Using Language to Navigate the Infant Mind

Abstract

How do infants represent objects, actions, and relations in events? In this review, we discuss an approach to studying this question that begins with linguistic theory—specifically, semantic structures in language. On the basis of recent research exploring infant cognition and prominent linguistic analyses, we examine whether infants' representations of motion events are articulated in terms of the components proposed by Talmy (1985; e.g., path, manner) and whether infants' event representations are defined in terms of broad semantic roles (agent, patient, source, goal) as proposed by Jackendoff (1990) and Dowty (1991). We show how recent findings in infant cognition are consistent with the idea that the infant's representation of events is a close reflection of the linguistic categories. We especially highlight research that is explicitly guided by linguistic categories likely to have correlates in nonlinguistic cognition to illustrate the usefulness of using language to pose questions about early conceptual representations.

Twelve-Month-Old Infants’ Encoding of Goal and Source Paths in Agentive and Non-Agentive Motion Events

“…For example, seven-month-old infants attend to manner and path changes in motion events (Pulverman, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, & Sootsman-Buresh, 2008), 10- and 13-month-old infants categorize paths and manners in motion events, respectively (Pruden, Hirsh-Pasek, Maguire, & Meyer, 2004; Pruden, Goksün, Roseberry, S., Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2012), and 11- and 14-month-old infants differentiate figures and grounds in motion events (Goksun, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Imai, Konishi, & Okada, 2011; see Goksun, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2010 and Wagner & Lakusta, 2009 for reviews). Focusing specifically on the endpoint and starting point, there is now abundant research suggesting that infants represent endpoints in events involving goal-directed action (e.g., Csibra, 2008; Gergely, Nadasday, Csibra, & Biro, 1995; Johnson, Ok, & Luo, 2007; Luo & Baillergeon, 2005; Meltzoff, 1995; Wagner & Carey, 2005; Woodward, 1998, 1999; Woodward & Somerville, 2000), and most pertinent to the current study, there is also evidence that infants represent endpoints, as well as starting points, in manner of motion events, and that infants represent endpoints in preference to starting points in these very same events.…”

Early Verb Learners: Creative or Not?

“…Although a new focus of research is directed at understanding event understanding in infancy (e..g, Wagner & Lakusta, 2009), much of what is known about verb learning concerns children's comprehension and/or production after 24 months (e.g., Fisher, 2002;Theakston, Lieven, Pine & Rowland, 2004). Thus, a better understanding of the initial stages of verb learning is needed.…”

Harder Words: Learning Abstract Verbs with Opaque Syntax

“…Many semantic features related to animacy, such as sentience, agenthood, and so forth, are invoked in Keenan's prototypical characteristics of syntactic subjects (Keenan, 1976). Additionally, animacy is a concept available to humans in early infancy (Carey, 1985;Woodward, Phillips, & Spelke, 1993;Saxe, Tenenbaum, & Carey, 2005;see Gelman &Opfer, 2002, andWagner &Lakusta, 2009, for good overviews). As such, we believe animacy is an important key in the puzzle of language bootstrapping, as it bridges conceptual, semantic and syntactic knowledge.…”