Gleitman's Argument For How Children Do And Do Not Learn Verb Meanings?

1. What are the two parts of Gleitman’s argument for how children do and do not learn verb meanings? P377

Glietman’s first argument is that verbs are unable to be learned by simply observing the situations where they are used. This is because a lot of verbs refer to coinciding situations, and parents don’t always use a verb when its perceptual links are present. The second argument is that there is enough evidence in a verb’s subcategorization frames to guess it’s meaning fairly closely.

2. How does a learning child test and remedy hypotheses of verb meanings? P379

There must be limits on the child’s hypotheses, and there appear to be limit’s on lexical organization, and they must be equipped with a learning mechanism that constructs, tests,

9. What is the classical associationist theory of semantic learning and what is one situational example supporting the theory and one situational example refuting the theory? P394

She refutes the classical associationist theory of semantic learning is where word meanings are attained through temporal contiguity of sensory features of the act and utterances of the word. And she shows that to explain verb learning, we need a controlled depictive system for verbs’ meanings.

10. How does Pinker’s Figure 1 table on p 396 provide evidence against Gleitman’s syntax theory?

He states that there is something that can be learned from hearing a verb in one frame, because frame semantics and frame syntax are very related, linking rules are an inferential mechanism in semantic bootstrapping, being able to predict how one can use a verb once they know what it means, and being able to govern how verbs change between