No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation uses Talmy’s linguistic analysis to evaluate the Typological Prevalence Hypothesis – the idea that concepts that are consistently lexicalized across languages are easier to learn than less-consistently-lexicalized concepts, especially for young language learners (Gentner & Bowerman, 2009). We predicted that, for 2-year-olds, who have just begun verb acquisition, mapping a novel verb onto its referent should be easiest for categories that are consistently represented in the world’s verb systems (PATH of motion), followed by less consistently-represented concepts (MANNER of motion), and then concepts that are never represented (COLOR of an actor) (Research Question 1). We also evaluated whether this mapping pattern was predicted by age (Research Question 2) or individual differences in vocabulary levels (Research Question 3). Largely confirming our prediction, 2-year-olds were better at mapping verbs for PATH and MANNER than COLOR. Thus, at the early stage of verb acquisition, children are already equipped with basic knowledge of what verbs should encode. Later into development, 4-year-olds showed the language-specific verb-to-MANNER bias. Further, adults were most likely to associate a novel verb with MANNER, followed by PATH, and then COLOR, exactly mirroring the way the English verb system encodes motion events. Individual differences in language skills predicted the verb learning patterns in adults but not in children. Taken together, this dissertation provides an important step towards understanding how the semantic organization of language may relate to the process of verb acquisition. / Psychology

Approximately 75% of children diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are significantly language impaired. While many learn a reasonably-sized set of object words, few master the relational terms (verbs and prepositions) that are the architectural centerpiece of the sentence. Though learning relational terms poses difficulty even for typically developing children, these words are differentially harder for children with ASD. This research is the first to ask why. Three studies examine the abilities necessary to learn verbs and prepositions. Studies 1 and 2 ask whether children with ASD have greater problems dissecting events into the foundational units and categories that underlie relational term learning (i.e., the path or where the object moves, and the manner or how the object moves through space) than do typically developing children. Study 3 focuses on tools known to assist in mapping from these basic categories onto words. Are children with ASD able to use information about a speaker's social intent to discover which event components are labeled by a particular word? Finally, this dissertation offers an exploratory correlational analysis designed to assess the joint impact of conceptual abilities and mapping (social understanding) as predictors for relational term learning in the two populations. Thirty-four 3- to 6-year-old children (17 with ASD) participated in the studies. Despite some methodological difficulties with the conceptual tasks, results suggest that the strongest correlate of relational vocabulary size in typical children was conceptual, while the strongest for children with ASD was social understanding. These findings extend prior research by noting the strong relationship between the ability to read social intent and relational term learning. They also suggest that for children with ASD, difficulty understanding the intentions of others is a primary problem that blocks the road to full language competence. / Psychology