Syntax and semantics in the acquisition of locative verbs

Syntax

and semantics in the
verbs*

acquisition

of locative

JESS GROPEN

Stanford University
STEVEN

PINKER, MICHELLE HOLLANDER
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
RICHARD

GOLDBERG

University of Maryland
(Received 8 August I989. Revised

19

February

I990

ABSTRACT

Children between the ages of three and
locative verbs like pour and fill, such as

seven

occasionally

make

e•'rors

with

filled water into the glass and * I
poured the glass with water (Bowerman, I982 ). To account for this
pattern of
errors, and for how they are eventually unlearned, we propose that children
use a universal linking rule called OBJECT Ai•FECTEDNESS: the direct object
corresponds to the argument that is specified as 'affected' in
some particular
*

I

way in the semantic

representation of a verb. However, children must learn
which verbs specify which of their arguments
specifically,
as being affected

whether it is the argument whose referent is undergoing change of location,
a
such as the content argumen t of pour,
the argument whose referent is
undergoing a change of state, such as theor container
argument of fill. This
predicts that syntactic errors should be associated with specific kinds of
misinterpretations of verb meaning. Two experiments were performed
on
the ability of children and adults to understand and produce locative
verbs.
The results confirm that children tend to make syntactic
with
errors
sentences containing fill and empty, encoding the content
argument as direct
[*]

We thank

Kay Bock,

Carey,

Eve Clark, Ken Wexler and Carol Tenny for their
grateful to the directors, parents arid especially children
of the following
After School Care Program, Inc., Cambridge Nursery
School, Central School, Children's Village, Inc., Creative Development
Center, KLH

helpful

Susan

comments. We are also
centres: Bowen

Center, Needham Children's Community Center, Newton Community Service Center,
Plowshares Child Care Program, Recreation Place, Rosary Academy Learning Center,
Temple Beth Shalom, and the Zervas Program. The research reported here is part of the
first author's doctoral dissertation. Experiment
was presented at the Twelfth Annual
Boston University Conference on Language Development.
This research was supported
by NIH grant HD I838I to the second author, and by a grant from the Alfred
P. Sloan
Foundation to the MIT Center for Cognitive Science. Address for correspondence: Jess
Gropen, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
943o5, USA.
II 5


CHILD

object (e.g. fill
meanings of fill

water).

LANGUAGE

LOCATIVE

predicted, children
requiring not only that

also misinterpreted the
and empty as
the container be brought
into a full or empty state, but also that the content move in some specific
(by pouring, or by dumping). Furthermore, children who mismanner
interpreted the verbs' meanings were more likely to make syntactic errors
with them. These findings support the hypothesis that verb meaning and
syntax are linked in precise ways in the lexicons of language learners.

the

As

INTRODUCTION

Although

syntax and semantics interact in the generation of errors and the
recovery from them in language development, there have been few concrete
demonstrations of how this works in detail. The purpose of tfiis work is to

understand this interaction in children's acquisition of locative verbs verbs
such as pour, fill, empty and load. Locative verbs express an event involving

the transfer of CONTENT to (I) or from (2) a CONTAINER. They are further
subdivided as to whether the content argument (i a, 2a) or the container
argument (i b, 2b) is encoded as the syntactic direct object. We shall refer to
these syntactic forms as CONTENT-OBJECT SENTENCES and CONTAINER-OBJECT
SENTENCES, respectively, and to the verbs appearing in them as CONTENTOBJECT VERBS and CONTAINER-OBJECT VERBS (see Schwartz-Norman, I976).
Some locative verbs (i c, 2c), which we shall call ALTERNATORS, may accept
either the content or container argument as direct object. (We are only
concerned with readings of these sentences in which both postverbal phrases
are arguments of the verb, and not in cases where the PP is taken to be an
embedded modifier of the direct object, e.g. Gus dumped the can of garbage,
but not the can of compost.)

Betty poured water into the cup/*poured' the cup with water.
Tom dripped paint onto the floor/*dripped the floor with paint.
b. Mike filled the cup with water/*filled water into the cup.
Lloyd covered the bed with a sheet/*covered a sheet onto the bed.
c. George loaded the gun with ammo/loaded ammo into the gun.
Dan stuffed the hamper with laundry/stuffed laundry into the
a.

hamper.
2a. Gus dumped garbage from the can/*dumped the ,can of garbage.
Tom wiped paint from the brush/*wiped the brush of paint.
b. Bob ridded the room of bugs/*ridded bugs from the room.
The crops depleted the soil of nutrients/*depleted nutrients from the
soil.
ice cream from the
c. Sally emptied the carton of ice cream/emptied

carton.

Bob drained the sink of

water/drained
ii6

water

from the sink.

Bowerman

ACQUISITION

(i 982) has documented an interesting 13-shaped developmental
production of locative sentences by her two children although
Eva initially used these verbs correctly, errors emerge within the

pattern in the

Christy

and

range of three to

years of age, after which the

errors decline. Bowerman
involved children overextending the

content-object form to verbs that ordinarily encode only the container
argument as direct object, as in I didn't fill water up to drink it (Eva, 4 I).
According to Bowerman, errors of the converse type-involving use of
incorrect verbs in the container-object construction-are less frequent.
Examples of both kinds of errors appear in Table i. Pinker (i 989) also found
seven errors involving locative verbs in three different four-year-old children,
such as I filled the grain up and And fill the little sugars up in the bowl.

found that the

TABLE

seven

most

I.

frequent

errors

Examples of overgeneralization (Bowerman, I982)

argument as direct object
I'm going to touch it on your pants..
didn't fill water up to drink it; filled it up for the flowers to drink it.
M Simon says, Touch your toes'.
C: To what (interprets toes as content, is now looking for container)
[note that this is a comprehension error]

E (4; 5)
I'm going to cover
screen over me.
C (4;9)
She's gonna pinch it on my foot.
E (4; xI)
And I'll give you these eggs you can fill up (giving M beads to put into
cloth chicken-shaped container)
E (5;o)
Can
fill some salt into the bear
bear-shaped salt shaker]
E (5 3)
Terri said if this
rhinestone on a shirt] were
diamond then people
would be trying to rob the shirt.
C (6; xo)
Feel your hand to that.
Errors with the container argument as direct object
E (2; 1)
Mommy, poured you. [M: You poured me ?] Yeah, with water
E (•4; i)
don't want it [= toast] because
spilled it of orange juice.
Errors with the
E (3;0)
E (4; I)
C (4; 3)

content

Bowerman notes that this pattern of development suggests a process of reorganization, driven by the child's discovery that a set of verbs, acquired
independently, have a common kind of mapping of semantic arguments onto
syntactic roles. This process, she points out, is similar to what applies in the
familiar example from inflectional morphology. In the case of locative verbs,
children first use individual verb-specific forms such as fill the glass (cf. the
morphologically-irregular broke, first learned by rote). Then, they abstract
the pattern whereby verbs like load that take the content-object sentence can
also take the container-object sentence. This allows them to overgeneralize
the content-object form to container-object verbs, such as infill the water (cf.
breaked). Bowerman suggests (following Talmy, I972) that the contentobject .form is overgeneralized more than the container-object form because
it is the dominant pattern in English for expressing locative events. Ac-


CHILD

LANGUAGE

LOCATIVE

cordingly, the overregularization of the
form is less common
(e.g. 1spilled it of orange juice) for the container-object
same reason that the overregularization
of irregular past tense inflections is
rare (e.g. brang on the pattern of sang).
Although there are similarities between
late errors with irregular inflection
and locative forms, there

are also some dissimilarities that merit further
examination. First, whereas irregular morphological
forms generally constitute a minority of the lexicon, and
are by definition idiosyncratic, neither
is true of the locative verbs that
overgeneralized. According to Rappaport
& Levin's (1985) near-exhaustivearelist of
locative verbs involving addition
of content to a container (not counting 125
two verbs from the list which
placed into more than one syntactic subcategory),
were
the non-alternators are in
the majority (9z), not the minority. Second,
among the non-alternators there
are almost four times as
many container-object verbs (73) as content-object
verbs (19), exactly the opposite

that required to explain the
greater
verbs. Furthermore, the
rankings are
same
we consider token frequencies: according
to the
frequency analysis performed
by Francis & Kucera (1982) on the basis of
million-word corpus, the sum of text-frequencies
a

is greater for the nonalternators (1295) than for the alternators (658),
and greater for the containerobject verbs (944) than for the content-object verbs
frequency analysis fails to distinguish between different(351). (Of course, their
argument structures
that a verb may take, and it bears only.
an indirect relationship to adult-tochild speech.)
More interestingly, neither of the non-alternating
locative forms consists
of idiosyncratic exceptions. The principal
difference betwe'en the contentobject and container-object forms is which
gets mapped onto the
role of direct object. It can be shown that in argument
broad outline, all locative verbs
conform to a single principle governing the linking
of semantic arguments to
grammatical functions, which
call the

frequency

of

pattern

with
obtained if
errors

we

RULE

to

container-object

OBJECT AFFECTEDNESS

LINKING

An argument is encodable
as the direct object Of a verb if its i-e•re•t ••pe•ifie-d
being affected in a specific
way in the semantic representation of the verb.
According to this rule, the choice of direct object is
governed by whether
the content or the container
must undergo a specified change in order for
the
verb"to apply.
The change, however,
can be a change either of physical
position or a change of state (which
may itself be mentally represented as
change of position in an abstract 'state
space': see Jackendoff, 1983). Fora
example, the meaning of pour specifies the particular
way in which the
content is affected: a substance
move in a cohesive stream, in contrast

with, say, dripping or showering. must
But pour does not specify the change of
state
of any container or surface to which the
substance moves one can pour
water
into a glass, beside a glass,
onto the ground, and so on. The linking rule
thus
118
as

ACQUISITION

is
that the content argument, but not the container argument,
specified
with
verbs
manner
Other
of
a
pour.
encodable as the direct object
of a container are
of motion of a content without a specified change of state
and shake.
drip
spill,

such
form,
content-object
the
as
also restricted to
which the
In contrast, the meaning of fill specifies the particular way in
being
not full to
is affected- it undergoes a change of state from
the
which
content
being full but it does not specify the particular manner in
dripping
by
water into
is affected one can fill a glass by pouring water into it,
that
specifies
thus
rule
linking
it, or by dipping a glass into a bathtub. The
encodable
is
as the
the container argument, but not the content argument,
specify

and
up
stop
like
cover, saturate
direct object of fill. Similarly, verbs
only change of state of a container, and can only encode the container
argument as direct object.
Finally, the meaning of the verb stuff jointly constrains the particularof
change of location that the content undergoes and the particular change for
In stuffing clothes into a hamper,
state that the container undergoes.
the hamper (perhaps compressing
into
forced
be
clothing
must
instance, the
remaining
the clothing) BECAUSE the hamper is being filled.to a point where its
the
relative
amount of
to
capacity is too small,, or just barely big enough,
the direct
then,
rule,
linking

clothing that is being forced in. According to the
the
either
content or container
object of stuff should be able to encode
Other alternators
alternator.
is
argument, and this is what we find: stuff an
simultaneously
changes
of
in
defined
terms
also specify actions that are
where force
dab,
brush
such
container,
and
or
as
specified in terms of content
of
where
load
container,
the

a kind
against
or
is applied pushing the content
the
in
container
act
the
enables
to
or
move
container
the
dictated by

specifies

•container

a

content

designed

way

(e.g,

a

camera,

or

a

gun).

The fact that the direct object always corresponds to the affected entity in
locative verbs manifests itself as a subtle semantic difference between the
versions. For example, John loaded the cart with apples implies that the cart
does
is completely filled with apples, but John loaded the apples into the cart
197'1)
be
(Anderson,
seen as a
can
not. This HOLISTIC INTERPRETATION
of a
change
specifying
state
a
consequence of the container-object form
natural
the

most
of
change
content;
a
container rather than a location
interpretation of a state change is that it is the entire object that undergoes
the change (see Rappaport & Levin, 1985; Pinker, 1989).
the
The object affectedness rule may be quite general, applying not only to
languages.
other
in
its
but
counterparts
English
in
alternation
to
holistic
Both the same kinds of verbs that alternate in English, and the
found
in the
interpretation accompanying the container-object form, can be
that
are
locative alternations of a variety of languages, including many
genetically and areally distinct from English (Moravcsik, 1978; Foley & Van
Valin, 1985; Rappaport & Levin, 1986; Gropen, 1989; Pinker, 1989).

iocative

119


CHILD

Furthermore,

the

principle

be

LANGUAGE

apply

constructions other than
across
Verbs
which an animate entity (an AGENT)
brings about a direct effect on another in entity
(a PATIENT), such as verbs of
causation of change of position (e.g. causative
slide) or state (e.g. causative
melt), or verbs of ingestion (e.g. eat),
are almost invariably transitive

languages, with patients as direct objects. In
across
contrast, verbs that fall outside
this broad semantic class show
variation within and across languages,
with either argument appearing moredirect
object, such as in verbs of emotion
as
(fear vs. frighten), or with prepositional objects
expressing the non-agentive
argument, such as in verbs of perception (see
vs.
physical contact without a change in the contacted look at) and in verbs of
surface (hit
hit at);

locative forms

Hopper
the

can

languages.

seen

to

Thompson, •98o; Levin, i985;

holism
&

vs.

Talmy, •985. Furthermore,see
interpretation of direct objects quite
and

effect accompanies the
semantic shifts can be seen in the difference between
Kurt
climbed the mountain and Kurt climbed
the mountain, only the first implying
that the entire mountain has been up
scaled, and in a variety of other
constructions discussed in Green,
Moravcsik,

generally: similar

•974;
•978; Hopper &]
Thompson, 980; Levin, i985 and Pinker,
•989.
The fact that non-alternating verbs
conform to a crosslinguistically
widespread linking pattern, rather than
being
a list of idiosyncrasies, suggests

that children may actually
use the linking rule in acquiring the locative
alternation,j and that it may play a role both in the genesis
of their errors and
in their recovery from them. Though
the linking rule appears to be

nearuniversal, the meanings of individual verbs clearly
are not. Therefore it is
possible that,mistakes in verb meaning, such.
entity is affected, might be the source of the as the specification Of which
syntactic errors reported by
Bowerman

(i982)" Specifically,

if a child erroneously thought that
a converb such asfill specified
some specific manner of motion of the
content-pouring, for example- he or she could derive
a content-object
form from it using the linking rule, and
would produce errors like fill the
water.

tainer-object

Previous research suggests that children
indeed slow in fixing the
meanings of .verbs compared arewith the meanings

of nouns
(Gentner,
standard adult

•975; •982). In particular, they have
more difficulty acquiring
meaning components relevant to changes of state than
components relevant
to changes of location. (Gentner
that this may be part of larger
suggests
a
aattern whe"reby functional components of word
meaning
difficult
are
more
:han perceptual/actional components.) For
example, Gentner contrasted the
zerb mix, which she suggests specifies
a particular change
of state ('an
ncrease in homogeneity') but is noncommittal about
the kind of action that
;ffects it, with stir, beat and shake, which
about the
esulting state, but which require particular are noncommittal
of
motion.
man•ers

Children
,ged five to nine and adults were asked to describe six
kinds
of

I20

LOCATIVE

to

events

and

to

ACQUISITION

verify whether

each of the four verbs
to them: a stirring,
shaking motion performed onwassaltappropriate
and water (which could 'mix ')
cream (which, already being
a homogeneous
substance, could not).
encoding manners of motion posed
no problem for the children

beating,
or

on

Verbs

or

97 %
7-year-olds and 93 % of the 7- to 9-year-olds paired
the
correct
manner-of-motion verb with the appropriate
manner of motion. However,
the end-state requirement of mix
was poorly grasped: the 5- to 7-year-olds
used mix on 48 % of the trials where the
substance was mixable and
46 %

of the 5-

to

of the trials where it

was

on

not.

Note that this asymmetry in the acquisition
together with the object affectedness rule, of verb meaning components,
offers us an independently
motivated explanation for why the
content-object
sentence is produced and
overapplied more frequently than the container-object
sentence, and, unlike
the analogy with overregularization
of irregular morphology, it does
depend on questionable assumptions about
not
locative forms in the input. Another advantage the frequencies of different
the linking theory over the
overregularization theory is that it provides to hypothesis
about how the
a
errors are eventually unlearned.
This is a general problem in language
acquisition, since children are not corrected
reliably misor
even
comprehended when they make grammatical
errors (Brown & Hanlon
97o),
so overgeneral rules are always logically

compatible with the child's linguistic
experience (Braine, i97i Baker, •979; Pinker,
•984; •989). Though it has
been suggested that subtle statistical
in
patterns
parental reactions might
differentiate ungrammatical from grammatical
it seems highly
sentences,
unlikely that such feedback could be of much
use in unlearning locative
errors, since they are too infrequent
allow

to
aggregation of significant
differences in parental feedback
types (e.g. out of a database of
22,303
utterances in the Brown corpus for Adam
Snow, •985) Pinker (•989) found only three onclearCHILDES (MacWhinney &
syntactic errors (o'ooo• %)
with locative verbs). Furthermore, the
errors occur far later than the
which such feedback might
ages at
occur (see Bowerman, I987; Pinker' •989).
The standard solution to the
no-negative-evidence problem in the

of
morphology is that irregular forms
block the application Of the regularcaserule,
when
the
child
hears broke
so

and realizes

that it is nothing more than the
break, he or she will avoid saying breaked
(see Pinker, x984; Pinkerpast&
Prince, 988). But no such blocking relation exists
in the
of

case of the locative
that
the
reliably indicating that fill the water is ungrammatical. child could take as
The non-occurrence
of such forms in parental speech
cannot impel the child to reject them,
because the child
be
of extending the alternation
to true
alternating verbs thatmusthappen capable

not to have been used in both forms in
the
input, such as, say, daub or spatter. In
contrast, the account based on the
object linking rule does suggest
an account of how the

alternation: there is

no

kind of parental

sentence

syntactic

I2I

errors

are


CHILD

LANGUAGE

unlearned. Children can learn that a verb likefill does not require a particular
of motion of the content as soon as they hear the verb used in a clear

context in which no such motion takes place: for example, when a glass is
filled by means of bailing or dripping. When the child processes such inputs
that falsify the erroneous manner component and he or she expunges that
component from the verb's semantic representation, the linking rule will no
longer map the content argument onto the direct object function, and the
1989; Pinker, 1989).
errors will cease (see Gropen,
In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that children use the object
affectedness linking rule to predict the syntactic privileges of verbs, but that
they must learn what is and is not specified as affected in the semantic
representations of individual verbs. First, using a task where children
describe pictures, we tried to confirm that children overgenerate locative
forms in sentences like The man is filling the water and The man is pouring the
glass with water, and to see whether we replicated the asymmetry in favour
of the former type of error, involving container-object verbs in contentobject constructions. Second, using a two-alternative forced-choice task in
which children select pictures corresponding to locative verbs, we attempted
to determine whether children misinterpret the meanings of locative verbs,
perhaps thinking that (e.g,)fill specifies the particular manner in which a
substance changes location instead of the particular change of state that a
container undergoes. Third, we tested whether syntactic and semantic errors
individual children- for example, whether children
across
are associated
who misinterpret the meaning of fill to specify the manner in which a
substance moves will be more inclined to express the content argument as the
direct object.
manner

LOCATIVE

ACQUISITION

children were drawn from middle-class day-care and after-school programs.
Eight children were replaced in the design because of their unwillingness or
inability to perform the syntactic task.

Materials

Twenty-five line drawings were created, each composed of two panels, like
first panel depicted the manner in which a substance
a comic strip. The
changed location during the course of an action; the second depicted the
endstate of a container as a result of the action. One example is reproduced
in Fig. I, where the first panel depicts a woman pouring water from a pitcher
i-nto a glass and the second panel depicts an empty glass next to a puddle of
water, showing that the woman had spilled the water. Fig. 2 displays another
example: the first panel shows a woman turning on a tap, allowing water to
drip from the spigot into a glass; the second panel shows a glass full of water.
A subject who knows that the meaning of pour specifies the manner in which
location should choose Fig.
over Fig. 2 as the better
a substance changes

EXPERIMENT

experiment we tested children's and adults' syntactic and semantic
knowledge of six common locative verbs: pour, fill, dump, empty, stuff and
splash. The parts of the experiment dealing with the verbs stuff and splash are
not discussed here, because they are alternating verbs (so syntactic errors,
strictly speaking, are impossible) and because children and adults performed

similarly on them. They are discussed in detail in Gropen (1989).
In this

Fig.

x.

A

picture

of

'pouring-spilling'

in

Experiment

Fig.

z.

A

picture

of

'dripping-filling'

in

Experiment

METHOD

Subjects
Sixty-four native speakers of English living in the Boston area participated:
16 children (1 • boys, 5 girls) aged 2; 6 to 3;5 (mean 3;1);16 (7 boys, 9 girls)
aged 3;6 to 4;5 (mean 3;11); i6 (8 boys, 8 girls) aged 4;6 to 5;•1 (mean
5;o); and 16 paid undergraduate and graduate students at MIT. The
I22

123


CHILD

LANGUAGE

LOCATIVE

example of 'pouring'. Similarly, a subject who knows that the meaning offill
specifies the resulting endstate of the container should choose Fig. z over
Fig. as the better example of 'filling'.
Of the z5 pictures, one depicted a boy hitting a ball with a bat in the first
panel, with the ball breaking a window in the second panel. It was used to
ensure that the subjects understood that the drawings depicted two events or
states that were causally related. The remaining z4 drawings were used to test

the subjects' semantic and syntactic knowledge of pour, fill, dump and empty.
The semantic test was designed to assess what we shall call a BIAS in the
interpretation of a verb's meaning; subjects were forced to choose which of
two pictures, differing in manner and endstate, best represented the meaning
of the verb (e.g. whether fill means pouring or fill means filling). Verbs and
drawings were chosen in pairs so that we could test what we thought would
be the most likely misinterpretations of the verbs. Specifically, we thought
that a child might interpret fill to specify a pouring manner, pour to specify
a full endstate, empty to specify a dumping manner, and dump to specify an
empty endstate. This also provides a built-in control: because the verbs in
these pairs are closely related in meaning, we were able to test subjects'
interpretation of both verbs of a pair using the same sets of pictures (across
subjects), ensuring that subjects' responses were not due to the salience of the
pictures themselves.
Twelve pictures were shared for trials with the x•erbs pour andfill. Of these
Z, subsets of three pictures depicted the same scenario- that is, the same
agent, container and content- with one picture ambiguous between pouring
and filling (e.g. Fig. 3), one depicting pouring but not filling (Fig. i), and one
depictingfilling but not pouring (Fig. z). Similarly, a set of iz pictures was
shared for the verbs dump and empty. We used four different picture sets in
testing the meaning of each verb so that the idiosyncrasies of any one scenario
could not explain the results. Table • lists descriptions of the pictures used
in the testing of pour/fill and dump/empty, organized by scenario. Within

TABLE

man

used in the testing of 'pour'/'fill'
'dump '/' empty'

PANEL

from tap into sink

water

(Pour/Fill)

Scenario Az

girl pours honey
girl drips honey
girl pours honey

bowl filled with honey
bowl filled with honey
empty bowl/spilled honey

from bottle into bowl
from fork into bowl
from bottle into bowl

(Pour/Fill)

Scenario BI

bucket filled with paint
bucket filled with paint
empty bucket/spilled paint

boy pours paint from can into bucket
boy drips paint from brush into bucket
boy pours paint from can into bucket

(Pour/Fill)

Scenario Bz
woman
woman

woman

pours water from
pours water from

drips

Scenario CI

water

from tap

dumps

ice

cream

man

scoops ice

cream

man

ice

cream

Scenario Cz

pitcher
pitcher

glass

glass
glass

into
into

empty

into glass

glass

(Dump/Empty)

man

dumps

from
from
from

carton
carton
carton

into bowl
into bowl
into bowl

(Dump/Empty)

Scenario DI

(Dump/Empty)

woman

dumps salad from bowl
dumps salad from bowl

woman

scoops salad from bowl

Scenario D2

onto
onto
onto

onto
onto
onto

water
water
water

glass/spilled
filled with

empty carton/ice cream in bowl
empty carton/ice cream in bowl
non-empty carton/some ice cream in
bowl
on

table

on

table

'Playdo'

empty bowl/salad on plate
non-empty bowl/some salad
empty bowl/salad on plate

plate
plate
plate

(Dump/Empty)

boy dumps sand from pail
boy scoops sand from pail
boy dumps sand fro m pail

filled with

empty can/'Playdo'
non-empty can/some
empty can/' Playdo'

girl dumps 'Playdo'* from can onto table
girl dumps 'Playdo' from can onto table
girl scoops 'Playdo' from can onto table
woman

(Endstate)

sink filled with water
empty sink/spilled water
sink filled with water

pours water from bucket into sink
pours water from bucket into sink

drips

2

and

(Pour/Fill)

Scenario AI
man

sets

(Manner)

PANEL

man

Picture

2.

ACQUISITION

empty pail/sand on towel
empty pail/sand on towel
non-empty pail/some sand

towel
towel
towel

on

on

on

table

plate

towel

Note: each line corresponds to a drawing composed of one manner panel andone endstate
panel. For each subset of three drawings (e.g. AI), the first drawing was displayed before the
remaining two; the second drawing was always displayed on the experimenter's right (the
child's left); the third drawing was always displayed on the experimenter's left (the child's

right).
'Playdo'

is

a

registered trademark.

(six pictures) were used for the testing of each verb;
subset was used equally often in the
in
an age group, each
across
testing of either verb of a pair. For the pour/fill sets, the manner distractor
depicted dripping and the endstate distractor always depicted an
empty container (the contents were spilled); for the dump/empty sets, the
subject,

two

subCsets

subjects

alway•

Fig.

3- A

picture

of

'pouring-filling'
I24

in

Experiment

i.

I25


CHILD
manner

distractor

always depicted

a

LANGUAGE

always depicted scooping

nofi-empty

LOCATIVE

and the endstate distractor

container.

Procedure
Adults were tested individually in a single session.; children were tested
individually in two half-hour sessions separated by several days. Two
experimenters tested each child, one interacting with him or her and the
other recording responses.
Before testing their knowledge of locative verbs, we introduced subjects to
the format of the pictures by presenting them with the drawing of a boy
hitting a ball with a bat and the ball breaking a •vindow. Subjects were first
asked to describe each panel separately, and then both panels together. If
subjects did not spontaneously use an appropriate causative verb (e.g. break,
smash) in describing the complete drawing, the experimenter modelled the
sentence The boy is breaking the window.
During the main body of the experimental session, we tested the Verbs one
at a time. For each verb we began with an ambiguous picture in order to
familiarize the subject with the conventions of the drawings (e.g. the use of
shading and a waterline to indicate the fullness of the glass). For example, the
experimenter would show Fig. 3 to a subject, and say 'Look at the first
picture: there's a woman, a pitcher, water, and a glass. Look at the second
picture there's the glass and the water. Now look at both pictures when the
woman does THIS (pointing to the first panel), it ends up like THAT (pointing
to the second panel). And it's called FILLING. THIS (gesturing towards the
entire drawing) is FILLING'. (In other conditions, the very same picture and
commentary would be used as an example of pouring.) The experimenter
would'then remove the first drawing and administer a forced-choice task

involving two non'ambiguous pictures (e.g. Figs and 2); this served as the
test of verb semantics. The constituents in each picture (i.e. pair of panels)
would be introduced, as above, starting with the picture on the experimenter's right. Neither of these pictures would be labelled as a depiction of
filling; instead, the experimenter would ask, 'Which of THESE (gesturing
towards both drawings) is FILLING .•' Notice that each picture preserves one
panel f..rom the ambiguous picture and introduces a new panel, so any
systematic difference in response could not merely reflect global similarity
between the original picture and either of the forced-choice .alternatives. If a
subject did not clearly indicate either one picture or the other, the experimenter repeated the question. The position of alternative pictures in the
forced choices was balanced within subject so that, for the two forced choices
per verb, a given type of picture (e.g. 'pouring-spilling') appeared on the
right as often as it did on the left.
Following this procedure, an elicitation task (the test of syntax) was
I26

ACQUISITION

administered for that verb. The picture selected in the forced-choice task
(whether it was correct or incorrect by adult standards) was presented to the
subject, who was asked to describe what was happening in the picture. We
were concerned that children may have an overall response bias to use the
content-object or the container-object constructions, masking any tendency
they may have to extend a verb to an incorrect form if it was the less-used
in two discourse contexts, one apone. Therefore we elicited sentences
propriate to each form. For example, when the chosen picture corresponded
to Fig. 2, the experimenter would make the container the topic in the
following way: 'Point to the glass; say GLASS... say FILLING... What is the
woman doing to the GLASS ?' A natural response to this question is, 'She's
filling it with water'-where the container argument is encoded as direct
object. In the same way, a content-topic query will set up a discourse context

favouring a locative response with the content argument as direct object. (For
of the same methodology applied successfully to eliciting
a discussion
different dative forms, see Gropen, Pinker, Hollander, Goldberg & Wilson,
I989). Furthermore, in those trials where a subject failed to produce a
sentence with an unambiguous direct object, we followed it up with a
prompt: 'filling what', or 'filling __?' If the prompt also did not work, we
asked (e.g.) 'Is the woman filling the glass or filling the water ?' (The order
of alternatives in the question was balanced across the two sets of pictures for
a given verb for a given child, and counterbalanced across subjects within
each age group.) In this way, we scored three kinds of response ãÂarying in
degree of spontaneity in the syntactic task. We balanced the order of
query topic used in the testing of each verb across the subjects in an agegroup.

Each cycle of semantic and syntactic tests was performed twice per verb,
the second time with a new set of three pictures. The order of verbs itself was
b•lanced across subjects in an age-group under the constraint that verbs with
overlapping picture sets (e.g. pour and fill) were never tested in consecutive
order or within the same session. In addition, the combination of verb testing
order, picture s•t combinations, and query order was counterbalanced across
subjects within each age group.

Scoring

responses

In the semantic test, children's
were scored according to whether
the chosen picture was consistent or inconsistent with the meaning of the
verb as indicated by the tendencies of the adult control subjects. In the

syntactic task: responses were scored according to whether the direct object
of a locative construction corresponded to the content or the container in the
described picture. To count as a locative construction, a response had to
specify both the appropriate verb and an unambiguous direct object. The
I27


CHILD

kind of question needed to elicit the locative ••esponse was also scored; that
is, whether the subject responded to the original elicitation, the subsequent
prompt (e.g. Filling what '), or the forced-choice question (e.g. Filling the
glass or filling the water '). Subjects often used pronouns in their responses
for example, in answering What is the woman doing to the glass ?' a subject
might respond, 'She's filling it'. These utterances were counted only if the
referent of the pronoun was disambiguated by the presence of an oblique
object or particle (e.g. She poured it into the glass or She poured it out), or the
referent could be pinned down via the subsequent prompt. Responses which
were undecipherable or not clearly locative (e.g. intransitive responses such
as She's pouring with the water) were excluded.

RESULTS

Syntax

AND

-ACQUISITION
fill were not just responses to follow-up prompts. The original request to
describe the picture elicited many fill-content sentences, and the statistical

comparisons remain significant when restricted to these responses.
Since empty is an alternator, strictly speaking children cannot make errors
with it. However, Table 3 shows that the children had a consistent preference
for the content-object form, which contrasts with adults, who used both
forms equally often. Across the child groups, the difference between the
proportion of trials eliciting content-object sentences and container-object
2"06, p < 0"05).
sentences (0"23) was significant (t (47)
Children were clearly sensitive to whether the original query focused on
LOCATIVE

LANGUAGE

DISCUSSION

produced

Table 3 shows the proportion of trials in which subjects
contentand container-object sentences with each verb in response to content-topic
and container-topic eliciting questions, Not surprisingly, adults used pour
and dump almost exclusively in content-object sentences (only two subjects
produced dump-container forms, one apiece), and they used fill almost
exclusively in container-object sentences (0nly one fill-content form was
produced by an adult). Empty, in contrast, is clearly an alternator- eight
adults used it in both locative forms, and four adults each used it in only one
or the other form.
Children could deviate from adults' responses in two ways: they could use
fill in content-object sentences, pour in container-object sentences, or dump
in container-object sentences. Of these potential errors, children were much
likely to produce the nonstandard fill form than the other two: 3o

more
children out of 48 produced at least one fill-content form, whereas only two
children produced at least one pour-container form and only six children
produced at least one dump-container form. The tendency to produce fillcontent forms declines with age the mean proportion of trials eliciting such
forms goes from o'53 in the young and middle groups to o'34 in the older
group aod o'o3 in adults, and this difference is significant in an ANOVA (F
(3, 6o) 6"63, p < o'ooi). A series of planned one-tailed t-tests shows that,
for each of the child groups compared separately to the adult group, there is
in the proportion of fill-content responses (fro m
a significant difference
(3o) 4"5o, P < o'ooi t (3o)
youngest to oldest, t (3o)
4"5o, P < o'ooi
3"oi, p < o'oo3). Although the oldest children produced fewer fill-content
forms (I utterances) than the younger children (i 7 utterances for each of the
younger groups), a post-hoc comparison reveals that this difference is not
significant (two-tailed t (46) I'48, p o'I4). As Table 3 shows, errors with

the container

or

on

the

content.

For the alternator empty, there

was

a

content-object sentences in response to content-topic
difference
o'41) and a preference to use container-object
--o'o6),
sentences in response to container-object queries (mean difference
lO'87, p < o'oo5). The effect can also be
a significant difference (F (I, 60)
seen with the non-alternating verb dump, for which container-object errors
exclusively in response to container-topic questions. (Fillwere produced
content errors were produced equally often in response to content, and
container-topic questions.)
preference to
queries (mean

use

Semantics
In order to

assess subjects' interpretations of particular verbs, we adopted the
criterion" if a subject chose the same type of picture (manner or
both semantic tests for a given verb, then he or she was
on
considered biased towards that aspect of the verb's meaning. Table 4
summarizes the number of biased subjects in each age group. Totals that are
significantly greater than chance (o'5 x o'5 x 16 4/16 subjects) at p < o'o5

accbrding to the binomial distribution are underlined.
The data reveal markedly different performance for pour and dump versus
fill and empty.
expected, adults unanimously treated pour and dump as
having more todo with a manner of motion than with a change of state, and
fill and empty as having more to do with a change of state than a manner of
motion. The number of children who were biased towards the adult
interpretations of pour and dump is significantly higher than chance for every
age group (p < o'o5). In contrast, forfill and empty we fail to find a significant
number for children biased towards the change of state interpretations, and
instead find that some groups of children were biased towards INCORRECT
meanings for the verbs. Specifically, in the semantic test for fill eight of the
oldest children (out of 16)consistently chose pictures showing a pouring
manner without a full endstate (p < o,o3). In addition, in every child-group
more children than would be expected by chance (though not significantly so)
showed a bias towards choosing incorrect pictures for empty (i.e. a dumping

following
endstate)

•As

129

JCL

18


CHILD

T A B L E 3.

LANGUAGE

LOCATIVE

Experiment
Proportion of trials in which subjects
content-object and container-object sentences

used verbs in

4"

TABLE

ACQUISITION

towards
i" Number of subjects biased
endstate interpretations of verbs

Experiment

AGE-GROUP
VERB-FORM

2

6--3

5

3

6--4

5

4

AGE

6--5

Pour
o'94

1"oo

1"oo

I'OO

0"88

1"oo

i.oo

1"oo

Mean

0"91

1,oo

1"oo

1.oo

(I8/IO/I)
Container-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query

0.o6

Mean

(29/3/0)

(29/3/0)

o'oo

o'oo

o'oo

o" 12

o.oo

o'oo

o'oo

0"09

o'oo

o'oo

o'oo

(11210)

Manner bias
Pour

Mean

1"oo

i'oo

i'oo

I'OO

o'81

o'94

o'88

o'97

o'94

o'94

(I9/IO/I)
Container-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query
Mean

o'91

(27121

°

(26/4/I)

Mean

Container-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query
Mean

Empty
Content-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query
Mean

Container-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query
Mean

0

2

4

8_

7

manner

•

I6

frequencies

are

0

0

7
7

5
5

significantly

o

0

17
17

greater than

chance,

at

•
•

p

<

0"05,

according

to

test.

without

an

empty endstate)

altogether

i9 out of the

48

children did

significant proportion (p < o'o2, binomial test).
These data suggest that a child may be more likely to think that the
meaning of fill involves pouring than that it involves something being made
full; likewise that empty involves dumping rather than that it involvessomething being made emptyl Presumably this is due to two factors. The
first is a bias toward picking up manner components of meaning, as suggested
by Gentner (I978). This overall bias can be demonstrated by aggregating
data over the set of four verbs, which was balanced for manner-oriented and
endstate-oriented meanings, and comparing the difference between the
proportion of manner and endstate responses for adults and children. Adults
showed no overall bias (the mean difference between manner and endstate
responses was o'I2, not significantly different from zero), whereas children
did: their difference scores were all significantly different from zero (young
0"28, (I5) ='3"2o, p < o"oi mid 0"39, (I5) 4"28, p < o'ooi old
5"26, p < o"ooi). The second factor is the statistical pattern
0"52, (I5)
cause-and-effect
of
sequences in the world, whereby pouring is a typical
and dumping is a typical means of effecting
fullness
effecting
of
means
so-a

o'oo

o'oo

o'oo

o'oo

z

o" 19
o'o9

o'o6

o" 12

o'o3

o.o6

o"

o.o6

(21010)

(I/I/I)

,(I/O/O)

0"56

0"62

0"44
0"53

o'19
0"50
0"34

0"06

0"50
0"53

0"94
0"94
o.94

Fill

Content-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container,topic query

I4
•

o

6

z

binomial

16)
x_•
I_•

6

Note: Underlined

Adult

(N

16)
4o
4o

Fill

5
5

(N

16)

Empty

Dump

Combined
children

11

(N

Endstate bias
Pour

a

6-5

•
I.•

Fill

o'88

4;

•
5t

Dump

Empty

Content-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query

3

16)

(N

Content-object sentences
Content-topic query
Container-topic query

6-4; 5
(N 16)

5

or

GROUP

Adult

6-3

manner

(9/8/0)

(9/7/1)

0"44
0"50

0"31

0"75

o'44

0"44
o'59

o'47

(5/6/0)

0"56

(4/10/1)

(IO/I/3)

(9/9/1)

0"69

0"69
0"56

0"69

0"50
0"59

0"50
0"59

0"62

(6/8/5)

(12/7/I)

0"31
0"44

0"31

o"

0"34

0.50
o'41

(I3/6/o)

0"38

0"38

(5/5/2)
130

(4/4/3)

(I

31

I/!/i

o'oo

0"03

0"75
0"25
0"50

5
0"75
0.50
0"2

Note: The numerals in parentheses in Table 3 correspond to the frequencies of sentences used
in response to the ,original question, the subsequent prompt, and the forced-choice question,
respectively. Adults always responded to the original question. For the trials on a given verb
performed by each group, total proportions may be less than l'OO and total frequencies may
be less than 32 because of discarded responses.

131

5-2


CHILD

LANGUAGE

emptiness. Adults know that these causal
world, not facts about the semantics of fill connections
or empty.

are

6.

TABLE

Experiment
empty'

i"

Contingency

and kinds

Contingencies

between semantic and syntactic
errors
We have suggested that children's
syntax errors are the product of correct
linking rules operating on incorrect semantic
with this suggestion is the finding that the kinds representations. Consistent
of verbs that children
use in
incorrect syntactic frames in spontaneous
speech and in the syntax test (fill
and empty) are the same verbs that children
misinterpreted in the semantics
test, with just the kind of bias (towards manner) that would
result in incorrect
content-object sentences. In contrast, pour and dump
were rarely the sources

of either syntactic or semantic
errors.
A much more stringent test
can b6 conducted by seeing if the tendency
towards semantic and syntactic errors is correlated
across individual children.
For each age group and verb

we constructed a 2 × 2 contingency table, each
child contributing one count, classifying children
according to their semantic
bias and their syntactic
errors. For fill, each child was classified
as either
biased towards the pouring
manner or biased towards the full endstate based
on performance in the semantics test, and
was independently classified either

having produced

as
at least one content-object form
among his or her
transitive sentences with fill,
or as having produced no such
errors, in the
syntax test. (One child who produced
no transitive sentences with fill
was
excluded.) This analysis is shown in Table
5. Only the oldest children

(4;6-5;x•) showed any tendency toward contingency
in the predicted
direction (i.e. being more likely to produce a fill-content
errors

TABLE

5"

Produced

at

2;6-3;5:
Manner biased
biased

l•ndstat•e

4

3;6-4;5:
Manner biased
Endstate biased
Manner
Endstate
Combined
Manner
Endstate

if

they

were

Experiment I" Contingency between bias in the interpretation
of
'fill' and grammatical errors in sentences with 'fill'
content-object

biased
biased
children
biased
biased

6
5

8

132

least

one

Produced

content-object

no

sentences

of

between bias in the interpretation of

sentences used

Produced only

content-object

sentences

with

empty'
Produced

container-object

only
sentences

z;6-3;5:
Manner biased
Endstate biased

3

3;6-4;5:

Manner biased

5

Endstate biased

o

4;6-5;I•:
Manner
Endstate
Combined
Manner
Endstate

biased
biased
children
biased
biased

6

o

o

I4

biased toward a manner interpretation forfi//), but this contingency

was only
marginally significant in a Z test (Z" (I) 3"o9; p < o-o8) and not significant
by a Fisher Exact Test (one-tailed p o-i2).
Table 6 displays a similar test that was conducted for performance
with
empty. Because both forms are grammatical for adults, for the syntactic
dimension each child is classified in terms of whether he
or she produced only
empty-content forms or only empty-container forms. Here the contingency is
the right direction for all three age
groups, and is significant for the combined
group of children according to a Fisher Exact test (one tailed p < o'o2):
a
child who is biased toward a manner interpretation for
empty will tend to

produce
whereas

sentence

ACQUISITION

LOCATIVE

facts about the

produce

empty-content sentences than empty-container sentences

child who is biased towards an endstate interpretation will tend
to

more
a

more container-object
contingencies between
encouraging, if somewhat less

The

sentences.

semantic biases and syntactic forms are
than conclusive, particularly for fi//. Apart
from the fact that our samples were
very small (two responses per measure
per child) in comparison to the noisiness of children's behaviour, there
are
two reasons why we may have underestimated the degree of contingency
present in children's grammars. First, even if children do assign irrelevant
manner features to a verb's meaning, there is
tested for
no guarantee that
the exact manner feature that children hypothesize. Pouringwe
seemed a
plausible, candidate but one alternative is that children think that filling
requires the top surface of a substance to move higher and higher during the
course of the action; such a manner of motion would in fact be compatible

with the panel depicting the full-container endstate. Second, subjects
were

I33


CHILD

LANGUAGE

always forced to choose between depiction of
but not filling and a
depiction of filling but not pouring.a Perhaps pouring
some children think that filling
must involve a full endstate AND a pouring
manner but when forced to choose
the more important one they
go for the full endstate. It might be the

LOCATIVE

ACQUISITION

nine months earlier). Four children were replaced in the design because of
their unwillingness or inability to perform the semantic task.

mere

presence of a manner component, not the absence of
an endstate component,

that causes content-object
errors, but our task pitted them against each other
rather than testing each one separately. The second
experiment attempts to
deal with this limitation,

EXPERIMENT

2

The main purpose of this experiment is
to distinguish a BIAS toward
manner
or endstate interpretations of a verb when they
are pitted against each other,
from a SENSITIVITY to each component when tested
individually, That is,
rather than asking whether filling
is more important to the
or pouring
meaning of fill, we ask whether filling is relevant to the meaning of fill,
and
separately, whether pouring is relevant to the meaning of fill. Our approach
in this experiment is to perform detailed
a
although
case study of the
we acknowledge that a case study of one verb is limited by its
believe that it can be valuable, especially when interpreted very nature, we
in conjunction

with studies in which more verbs
are tested in a less detailed fashion (e.g.
Experiment i), In addition, we test a somewhat older
group of children
spanning a wider age-range, in an attempt
to see clearer age trends, and
introduce several minor methodological improvements. The
improvements
include using three-panel pictures,
some of them with contents and
containers coloured in, and dispensing with the practice of initially
an
ambiguous drawing before each forced choice. These changes presenting
adopted in
order to lessen the possibility that children might misinterpretare
the stimulus
materials for the semantic test for example, by ignoring the
endstate
panel
simply because they do not understand the format
or conventions of the
drawings, or because of any possible •esponse bias towards the 'original'

Verbfill;

.•/laterials
In the semantic

task, each subject was shown •2 pairs of pictures; in the
each subject was shown four actions, each involving one of

four contents and one of four containers.
Each picture used in this experiment was composed of three panels,
corresponding to the beginning, middle and end states of an action. In a
picture of 'pouring-spilling' (Fig. 4), for example, the first panel shows a
woman pouring water from a pitcher, with a small puddle appearing next to
an empty glass; the second panel shows her continuing to pour with a larger
puddle next to the empty glass; in the third panel the woman has gone,
leaving behind an even larger puddle next to the empty glass. In a picture of
'dripping-filling' (Fig. 5), the first panel shows a woman turning on a tap,
allowing water to drip from the spigot into a half-filled glass; the second
syntactic task,

Fig.

4- A

picture of 'pouring-spilling'

in

Experiment

Fig.

5. A

picture

in

Experiment

2.

manner.

METHOD

Subject's
Sixty-four

English living in the Boston
p•rticipated(eight boys, eight girls) aged 3;5 to 4;6 (mean areao), sixteen (six
boys, Io girls) aged 4; 9 to 6;6 (mean 5;7), sixteen (•. boys,4; four
6; io to 8;9 (mean 7;9), and •6 paid undergraduate and graduate girls) aged
students at
MIT. The children were drawn from middle-class day-care
and after-school
programs, and four of them had participated in Experiment
(not less than
native speakers of

•6 children

of

'dripping-filling'

I34
I35

2.


CHILD
TABLE

LOCATIVE

LANGUAGE

7. Manners and endstates contrasted in the semantic tests

Experiment

OF

TEST

Manner

sensitivity

Endstate

sensitivity

Bias

PICTURE

2

Manner

Endstate

Manner

Endstate

pouring
pouring
pouring
pouring
pouring
dripping
dripping
dripping
pouring
pouring
dripping
dripping

full
empty
full
3/4- full
empty
full

dripping
dripping

full
empty
3/4- full
empty
full
3/4- full
empty
full

3/4-full
empty
full
full
full
full

of

2

PICTURE
TYPE

ACQUISITION

pouring

pouring
pouring
dripping

dripping
dripping
dripping
dripping
pouring
pouring

empty
empty
empty
empty

panel shows her continuing to allow water to drip into the glass, now threequarters filled; in the third panel she has gone, leaving behind a full glass.
The i2 pairs of pictures shown to each subject were designed to test
three types of knowledge about the meaning
of fill. Two tested sensitivity to
particular manners; six tested sensitivity to particular endstates; and four
tested bias towards particular manners or endstates when they are pitted
against each other. These tests are summarized in Table 7.
The manner sensitivity test contrasted pouring and dripping.
choice
was presented twice to each subject, one where both alternatives depicted an
empty container (the contents spilled) and one where both alternatives
depicted a full container.

Tt•e

One of the endstate sensitivity tests contrasted full and empty, as in the last
experiment: one picture showed an empty container (with successive panels
showing puddles of increasing size) and the other depicted a full container
(with successive panels showing a half-full, three-quarters-full, and full
container). Other endstate sensitivity tests were de'signed to distinguish
between two ways in which subjects might be sensitive to the 'fullness'
component of fill: the container might have to end up completely full, or it
might have to become increasingly full over time, though not necessarily
completely full at the end (this roughly corresponds to Vendler's (I957)
distinction between ACCOMPLISHMENT and ACTIVITY meanings). In these
tests, subjects were shown a picture culminating in a three-quarters-full
container (with successive panels showing a quarter-full, half-full and threequarters-full container; see Fig. 6), which was contrasted with a picture
culminating in an empty container, or with a picture culminating in a full
136

Fig.

6. A

picture

of

'pouring-3/4-full

container' in

Experiment

2.

pictures used in endstate sensitivity tests, the
coloured
in to make them more salient.) If a
were
subject views filling as requiring that a container be completely full, he or she
should always choose the full containers over the three-quarter-full containers; if a subject views filling as requiring only that a container become
increasingly full, he or she should always choose the full and three-quartersfull containers over the empty containers, but should not consistently choose
the full containers over the three-quarter-full containers (because both of
these containers become increasingly full by the same amount-half a
container's worth of content). Each endstate contrast (e.g. a full container vs.
an empty container) was presented once with a pouring manner in both
pictures and once •with a dripping manner in both pictures, yielding a total
of six endstate trials per subject.
The bias tests contrasted the pouring and dripping manners and the
empty-container and full-container endstates simultaneously. Subjects were
shown two contrasts: between 'pouring-spilling' and 'dripping-filling' (a
replication of the bias test in Experiment i); and between 'pouring-filling'
and 'dripping-Spilling '. Within subject, each of these contrasts was presented
twice, resulting in four bias trials.
As in Experiment i, four different scenarios (involving a particular agent,
content and container) were used, summarized in Table 2. In pairing picture
sets with particular tests of verb meaning, we divided the set of 12 tests into
four subsets: the manner contrast with a full container as the endstate, and
the two bias contrasts; the manner contrast with an. empty container as the
endstate, and the two bias contrasts (repeated); the three endstate contrasts
with pouring as the manner the three endstate contrasts with dripping as the
We counterbalanced the combination of picture set (i.e. set of
manner.

participants depicted) and meaning-test subset across subjects within an agecontainer.
contents

(Note

that in all the

and containers

group.

I37


CHILD

LANGUAGE

LOCATIVE

rather

In the syntax test, real events
than pictures were used. These events
involved marbles and pennies, which could be put into bowl
jar, and
a
apple juice and grape juice, which could be put into a glass or or a
cup.

Procedure
As before, the semantics tests preceded the syntax test. Both
were administered in a single session by two experimenters, one interacting with the
child, the other recording data. This time there was no separate introduction
to the format of the pictures. The semantic trials consisted of
Z forced
choices between pictures. For each forced choice, the experimenter placed
the pair of drawings directly in front of the subject and talked him
her
through each drawing. For the children, the experimenter first had the orchild
identify each of the depicted entities in each pan•l, by saying, for example,
'Look at the first picture (Fig. 4): point to the woman; point to the pitcher;
point to the water; point to the glass. Now look at the second picture (Fig.
5): point to the woman; point to the tap; point to the water; point to the
glass '. If a child failed to point to the relevant entity, the experimenter would
do so. Then the experimenter would say (to adults as well
as to children) 'this
is the beginning (points to first panel), the middle (second panel), and the end
(third panel). When the woman does THIS (sweeps finger,across first and
second panels), it ends up like THAT (points to third panel)'. Finally, after
both series of panels had been reviewed, the experimenter would ask, 'Which
of THESE (gesturing toward both drawings) is FILLING ?' If
necessary, the

question

was

repeated.

The order in which the i2 pairs of forced choices
were presented
randomized separately for each subject within an age-group. We ruled was
out
orders that resulted in two consecutive trials involving the
same scenario, two
consecutive trials testing the same contrast, or three consecutive trials testing
the same type of contrast (manner sensitivity, endstate sensitivity,
or bias).
In addition, for each presentation of a given contrast, each drawing
was
presented once on the right and once on the left.
Each subject then participated in the syntax test, comprising four
opportunities to produce sentences with fill. The procedure
to
was designed
increase the chances of eliciting full locative sentences with prepositional
phrases. Each trial involved two potential contents
two potential containers, only one of which actually participated in orthe event. Discourse
factors should encourage subjects to utter a prepositional phrase in order
identify the content or container actually used. (Crain, Thornton & Murasugito
(1987) found that this kind of task was successful in eliciting passives with
full by-phrases from children.) Furthermore, subjects
were asked to describe
the action for the benefit of a-.blindfolded puppet, encouraging explicitness.
As before, in each trial children were given questions that focused the
content

138

ACQUISITION

and questions that focused the container. For example, subjects were told
I'm gonna do some filling, and I want you to tell Marry the Puppet what I'm
doing. Here are some marbles. I can have either a jug or a bowl. Now watch
this: I'm filling (fills jar with marbles)., .:'Can you tell Marty what I did to the
MARBLES ?' Notice that a pragmatically natural response in this context
(standard syntax aside) is a content-object form, (e,g,) You filled the marbles
into the JAa', where the old information (topic) is encoded as the direct object
and the new information is encoded as the oblique object. An example in
which a container is made the topic is the following: 'Here is a glass, I can
have either grape juice or apple juice. Now watch this: I*m filling (fills the
glass with apple juice)... Can you tell Marty what did to the GLASS ?' Here
the appropriate response is 'You filled the glass with APPLE JUICE'.
If a subject failed to use an unambiguous direct object (or used a verb other
than fill), the experimenter repeated the query, reminding the subject that
Marry could not see (or telling the subject to 'use the word fill'). As in
Experiment i, this was followed, if necessary, by asking 'filling (what) ', and
then, .if necessary, by asking filling the glass or filling the apple juice (with
the order of items balanced within subject).
Four orders of trials within the syntactic task were employed across the
subjects within an age-group. The orders were determined by the factorial
combination of whether subjects began the task with the solid materials or
the liquid materials, alternating thereafter, and whether the order of query
topics was content-container-container-content or container-content-content-container. Each of the four contents and containers was used once and
only once for a given subject. The pairing of solid contents and containers
(i.e. marbles-bowl and pennies-jar vs, marbles-jar and pennies-bowl) was
counterbalanced with the pairing of liquid contents and containers (counting
whether the content or container of each material type was the topic) to yield
16 unique combinations of materials and query topics across the subjects

within an age group. In addition, these pairings of content and container
the order of syntactic trials across subjects within
were counterbalanced with
an

age group.

Scoring
Responses

in the semantic task were scored according to the manner and/or
endstate of the chosen drawing in each forced choice trial, depending on
which of these components was contrasted. For the syntax test, responses
scored according to whether the direct object of a locative form
were
corresponded to the content or the container. (Acceptable locative forms
included two passives (e.g. the glass •vas filled up), and two unaccusative
intransitives (e.g. the glass filled •vith marbles). In each case the glass was
scored as the underlying direct object; see Perlmutter, 1978; Burzio, 1986.)
139


!'11

1•1•011ii11|i#

pho•b[• or
j•dca) w•re

•r•

tlOt

I,I)

I, ANGUAGE

LOCATIVE

tm in Experiment
I. Responses that were undecilocative (e.g. intransitives such as she' s filling with the

trÂãted

clearly

excluded. As in Experiment i,
also scored
were
,•ceording to whether they were elicited by theresponses
original question, by the
subsequent prompt, or by a forced-choice question.

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

AND

Syntax
Table

8 shows

produced

as

a

the proportion of fill-content and fill-container forms
function of query topic and age-group. As in Experiment
i,

generally unwilling to produce sentences with the content
argument as the direct object, with the exception of one adult who did
so
once. In contrast, 34 out of the 48 children, a majority within each
age group,
produced at least one fill-content form. An ANOVA on the mean proportion
of content-object sentences across all four
groups reveals a significant main
effect of age (F (3, 60)
8"57, P < o'ooi), and planned comparisons (at onetailed p < o'o5) show that each group of children produced significantly
more
fill-content forms than did the adults (youngest; (30) 5"o8,
p < o'ooi;
middle: (3o)
4"48, P < o-ooi oldest: (30)
P < o-ooz). We also
found, as in Experiment i, that the oldest children (here between

6; and
8;9) produced fewer fill-content forms than did younger children, this•o time
significantly so (t (46) z-z6, two-tailed p C 0"05).
adults

were

=3"34,

TABLE

8.

Experiment
content-

Proportion of trials in which subjects
object and container- object sentences

2"

used

'fill'

in

AGE-GROUP

Content-object sentences

Content-topic query
Container-topic query

Mean

3;5-4;6

4;9-6;6

6;lO-8;9

°'53

o'53
o'47
°'5o

o'38

o'o3

o" 12

o'oo

(16/o/o)

o'25

o'o2

o'97

o'47
°'5°

(22/10/O)
Container-object

sentences
Coil.tent-topic query
Container-topic query

Mean

(z7/5/o)

o'38

o-38

o-59

°'47
°'4•

o'5o
0"44

o'88

0"73

(25/2/0)

(28/0/0)

(46/1/O)

.Adult

l"OO

0"98

Note: The numerals in parentheses correspond to the frequencies of
sentences used in
response to the original question, the subsequent prompt, and the forced-choice question,
respectively. Adults always responded to the original
question. For
child group, total
proportions are less than I'OO and total frequencies are less than 64each
because of discarded
responses.

I40

ACQUISITION

These patterns are also clear in responses to the original request to describe
the actions (see the frequencies in Table 8), not just in the follow-ups. Adults

produced significantly fewer fill-content forms (mean o-o2) than did any of
(3 o) 4"27, P < o'ooi
the individual child groups (mean young
0"34,
old
3"87,
(3o)
middle
3"34,
o'25, (3o)
P < o-ooi mean
o'42,
mean
topic:
discourse
the
sensitive
Children's
o'oo2).
to
as
utterances were
p <
expected, more fill-content forms were produced in response to the contenttopic query (mean o'37) than to the container-topic query (mean o'27),
6"48, p < o'o2.
F (I, 6o)

Semantics
Table 9 summarizes subjects' choices among pictures corresponding to
different meaning components for fill. The frequency of subjects displaying

of preferences is underlined if it is significantly greater
a particular pattern
chance,
than
at p < o'o5, according to the binomial distribution. The table
also summarizes the magnitude of subjects' preferences for one kind of
picture over another by displaying the mean difference between the proportions of standard and non-standard responses under each pair of possible

preferences.
Sensitivity to particular endstates. As Table 9 shows, significant numbers of
children displayed adult-like sensitivity to the endstate meaning component
of fill by choosing the full container over the empty container, the full
container over the three-quarters-full container, and the three-quarters-full
container over the empty container. Each of these proportions was significantly above chance for each age group (though marginally so, at p < o'o9, for
the mid,aged children on the full/three-quarters-full contrast), as was the
frequency of children showing adult-like preferences in all three choices.
Adult-like preferences across all three choices combined can be seen to
increase with age (from 37"5 •/o of the youngest children to 6z'5 % of the
oldest children and 94% of the adults). ANOVAs on the mean difference
between proportions of standard and non-standard responses for each
endstate sensitivity test reveal a significant effect of age group only for the
full-empty contrast (F (3, 60) 3"o•, P < o'o5). The mean difference between
the proportions of 'full' and 'empty' responses is greater for the adults
(mean i'oo) than for the youngest children (marginally: mean o'8i;
(3 o) i'86, p < o'o8) or for the mid-aged children (mean o'44; (3o)
•'76, P < o'o•). This pattern of results that the youngest and mid-aged
children were less sensitive to endstate than were the adults was also found
in significant or marginally significant post-hoc tests for the contrasts
between full' and 'three-quarters-full' and between 'three-quarters-full'
and 'empty'. Although the mid-aged children appear to perform worse than

141


CHILD

T A B L E

LOCATIVE

LANGUAGE

three-quarters-full containers. In fact, the difference in performance on
these tests was significant for the youngest children (mean proportion for
0"78, mean pro'full' and 'three-quarters-full' over 'empty' responses
'three-quarters-full'
o'5o, two-tailed
responses
portion for 'full' over

Experiment 2 Number of subjects displaying consistent
preferences between pictures in the semantic task

9"

over

AGE-GROUP

3;5-4;6
(N= •6)

CRITERIA

sensitivity
(0'25, 8)
empty > full (0"25, 8)
mean difference in proportion

4;9-6;6
(N= I6)

6; lO-8;9
(N= I6)

empty

>

•
o

of

o'8i

choices

(N= I6)

> 3/4-full (0"25, 8)

3/4-full > full (0"25, 8)

difference in

_8
o

proportion of

0"5o

choi_ces

3/4-full
empty

>
>

empty (0"25, 8)

•

3/4-full (o'25, 8)

difference in proportion of
choices
full > empty, full > 3/4.full, &
3/4-full > empty (o'oi56 2)
mean difference in proportion of

choices
full > empty & 3/4-full >empty
mean

(O'O625, 4)

difference in
choices
Manner sensitivity
mean

pouring
dripping
mean

3
0"44

•

i__•6

2"18, p

<

for their purposes.

o

0"75

i'oo

sensitivity. Table 9 also shows the number of subjects who were
consistent in choosing one manner or another. A significant number of the
mid-aged children (9/I6; p < o'oI), oldest children (I5/I6; p < o'ooI), and
adults (I3/I6; p < o'ooi) showed a preference for pouring over dripping as
the best manner for filling. For the youngest children this preference was only
marginally significant (7/I6, p < o'o8). The number of subjects displaying
the opposite preference was less than would be expected by chance in all age
difference between the progroups. Across groups, comparing the mean
dripping
and
pouring
portions of
responses, we found significant differences
o'12) and the adults (mean o'8i,
(mean
children
the
between
youngest
(3o) 2"83i-.p < o'oI), between the youngest children and the oldest children
(mean o'94, (3o) 3"53, P < o'oo2), and between the mid-aged children
(mean o'5o) and the oldest children (t (3o) 2"57, P < o'o2).
Note that the sensitivity tests do not distinguish properties of an action
that are essential to the meaning of a verb from those that are merely typical.
Thus the fact that 13 adults consistently chose the pouring manner over the
dripping manner in this test only implies that pouring is regarded asa BETTER

dripping, not that pouring is essential to it. Indeed, only
means of filling than
three
adults (out of 16) completed both manner sensitivity trials without any
reservation; the remainder either hesitated or commented to the experimenter that the difference between pouring and dripping was not

Manner

full

mean

j_•o

0"05). This may be due to the youngest children being more
that the container become increasingly full than
requirement
sensitiv.e to the
end
it
that
up completely full alternatively, the youngest
to the requirement
full'
likely
be
children may
to consider a three-quarters-full glass to be
more

(15)
Adult

Endstate

full

ACQUISITION

proportion of

dripping (0'25, 8)
pouring (0"25, 8)
difference in proportion
>
>

choices
Bias
full (0"0625,4)
empty (o'o625,

4)
pouring (0"0625, 4)
dripping (0'0625, 4)

of

0"75

9,
3

o'38

r__L

•5

2

0"56

o'88

i.__•i

i.•

16

2

0"56

o

o

0"88

I"oo

o'46

9"73

0"96

6

o'69
i_•_o

o'78

I.•O

o'5o

I.•2

o'8I

I6
I'oo

7
5

9
O

O

o'I 2

0"50

0"94

0"8

7

6

7

o

16

o

o

5

6

3

o

o

o

o

o

essential.

the youngest children in these two contrasts, this dip disappears if we
consider their performance on both of these tests combined or on all three
tests combined.
Children were more likely to choose pictures of full and three-quarters-full
containers over empty containers than to choose pictures of full containers

subject consistently chose the 'pouring-filling' picture over the
'dripping-spilling' picture and the 'pouring-spilling' picture over the
dripping-filling' picture, he or she was classified as biased towards a pouring
meaning component of fill. Similarly, subjects
manner as the more important
would be classified as biased towards a dripping manner if they consistently
made the opposite choices. Subjects were classified as biased toward a fullcontainer endstate if they consistently chose the 'pouring-filling' picture
'dripping-spilling' picture and the 'dripping-filling' picture over
over the

picture, and biased toward an empty-container end'pouring-spilling'
the
made the opposite choices.
consistently
they
if
state

142

143

symbol indicates the pattern of preference frequencies significantly greater than
o'o5) are underlined. The probability of a single subject displaying a consistent
preference across the trials involving a given comparison, and the o:o5 cut-off for frequency
greater than chance, are listed in parentheses.
Note The
chance (p

>

<

Bias. If

a


CHILD

LANGUAGE

Table 9 shows that the current experiment clearly replicates the first
significant
number of the youngest (5 out of •6) and mid-aged childrenone:(6
a
out of 6) were biased towards a pouring
manner interpretation, despite the
fact that there were also significant numbers of subjects in each
group who
were biased towards a full-container endstate interpretation. Thus different
children of the same age may assign different weights
to the manner and
endstate components of the meaning of fill.
One of the interesting differences between the results of the bias
and
manner sensitivity tests is that bias towards the pouring
manner DECREASES
markedly from the youngest and mid-aged children to the oldest children
(only the younger groups being biased), whereas sensitivity
to the pouring
manner INCaEASES significantly from the youngest and mid-aged children
to
the oldest children (means of o'xz, o'5o and
o'94 respectively; for oldest
versus youngest, p < o'oo2; for oldest versus mid, p < o-o2). Apparently,
children become increasingly sensitive to the stereotypical
manner associated
with some verb, while also becomingless subject to the misconception that
such a manner is essential to the meaning of the verb. For

a young child, if
a verb has a characteristic manner,
that manner is a necessary part of the
meaning of a verb. This can be seen by the trend whereby the ratio of the
children who are both pouring-sensitive and pouring-biased
to the children
who are only pouring-sensitive drops from o'57 (4/7) to
o-55 (5/9) to o'zo

(3/•5)

for groups of increasing age.
In sum, subjects of every age group were sensitive to the full-container
endstate requirement of fill and to the fact that pouring is the characteristic
manner for filling, though the latter sensitivity
in the
was weak
children. However, although a significant number of subjects of younger
every agegroup were correctly biased towards the full-container endstate as the most
important meaning component of fill, there was also a significant number of
younger children (3 5-6 6) who displayed an incorrect bias toward a pouring
manner as the most important meaning component.
Thus the main developmental trend we see in the acquisition of the meaning of fill is realizing
a verb can have a CHARACTERISTIC manner that is not
a NECESSARY
This phenomenon is reminiscent of Keil's (• 986) demonstration that manner.
children
shift from representing a word meaning in terms of the characteristic features
of its referents to representing it in terms of its defining features. For
children below the age of seven think that an uncle is nice

a
man who
drinks beer with one's father, even if he is not the father's brother, and that
a two-year-old cannot be one's uncle, even if he is one's father's brother.
Older children make the opposite choices.

exampJe,

I44

LOCATIVE

ACQUISITION

Contingencies between semantic and syntactic errors
As in Experiment •, we can ascertain whether children who were more likely
to think that fill requires a.pouring manner were also more likely to produce
syntactic errors with the content argument as direct object. In this case, we
have measures both of children's relative bias between manner and endstate
components, and of their sensitivity to each. Strictly speaking, a bias toward
object affectedness linking
a manner interpretation is not necessary for the
rule to yield content-object errors, since a person may incorrectly require a
verb to have a manner component, but opt for the endstate component if
forced to choose between them. Nor is sensitivity to manner sufficient to lead
to such errors, since a person may know that a manner is typically associated
with a verb, while not requiring it to be satisfied in every case (indeed, we
suggest that our adult subjects are in this category). Thus, unfortunately, we
have no pure measure of semantic knowledge that is expected to predict
syntactic errors perfectly; the closest is the side remarks by most of our adult

subjects that while they preferred pouring to dripping (like the children),
pouring was not necessary for filling to occur. However, we suggest that the
following test is informative. For the two younger groups of children,
significant numbers were biased in choosing the pouring manner over the full
endstate. Therefore those are the ages at which children who are sensitive to
the pouring manner are also likely to interpret the pouring manner as a
necessary component of the meaning of fill (even if it is not as important to
them as the endstate component, and hence would not show up in the bias
test for every child). Therefore it is within those age ranges that children who
should be more likely to produce
are sensitive to a pouring manner for fill
ungrammatical content-object sentences than children who show no sensitivity to the pouring manner. The older group, which contains children
who are sensitive to a pouring manner but not are not biased towards it, does
not differ qualitatively from adults; their sensitivity scores may not be
diagnostic of a belief that pouring is necessary to the meaning of fill and the
scores in turn may not be predictive of syntactic errors.
We constructed 2 x 2 contingency tables, with each child contributing one
score to a table. On the semantic dimension, a child is classified as sensitive
to a pouring manner if he or she chose pouring over dripping in both of the
sensitivity tests; otherwise, the child is scored as insensitive to a
manner
pouring manner. On the syntactic dimension, a child is classified as either
producing at least one fill-content form, or producing no fill-content forms.
The contingency tables are presented in Table •o.
Although no significant contingencies were found for the separate child
groups or for the combined child group (3 5-8 9), the Fisher Exact Test for
the mid-aged children approached significance (p < o'o8). Moreover, within
the combined group of youngest and mid-aged children there was a
•45

CHILD

TABLE

10.

Exp.

eriment

interpretation of 'fill'

z:

LOCATIVE

LANGUAGE

contingency between sensitivity to
grammatical errors in sentences

and

Produced

at

content-object
3;5-4;6

Pouring-sensitive
Pouring-insensitive
4;9-6;6
Pouring- sensitive
Pouring-insensitive
6; lO-8;9
Pouring- sensitive
Pouring- insensitive
Youngest and mid-aged children (3 5-6 6)
Pouring•sensitive
Pouring- insensitive
Combined children (3 5-8 9)
Pouring- sensitive
Pouring-insensitive-

least

one

sentence

manner

with

Produced

content-object

7

o

6

3

in the

'fill'

no

sentences

8
3
9

4

6
o

5
9

24
o

7
7

significant contingency (one-tailed Fisher Exact test p < o'oz). Thus, children between 3 6 and 6 6 who are sensitive to a pouring manner as part of
the meaning of fill will tend to produce errors where the object of fill is a
content argument more than children of those ages who show no sensitivity
to a

pouring

manner.

The evidence for contingencies between semantic choices and syntactic
errors across individual children is not conclusive, but it has turned up three
different times (with fill among the 4;6-5; 1-year-old children in Experiment 1, with empty in the z 6-5 i-year-old children in Experiment i,
and with fill in the 3 5-6 6-year-old children in Experiment z). Given how
crude the analyses were, it is not surprising that the effects were not strong:
with a small number of responses per task, random factors such as attentional
lapses or position biases can destroy consistency, and as mentioned, we
cannot be sure that we have tested any misinterpretations other than _the
obvious one corresponding to pouring. Furthermore, a misinterpretation of
the meaning of fill may not be an all-or-none trait that some children make
and others do not, but a continuous tendency, and our measures were
dichotomous. Thus it is fortunate that we are able to see any degree of
contingency across children at all.

GENERAL

We have

DISCUSSION

proposed

ness, to map

an

that children use a universal linking rule, object affectedargument onto the direct object role if it is specified as

1•6

ACQUISITION

affected in some particular way in a verb's semantic representation. But
children must learn which arguments of which verbs are specified as
'affected ', so they may at some point during language acquisition have
inaccurate semantic representations for particular verbs. Because children
manner-of-motion components of meaning than
seem to be more sensitive to
to change-of-state components (Gentner, I978), they should be prone to
making errors whereby change-of-state verbs like fill are misinterpreted as
specifying a manner of motion. Such misinterpretations would then lead to
the syntactic errors such as I filled the water into the glass documented by
Bowerman (1982) where the content argument is encoded as direct object.
The syntactic error would be unlearned as the child revises his or her
interpretation of the verb's meaning by encountering situations in which the
incorrect manner component is falsified, such as when fill is used in
conjunction with dripping or bailing•
The results of two experiments lend support to this theory. In both

experiments we have replicated Bowerman's finding based on spontaneous
speech that children are apt,to make syntactic errors with verbs like fill,
reflecting a general preference for content-object sentences that also manifests
itself in their u•ing mostly content-object forms for the alternating verb
empty. Again replicating Bowerman, we found that children make fewer
syntactic errors where content-object verbs like pour and dump are used in
container-object constructions. We discovered that children are likely to
misinterpret the meanings of the kinds of verbs that they make syntactic
overapplication of the linking rule would
errors with, in the direction that
predict. Although all groups of children between z;6 and 8;6 realize that fill
has something to do with a container being made full, and that this state is
better accomplished by pouring than by other manners of motion, until about
6;6 children are likely to think that the pouring manner is an essential part
of the meaning of fill rather than merely typical of it. Conversely, the verbs
that are used with few syntactic errors, pour and dump, are not prone to
semantic misinterpretation. Finally, for children in the age-range in which
typical manners are misinterpreted as being essential, we have found some
evidence that individual children who are more likely to be sensitive to
typical manners are also more likely to make the predicted syntactic errors.
We conclude that systematic misinterpretations of particular verbs, coupled
with universal linking rules, may account for the occurrence of the syntactic
errors.

Although we have been able to exploit a naturally-occurring manner bias
in order to show a correlation of syntactic and semantic errors, the question
remains as to whether or not a causal relation holds. The alternative is that
children use the syntactic properties of verbs to predict their meanings
(Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Pinker, 1989). Though children presumably do
direction, it is unlikely that they are doing so in the

use linking rules in this
147


CHILD

LOCATIVE

LANGUAGE

phenomena examined here. Presumably children have never heard adults
uttering fill-content forms; the only fill-content forms that a child has access
to are self-generated. The faulty semantic representations, which we have
independently demonstrated, are the plausible sources for the syntactic
Furthermore, a causal relation from semantics to syntax in the
errors,
acquisition of locative verbs was directly demonstrated in the experiments of
Gropen (•989), where verb meaning was manipulated experimentally.
Children and adults were taught novel verbs in a neutral syntactic context
(e.g. this is mooping), and then tested on their willingness to produce contentand container-object sentences containing the verbs. The meanings of the
verbs varied according to whether the content or the container was affected
in a particular and salient way (e.g. whether the content moved in a zigzagging fashion, or whether the container changed colour). In four experiments children and adults produced relatively more content-object sentences
for verbs in which the content changes location in a sa•ent manner, and
relatively more container-object sentences for verbs in which the container
changes state in a salient way.
We do not claim that the object affectedness rule is sufficient for children
to deduce the complex patterns of syntactic behaviour of locative verbs in
English and other languages. Since human cognition is flexible enough to
construe virtually any participant in any event as being 'affected' in, some
way, such a rule by itself does not provide enough constraints and could lead

to massive overgeneration. Rather, at least two layers of knowledge mediate
between the linking rule and its application to particular •erbs. First,
children must learn the broad domain of forms used in a language to express
events about transferring contents to or from containers; that is, whether a
language has a content-object construction, a container-object construction,
whether such constructions admit of oblique arguments, are
or both;
morphologically marked, and so on. There is evidence that children discover
this broad semantic domain early and confine their generalizations of the
locative alternation within it. Bowerman (x982) noted that children do not
make errors like I read Mary with a book, based on I read a book to Mary, or
I ate a spoon into my pudding, based on I ate my pudding with a spoon,
presumably because children know that the listener is not a container
argument of read and that the instrument is not a content argument of eat.
But even within the broad domain of content-container verbs, further
distinctions must be learned. If children applied the linking rule to any verb
taking content and container arguments with no further constraints, nothing
would prevent them from acquiring and retaining verb meanings in which
arbitrary contents and containers are specified as affected. For example, how
does a speaker of English ever learn that the container is' affected' in instances
of splashing (e.g. John splashed water onto the dog/splashed the dog with water)
but that the contai•ner is not' affected' in instances of spilling (e.g. John spilled
148

ACQUISITION

the dog with water) Even in the examples examined
explanation of why children, inspired by
need
an

we
alternating verbs like load or stuff, would not hypothesize a meaning of pour
that specified that the container was full or covered with just enough or too
much material for its capacity, or a meaning for fill that dictated that the
container. If they
content be poured or inserted in a way appropriate for its
syntactic
errors even in the
did, such meaning representations would license
adult state.
We suggest that the answer is that the child learns to restrict productive
extension of the locative alternation within particular narrow, semantically
cohesive subclasses of verbs, and avoids generalizing outside these boundaries
(see also Levin, •985). For example, verbs that involve forced directed
motion of a masslike substance alternate (splash the water/splash the wall;
also inject, splatter, spray), but verbs that involve allowing gravity to move a
masslike substance do not (pour the water/*pour the glass; also spill, ladle,
drip). Verbs where the content is almost too large for the intended capacity
of the container alternate (stuff feathers into the pillow/stuff the pillow with
feathers; also crowd, jam, cram), but verbs without such an implication do not
(fill, cover). SeE Pinker (I989) and Gropen (I989) for detailed characterizations of such subclasses and their members, and of how their acquisition
might help the child determine exactly which verbs can generalize and which
must be treated conservatively.
Interestingly, the object affectedness rule seems to apply at a more abstract
level to the question of which narrow subclasses in a language can alternate
and which cannot. For example, the fact that the subclass of verbs containing
brush and smudge alternates but the subclass of verbs containing pour and spill
does not may be related to the fact that in the former, the agent is more easily
construed as simultaneously and directly acting on the content and container,
whereas in the latter, the action does not directly affect the container, but the

force of gravity intervenes. Furthermore, for some classes there is a degree
of interpredictability between the manner in which the content moves and
the change of state that the container undergoes, so that both content and
container•must be construed as being necessarily affected by the action. For
example, in stuffing and cramming the forceful nature of the manner is
intimately tied to the too-small size and resisting boundaries of the container,
whereas for verbs likefill and cover the end-state change allows one to predict
less about the nature of the motion or vice-versa.
In these experiments we do not claim to have demonstrated this full set of
mechanisms needed to attain adult knowledge of locative verbs. But, using a
few Verbs as a case study, we have provided evidence that children use the
object affectedness linking rule, and that, thanks to its operation, subtle and
systematic deficits in meaning can lead to predictable kinds of patterns in
children's grammatical development.

the
within this
water

on

dog/*spilled
study,

I49


CHILD

LOCATIVE

LANGUAGE

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