Cover not available
Part of
Social Environment and Cognition in Language Development: Studies in honor of Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Edited by F. Nihan Ketrez, Aylin C. Küntay, Şeyda Özçalışkan and Aslı Özyürek
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 21] 2017
► pp. 179–198

Chapter 12
Event perception and language learning

Early interactions between language and thought

| Koç University, Turkey
| Koç University, Turkey | Boğaziçi University, Turkey
| Temple University, USA
| University of Delaware, USA
How do children learn relational words such as verbs and prepositions? We present a framework for testing children’s acquisition of relational words. We argue that learning relational language requires first discriminating and abstracting a set of components in events. Children then come to interpret these event components in line with their native language. In this process of trading spaces, infants start from a common non-linguistic base and focus on event components encoding once they start to learn their native language, becoming language-specific interpreters. Not only does language focus attention on particular components of events, but it also might serve as a tool for constructing complex event concepts. We discuss the implications both for first language learning and second language acquisition.
Keywords: event perception, relational language, language and thought, second language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Trading spaces
  • 3.Nonlinguistic event processing: When and how do children package event components?
    • 3.1Static events
    • 3.2Dynamic events
  • 4.How does learning one’s native language impact event processing?
    • 4.1Labeling event components
    • 4.2Vocabulary knowledge
    • 4.3Expression of events
    • 4.4Language as a mediator
  • 5.Learning more than one language
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 18 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.21.12gok
References (88)
References
Aksu-Koç, A.. 1994. Development of linguistic forms: Turkish. In Relating Events in Narrative, R. Berman & D. I. Slobin (eds), 329–388. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Aguiar, A. & Baillargeon, R.. 1999. 2.5-month-old infants’ reasoning about when objects should and should not be occluded. Cognitive Psychology 39: 116–157.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allen, S., Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., Ishizuka, T. & Fujii, M.. 2007. Language-specific and universal influences in children’s syntactic packaging of manner and path: A comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish. Cognition 102: 16–48.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arterberry, M. E. & Bornstein, M. H.. 2002. Infant perceptual and conceptual categorization: The roles of static and dynamic stimulus attributes. Cognition 86: 1–24.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bahrick, L. E. & Pickens, J. N.. 1995. Infant memory for object motion across a period of three months: Implications for a four- phase attention function. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 59: 341–373.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baillargeon, R.. 2004. Infants’ physical world. Current Directions in Psychological Science 13: 89–94.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baillargeon, R. & Wang, S. H.. 2002. Event categorization in infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6: 85–93.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, D. A., Baird, J. A., Saylor, M. M. & Clark, A. M.. 2001. Infants parse dynamic action. Child Development 72: 708–717.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bogartz, R. S., Shinskey, J. L. & Schilling, T. H.. 2000. Object permanence in five-and-a-half-month-old infants. Infancy 1: 403–428.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, M. & Choi, S.. 1994. Linguistic and nonlinguistic determinants of spatial semantic development. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development , Boston, MA.
Brown, A. & Gullberg, M.. 2008. Bidirectional crosslinguistic influence in L1-L2 encoding of manner in speech and gesture: A study of Japanese speakers of English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 30: 225–251.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasola, M.. 2005. When less is more: How infants learn to form an abstract categorical representation of support. Child Development 76: 279–290.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasola, M., Bhagwat, J. & Burke, A. S.. 2009. Learning to form a spatial category of tight-fit relations: how experience with a label can give a boost. Developmental Psychology 45: 711–723.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasola, M., Cohen, L. B. & Chiarello, E.. 2003. Six-month-old infants’ categorization of containment spatial relations. Child Development 74: 679–693.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casasola, M. & Park, Y.. 2013. Developmental changes in infant spatial categorization: When more is best and when less is enough. Child Development 84: 1004–1019.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, L. & Guo, J.. 2009. Motion events in Chinese novels: Evidence for an equipollently-framed language. Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1749–1766.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Choi, S.. 2006. Influence of language-specific input on spatial cognition: Categories of containment. First Language 26: 207–232.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. & Bowerman, M.. 1991. Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition 41: 83–121.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. & Hattrup, K.. 2012. Relative contribution of perception/cognition and language on spatial categorization. Cognitive Science 36: 102–129.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V.. 2003. First Language Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Csibra, G., Gergely, G., Biro, S., Koos, O. & Brockbank, M.. 1999. Goal attribution without agency cues: The perception of “pure reason” in infancy. Cognition 72: 237–267.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erciyes, A. & Göksun, T.. 2016, January. On the way to learn relational words: Detecting event components in dynamic events. Poster presented at the 16th BCCCD conference , Budapest, Hungary.
Flecken, M., Carroll, M., Weimar, K. & von Stutterheim, C.. 2015. Driving along the road or heading for the village? Conceptual differences underlying motion event encoding in French, German, and French–German L2 users. The Modern Language Journal 99: 100–122.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Furman, R., Küntay, A. C. & Özyürek, A.. 2014. Early language-specificity of children's event encoding in speech and gesture: evidence from caused motion in Turkish. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29: 620–634.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gentner, D.. 1982. Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In Language Development: Language, Thought, and Culture, S. Kuczaj (ed.), 301–334. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Bowerman, M.. 2009. Why some spatial semantic categories are harder to learn than others: The typological prevalence hypothesis. In Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, J. Guo, E. Lieven, S. Ervin-Tripp, N. Budwig, S. Özçalışkan & K. Nakamura (eds), 465–480. New York NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
George, N.. 2014. The Force of Language: How Children Acquire the Semantic Categories. PhD dissertation, Temple University.
George, N., Göksun, T., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2014. Carving the world for language learning: How neuroscientific research can enrich the study of first and second language learning. Developmental Neuropsychology 39: 262–284.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
George, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R.. Under review. Force dynamics: A semantic window into event hierarchies.
Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. 2008. How toddlers begin to learn verbs. Trends in Cognitive Science 12: 397–403.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksun, T.. 2010. The “Who” and “Where” of Events: Infants’ Processing of Figures and Grounds in Nonlinguistic Events. PhD dissertation, Temple University.
Göksun, T., George, N. R., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2013. Forces and motion: How young children understand causal events. Child Development 84: 1285–1295.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksun, T., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2010a. Trading spaces: Carving up events for learning language. Perspectives on Psychological Science 5: 33–42.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010b. How do preschoolers express cause in gesture and speech? Cognitive Development 25: 56–68.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksun, T., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Imai, M., Konishi, H. & Okada, H.. 2011. Who is crossing where? Infants’ discrimination of figures and grounds in events. Cognition 121: 176–195.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gullberg, M., Hendriks, H. & Hickmann, M.. 2008. Learning to talk and gesture about motion in French. First Language 28: 200–236.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Han, Z., & Cadierno, T.. (eds) 2010. Linguistic Relativity in SLA: Thinking for Speaking. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Hespos, S. J. & Baillargeon, R.. 2001. Reasoning about containment events in very young infants. Cognition 78: 207–245.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Young infants’ actions reveal their developing knowledge of support variables: Converging evidence for violation-of-expectation findings. Cognition 107: 304–316.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hespos, S. J., Grossman, S. R. & Saylor, M. M.. 2010. Infants’ ability to parse continuous actions: Further evidence. Neural Networks 23: 1026–1032.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hespos, S. J. & Piccin, T.. 2009. To generalize or not to generalize: Spatial categories are influenced by physical attributes and language. Developmental Science 12: 88–95.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hespos, S. J. & Spelke, E. S.. 2004. Conceptual precursors to language. Nature 430: 453–456.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hespos, S. J., Saylor, M. M. & Grossman, S. R.. 2009. Infants' ability to parse continuous actions. Developmental Psychology 45: 575–585.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hohenstein, J., Eisenberg, A. & Naigles, L.. 2006. Is he floating across or crossing afloat? Cross-influence of L1 and L2 in Spanish-English bilingual adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 9: 249–261.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Imai, M., Li, L., Haryu, E., Okada, H., Hirsh-Pasek, H. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2008. Novel noun and verb learning in Chinese, English, and Japanese children: Universality and language specificity in novel noun and verb learning. Child Development 79: 979–1000.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R.. 1983. Semantics and Cognition [Current Studies in Linguistics Series 8]. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Johanson, M., Selimis, S., & Papafragou, A.. 2008. Cross-linguistic biases in the semantics and the acquisition of spatial language. Paper presented at the 33rd Boston University Conference on Language Development , Boston, MA.
Konishi, H.. 2015. Semantic Reorganization: Does Language Influence Infants’ Perception of Components of Events? PhD dissertation, University of Delaware.
Konishi, H., Pruden, S. M., Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. 2016. Categorization of dynamic realistic motion events: Infants form categories of path before manner. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 152: 54–70.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Konishi, H., Stahl, A. E., Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, KK. In press. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Lai, V. T., Rodríguez, G. G. & Narasimhan, B.. 2014. Thinking-for-speaking in early and late bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17: 139–152.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakusta, L. & Carey, S.. 2008, March. Infants’ categorization of sources and goals in motion events. Paper presented in Conceptual primitives for processing events and learning relational terms. Symposium at the 16th International Conference on Infant Studies , S. Pruden, & T. Göksun (Chairs), Vancouver, Canada.
Lakusta, L., Wagner, L., O’Hearn, K. & Landau, B.. 2007. Conceptual foundations of spatial language: evidence for a goal bias in infants. Language Learning and Development 3: 179–197.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakusta, L. & Landau, B.. 2012. Language and memory for motion events: Origins of the asymmetry between source and goal paths. Cognitive Science 36: 517–544.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakusta, L. & Carey, S.. 2015. Twelve-month-old infants’ encoding of goal and source paths in agentive and non-agentive motion events. Language Learning and Development 11: 152–175.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leslie, A. M. & Keeble, S.. 1987. Do six-month-old infants perceive causality? Cognition 25: 265–288.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maguire, M. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Haryu, E., Imai, M., Vengas, S. & Sanchez-Davis, B.. 2010. A developmental shift from similar to language-specific strategies in verb acquisition: A comparison of English, Spanish and Japanese. Cognition 114: 299–319.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mandler, J. M.. 2012. On the spatial foundations of the conceptual system and its enrichment. Cognitive Science 36: 421–451.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCabe, A., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bornstein, M. H., Cates, C. B., Golinkoff, R., Guerra, A. W. & Mendelsohn, A.. 2013. Multilingual children. Social Policy Report 27: 2014–51.Google Scholar
McDonough, L., Choi, S. & Mandler, J. M.. 2003. Understanding spatial relations: Flexible infants, lexical adults. Cognitive Psychology 46: 229–259.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muentener, P. & Carey, S.. 2010. Infants’ causal representations of state change events. Cognitive Psychology 61: 63–86.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Negueruela, E., Lantolf, J. P., Jordan, S. R., & Gelabert, J.. 2004. The “private function” of gesture in second language communicative activity: A study on motion verbs and gesturing in English and Spanish. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 14: 113–147.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş. 2016. Do gestures follow speech in bilinguals’ description of motion? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19: 644–653.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş. & Slobin, D. I.. 1999. Learning “how to search for the frog”: Expression of manner of motion in English, Spanish, and Turkish. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, A. Greenhill, H. Littlefield, & C. Tano (eds) 541–552. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş., Gentner, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S.. 2014. Do iconic gestures pave the way for children's early verbs? Applied Psycholinguistics 35: 1143–1162.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Papafragou, A., Hulbert, J. & Trueswell, J.. 2008. Does language guide event perception? Evidence from eye movements. Cognition 108: 155–184.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pruden, S. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. 2006. Foundations of verb learning: Labels promote action category formation. In Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia & C. Zaller (eds), 476–488. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pruden, S. M., Göksun, T., Roseberry, S., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2012. Find your manners: How do infants detect the invariant manner of motion in dynamic events? Child Development 83: 977–991.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pruden, S. M., Roseberry, S., Göksun, T., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2013. Infant categorization of path relations during dynamic events. Child Development 84: 331–345.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pulverman, R., Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Sootsman-Buresh, J.. 2008. Infants discriminate paths and manners in non- linguistic dynamic events. Cognition 108: 825–830.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pulverman, R., Song, L., Pruden, S. M., Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. 2013. Preverbal infants’ attention to manner and path: Foundations for learning relational terms. Child Development 84: 241–252.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rakison, D. H. & Krogh, L.. 2012. Does causal action facilitate causal perception in infants younger than 6 months of age? Developmental Science 15: 43–53.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Regier, T. & Zheng, Z.. 2007. Attention to endpoints: A cross- linguistic constraint on spatial meaning. Cognitive Science 31: 705–719.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roseberry, S., Richie, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M. & Shipley, T. F.. 2011. Babies catch a break 7-to 9-month-olds track statistical probabilities in continuous dynamic events. Psychological Science 22: 1422–1424.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roseberry, S., Göksun, T., Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M.. 2012. Carving categories in a continuous world: Preverbal infants discriminate categorical changes before distance changes in dynamic events. Spatial Cognition & Computation 12: 231–251.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saylor, M. M., Baldwin, D. A., Baird, J. A. & LaBounty, J.. 2007. Infants' on-line segmentation of dynamic human action. Journal of Cognition and Development 8: 113–128.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shafto, C. L., Havasi, C. & Snedeker, J.. 2014. On the plasticity of semantic generalizations: Children and adults modify their verb lexicalization biases in response to changing input. Developmental Psychology 50: 794–808.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sharon, T. & Wynn, K.. 1998. Individuation of actions from continuous motion. Psychological Science 9: 357–362.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I.. 1996. From “thought and language” to “thinking to speaking.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (eds), 70–96. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
. 2001. Form-function relations: How do children find out what they are? In Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development, M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (eds), 406–449. Cambridge: CUP.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Song, L., Pulverman, R., Pepe, C., Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. 2016. Does the owl fly out of the tree or does the owl exit the tree flying? How L2 learners overcome their L1 lexicalization biases. Language Learning and Development 12(1): 42–59.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Song, L. Pruden, S. Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K.. In press. Prelinguistic foundations of verb learning: Infants discriminate and categorize dynamic human actions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Stahl, A. E., Romberg, A. R., Roseberry, S., Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh‐Pasek, K.. 2014. Infants segment continuous events using transitional probabilities. Child Development 85: 1821–1826.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L.. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, T. Shopen (ed.), 57–149. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics: Vol. 1. Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Waxman, S., Fu, X., Arunachalam, S., Leddon, E., Geraghty, K. & Song, H. J.. 2013. Are nouns learned before verbs? Infants provide insight into a long‐standing debate. Child Development Perspectives 7: 155–159.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wolff, P.. 2003. Direct causation in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. Cognition 88: 1–48.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zacks, J. M. & Tversky, B.. 2001. Event structure in perception and conception. Psychological Bulletin 127: 3–21.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Esmer, Şeref Can, Erim Kızıldere & Tilbe Göksun
2024.  Smashing verb learning through parental sound symbolic input in preterm and full-term children . Language Acquisition 31:3-4 ► pp. 284 ff. DOI logo
Göksun, Tilbe, Aslı Aktan‐Erciyes, Dilay Z. Karadöller & Ö. Ece Demir‐Lira
2024. The multifaceted nature of early vocabulary development: Connecting children's characteristics with parental input types. Child Development Perspectives DOI logo
LUSTIGMAN, Lyle & Eve V. CLARK
2019. Exposure and feedback in language acquisition: adult construals of children's early verb-form use in Hebrew. Journal of Child Language 46:2 ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.