Children use syntax to learn verb meanings

Verb learning is clearly a function of observation of real-world contingencies; however, it is argued that such observational information is insufficient to account fully for vocabulary acquisition. This paper provides an experimental validation of Landau namely, that children may use syntactic information to learn new verbs. Pairs of actions were presented simultaneously with a nonsense verb in one of two syntactic structures. The actions were subsequently separated, and the children (MA = 2;1) were asked to select which action was the referent for the verb. The children's choice of referent was found to be a function of the syntactic structure in which the verb had appeared.