1988 Reports
The Conceptual Origins of the Transitive/Intransitive Distinction
Evidence is presented to support the claim that two-year-old children learning English acquire the transitive/intransitive distinction from their developing knowledge about action events, consistent with cognitivist theories of language development. Their temporal perspective on an action–when a child planned, requested, or otherwise anticipated an action–was a critical factor. Thus, acquiring the transitive / intransitive distinction was influenced by the volitionality of the locus of change in addition to the distinction between an actor and the object affected.
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- Origins of the Transitive Intransitive Distinction_Risp-Blm.pdf application/pdf 10.5 MB Download File
Also Published In
- Title
- Papers and Reports of the Child Language Research Forum
- Publisher
- Stanford University Department of Linguistics
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Human Development
- Published Here
- May 8, 2018