb categories
evolutionary and child language acquisition terms, the early development of

syntax amounts to little more than hanging words onto the preexisting
armatures of conceptual structure is so simple and probable as to amount to
the null hypothesis. 4
Of course, as Chomsky has repeatedly pointed out , this realisation gets us
practically nowhere. We have such a poor grasp of the nature of the putative
underlying conceptualstructures that it is difficult to even designexperimental
tests of the claim (quite apart from the other difficulties that arise in doing
experimentswith prelinguistic childrenS Gleitman and others in the present
volume have made considerable headway in the face of thesedifficulties, but
there is a long way to go. For similar reasons to do with limitations on
current knowledge, it does not seemto constrain syntactic theory in any very
'
useful way. Right now (and this is Chomsky s substantive point ), the most
reliable entry to the human system of language and symbolic cognition that
'
we have comes from the linguists phenomenological grasp of the syntactic
epiphenomenon, which has only just begun to look as though it is yielding
some insight into the underlying conceptual structure.
Nevertheless, the claim that semantics is the precursor of syntax is not
without content, and has consequencesfor the question at hand. In particular
, it immediately entails that if we are asking ourselveswhy children do not
classify meet as subcategorisingfor NP PP on the basis of sentenceslike ( lb ),
we met Harry on the bus, then we are simply asking the wrong question. A
child who learns this instance of this verb from this sentencemust start from
the knowledge that the denoted event is a meeting, and that this involves a
'
transitive event concept. It usually never crossesthe child s mind that meet
might subcategoriselike put , becausethe conceptual representation usually
'
doesn t suggestthat.
Once again, taking this position raisesmore questions than it answers. We
are only just beginning to make sense of the complex mapping between
surfacegrammatical roles like subject and object, and the underlying thematic
roles that seemto be characteristic of the conceptual level. (I am particularly
thinking of recent work by Grimshaw 1990.) It also raises the question of
4 The use of the words ' little more' rather than ' nothing more' is important . It would not be
-
surprising to find that some part of syntax perhaps the observed constraints upon consistent
orders across headsand complements - had its origin elsewherethan in semantics.
5 I am not saying that logicians and my fellow computer scientists do not have interesting
fonnalisms for representingconceptual structures. In fact these systemsare the main source of
fonnal theoretical devices that linguists have to draw on. But as knowledge representation
systems, none of them as yet seemparticularly close to the human one.
M. Steedman
I Acquisitionof verbcategories 477
'
whether the child s conceptual representation really can be used reliably in
this fashion , which Pinker ( 1989) has called ' semantic bootstrapping ' , and , if
not . how the child can cope with its unreliability .
S. Syntacticandsemantic
Gleitman ( 1990) argues very persuasively that the child must often find
itself in a situation which is ambiguous with respect to the conceptual
representation. To take one of her examples, a child who is being read a story
from their picture-book about a fox and a rabbit may have insufficient
information from their understanding of the story and from a picture of the
fox running after the rabbit to tell whether an unknown verb in an adult
sentenceof the form ' The fox is V ER Sing the rabbit ' should be associated
with the concept of chasing, or the concept of fleeing. In a number of elegant
experiments, she and Landau and their colleagueshave shown that children
who are artificially placed in this situation identify whichever conceptual
representationis consistent with the syntactic form of the sentence. Since this
is the only information that appearsto be available to the children as a basis
for the decision, they argue that children are capable of using a process of
' '
syntactic bootstrapping to aid them in learning the subcategorisationsof
verbs. Such a processrequires the child to generalisefrom its existing partial
'
knowledge of syntax and verbal subcategorisations, perhaps via the linking
'
ru1es discussedby Pinker and his colleagues(cf. Gropen et al. 1991).
Gleitman' s proposal is in principle entirely consistent with semantic boot-
'
strapping in the senseoutlined here. It is actually quite likely that the child s
'
conceptual representation isn t much more underspecifiedthan being ambiguous
as to whether this situation is an instance of transitive chasing or
transitive fleeing, and a few other equally relevant propositions. That is, we
can probably assumethat the child knows what it is to be ' read a story' , that
the story is ' about the fox trying to eat the rabbit ' , and a lot of relevant facts
such as that ' to eat something you have to catch it ' , ' rabbits don' t like being
' '
eaten , and so on. (If they don t know stuff like this, then they may be in a
position to learn the nouns, but probably not to learn the verbs.) In this case,
there aren' t likely to be that many other possibilities, and syntactic bootstrap-
ping may well reduce the set to one possible meaning. If so, it may well do so
in the face of syntactic complications that are irrelevant to subcategorisations,
such as the presenceof modifiers or adjuncts. Their presencewill not prevent
the child from acquiring the meaning of the verb, which it must have already
478 M . Steedman/ Acquisition of verb categories
as one of a number of alternatives that syntactic bootstrapping correctly

disambiguates, if learning is to take place at all.
One piece of circumstancial evidence in support of this conjecture is that
adults work this way too. There is increasing experimental evidencethat the
adult sentenceprocessing mechanism deals with the huge degree of nondeterminism
that arises from natural grammars by appealing to meaning,
filtering out the myriad spurious paths that the grammar permits on the basis
of whether they make sense, both on the basis of sentence-internal semantics,
and of reference and extension in the context. This semantic filtering of
spurious paths which would otherwise overwhelm the computational resources
of the processor has been claimed to go on continually at every point in
the parsing process, with very fine ' grain' , probably more or less word by
word . (See Steedman and Altmann 1989 and Clifton and Ferreira 1989 for
referencesand arguments pro and contra this proposal, which ultimately
comes from computer science, particularly in work by Winograd 1972.)
Nevertheless, it may well be the case, as Gleitman suggests , that children
are frequently much more at sea than this, and may even have much larger
sets of propositions in mind , most or even all of which are irrelevant to the
adult meaning. However, recent computational work by Siskind ( 1992) shows
that a processof intersecting such setson successiveencounterswith the verb
can be used to eliminate the spurious meanings. 6
Of course, children are not adults, and neither are they mind readers, and a
' '
meaning that seems appropriate to them over a number of iterations of this
' ' ' '
processmay not be the same as the adult s. The child s concept of chasing
'
(we may imagine as an extension of Gleitman s example) may be overspecifically
restricted to an activity of attempting to catch by running . In this case,
' '
their own future use may be characterised by undergeneralisation - for
example, they may be unwilling to agreethat a similar scenario involving cars
is chasing. There is of course a huge literature that has revealedthe fine detail
of this process. 7 There are also instancesof overgeneralisation, and possibly
6 Two
problems which Siskind leaves open are the problem of polysemous verbs, and the
problem that ariseswhen the set of putative meaningsderived from an occurrenceof the verb are
all spurious. Both of these eventualities will lead to empty intersections. One simple tactic that
might serveto distinguish them and thereby be used to maintain a coherent lexicon would be to
respond to an empty intersection by keeping both entries, relying on a tactic like binomial error
estimation to distinguish between true polysemous lexical entries and spurious ones on distributional
grounds.
1 For
example, Brown ( 1973), Bowerman ( 1973) and Clark ( 1973), and Carey ( 1982), the last
including an extensivereview.
M. Steedman
I Acquisitionof verbcategories 479
'
even more bizarre ' complexes, revealed in non-standard lexical meanings.
There is also evidencethat children predict new lexical entries that they have
not actually encountered, via lexical rules such as the rule that generates
causative verbs from certain adjectives, such as cool. This process may on
occasiongive rise to non-standard lexical causatives, as in # It colds my hand,
either becauseof slightly non-standard lexical rules, or becausestandard rules
are applied to slightly non-standard lexical entries. (SeeBowerman 1982and
referencestherein.)
The way in which children successivelymodify non-standard lexical items
to approximate the adult lexicon is the most challenging and least well-
understood part of the process. But the undoubted fact that the processes of
syntactic and semantic bootstrapping appear to iterate in this way suggests
that together they may constitute the processby which children gain accessto
concepts which are not immediately available to prelinguistic sensory-motor
cognition , and may thereby provide the force behind the explosive change in
cognitive abilities that coincides, both in evolutionary and in child -developmental
terms, with the appearanceof language. 8 Computational models of
the kind proposed by Brent and Siskind will continue to provide the only way
in which theories of this process, such as syntactic, prosodic and semantic
' '
bootstrapping , can be developed and evaluated.
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Appendix
--
Symbolsfromthe
Phonetic
International
, with
Alphabet examples
-
a st.QP , C2P m man, him
a ~ , ~ ther
Im n ,n.ose, aImoy
.. f.@
:t, pl.@:cid IJ wi!!,l, sink
A byt, ft.Q.Qd ou gQ, SQY1
aJ ~ , kite .') w.@ .w
.lk , I.@
au ~ I, h~ 0 w.@ .nt, astron.@ .Y.t
b ,hoss , ho,ho .')1 v
bQil, .Qice
tl ~ balo, pi~ P eie, nae
d go, hag r rim, parrot
d3 w~ e, rase s .'-imon, bog
el b.@:!t, d~ I mip, f~ al
~ gmong, readily t lawn, walkeg
w~ ther, ! DY 9 !hiD, mytJ !
f felt, left 6 !l!en, wea!lier
g So, les u r.QQf , ft~
h hat, how u l.QQk , fyll
'
h Ohio, ahead 3r bird, wQ!St
I ~ I, ~ v yoice, giye
I if, remit w m , qyail
j ~et, can~on x (Spanish ) proteFr ,
(Dutch) ka~ el
k ~ , bac -k z ~ I, ~
I lip, bill 3 lealure, garale
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Author Index
Abbs, J. H., 439, 446, 451 Boomer, D. S., 23, 247

Abercrombie , D., 392 -Braem
Boyes , P., 223
Anderson , J. R., 17, 19- 2I , 73- 75, 77, 93, Bransford, J. D., 113
154 BrazilD., 315
Anderson , W. G., 414 , S., 127
Breskin
Appelt, D. A., 124 Bresnan , J., 74, 161- 162. 170, 189, 193,
Arbib, M. A., 446 197, 235, 338
Arnold, G. F., 307, 310 Broadbent , D. E., 21, 119
Aston, C. H., 388 Brodda, B., 449, 453
Atkinson, J. M., III Browman , C. P., 320, 327, 445
Austin, J. L., 58 Brown, G., 23, 36, 112- 113, 147- 148, 307,
400, 403- 405
Baars,B. J., 356- 358, 461- 462, 464- 465, Brown, G. D. A., 199
468, 477 Brown, P., 137
Baddeley , A., 10 Brown, R., 113, 320
Barth, M., 74 Bruner, J. S., 29
Barwise , J., 74 Buhler, K., 45- 46, 53- 54, 89
Bassett, M. R., 391 Burkle, B., 51- 52, 156
Bates, E., 121, 147, 262, 265. 268, 270, Butterworth, B., 23, 36, 109, 126, 128, 183,
212- 213 186, 203, 217- 218, 222, 231
, L., 185
Bauer Buttrick, S., 48
Beattie - 128
. G.. 23. 33.35.68. 126 . 203
Beaugrande , R. de, III Calvert , D. R., 425,428,434
Bell-Berti, F., 443 Camden , C. T., 461,465,468
Berg, T., 249 Carr, T. H., 20
Berko-Gleason , J., 320 Carroll,J. M., 196 , 262
Berian, R. W., 414 Chafe . W. L.. 23, 36, 119 , 138
, 148, 267
Bever , T. G., 23 Chistovich , L. A., 23, 35I
Bierwisch , M., 93, 179, 216, 218, 248 Choi, S., 52
Bleasdale , F. A., 320 Chomsky , N., 305
Bloem, I., 400 Clark, E. V., 23, 46, 54, 85, 128 , 139, 200,
Bock, J. K., 14, 16, 20, 23, 192, 236, 261, 213,229,267
263- 265, 267, 273- 275, 278- 281, 303, Clark, H. H., 23, 43, 48- 49, 59, 65- 67, 85,
394- 396 94, 120 , 122 , 128 , 133 , 148
, 136 , 185 , 229,
Boehme , K., 46 267
BolingerD ., 165, 307 Clark, J. E., 470- 471
Bond, Z. S., 471 Clements , G. N., 290,292,297
Author Index 540
Clifton, C., Jr., 464 Fanshel, D., 112
Cohen,A., 214, 399 Fauconnier , G., 94
Cole, K. J., 451 Fay, D., 14, 184, 218, 248, 254- 256, 355,
Collier, R., 307, 310, 400, 404- 405 462
Cooper, F. S., 441 Feigenbaum , E., 205
Cooper, W. E., 14, 264, 388- 389, 394- 396, Fel'dman , A. G., 438
400, 471 Fillmore , C. J., 46, 48, 53- 55, 90, 97- 98,
Coulthard, M., 315 103 , 266,272
Craik, F. I., 320 FiskeD. W., 35
Crompton, A., 327, 329, 336, 340, 346, 348 Floresd'Arcais , G. B., 20, 223-224,226,
Cruse, D. A., 187 262,269
Cruttenden , A., 307, 310, 314 Fodor,J. A., 15,20, 22- 23, 74, 94, 201
Currie, K. L., 113, 307, 400, 403- 405 Folkins , J. W., 439,446
Cutler, A., 35, 165, 171- 172, 184, 186, Ford, M., 23, 256-259,282
199, 214, 247, 255, 307, 326, 344, 348, Foss , D. J., 23
355, 372, 392, 396- 397, 462- 464, 477, Fowler , C. A., 147 , 438- 440,444- 447,
495 449- 450,452- 453
Francik , E. P., 136
Daniloff, R. G., 444 Francis , W. N., 219
Danks, J. H., 24, 27 Franck , D., 39
Danly, M., 388- 389 Freud , S., 214,217,234
Dauer, R. M., 393- 394 Friederici , A., 49
Davidson -Nielson, N., 336 Frijda,N., 74
Deese , J., 65, 306, 316, 386, 390, 393 Fromkin , V. A., 184 , 200,214,216,218-
Dell, G. S., 13- 14, 16, 19- 20, 137, 211, 221,247- 248,325,328,330- 332,335-
218, 319, 330- 331, 334, 342, 351- 354, 336,338,340,347-350
356- 360, 362- 363, 366, 469, 474- 476 Fry, D., 24
Denes , P. B., 426, 431 Fujimura , 0 ., 332,388- 389
De Pijper, J. R., 400, 403 Fujisaki , H., 444
De Rooij, J. J., 381
De Smedt,K., 235, 253, 468, 486 Gallistel , C. R., 435
Deutsch , W., 46, 121, 129, 131, 133 Gardiner , J. M., 320
Devescovi , A., 262, 268, 270 Garding , E., 307
Diehl, R. L., 444 Garfield , J. L., 22
Dik, S. C., 74 Garnham , A., 114 , 199
Dixon, R. M. W., 55 Garnsey , S. M., 469
Dogil, G., 370, 408 Garrett , M. F., 14,23- 24, 201,204,216,
Doherty, M., 102 218,220- 222,247-249,255,282,303,
Donders,F. C., 200 324,336,371- 372,378,497
Drew, P., III Garrod , S., 119 , 154
DuBois, J. W., 485 Gay, T., 388,439,445,449
Dfingelhoff,F. J., 226- 227 Gazdar , G., 41, 63- 64, 170
DuncanS., 34 Gee , J. P., 259,386,390- 391
Gelfer , C. E., 400
Eady, S. J., 394- 396 Gerrig , R. J., 43
Easton,T. A., 448 Gerstman , L. J., 127
Ehrich, V., 51- 52, 58, 112, 142, 155- 157 Gill, J., 259
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., 30, 37 Glaser , W. R., 226- 227
Eriksen,C. W., 414 Gotrman , E., 111 - 112
, 495
Erwin, C. 1., 416 Goguen ~J. A., 112
Ewan, W. G., 449 Goldman , N., 205- 206
Author Index 541
Goldman, S. R., 263 Hopper, P. I., 137

Goldman-Eisler, F., 23, 126, 128, 203- 204, Hotopf, W. H. N., 199, 216, 219- 220
259 Housum,J., 147
Goldstein,L., 327, 350, 445 Huijbers, P., 187, 231, 258
Good, D. A., 128 Humphreys , G. W., 230, 232
Goodglass , H., 320 Hurwitz, S., 154
Goodwin, C., 33, 36- 37 Huttenlocher , J., 225- 226, 230
Gordon, P. C., 351, 419 M.
Hyde, , 320
Gray, W., 223 Hymes,D., 42
Grice, H. P., 30, 39- 41, 43- 44, 47, 53, 59,
66- 67, 69, 123, 129, 133, 148, 158, 213 Irwin, D. E., 263, 265
Grimes,J. E., 23 Isaacs, E. A., 133, 148
Grosjean , F., 36, 259, 386, 390- 391 lsard, S., 165, 171- 172, 247, 392
- , L., ~86
Grosjean
Grosz, B. J., 112- 113, 119 Jackendoff , R., 74, 79, 84, 87, 90, 94, 168
,
Gruber, J. S., 90 170
Gumperz , J. J., 42 Jaffe
, J., 127
Gussenhoven , C., 307 James , D., 482
James , W., 119 , 320
Hagoort , P., 400 Jarvella , R. J., 46, 121
Hakes , D. T., 23 Jassem , W., 393- 394
Hale,K., 169 Jefferson , G., 23, 31, 33, 111, 458
Halle,M., 289,291,305,441 Jenkins , J. J., 216
Halliday , M. A. K., 23, 35, 165
, 271,307, Johns , C., 315
- 393
392 Johnson , D., 223
Johnson , M. K., 113
Hankamer
. G.. 185 Johnson -Laird, P. N., 46, 58, 72, 74, 84,
Harley , T. A., 122
, 129
, 218,221 113 - 114 , 195 , 200,207- 209
Harris,K. S., 439,443 Jones , H. G. V., 320- 321
Hart, J. 't, 307,310,399,404- 405 Jongman , A., 399
Hassan, R., 271 Jorgenson , J., 43
Haviland, S. E., 120 Joshi, A., 119
Hawkins,J., 82, 260
Hawkins. P. R.. 23 Kaisse , E. M., 166 , 302,367- 369,377,408
Hayes . B.. 292 Kamp,H., 114
Healy . A. F.. 330. 339
. 350 Kao, H. S. R., 435
J-Jeesch D. c.. 400
Pc Katz, W., 399
Henderson , A., 126- 127 Keele, S. W., 416
Hennan. S. J.. 121 Keenan , E. L., 194
Hemnann, T., 23, S2, 66, 119, 124, 131, Keenan , J., 121
I ~~- I~S Kelly, M. H., 394-396
Hill. C.. SO
. 52 Kelso , J. A. S., 439- 440,446- 447,449-
Hill, D. R., 393 450,452
Hillier, C. S., 203 KelterS., 122 , 221,273,275
Hindle , D., 497 Kempen , G., 14,24- 25, 28, 121 , 187
, 162 ,
Hockett , C. F., 482 231,235- 237,240,244,249,253,258,
Hoenkamp , E., 14, 24- 25, 28, 162, 206, 275,282,468,486- 489,491,497
235- 237, 240, 244, 249, 252- 253, 275, Kenstowicz , M., 166
282 Kent, R. D., 440
Holmes,V. M., 23, 256- 260, 282 Kenworthy,J., 113 , 307,400,403-405
Holt, K. G., 447 Keyser , S. J., 292
Hoosain, R., 435 Kiegl, R., 270
Author Index
Kintsch , W., 74, 121 Linde,C., 112 , 139 , 143

Kiparsky , P., 286 Lindsley , J. R., 258
Kisseberth , C., 166 Linell, P., 285
Klapp,S. T., 410,414- 419,454,473 Longuet -Higgins , H. C., 297
Klatt, D. H., 330,339-340,350,389 Lounsbury , F. G., 203
Klein, W., 46, SO , 52- 53, 89, 112 - 137
, 136 , Lovins , J. B., 332
139 Lubker , J., 439,445
Kloker,D., 389 Lucas, D., 320
Knoll, R. L., 417,419-421 Lyons , J., 44, 46, 55, 57- 58, 62, 197
, 207
Kohler,K. J., 436
Kohn, S. E., 320 Maassen , B., 16, 162 , 231,258,276-278,
Koriat, A., 320 280- 281
Kosslyn , S. M., 72 MacKay , D., 19,331- 332,350-351,353,
Koster , C., 112 , 142 356- 357,462,465,470,474- 477,498
Kowal,S., 391 Maclay , H., 199 , 203
Kozhevnikow , V. A., 23, 351 MacLure , M., 36
Krauss , R. M., 148 MacNeilage , P. F., 438,442,445- 446,451
Krach,A., 497 MacWbinney , B., 97, 121, 147, 265,267,
Kubicek , L. F., 225,230 270,272- 273,344,348
Kucera , H., 219 Madigan , S., 264
Kugler , P. N., 447 Makkai,A., 187
Malinowski , B., 104
la BergeD., 20 Mangoid , R., 131
Laboy , W., 111 - 112, 139, 143 Marshall , J. C., 22
Lackner , J. R., 471- 472,474 Marslen -Wilson , W., 35, 147- 148, 473,
Ladd.D. R.. 165 . 176. 307.309.385.399 492
Ladefoged , P., 438 Martin, J. G., 203
LaHeij, W., 438 Martin, J. R., 113
Lakoff,R., 57 Masling , M., 121
Lane, H., 386 Mayer , K., 214,216- 217,248
Langford , S., 320,321 Mayhew , D., 121
Laver, J. D. M., 14,247,468 McNeill,D., 12,23- 24, 74, 94, 285,320
Medin,D. L., 183
Menn,L., 320
Meringer , R., 214,216- 217,248,463-464,
470,478,480
Mervis , C. B., 223
Metzler , J., 72
Meyer , A., 353-354,360,409- 410
Meyer , D. E., 351,419
Mill, A. I. D., 199
Miller, G. A., 21, 43, 46, 48, 58, 74, 119 ,
183 , 185 , 195 , 200,207- 209,212
Mittelstaedt , H., 49
Mittenecker , E., 320
Mohanan , K. P., 163 , 289,291
Moll, K. L., 444
Monsell , S., 417,419-421
Montague , R., 74, 77, 79, 88
Montague , W. E., 414
Montgomery , M., 36
Morton,J., 201,203
Author Index 543
Motley, M. T., 356, 461- 462, 464- 466, Pollock , M. D., 414
468- 469, 474, 477 Pols,L. C. W., 432
Munro, A., 139 Posner , M. 1., 20, 73
Power , M. J., 127
Nakatani, L. H., 388- 390, 392- 393 Premack , D., 73
Neilson, M. D., 451 Prentice , J. L., 262- 263
Neilson, P. D., 451 Priller,J., 320
Nelson, L. J., 471 Prince, A., 298
Nespor, M., 302- 303, 370, 373, 378, 381, Prince, E., 114 , 146, 148
392, 408 Pullum , G. K., 375- 376,378,408
Newell, A., 17, 143, 321 Pylyshyn , Z. W., 22
Ninnaier, H., 51
Nolan, F. J., 440 Quinlan, P. T., 230
Noordman, L. G. M., 212 Quirk, R., 2, 43
Noordman-Vonk, W., 183
Nooteboom , S., 149, 273, 350, 357, 387- Reason , J., 320
390, 463- 464, 470, 478, 480, 485 Recanati , F., 59
Nonnan, D. A., 74 Redeker , G., 148
Nunberg,G., 47- 48, 53, 134 Reich, P. A., 218, 351, 356
Reichenbach , H., 56
Ochs-Keenan . E.. 41- 42 Reinelt, R., 112, 139
O'Connell . D. C.. 391 Reinhart,T., 98- 99, 137, 265
O'Connor . J. D.. 307.310 Remez , R. E., 438, 450, 453
O'Connor . K. D.. 388 Richardson, G., 438
Ohala . J. J.. 400 Riddoch, M. J., 230
Ohman . S. E. G.. 453 RochesterS. R., 113, 259
Ojemann . G. A.. 441 Rommetveit , R., 262- 263
Oldfield . R. C.. 199 . 230 Rooth, M., 89
Oiler. D. K.. 446 Rosch, E., 155, 223
Olson . D. R.. 129 Ross,J. R., 65, 264
Osgood , C. E., 23, 44, 148 , 203,267-
, 199 Roudet, L., 387
269,272 Rubin, D. C., 320
Ouweneel , G. R. E., 166 , 367 Rubin, P., 438, 450, 453
Rumelhart , D. E., 19, 74
Paccia -Cooper,J. M., 14, 389 Ryalis, J., 400
Paivio, A., 264 Ryave,A. L., III
Pa1enno , D. S., 216
Parker, F., 444 Sacks, H., 23, 31, 33, 35- 36, 39, 111,459
Parkes , C. H., 201 Sadock , J., 63
Partee , B., 89 Saltzman , E. L., 439- 440, 446, 450
Pearson , M., 35 Samuels, S. J., 20
Pechmann , T., 46, 129- 133, 150, 273 Sanford, A., 113 , 119
Perdue , , 42
C. , D., 35
Schaffer
Perfetti, C. A., 263 Schank, R. C., 74, 90, 139
Perkell,J. S., 442- 444, 446, 453, 456 Schegioff, E. A., 23, 31, 36, 112
, 458,
Perry, J., 74 460-461,463,497
Petrie, H., 126 Schenkein , J., 122 , 273
Pick, H. L., 463 , K., 102
Scherer , 307
Pierrehumbert , J., 307 , D., 38
Schiffrin
Pike, K., 332 Schlesinger , I. M., 23, 104
Pinker, S., 192, 194, 197- 198 Schmerling , S., 165
Pinson,E. N., 426, 431 Schneider , W., 20
Author Index S44
Schouten , M. E. H., 432 Taylor, I., 259

Schreuder , R., 48, 206,212,223-224,226 Tent, J., 470- 471
Schriefers , H., 188 , 227- 230 Terken, J. M. B., 132, 147, 149, 273
Schunk , D. H., 65- 66 Teulings , H. L., 435
Scollon , R., III Thomassen , A. J. W. M., 435
Scollon , S. B. K., III Thorson, N., 307
Scott, D., 391 Toner, H., 166
Searle , J. R., 60- 61, 64- 65, 69 Treiman, R., 330, 333, 336, 338
Selkirk , E., 165 - 166 , 174 , 176, 287,289, Tuller, B., 439, 446, 452, 471- 472, 474
291-292,298- 299,303- 306,361,373- Turner, E., 262- 263
374,379- 380,382- 383,387,391,394, Turvey, M. T., 438- 439, 446- 448, 450
420 Tye-Murray, N., 471
Senft
, G., 104 Tyler, L., 35, 147- 148, 473, 492
Seuren , P. A. M., 22, 74, 101 , 114, 118
, 197
Seymour , P. H. K., 223 Umeda,N., 389
Sbankweiler , D. S., 441
Shattuck -Hufnagel , S., 319,321,330- 332, Vaissiere, J., 307, 389
334- 335,338- 343,346,350,357- 358, Valian, V. V., 257
360,362 Van Bezooijen , R., 102, 307
Shepard , R. N., 72, 154 VandenBroecke , M. P. R., 350
Shitrrin , R. M., 20 Vander Sandt, R. A., 118
Sbillcock , R. S., 199 Van Dijk , T. A., 112
Sidner , C. L., 112 - 113 , 119 VanGalen, G. P., 435
Siegel, D., 286 VanWijk, C., 259, 303, 391, 468, 487- 489,
Siegel, G. M., 463 491, 497
Silvennan , K., 307 Vatikiotis-Bateson , E., 452
Simon , H. A., 17, 143 Vogel, I., 302- 303, 370, 373, 378, 381, 392,
Skarbek , A., 126 408
Siobin , D., 104 Vorberg, D., 227
Small , L. H., 471
Smith , E., 183 , R., 166
Wales
Snyder , C. R. R., 20, 73 Walker, E. C. T., 201
Sonnenschein , S., 131 , T., 444
Walsh
Sorensen , J. M., 400 Walton. D. N.. 112
Sorokin , V. N., 449 Warren, R. K., 192, 261, 263- 265
Sowa , J. F., 74 Webber , B. L., 114
Sperber , D., 40- 41, 43- 44, 59, 63- 64, 73, Webelhuth , G., 163
101 Weindrich,D., 135
Sridhar , S. N., 148 , 265,267- 270,272-273 Weinheimer , S., 148
Steedman , M. J., 57- 58, 207 Weinstein , S., 119
Sternberger , J. P., 218,247,249,256,326, Weissenborn , J., 46, 53
330,332,334,336- 338,344,348,351, Wells, G., 36
356- 357,371- 372,474 Wells, R., 332
Sternberg , S., 414,416- 421,454 Wessels , J., 35
Stevens , K., 432-433,440- 442,446 Whorf, B. L., 103
Strange , W., 203 Wiche, R. T. P., 74
Studdert -Kennedy , M., 441 Wickelgren , W. A., 357
Stutterheim , C. von, 136 - 137 Wilkes-Gibbs, D. L., 122, 133, 148
Svartvik , J., 2, 43 Willems, N., 399
Williams, E., 89
Tannenbaum , P. H., 203, 262 Williams, F., 203, 262
Tanz, C., 46 Wilshire, C., 343
Author Index S4S
WilsonD., 40- 41, 43-44, 59, 63- 64, 73,

101
Wingfield, A., 230,320
Winterhoff -Spurk , P., 135
Witten,I. H., 393
Wright,C. E., 417,419-421
Wunderlich , D., 40, 52, 64, 112, 139
Wundt,W., 23, 26, 28, 96, 119 , 162, 235,
239,261,275,417 .
Wyatt,E. P., 417
Yanney , A. D., 320
Yogve , V. H., 36
YuiUe, J. C., 264
Yule,G., 23, 36, 112- 113 - 148
, 147
, D. A., 52
Zubin
Zwanenburg , W., 166 , 367
Zwicky. A.. 63. 369. 375 - 376
. 378
. 408
Subject Index
Abdominal muscles, 422 Active voice. SeePassive

Absolutive. SeeCase Activation
Accent, 297, 328. SeePitchaccent , Word conceptual , 198, 229, 275, 278
accent lemma, 181, 195, 197, 200- 201, 219- 221,
contrastive , 132- 133, 177 232, 244, 280
default, 177- 178 logogen , 202, 204
intonational, 309 meaning , 93, 96, 197, 231- 232
andisochrony , 392, 395, 397 phonological , 7, 231- 232, 280, 320, 397
nuclear,309 Activationspreading , 18- 20, 75, 211- 212,
primary, secondary , 309- 310 225, 233, 319- 320, 366- 367
prosodic, 130, 147 theoryof self-monitoring, 465, 467, 474-
in shifts, 372 477
stranding , 247, 282, 372 theoryof speech erron, 234, 346- 347,
Accentuation , 25, 132, 179, 283, 374. See 351- 363
alsoDe-accentuation Acousticgoals, 441- 442
of discriminatinginformation, 132 Actor. SeeThematicroles
of referentialexpressions , 150 Adjunct, 169
Access . SeeLexicalaccess Adaptive modeltheory, 45I
'
Accessibility Address
conceptual , 236, 260- 261, 264- 266, 275, in discourse model, 99, 118, 146, 151, 152,
278 159, 260, 271
lexical, 16, 260, 276- 277 in form lexicon, addressframes , 165, 187,
phonological , 281 191, 321- 329, 335- 337, 344, 346, 348-
of phoneticplan, 285 349, 361- 362, 367, 371, 373, 406, 408-
status(index) of referents , 108, 144- 146, 410, 419
149, 151, 159, 163, 237- 238, 246, 270- in linearization , 144
271, 401 Addressingfailures
of word fonns, 16, 276 oflemmas, 214- 222
Aa: ommodation(in speech errors), 249 of lexicalform, 162, 331, 346, 349, 351,
ofcase, 249 358
in connected speech , 364, 408, 411 Adjacencypain, 36
metrical, 299 Adjective, 148, 167- 169, 194- 196, 236, 253,
morphological , 364 476
segmental andallophonic,340, 364 affixes, 104
andstranding , 246 in compounds , 288
Accusative . SeeCase eliding, 271
Acknowledging function. SeeDeixis focusing , 178
Subject Index 548
Adjective(cont.) Antonymsin speech errorsand repairs,

marked/unmarked , 229- 230 185, 216, 219, 496
nodes , 476 Apartmentdescriptions , 139, 143
phrase , 180, 251, 255 Apperception , 26, 119
andprelexicalhesitation , 203 Apprehension , 119
root, 286- 287 Appropriateness repair. SeeRepair
andword accent , 306, 374, 393 Areafunction, 445
Adverbial Archiphoneme , 337
deictic, 48, 69 Argument
modal, 62, 403 conceptual , 169- 170, 174- 178, 189, 191--
temporal,55, 58, 69, 178 195, 245
Affix, 182- 183, 286, 288- 289, 299 external, 169, 182
in activationspreading , 352- 353, 355 Arousal(emotional ), 469
inflectional, 290 Arrangingfor expression , 138- 144. See
in spelloutprocedures , 324- 331, 344, 349, a/so Linearization
352, 362 Article, 167- 170, 203, 238
root (classI , primary), 185, 286- 288, 294, definite/indefinite,271- 273
299 in phonologicalwords, 377
shift, 372 in shifts, 371
word(classII , secondary ), 286- 289, 294 Articulation, Articulator, 7, 9, 22- 28, 102,
Affricatives , 434 180, 229, 259, 284- 285, 291, 296, 304,
Agent. SeeThematicrole 318, 328, 345, 361, 364, 410- 411, 413-
Agency,270 457, 473, 475, 497
andsaliency , 268- 269, 276 in delayedauditoryfeedback , 477
Agglutinativelanguage , 185, 289 effort, 408
Agonist/antagonist , 438 interruptionof, 13
Agrammatism , 22, 469 latencyof, 230, 259, 473
Alpha/gammaloop, 436, 437 monitoringof, 462, 472, 476
Allomorph, 301- 302, 317, 325, 331, 364, precisionof, 396, 410
367- 370, 375- 377, 406 Articulatornetwork, 450
Allophone, 296- 298, 327- 328, 340- 341, Articulatory
362, 434 buffer, 12, 28, 386, 473
Alternativeplans, 217 gesture , 295, 297, 318, 326, 346, 362, 409
Alternatingstress , 299, 306, 374, 394- 396 plan, 12- 13, 24, 28, 297, 318, 329, 386
Alveolarridge, 296, 430, 433, 442 placeof, 296, 472
Alveolars,433 units, 332
Ambiguity Artificial intelligence , 124, 205, 207
andconversational maxims,41, 129 Arytenoidcartilage , 424
of intentions , 67 Aspect, 55, 57, 100, 102- 103, 106, 165, 183,
of networkrepresentations , 77 191, 233
in referentialexpressions , 129 Aspirationof speech sounds , 296- 297
repairof, 461, 491 Assimilation , 369- 371, 406, 408, 411
Ambisyllabicity , 295 Assertion , 3, 10, 17, 300
Amnesticdisorders , 184 Assertivespeech act. SeeSpeech act
Anacrusis , 308, 373, 393- 394, 396 Association . SeeWord asSociation
Anaphora, ISO, 176, 271, 283 Associative
Anteriorspeech sounds , 296, 340, 433, 443 intrusions,214- 215, 219, 221, 234
Anticipationin speech errors, 347- 348, relationsin lexicon, 183- 184, 234
358- 359, 372, 468 Attention
Anticipatoryretracingin self-repairs, of addressee , 5, II , 35, 59, 68, 108, 110,
490- 491 136, 144, 147, 150- 152, 270, 311, 316
Subject Index 549
in lexicalretrieval, 21 Blend. SeeErrors

in monitoring, 9, 28, 463- 467, 471- 473, Bookkeeping , 110- 111, 114, 140, 143
487 Boundary , 171, 180, 310, 381, 390,
tone
andpausing , 127 401- 403, 421
in planning, 20, 28, 82, 89, 119, 126- 129, Brain, 18, 445- 446
158, 257 Breakdownpattern, 22
selective , 463, 465, 467, 498 Breakoption for phonologicalphrase ,
span, 119 304- 305, 308, 373, 379- 381, 385- 387,
Attentional 390, 400, 402
effort, 157 Breathing , speechversusnon-speech , 413,
focusing , 119, 141, 172, 176, 178, 316 423, 425, 429, 447- 449, 455
lapse129, 145, 487
pointer, 172 Call hierarchyin lP G, 244, 252, 256- 259
resources , 21, 27, 124, 126, 249, 467 andplanningunits, 257, 259
Attitude(speaker 's 44 57 61- 63, 90, Canonicalsettingfor speech , 29- 30, 45, 49,
), , ,
101 102, 171, 307, 311- 364, 366, 402,
- 55, 68
478. SeealsoCommitment Case
Audition, 9, 13, 475 absolutive , 169
Auditory accusative , 89, 163, 243, 251, 253- 254,
feedback , 443- 445, 474, 477. Seealso 263
Delayedauditoryfeedback dative, 163, 181, 193, 243, 248- 249, 254
goal, 442, 444- 445, 456 ergative , 168- 169
targets , 440, 442, 445, 456 marking, 161, 163, 169, 179, 235, 248,
Automaticityof processing , 2, 20- 22, 27- 254
28, 249- 250, 259, 270, 282, 447- 448, nominative , 6- 7, 163, 168, 240, 243, 248,
477 249, 25I , 253
Auxiliaries,7, 57, 193- 194, 197- 198, 253, Casualspeech , 368- 369, 406
299 Categorialprocedurein lP G, 238- 242,
modal, 197 244- 245, 250- 251, 254- 256, 261, 275,
reductionof, 302, 364, 375, 377- 378, 406 282
Awareness , 20- 22 Categories of experience , 78, 94- 95
Categoryidentity convention in selfrepairing
BABEL, 205 , 493- 494
Backchannelbehavior,36, 430 Causativeverbs, 54
Backgrounding , 71, 97, 137, 267, 315, 400 C-command , 377
Backtracking , 235, 253 Challenges , 61
Backwardsuppletionof presupposition , Changeof state, 62, 268
118, 146 Checkofffailurein speech errors, 346- 347
Basicclausepartitioning, 256- 257 Chronologicalorderin linearization , 138-
Basiclevelterms, 223 139, 159
Basicmetricalpatternof word, 284, 298- Citation formsof words, 364, 373- 374,
299, 323, 373- 374, 382, 384 382, 405, 407, 411
Basicobjectlevel, 223, 234 Classificatory particles, 104
Beat, 297- 299, 305, 383 Clause
demi, 304- 305 basic, 256- 258, 283, 303
movement , 306, 373- 374, 377, 382, 384, finite, 256- 258, 308
394 main, 167, 250, 252, 255, 308
silent, 380- 382, 385, 387, 391, 408, 420 subordinate , 254- 256, 258
Bernoullieffect, 426- 427 surface , 23, 256- 257
Bilabials,370, 432 Clitic, 307, 375, 317- 378
Biteblockexperiments , 439, 445- 446, Cliticization, 302, 307, 364, 370- 371, 373,
451- 452 375- 378, 380, 406- 408, 411
Subject Index 550
Cluster(of phonologicalsegments ), 293- Competingplans, 217

294, 319- 320, 325, 332- 338, 340, 342- Competitionmodel. 265. 270
344, 348- 349, 360- 361, 363, 369, 409, Complement , 7, 169- 170, 175- 176, 180,
419, 453 238- 239, 242, 250- 251, 255
composition , 327, 335, 337- 338, 344, nounphrase , 178, 196
348- 349, 361- 363, 409 sentential, 190. SeealsoS-COMP
spellout, 325, 337, 343- 344, 349 . verbal, 169, 190, 197. SeeqlsoV-COMP
Coarticulation , 7, 370, 490, 438, 443- 444, Componentiality , 200- 201
454, 457 Compound , 185- 186, 286, 288- 290, 382
Cocktailpartyeffect,462 Computermodels , 205, 235
Coda Conceptual
procedurefor phonologicalphrase , 379- accessibility . SeeAccessibility
380 argument , 169- 170, 172, 175- 176, 178,
of syllable,293, 294, 324- 325, 327- 330, 189- 195, 245
332- 335, 338, 344, 348- 349, 353, 357, core, 212
360- 362, 407- 410 feature,71, 104, 157, 204
Cognitive function,.79- 82, 189, 241
effort, 128, 157, 344 intrusionandspeech errors, 214- 215, 217,
impenetrability , 22 219- 220, 234
load, 128 modification , 82- 83, 196
stylein linearization , 154, 159 prominence , 147, 149- 151
system , 73, 202- 204 relations, IS, 27, 184, 216
Coherence specification in lemma, 188- 189, 195- 197,
conceptual , 118, 128 200, 217, 233, 237, 241, 245
of discourse , 283 Conceptualization , 6, 26, lOS, 181, 186,
syntactic , 275 205, 209. SeealsoMessage generation
Cohesion , 236, 271 Conceptualizer , 9- 10, 14, 16, 21, 25, 27, 70,
Cohesive 95, 105, 202, 237
grammaticalencoding , 236, 271, 461 Condition/actionpair (in productions ), 10,
reference , 271- 273 17, 72, 124- 125, 207, 240
syntax, 273 Configurationallanguage , 163, 166- 169,
Co- hyponym, 183- 184, 219 179- 180, 270
Collaborationin conversation , 65, 133 Congruency effect
Color naming, 131, 183, 207 in usingcomparatives , 228- 229
errorsand repairs,463, 466, 496 in topica1ization , 262, 268
Command -and-executionstagein articulation in questionanswering , 273
, 419 Congruentgrammaticalencoding , 266
Commissives . SeeSpeech act Conjunct, 264
Commitment , S, 61- 64, 101- 102, 123, 134, Conjunction , 82, 167, 194, 276- 281, 367,
314, 402 377, 499
episternic , 57, 62- 63, 68, 101 Connected speech , 284, 302- 319, 323, 325,
deontic, 62, 64, 68, 101 329, 343- 361, 364- 412
Commonground, 112, 115, 118, 120, 124, Connectionism , 18- 20, 211, 474- 478. See
132, 135, 146 alsoActivationspreading
Communicative Connective , 44, 483
goal, S, 11, 107, 115, 128, 136, 282 Connectivityin linearization , 139- 143
intention, 4- 5, 21, 30, 58- 60, 62, 68- 69, principleof, 140
107- 110, 114, 119, 123- 125, 137, 144, Connotation , 183
157- 159. SeealsoIllocutionaryforce Consonant
Comparatives , 183, 187, 234 ambisyllabic , 295
Compensatory articulatorymovements , cluster. SeeCluster
438, 439, 443, 445, 451- 452 co-productionwith vowel, 453
Subject Index 551
Convention , 38, 42, 44, 63, 65, 67- 68

in repairing,492- 494
Conventional
forms, 6, 65, 315
rules, 38, 41- 43
Conventionality , degreeof, 66- 67
Convergence in lexicalaccess , 199- 20I ,
204, 207, 209- 210, 212, 214, 233
Conversation , 1- 8, 27- 46, 53, 56, 58, 60-
69, 111- 117, 119- 123, 133, 145, 172,
179, 306, 390, 404, 458, 460, 466, 471
closing,disengaging from, 31, 33, 36- 37
everyday , 42, 58, 63, 111- 112
opening , engagingin, I , 31, 36
rulesof, 460
sustaining , 36
skill, 21
Cooperationin conversation , 30- 31, 38-
39, 44, 67, 133- 134
Cooperativeprinciple, 39- 40, 53
Cooperativeness , exploitationof, 43- 44,
133
Coordinationandself-repair, 486- 489
Coordinativestructures , 440, 447- 450, 452,
-
456 457
Coproductionof articulatorygestures ,
444- 445
Coremeaning , 212, 214, 216, 219
Coreprinciple, 213
Coronalspeech sounds , 296, 301, 433, 442,
453
Cricoarytenoidmuscles , 424
Cricothyroidmuscles , 424
Cross-linguisticcomparisons , 265, 268, 272,
283
Culture, 37, 42, 44, 62- 65, 104, 139, 497
Currentnodein activationspreading , 353-
355, 358- 360, 475, 477
Current-speaker -selects -next, 31, 34, 36, 38
Cyclesin monologues , 126- 128
Dative. SeeCase
Deaccentuation , 147- 150, 283
Deactivation , decayof activation,234, 3
359
Deafness , 444, 446
Debate, 112, 126
Decision-makingstage , 228
Decisiontable, 207- 210, 213, 233
Declarativeknowledge . SeeKnowledge
Declarativemood, sentence type, 101
Subject
Index 552
Declaration . SeeSpeech act Detectionof errors, 463, 471- 472

Declination , 398- 400, 421- 422, 427 Determiner , 169, 170, 194, 196- 198, 246-
Deepstructure , 256 247, 271, 299
Deepclause , 23, 259. SeealsoBasicclause Diacriticfeatures , 165, 167, 170, 174, 183,
Defaultaccent , 177- 178 190- 193, 196- 198, 233, 238- 244, 247-
Definite/indefinite 251, 275, 288- 289, 321- 322, 324, 329-
expressions , 114, 120, 152, 197 331, 343- 344, 352, 362, 365- 366, 373,
referent , 99, 146, 170, 175, 267, 271- 273 377, 382
Deictic Diphthong, 338, 409, 432, 434, 440
adverbial , 48, 69 Direct/indirectspeech act. SeeSpeech act
anchoring , 29, 44- 46, 102 Directionascategoryof experience , 74, 78,
characterof speech , 30 91, 94
coordinatesystem , 48, SO - 53, 69, 153, 154 Directionalterms, 53, 91, 153- 154, 195
origin (origo), 46, 48, 50, 52- 55, 58, 69 andgazemovement , 153- 154
model, 53 Directive. SeeSpeech act
perspective , 137, 153- 155 Discourse
pronoun, 5, 45 coherence of, 283
proximity, 103 context, 53, 110, 115, 158, 183, 461, 463
region, 47, 52- 54 model, 9, 113- 120, 122- 123, 126, 132,
shift, 45 134, 144- 152, 159, 163, 171, 175, 271,
shift of origin, 54, 58, 69 273
verb, 54 record, 8, 10, 111- 123, 146, 172,460
Deicticreference , 51, 53 situation, 10, 107, 110
primary, 48- SO topic, 99, 112- 113, 115, 12I, 152, 158-
secondary , 49- 51, 69 159, 460
Deixis type, 111- 112, 126
acknowledging functionof, 54- 5~ Discriminatinginformationin object
by analogy, 53 - 54, 69 naming, 131- 132, 134
anchoringof utterance , 100- 103 Discriminationnetwork, 205- 207, 210, 233
coordinationproblem, SO Distraction, 216- 217
delimitationproblem, 52- 53 Distinctivefeature,296- 297, 330, 340- 341,
discourse , 46 350, 354, 358, 362, 440- 442, 477, 456
identifyingfunctionof, 47- 48 Distributed
informingfunctionof, 48- 54 control, 204
person , 5, 45 processing , 20
place, spatial, 45- 55, 58, 69, 103 representation , 211
social, 45- 46 Drawl, 34- 35, 420- 421, 455, 477
time, 45- 46, 55- 58, 106, 137 Dysftuency , 18, 24, 281, 477, 498
typesof, 44- 46
Delayedauditoryfeedback , 477 Editing, 458- 499
Demonstrative , 104 distributed,467- 469
determiner , 47 expressions , 459, 478, 482- 484, 491, 494,
reference , 48, 53 496, 498- 499
Dentalspeech sounds , 433 lexicalbiasin, 465, 477
Deonticmodality. SeeCommitment prearticulatory , 466, 468- 469
Derivation(morphological ), 183- 184, semanticbiasin, 465
286- 287, 289, 316, 326, 344 syntacticbiasin, 465
Destination , in lP G, 239- 253, 256, 258, theory, 465, 467- 468, 470, 476, 498
282, 303 of taboowords, 461, 468- 469
error, 246, 248- 249, 282 Editor, 459, 466, 469- 470, 474
functional, 239, 241, 243, 248- 249 Eigenfrequency of vocaltract, 449, 453
hierarchy , 252- 253, 256, 258, 304 Ellipsis, 153, 253- 254, 273
Subject Index 553
Ellipticalmessages , 89- 90, 105 in other-producedspeech , 470- 471

Emotion, 38, 70, 102, 171, 307, 311, 316, Euphony, 394 , 397 - 398 , 402
364, 366, 403, 410, 469 Euphonyrules, 384, 394, 396, 411
Empathy,312 Eventasconceptualcategory , Event
Emphaticstress , 300, 404 function, 26, 74, 78- I06pass;m, 157,
Emptyelements , 167, 170, 253, 375 159, 163, 188- 189, 241
Encliticization, 375, 380, 407- 408, 411 Eventdescription , 261- 262, 267- 270, 272,
Encyclopedic knowledge . SeeKnowledge 277- 278
Endophoricredundancy , 132- 133, 136, Eventtimein deixis, 55- 58
ISO Examinations , 111- 112
Engaging . SeeConversation Excitement , 102
Epiglottis,424, 428 Executivecontrol. SeeControl
Epistemiccommitment . SeeCommitment Exhalation,295, 422, 447
Ergative.SeeCase Exhalingspeechsounds , 295
Errors Exophoricredundancy , 132- 134, 136
Expansions , 497
Expiratorymuscles , 422, 472
Expressives . SeeSpeech act
Expressive functionof prosody, 306- 307,
317
Exploitationof maxims,43- 44
Externalargumentof verb, 169, 182
Externalloop in monitoring, 472- 474
Extrinsictiming, 436, 444
Eyebrowflash, 37
Eyecontact, 35. SeealsoGaze
Facial expression, 68, 430

Falsetto, 424
False vocal chords. 424
Fastspeech , 302,368- 371,385,409,487
Fluency, 1- 2, 8, 12, 18, 24, 28, 30, 34, 128
,
127- 128, 199 - 204,222,239,245,282,
Subject Index SS4
Genioglossus , 430
Gesamtvonte Uung,23. 26
Gestaltof object/scene . 131- 132. 156. 159
Gesture . 8. 23. 35. 45. 47. 53. 59. 68
articulatory. 291. 295. 297. 318. 326- 327.
346. 362. 364. 388, 409. 414. 434- 435.
438. 440. 444, 446
Giveninformation. 6. 98. 114. 311. 315
Givenness . 99. 100
Glottal speechsounds . 381. 433
Glottal stop. 381
Glottis. 309. 424. 427- 429. 433. 445
Goal
communicative . 5. II . 107. 117. 128. 136.
282
elaboration . 127
Grammar. 192. 236
message , 70
IncrementalProduction . 235. 249. 282
LexicalFunctional. 162. 235
of repair. 489
Grammatical
encoding . 9. II . 105, 179. 181- 283passim .
375, 422
relations. 15. 27. 161. 179. 285
Grammaticalfunction. 97. 152. 161- 163.
167- 170. 179- 180. 189- 190. 192- 195.
198. 222. 233, 235- 236. 238- 239. 244-
245, 250. 256. 260- 261. 264- 270. 275.
279. 281. 283
hierarchyof, 192. 194. 233, 260. 266. 269.
275
Gravityanddeixis. 49
Grid. metrical. 298- 299. 304- 305. 317. 323.
366. 374. 378. 380- 384. 411
Haplology. SeeErron
Harmonics . 427
Head/modifierstructures . 79. 82. 89, 96
Head-of-phrasefunction. 167- 168. 238
Head-of-phraseprocedure . 239. 247
Hemispheric lateralization. 22. 154
Henderson graph. 127
Hesitantspeech . 127- 128. 204
Galvanicskin response , 469 Hesitation.5- 6. 203- 204. 257- 259, 460.
Gap (pause ), 33, 78 484, 494
Gaze , 203, 204, 421
prelexical
in convenation, 8, 35, 36, 59, 68 Homonym,208
movementanddi~ tional tenDs, 153- 154 Hyperbole , 44
tour, in scenedescriptions, 153 Hypemym , 183
, 216,220
Gender
, 168, 231,238 Hypemym problem, 201,204,207,210,
Generic
verb,206 212- 214,233
Subject Index 555
I-marker, 23 Interference
Idea conceptual . 217- 218. 227. 229. 234
sensory -motor, 94 plan-internal. 222
unit, 23, 36 Interjectionin repairs.482. 484
Idealdelivery, 128, 384- 385, 391, 402 Interlinear-toneticnotation. 309- 310
. SeeDeixis
function
Identifying Internalloop in self-monitoring. 472- 473
- 187
Idiom. 186 Internalspeech . 12- 15. 21. 27- 28. 469-
Illocutionaryforce, 58- 65, 108, 123- 124, 473. 498
151
. 157
. 398
. 402 InternationalPhoneticAlphabet. 12. 295.
andaccessibility
Imageability , 264- 266 500
, 63- 65, 67, 71, 100
Imperative - 101, 106
, Interrogative . 63- 64. 67. 78. 100- 102. 106.
109144
, , , 157 170- 171 , , 403
240 109. 144. 157. 170- 171. 240. 403
Implicature Interruptionof speech . 28. 112- 113.459.
conventional, 44 473. 478- 48. 489. 492
conversational, 41- 44, 66- 67, 124, 138 delayed . 478. 480. 482. 484. 490- 491
Inclination of pitch, 404 immediate . 479- 480. 495. 498
Incremental , 2, 23- 28, 109
production , 157
, Main InterruptionRule. 478. 480- 482.
162 235
, , 239- , - 254
245 253 , 284 , 365, 498
371 - 384
, 373 , 396
, 398, 400, 405, 411, within-word. 479- 481. 484
Interview. 3- 5. 111- 112. 126. 158. 391
Incremental Production Grammar , 235, Intonation. intoning. 15. 18. 23- 24. 33.
249
. 282 62- 64. 102. 108. 165. 166. 171. 179- 180.
field.46
Indexical 255. 290. 306- 307. 315- 317. 365. 368.
Indignation . 30. 102. 171 406- 407
Indirect speechact. SeeSpeechact generationof. 398- 405
Inferability of referents. 99- 100. Seealso Intonational
Accessibility meaning . 102. 171. 312- 317. 366. 405
Infinitive . SeeTense lexicon. 171. 316
, 55, 104
Inflection , 165
, 161 , 183 , 251,
, 198 phrase . 259. 303- 304. 306- 311. 314- 317.
286,288-290,316,322,344
clitics
versus . 378
asdiacritic . 191
. 183
feature . 256
Junctureof words, 302
Key, 315- 317, 366, 385, 398, 400, 411

Kinaestheticrepresentations , 73
Kinshipterms, 183, 207, 210, 212
Knowledged
~ larative, 10- II , 18, 72- 73, 182, 185,
236
Subject Index 556
Knowledge(cont.) Lemma,6
encyclopedic , 9- 10 access , 198- 213, 320
mutual, shared , 8, 14, 29, 44- 45, 47, 69, access failure, 214- 221
84, 114- 115, 123, 125, 146, 158 substitutionin self-correction , 489
mode, 72- 74 Legitimacyof request , 134- 135
procedural , 9- 11, 72, 105, 124- 125, 149, Levelsof processing , 231- 232, 234, 319,
185- 186, 236 321, 330, 343- 345, 361- 362, 367, 369,
representation , 72- 74 468
situational, 10, 72 Lexicalaccess , 186, 199, 200, 205- 206,
store, II , 28 213- 214, 230, 234, 277, 468
failureof, 214- 221, 462
Labialspeech sounds , 295, 340, 442 theoriesof, 199, 201, 206, 211
Labio-dentalspeech sounds , 433 timecourseof, 181, 222- 232
Languages Lexicalaction, 208- 210
Cantonese , 268 Lexicalbiasin speech errors, 355- 356, 359,
Danish, 307 363
Dutch, 71, 103, 122, 130, 140, 167, 220, editingaccountof, 465, 477
237, 238, 307, 350, 433, 483, 485 activationspreadingaccountof, 356, 359
Dyirbal, 55 Lexical
Finnish, 185, 268, 289 categories , 167, 288
French, 231. 238, 297, 302, 307, 367- 368, encoding , 186- 187, 233
387, 392, 429, 433 entry, 182- 183, 186- 188, 231, 234, 322,
German,26, 45, 102, 165, 167, 179, 238, 344
248- 249, 254, 263, 265, 289, 350 error. SeeErrors
Hausa, 50 form, 12, 231, 258, 285, 320- 321
Hebrew,268, 433 gap, 209
Hungarian , 265, 268, 272- 273, 289 hypothesis , 181, 235
inflectional , 289 intrusion, 184
Italian, 262, 272- 273 pointer, 165, 167, 174, 180, 193, 195, 344,
Japanese , 103- 104, 186, 286, 272, 289, 329 362, 373, 375- 378
Kannada,269 LexicalFunctionalGrammar, 162, 235
Kiliyila, 104 Lexicalrule(passive , dativeshift), 193
Malay, 104 Lexicallydrivenformulation, 181, 198,
Malayalam , 163, 167, 180, 270 235- 236, 282
Quiche,497 Lexicon
Serbo-Croatian, 268 intonational, 171, 316
Spanish , 53, 102- 104, 268, 392- 393, 433 lemma,9, 187, 199
Swedish , 307 mental, 6, 11- 13, 18, 22, 27, 162, 167,
-
stresstimed~373, 392 393 - 181- 234, 290, 302, 316
syllable-timed, 392- 393 form, 12, 163, 187, 258, 284- 301, 323,
Thai, 497 329, 344, 352- 355, 363, 368. 373. 408
Turkish, 185- 186, 268, 289 Liaison, 295. 302. 367- 368. 454
Tuyaluan,497 Linearization . 107. 138. 138- 144, 153. 159.
Warlpiri, 169 460
Language -specificconceptualizing , 103- content-relateddeterminants . 138- 139
105, 157 principles , 138. 140. 143
Language of thought, 71, 73- 74, 105 process -relateddetenninants . 138- 144
Lapse(pause ), 2- 3, 33 strategies , 153. 159
Laryngealspeech sounds , 295, 316 Lip. 295- 296. 413. 428- 430. 432- 434. 436.
Larynx, laryngealsystem , 295, 413, 423- 430 440. 442, 446. 449- 452
Lecturing, 30 spreading /rounding. 409. 430. 434. 443
Subject Index 557
Listingintonation. 386 Melody

Localmanagement in turn-taking. 34 of segments , 290
Locationprogrammingin articulation. 436. of sentence , 18,63, 102 , 171 , 180 , 301,
439- 440. 455 306- 307,311,317,398.Seealso
Logicaloperations . 82 Intonation
Logogentheory. 201- 204. 214. 219. 230. Memory
233 limitations , 10
Long-termmemory. 10. 21. 72. 119. 121. long-term.SeeLong-termmemory
126, 351- 352 for other-produced speech , 121
Longitudinalthyromuscularis. 424 primary , 119
Lookahead . preview. 18. 24- 25. 28. 235. search , 126 , 158
373- 385. 389- 390. 396. 398- 400. 402- for self-produced speech , 121 - 122
406. 411 sentence , 74
Loudness . 7. 22. 108, 309, 364, 367, 369- working . SeeWorkingmemory
370, 396, 409- 411. 427, 455, 462, 495 Mental
Lungs,413, 422- 423 lexicon . SeeLexicon
Lying. 40 load, 259
model , 72, 113
, 5, 11. 107, 109- 110, 123- tour, 142 , 153 - 154
Macroplanning -
-
144. 152, 157 158 Message generation , 16, 28, 70, 72, 107
Main InterruptionRule. 478. 480- 482. 160
498 Metaphor , 44
Main/sidestructure, 136- 137 Metrical
Malapropism . SeeErrors grid. SeeGrid
Mandible,424 phonology , 395
Manner planning , 304,317,373,397- 399,402,
conceptual category , 74, 78- 79, 82- 83, 408,410- 411
92, 96 rules , 299,382
maxim. SeeMaxims structure of connected speech , 303- 307,
Marked/unmarkedadjectives , 229- 231 364- 365,372,374,387,408
Mass-springtheory, 438- 440, 448, 450, tier, 290,293,297- 299,301
452, 455- 456 MiC ;roplanning , 5, II , 107 - 110 , 123 , 126 ,
Massetermuscles , 45I 128- 129 , 132 , 144 - 160
Mastication , 413, 430, 448 MinimalLoadPrinciple of linearization ,
Maximizationof onset, 294, 335 143
Maxims, 39- 44, 69, 129, 158 Minimalnegation , 212
manner,41 Modalverb,62, 101 , 198 , 403
, 64, 100 - 102 , 170 - 171 , 180 , 402.
exploitationof, 43- 44 Modality
floutingof, 43, 124 SeealsoAttitude
quality, 40, 43, 60 Modeof knowledge representation . See
quantity, 39- 40, 42, 123- 124, 129- 130, Knowledge
133, 140, 148, 213 Model-referenced control,445- 447,451-
relation, 40, 42, 66, 112 452,456
Modification , 79, 82- 83, 88, 96, 169 - 170 ,
Meaning
core, 2.12- 213, 216 196
intended , 6- 7, 13 Modularity , 22
intonational, 102, 171, 308, 310- 311, Monitoring
314- 317, 366, 373, 405 connectionist theoryof, 459,474- 478
lexical, II , 13, 182- 188, 197, 200- 201, editingtheoryof, 459,467- 474
212, 216- 217, 232, 236 other-, 470-471,473
propositional , 364 self-, 8- 10, 13- 14, 16,21, 28, 70, 458- 478,
relationsin lexicon, 183- 184, 188, 215 498- 499
Subject Index 558
Monologue , 126- 128, 147 Nasopharyngeal port, 429

Mood. SeeDeclarative , Interrogative, Naturalorder(in linearization ), 41, 138-
Imperative 139, 142
of verb, 63- 64 principleof, 138, 159
Morpheme , 182, 185- 186, 285, 300- 301, Naturalreference points, 155
319- 326, 329- 331, 344, 349, 353- 357, Negation,82, 212, 256, 314
362- 363, 370, 372, 375, 378, 406 minimal, 212
affix, 104, 183, 185, 286- 290, 294, 299, Negationtest, 212- 213
323- 326, 329- 331, 344, 349, 352- 353, Network
355, 362, 372 articulator, 450- 45I
prefix, 285, 287, 353- 354, 362 connectionist , 18- 19, 353- 354, 363,
root, 12, 185, 285- 290, 294, 299, 307, 474- 476, 498
329- 331, 344, 349, 354- 355 discrimination . SeeDiscrimination
Morphology, 12, 15, 100, 102, 104- 106, propositional , 75- 77, 79
163, 169, 182, 193, 248, 271, 273, 286- spatial, 140, 203
290, 316, 462, 470 Newinformation, 5, 109, 114, 120, 151, 159,
Morphological /metricalspellout, 321- 324 172, 176. SeealsoGiveninformation
Morpho-phonology , 187, 191, 301- 302 Newsvalue, 71, 147, 149- 159, 171- 172,
Motherese , 368 400
Motivationof speaker , 8, 20 Node-structuretheoryof monitoring, 474-
Motoneurons , 437. SeealsoAlpha/gamma 478
loop No-markingerrors. SeeErrors
Motor controlof speech . SeeControl Nominative.SeeCase
cyclicityof, 448 Nonconfigurationallanguage , 163, 168-
hierarchalpropertiesof, 448 169, 179- 180, 270
Motor controltheories Nose, 428
auditorytargets,445- 447, 456 Noun
coordinativestructures , 440, 447- 452, 456 common, 196- 197, 199
locationprogramming , 436- 440, 455 count, II , 197, 238, 247
mass -spring, 438- 440, 448, 450, 452, 455- mass , 197
456 proper, 196, 200, 250
orosensory goals, 442- 445, 456 Nuanceediting, 482
Motor program, 28, 327, 396, 414, 416, Nuclear
419, 421, 434- 435, 441- 442, 447, 449 entities/elements , grammaticalencoding
Mouth, 13, 424, 429- 431, 435, 439, 445, of, 97- 98, 152, 260- 271
448, 451, 455- 456 pitch movement , 391, 401- 403
Muscle-movementnodes , 475 stress , 176, 179- 180, 306, 383- 385, 389-
Musclespindle,437, 443, 457 391, 402
Mutual stressrule, 305, 308- 309, 382- 384
belief, 133 thematicstructure,96- 97
knowledge . SeeKnowledge tone. SeeTone
Nucleus
Naming, 131, 158, 206, 222, 225- 232, 234, of syllable,293, 325, 327- 328, 331- 335,
277, 415, 463, 488 338, 344, 348- 349, 353- 354, 360- 362,
latency,207, 223, 225- 232, 277, 415 407- 410
Narration, III , 126, 136 of intonationalphrase , 309- 317, 386, 401,
Narrativeability, I 403- 404
Narrowfocus, 177- 178 Number, 47, 105, 165, 170, 183, 191, 197,
Nasal 233, 238, 240, 242, 247, 249- 250, 273,
cavity, 296, 413, 423, 428- 430, 455 275, 322
speech sounds , 290, 296- 297, 334, 340, plural, 47, 168, 185, 187, 197, 241, 247-
346, 350, 429, 432- 433, 441- 442 249, 288, 301, 324, 326, 331, 344, 378
Index
Subject 559
singular,47, 168, 187, 197, 238- 240, 242, Passive , 169, 181, 262, 268
289, 301, 344 elicitationof, 261- 264, 266, 268, 488
Numerals , 104, 273 lemma,245
lexicalrule, 193- 194, 233
' 's 3
Obligations , speakers andaddressee , , syntacticprimingof, 274- 275, 278
- -
20, 31 32, 61, 63 65, 135 truncated , 275
Object. SeealsoCase Path, asconceptualcategory , 90- 91, 94-
categorization , 223 96, 178, 189, 195, 237
naming, 130- 131, 158, 232. Seealso Pathfunction, 90- 91
Naming Patient. SeeThematicrole
orientation,49, 154- 155 Pause , pausing , 23, 33, 35- 37, 126- 128,
recognition , 230 203, 236, 257- 259, 305, 308, 364, 366-
reference , 133- 134 367, 372, 381, 385- 387, 390- 391, 409-
size, 155, 228- 229, 276 410, 420, 459, 482
Oblique. SeeCase Perceptual -loop theoryof monitoring,
Obstructionof pitch, 300. SeealsoPitch 469- 474, 476, 498
accent, movement Performativeverbs, 64- 68
Obstruents, 334, 434 Perseveration , 331, 347, 358- 359, 468
Omissions. SeeErrors Personasconceptualcategory , 74- 98,
Onset 113- 115, 189, 241
ofsyllable
, 290 - 294
, 293 , 299 - 344
. 324 . asdiacriticvariable, 191, 197, 233, 238,
- 349
347 , 353- 354357
, , 359- 362
. 367
. 240- 242, 250, 273, 289, 322, 331
369, 407- 410 Persondeixis. SeeDeixis
maximizationof, 294, 335 Perspective
of word. SeeWord addressee 's 52
,
Oralcavity, 413, 428, 430, 445, 455 informational/thematic,5, 11, 70, 96, 105,
Orbicularisoris, 430 109- 110, 132, 138, 145, 152- 159, 260,
Orderingerrors. SeeErrors 269
'
Orderingfor expression . SeeLinearization speakers, 94
Origin, origo. SeeDeicticorigin visual, 226
Orosensory goals, 442- 445, 456 Pharynx,428- 430
Overspecification in objectnaming, 129, Phonation , 424
158 Phonationperiod, 127
Overtone , 427 Phone,292, 294- 297, 328, 346, 362- 363,
Overtspeech , 2, 9, 12- 14, 16, 21, 27, 469- 438, 440- 441, 444, 472
472, 474, 498 Phoneme , 22, 211, 292, 298, 301, 320- 363
passim , 464, 475, 477
Palatalspeech sounds , 433 Phonemic
Palate(hard, soft), 423, 429- 431, 433 clause , 23
Palato-alveolarspeech sounds , 433 code, 297, 300
Parallelprocessing , 2, 20- 21, 24, 27- 28 similarityconstraint,350, 358
in articulation, 449 Phonetic
in grammaticalencoding , 238, 240, 242- feature,295- 297, 316, 350, 428, 432- 434,
243, 245- 246, 248- 251, 256, 259, 282 440, 442, 455
in lexicalaccess , 199- 202, 207- 211, 222, plan, 7- 8, 12, 24- 28, 284- 421passim ,
233- 234, 372 434- 436, 444, 449, 454- 457, 470, 473.
in phonologicalencoding , 355, 363 SeealsoArticulatoryplan
Parenthetical , 308, 386, 408, 497 Phoneticspellout, 319, 321, 324, 326- 329,
Pars-pro-toto principle, 124 332, 335, 338, 344, 348- 349, 361- 363
Parsedspeech (in monitoring), 13, 26, 470 in connected speech , 364- 370, 375, 387,
Particle,64, 375- 376 389, 400, 405- 412, 417, 436
classificatory, 104 Phonicduration, 387- 392
Subject Index 560
Phonological Planning
encoding , 7, 11- 12, 18, 20, 24, 26, 102, articulatory , 297, 420- 421
161- 162 , 165, 166, 171, 179, 181, 187, conceptual, S, II , 20, 24, 204. Seealso
231, 233, 236, 239- 242, 246, 255, 259, Macroplanning , Microplanning
275- 276, 278- 279, 282- 284, 303, 316, of connectedspeech, 364- 412
318- 412pa.rsim, 414, 416, 419- 422, of discourse, 115, 119
435- 436, 462, 468- 469 message , II , 119, 126, 259, 275, 467
feature,23, 350 metrical, 304, 317, 373, 397- 399, 402, 4OS ,
phrase , 259, 303- 307, 317, 373, 378- 381, 410- 411
390- 391, 411, 419- 421, 454, 473 motor, 420, 435, 443- 444
priming, 279- 280, 354 phonetic,296, 31S,321, 329, 341, 343-
word, 302, 317, 361, 370- 380, 389- 392, 346, 359, 365, 473
398, 406- 421passim , 454, 473 prosodic, IS, 364- 365, 396, 405, 410
Phonotactic speechact, 10S - I09, 474
possibility, 294, 335- 338, 344, 362, 369, andsyntax, 25S- 259
482 unit, 23, 256- 257, 259, 420
rule, 294 utterance , 3- 4, IS, 277, 2S2
PhrasalFocusRule, 174- 176, 178- 179 Planningdiscourse , 112
Phrase . SeeIntonational, Phonological , Pleas , 61
Phrasestructure Pledging , 61, 64
Phrasestructure, 163, 166- 167, 169, 179- Plosivespeech sounds , 290, 413, 433, 441,
180, 365, 369, 373, 384, 391, 408, 498 472
Pitchaccent , 7, 12, 100, 149- 151, 166, Plural. SeeNumber
174- 178, 237, 244, 299- 300, 306- 307, Politerequests , 66- 69, 135
310, 315, 317, 323, 364, 374, 382- 386, Politeness , 3- 6, 21, 30, 37, 65- 69, 124,474
389, 398- 400, 404- 405, 410. Seealso Posteriorspeechsounds , 296, 433
Accent, Accentuation Pragmatics , 39
andaccessibility of referent , 270, 273 Prearticulatoryediting. SeeEditing
contrastive , 172, 177, 247, 273, 307, 309, Precisionof articulation, 22, 396, 410, 434,
401, 495- 496 462
default, 177 Predication , 70- 71, S9, 90, 9S- 99, 113- 115,
asdiacriticfeature, 165, 180, 191, 233, 150- 1S4 , 159, 171, 261, 30S
366, 373, 382, 408 Prefix. SeeMorpheme
andfocus, 100, 174, 243, 246, 496 Prenuclear tune, 311- 312, 403- 405
monitoring, 463 Preposition , 4S, 122, 166- 167, 17S , 192,
andprominence , 307, 386 194- 195, 19S , 236, 251, 273, 2SS , 369,
andnuclearstress , 308- 309, 384- 385, 371, 37S,421
402 Prepositionalobject, 23S,248, 264, 274
Pitch-AccentProminence Rule, 382 Prepositionalphrase , II , 167, 169, 17S, ISO,
Pitch-AccentRule, 175 192, 195, 23S,266, 26S, 304, 485, 487,
Pitch 490
contour, 7, 171, 255, 300, 307- 310, 316, Presentatives , 272
364, 366, 373, 398, 405, 411, 427, 498 Prespecification in self-repairs,491
modulation,413 Presupposition , 102, 113, 117- 119, 171,
movement , 298, 309- 310, 327- 328, 367, 175, 212, 216, 219. SeealsoBackward
372, 381, 385, 391, 396, 399- 405, 409- suppletion
410, 427 existential , liS
obstruction , 300 factive, liS
raising, 113, 315 Pretonicaccent.SeePrenuclear tune
stranding , 247, 282, 372 Preverbalmessage , 9, II , 14- 15, 72- 74,
withholding , 147 76, 7S, 93, 101, 105, 107- 110, 157, 160,
Placefeatures , 295, 316, 350, 443 170, 179- ISI, IS6
Subject Index 561
Priming Prototype,84
andactivationspreading , 352, 354, 474- Psychologicalattitude. SeeAttitude
477, 498 Psychologicalreality, 79, 124, 206, 257
lexical, 221- 226, 230, 275, 476
phonological , 279- 280, 354 Quantifier, 76, 196
syntactic , 273 - 275 Question , 30- 31, 35, 38, 60, 65- 68, 89,
Principle 118, 255
of connectivity , 140 answering , 36, III , 122, ISO, 172, 179,
of contrast, 200, 213 221, 254, 273
cooperative , 39- 40, 53 intonation, 102,403- 404
core, 213 tacit, 78, 86
linearization , 138, 140, 143 tag, 34, 308, 386
naturalorder, 138, 159 andtopic, 262- 266
of specificity , 213- 214 wh-, 101, 404
uniqueness , 213 yes/no, 101, 255
Proceduralknowledge . SeeKnowledge
Procedure . SeeCategorial , Functional Radiotalk, 29, 112
Processing Raisingverb, 190, 250
capacity,20 Rate(speed)
components , 1- 2, 8, 13- 15, 20- 24, 28, 70, of activationspreading
- , 35I, 359,366
365- 368, 468- 469 of errordetection , 466, 470- 473, 498
stage , 24, 234 of lexicalaccess , 199- 20I , 206, 225, 228,
Procliticization , 376- 377 233- 234, 277
Productions(condition/actionpairs), of grammaticalencoding , 246, 454
17- 18, 82, 124, 207, 321 of processing , 26, 28
Pro-form, 148- 149 of speech , 22, 108, 199, 222, 306- 308, 316,
Projectable units(in turn-taking), 31, 35 355- 359, 363, 366, 368- 370, 374- 375,
Prominence 385- 386, 389- 391, 392- 393, 407, 410-
conceptual , 147, 149- 151, 165, 172, 175- 411, 413- 414, 422, 432, 447, 449, 453,
176, 178, 180, 236- 237, 243, 266, 280, 457
307, 398 Rationality, 41, 67- 68, 158
contrastive , 158, 172, 176, 307, 398, 496 Reading , 259, 308, 390- 392, 394, 396, 400,
prosodic , 131, 147, 149, 152, 171, 180, 405, 415- 416
305- 306, 309, 311, 382, 384, 386, 401- -. -timeprocessing
Real , 15- 16, 18, 28, 206,
402 210, 212
syntactic , 260- 261, 264- 266, 268, 275, Reassuring intonation, 313, 402
-
278 281 Recall(verbatum ), 121- 122, 263- 264
Promising , 60- 61, 64 Recipient . SeeThematicrole
Pronominalization , 99, 149, 271- 273, 283 Recursiveness of conceptualstructure,82,
Propositional 87
format/modeof representation , 71, 105, Redundancy in objectnaming, 129- 132,
108, 110, 144- 145, 152- 155, 159, 188 158. SeealsoEndophoric , Exophoric
network, 75 Reduction
Propositionalization , 145 phonological , 166, 302, 364, 369- 371,
Proprioception in articulation, 445, 451 376- 378, 388, 406, 409, 464
ProsodyGenerator , 323, 365- 412passim , of referringexpressions , 5- 6, 147- 150,
416- 417 176, 271- 272
Prosodic Reference
focus, 171- 172, 176, 271, 496 deictic. SeeDeixis
planning, 18, 364- 365, 396, 405, 410 demonstrative , 48, 53
stress, 132, 273. SeePitchaccent geographic , 51
unit, 259, 373, 436 intrinsic. SeeIntrinsic
Index
Subject 562
of contribution. SeeContribution basicclause , 257- 258, 282

time. SeeReferen ~ time sentence , 165, 166, ISO
Repair, 36, 220, 253, 304, 458- 499pa.rsim Rimeof syllable,290, 293- 294, 299, 324-
appropriateness . 459, 461, 474, 481, 483, 325, 332- 334
485, 490- 491, 495- 496, 499 Ritual, 30, 37
covert, 478- 479, 483- 484, 492, 494 Roaddi~ tion. SeeRoute
error, 459, 464, 490- 491, 496, 499 Role. SeeThematicrole
instant, 490- 492, 495 Root. SeeMorpheme
O(x:aSionof, 490- 491, 499 Routedirection, 30, 109- 110, 112, 126,
" on the ," 245, 497, 499 136, 139, 152
fly
overt, 4 ) , 479- 480 Roundingof lips. SeeLip
prosodicmarkingof, 495- 496
syntaxof, 485- 489
well-formedness of, 486- 487, 489, 491,
Subject Index 563
Selectinginformation for expression, S, Sincerety condition, 60- 62, 67

128- 137, 158 SingularSeeNumber
.
Selectionalrestriction, 189 Situationalknowledge . SeeKnowledge
Selectiveattention. SeeAttention Skeletaltier. SeeTier
Self-interruption , 459, 478, 480- 482, 484,
489, 498
Self-monitoring , 458- 478
Self-selectionin turn -taking , 32- 34, 37, III
Semantic
bias in monitoring , 465
categories, 79, 86, 234
cohort , 232
decomposition, 93- 94, 96
domain, 95, 209
entity, 74- 89
field, 96, 183, 219
function , 71, 87, 93, 102, 105
markedness, 229- 231
opposition, 219
relation , 74- 75, 161, 184, 207, 218- 22(J
representation, 73- 74, 77- 78, 94, 105
test, 205, 207
type, 77, 86- 90, 253
unit , 35- 36
Semiotic extension, 94
Semi-vowel, 434
Sensory-analysisnodes, 475
Sentence
boundary, 171
constituent . SeeConstituent
memory,74, 263
mood, type. SeeMood
topic, 98- 99, 194, 265
Sequential (versusserial) testing, 199, 206.
233
Serialorderin phonologicalencoding ,
353- 354, 360- 363, 417
Setetfects
in monitoring, 477
in naming, 134
Set-system , 96
Sharedknowledge . SeeKnowledge
Shift. SeeErrors, Deictic
Shriekyvoice, 102
Sideactivity, 37
Sideintention, 137, 159
Sidestructure, 136- 137
Signalingactivation, 359
Silence , 3, 5, 8, 32- 33, 38, 127- 128, 258,
387, 391, 398, 420. SeealsoPause
Silent(demi) beat. SeeBeat
Simplereaction,200, 214, 416- 418, 473
Subject Index 564
Spreading activation. SeeActivation structure.7- 8. II . 15. 17- 18, 24, 26- 28.
spreading 161- 180. 191, 198. 217, 222, 235- 283,
Spurt, 23 284- 285. 299, 302- 303, 305- 308, 317-
Stackprinciplein linearization , 143 318. 322, 343. 353, 362, 365, 368, 370-
Stages . SeeProcessing 371. 375- 379. 380- 381, 383- 384, 386.
Standard 398, 400- 406
linguistic, 30, 410- 411, 418 Swallowingreflex, 448, 450
of conversation , 31, 39, 41, 63, 61, 461 Syllabicity,292, 295, 323, 365. 370- 371,409
Statefunction, 80, 251 Syllabification , 284, 294, 318, 365, 375, 405.
Statusof addressee , 45- 46, 69 SeealsoResyllabification
Stem, 180, 183- 185, 288, 290, 323- 325, Syllable
329- 331, 344, 348- 349, 352, 354, 362, articulation, 452- 454
312, 318 boundaries , 22. 292, 294, 300. 332, 481-
Stimulusonsetasynchrony , 226, 230, 234 482
Stops,433, 441- 442 coda. SeeCoda
Storytelling, 131 constituent . SeeConstituent
Stranding . SeeErrors duration(length), 298, 318. 327, 364. 367.
StressS, 12, 298, 310, 403. SeealsoPitch 369- 370. 373, 381, 387- 396. 398, 409-
accent 411, 416- 417. 436, 449
alternation,299, 306, 314, 394- 396 heavy/weak, 299, 316
assignment , 298- 299, 306, 325, 382- 384, inventory, 318, 327
390 latencyeffect, 414- 419
clash, 299, 306, 314, 381, 384, 394- 396 node, 18- 19, 292, 357- 358, 475
contrastive , 241 nuclear,309, 313, 325, 402
error. SeeErrors nucleusof. SeeNucleus
group, 420 omission , 396- 397
nuclear.SeeNuclear onset. SeeOnset
pattern, 25, 186, 298, 301, 323, 344, 355, program, 319, 327, 361- 362, 417, 436
313, 382, 391- 398 . rime. SeeRime
prosodic . See Prosodic stressed / unstressed . SeeStress
rules, 298- 299, 305- 309, 314, 382- 384, tier, 290, 292- 295, 298, 301, 325
390, 394- 396 unit, 292, 452
strandingof, 241, 312, 282 Syllable/ stress -timedlanguage . See
syllable,291- 299, 306, 308- 310, 311- 318, Languages
320, 325, 328- 329, 332, 341- 342, 344, Synergism , 447
359, 369, 312- 314, 381- 390, 392, 391, Synonym , 183, 200, 213, 220, 234, 254
404, 408, 411 Syntactic
tertiary, 309- 310 bias281, 465
word, 25, 255, 281, 293, 298- 301, 311, buffer, 12, 13, 26
324, 315, 381, 384, 389 specialist , 168, 249, 275
Stridentspeechsounds , 296, 30I , 434 Syntagma , 23
Subcategorization , 169- 110, 115, 180, Syntax,26, 35- 36, 182
194- 196 cohesive , 271, 273- 275
Subglottalair pressure , 399, 422, 421 andmeaning , 88
Submissiveness , 102
Substitutions . SeeErrors
Subvocalspeech , 285. SeealsoInternal
speech
Supralaryngeal system , 12, 295, 291, 316,
413, 422- 423, 428, 434, 455
Surface
clause . SeeClause
Index
Subject 565
Taskvariablesin motor theory, 45 reference , 55- 56, 94

Teeth, teethridge, 430, 433, 439, 445, 455 relevance , 56- 57
Telephone talk, 29, 37, 66 speaking , 127
Tense utterance , 56- 57
function, 87, 157 Timecourseof lexicalaccess , 222- 231
future, 45, 57, 61, 64, 101, 103, 137 Timingof motorexecution , 405, 416, 436,
past, 46, 55- 56, 94, 182, 187, 241, 323, 439, 442- 444, 449, 473. Seea/soIntrinsic
326, 348 , Extrinsictiming
perfect,46, 55, 193, 197 Tip- of-the-tonguephenomenon , 188, 231,
pluperfect , 55- 56 319- 321, 323, 342, 355, 361
present - 57, 182, 258, 289
, 55 To-contraction , 376
presentperfect, 56- 57 Tone, 308, 310- 317, 366, 385, 390, 398-
primary, 55 405, 410- 411, 421
Tensedverb, 171, 197, 242 boundary.SeeBoundary
Text-to-grid alignment , 382 fall-rise, 313- 314, 401
Thematicroles, 89, 90- 95, 150, 189, 192, full-rise, 313
233, 254, 266 high-fall, 312, 404
actor, 11, 91- 94, 96, 105, 150, 265, 267 level, 314
agent, 71, 91- 93, 95- 98, 105, 152, 189, low-fall, 312- 313, 403, 404
192- 194, 233, 241, 261, 262, 265- 269, low-rise, 313
487 nuclear,311- 312, 315, 317, 385, 398- 405
experiencer , 4, 6- 7, 92, 96, 190, 250 rise-fall, 314
goal, 71, 90- 96, 98, 105, 178, 189- 190, Tonegroup, 23
192- 195, 242, 266 Tonelanguage , 317
instrument , 92, 96 Toneunit, 23
. patient , 89- 90, 92, 96, 149- 150, 192- 193, Tongue,413, 423, 429- 430, 439- 440, 445-
253, 261- 263, 269 446
recipient, II , 21, 92, 95- 97, 190, 192, blade, 296, 433
261- 262, 266, 268, 487 body, 430, 432, 453
source , 71, 90- 96, 105, 189, 192, 266 extrinsic/intrinsicmuscles , 430
theme,90- 92, 94--96, 152, 172, 175- 176, tip, 442
189, 192- 194, 241- 242, 245, 250, 266 twister, 341, 343, 471- 472
Thematicstructure,70- 71, 90- 97, 105, 283 Topic
Therapeuticdiscourse , 112 changeof, 33, 36- 37, 111, 398, 400, 404
Thorax, 422 discourse , 99, 112- 113, 115, 121, 152,
Threshold(in logogentheory), 202- 204, 158- 159,460
219 encodingof, 260- 270, 283
Throat (pharynx), 428- 430 of message , 11, 71, 97- 99, 108- 109, 120,
Thyroidcartilage , 424 151, 238, 245
Tier (phonological ) of sentence , 98- 99, 194
feature,291, 297, 316 shift, 112- 113, 149
intonational,290, 299- 301 Topicalization , 138, 144, 152, 233, 265
metrical, 290, 293, 297- 299, 301 Trachea , 423- 424
segment , 290, 292- 297, 301 Transition-relevance place, 31- 33, 35- 36,
skeletal(or timing), 290- 294, 301, 316, 38
323 Tune, 311- 314, 316- 317, 366, 398, 403-
syllable,290, 292- 295, 298, 301, 325 405, 410- 411
Timbre, 413, 427- 430, 432, 455 Turn allocation/assignment , 31, 33- 34
Time Turn-constructional unit, 23, 31, 35
adverbials , 58 Turn-taking, 29- 32, 34, 36- 39, 44, III ,
calender , 58 133, 306, 373, 390
deictical, 102 Turn-yieldingcues,34
Subject
Index 566
Typetheory, 79, 82- 83, 86- 9()

Type/tokendistinction, 83- 86
Underspecificationin object naming, 40,

130, 133
Uniquenessprinciple, 213
Unit Similarity Constraint , 329- 332, 334,
360- 362
Unitsof processing , 23- 26
Unpackingthemotor program,416- 421,
454
Utterance, passim
Utterance-final lengthening , 373, 390
Uvula, 433
Uvularspeechsounds, 433
V-COMP, 169, 190- 191, 197- 198, 250- 253

Vectorsummationin articulation.444- 445
Velarspeech sounds , 433
Velum. SeeSoftpalate
Verb, 192- 194,passim Word-initialconsonant
andspeech
errors
,
deictic, 54 321,338,341- 343,464
perfonnative , 64- 68 Wordorder
raising, 190, 250
159
Writing.435
Vowel
back, 431
errors. SeeErrors
front , 431
lax/ tense, 350
lengthening
- - , 34, 36, 309. SeealsoDrawl
semi-, 434
Vowel space, 431
WeU-formedness
of conversation . 37- 38
of message , 70
monitoringof, 14, 498
Rule, 486, 489, 491, 497, 499
of self-repairs,485- 487
of syllable/cluster, 329, 369, 482
of syntax, 282, 468
Wh-movement , 253

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2/17/2011 Books: Speaking

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Selected Title Details

"Required reading for anyone w orking in the field."

In Speaking, Willem "Pim" Levelt, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für

"A w ork of massive scholarship and authority."

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact | FAQ

0024 /94/ 507.00 ~ 1994- ElsevierScience

exploit multiple probabilistic cuesto discover the word units: domain-general

We thank Lingua for the opportunity to air theseworks in this Special

I will contribute to the present chaos of person pronominalization in

I will follow the transcription conventions of the International Phonetic

Remarks on lexical knowledge

/94/$07.00~ 1994- Elsevier

2.1. Idioms are instances of we//- formed structures

The view that I am presentingherewould have large numbersof objects of a

2.1.1. Filmore's examples

(3a) John notwithstanding, we will go there tomorrow .

(4a) John aside, ...

which are clearly small clauseconstructionsof somekind. The difference

(Sa) put that aside,

We may ~xpress this restriction on notwithstanding by not listing it in the

Importantly, (6) is an instanceof a structurewhich is well fonnedin English

- AP]- S > >

(8a) long ago

' I complements right , specs left ' > >

Here, the idiom is a well-formed subinstanceof prepositional phrase, which

2.1.2. What rules.do idioms obey?

( l Oa) * They kicked the buckets (as an idiom )

2.2.1. Idioms with instances

( 11) pants jeans shorts cutoffs culottes bermudas ...

( 13a) [inchoative)v +- : posture verb (Japane~

The most surprising casesare the casesthat achieveexceptionlessness . The

2.2.2. Formal idioms: Exploited and unexploitedavenues

' ' '

( 15) [ X Y] y > > [ NN] N

English embeddedquestions must begin with a wh-phrase. This is not to

( 16) Who wonderswhetherGeorge saw who ?

The correct generalization is as stated: a Wh -word must appear at the

( 17) [wh-phraseS +- : embeddedquestion

That is, a sentencewith a Wh-phrase at the beginning is a question, and

(20) [ V S]. +- : matrix yes/no question

(2Ia ) Had I been there, this would not have happened

2.4. Idiom families

At one end of the language-particular information that a learner must

The two Ns are meant to be identical tokens of the samenoun, as in side by

(25) Nx P Nx > >

If these are idioms, then we expect them to be instances of well-formed

(27) John went [from a to b]

The compound prepositions generally require both prepositions to be

(28) I do not know what he is doing [one day to the next] .

T1')us the compound prepositions are somewhat like conjunctions, where we

(29) John hunts bear

(a) *John huntsbook

A paradigm is a multidimensional array of linguistic forms - for example, a

The Latin verbal conjugation is 8-dimensional, with the dimensions listed on

At a slightly greater level of abstraction, one might regard a paradigm as a set

We tend to think of paradigms as a means of displaying inflectional

(33) active passive

(34) A COMP SUPER

3.2. The abstractness of paradigm structure

In general, there is not a one-to- one relation between the slots in a

For example, the English verbal paradigm is 4-dimensional (personX number