action meets word how children learn verbs apr 2006

Action Meets Word:
How Children Learn Verbs
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff,
Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Action Meets Word
This page intentionally left blank
Action Meets Word
How Children Learn Verbs
EDITED BY
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
1
2006
3
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright © 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Action meets word : how children learn verbs / edited by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-517000-8
ISBN-13 978-0-19-517000-9
1. Language acquisition. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general—Verb.
I. Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy. II. Golinkoff, Roberta M.
P118.A174 2005
401'.93—dc22 2005008496
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
We dedicate this volume to our mothers, Anne and Joan,
whose Actions and Words have always been supportive
of our endeavors,
to our families (Jeffrey, Josh, Benj, and Mikey; Larry,
Jordan, and Allison), who are there for us in many
ways . . .
and to all the families and children who dedicated their
time to our research so that children could teach adults.
This page intentionally left blank
Preface

Word learning has come of age. And just as children take risks at adolescence,
the field of word learning has taken a risk by moving into the area of verb acqui-
sition. Adolescents who learn to take careful, socially acceptable risks do so be-
cause they have been lucky enough to experience good parenting. Along the way,
we have had guidance from some of the best, people whose work and perspective
infuses the chapters of this book. Their work has become the backdrop for the field,
sometimes in ways that now seem so obvious that their contributions are taken for
granted. Of course, we refer to ovarial work by Lila Gleitman, Lois Bloom, Steven
Pinker, and Michael Tomasello, who knew that the field of word learning would
never mature if it did not move beyond the study of nouns. Ten years ago the field
took its first tentative steps with an influential volume on verb learning edited by
Michael Tomasello and William Merriman, appropriately called, Beyond Names for
Things. Look how we’ve grown!
This volume represents a proliferation of research on this exciting new fron-
tier and expands greatly on what we knew about verb learning a decade ago. Just
as Chomsky once said that “language is a window on the mind,” verbs provide a
window on the relational thinking that makes us human.
There are many to thank for this volume. We thank the authors of these chap-
ters, a wonderfully professional and responsive group. We feel fortunate to be in
such company. Readers should recognize, however, that this volume does not rep-
resent the full force of the field; as our chapters became finalized, other stimulat-
ing research emerged that might well have been included. Thanks also go to our
superb laboratory coordinators (Amanda Brandone and Meredith Jones), who al-
lowed us to focus on assembling the volume, and to our graduate students (Shan-
non Pruden, Rachel Pulverman, Sara Salkind, Julia Parrish, and Weiyi Ma) who
read the chapters with us and served as apprentice editors. Undoubtedly, students
like these will take the ideas in this volume to the next level, becoming the editors
of such a volume ten years hence. Roberta’s secretary, Maryanne Bowers, was, as
always, invaluable in helping us with every aspect of the book and keeping our
lives on track.

Oxford University Press has been a friend to us, welcoming our new projects
even in their most incipient, inchoate stages. For this we thank Catharine Carlin,
wine connoisseur and editor extraordinaire, and Jennifer Rappaport. Since much of
the research appearing in this volume was supported by federal agencies, we collec-
tively thank the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Mental
Health, and the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development.
Children and families are at the core of everything we do. Their participation
in the studies reported here affords the progress of basic science. Basic science
continues to provide us with the foundation for understanding how children
learn. It fuels the development of applications that help children reach their lin-
guistic potential. It provides the source for dissemination of scientific knowledge
to the families, teachers, and policy makers who have children’s best interests at
heart. Basic research like that found in this volume illustrates how a phenomenon
like language acquisition is complex and multidetermined.
We saved the best for last. Our action-packed families, a source of enduring
support, have taught us about the necessity of multitasking. Thank you, Jeff Pasek,
for always being there and for being such a great husband to both of us. Your
newly acquired expertise in literary contracts gives us a sense of security and the
price is right. Larry Ballen, who arrived midstream, is just starting to understand
that “bootstrapping” does not refer to something that happens in a shoe store. Life
often turns on relational actions.
Mikey, Benj, and Josh Pasek and Allison and Jordan Golinkoff have grown into
editors themselves (well, we helped a little). We thank them for teaching us how
action meets words.
viii PREFACE
Contents
Contributors xiii
Introduction: Progress on the Verb Learning Front 3
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Part I Prerequisites to Verb Learning: Finding the Verb

1 Finding the Verbs: Distributional Cues to Categories Available to Young
Learners 31
Toben H. Mintz
2 Finding Verb Forms Within the Continuous Speech Stream 64
Thierry Nazzi and Derek Houston
3 Discovering Verbs Through Multiple-Cue Integration 88
Morten H. Christiansen and Padraic Monaghan
Part II Prerequisites to Verb Learning: Finding Actions in Events
4 Actions Organize the Infant’s World 111
Jean M. Mandler
5 Conceptual Foundations for Verb Learning: Celebrating the Event 134
Rachel Pulverman, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta M. Golinkoff, Shannon Pruden,
and Sara J. Salkind
6 Precursors to Verb Learning: Infants’ Understanding of
Motion Events 160
Marianella Casasola, Jui Bhagwat, and Kim T. Ferguson
7 Preverbal Spatial Cognition and Language-Specific Input: Categories of
Containment and Support 191
Soonja Choi
8 The Roots of Verbs in Prelinguistic Action Knowledge 208
Jennifer Sootsman Buresh, Amanda Woodward,
and Camille W. Brune
9 When Is a Grasp a Grasp? Characterizing Some Basic Components of
Human Action Processing 228
Jeffrey T. Loucks and Dare Baldwin
10 Word, Intention, and Action: A Two-Tiered Model of
Action Word Learning 262
Diane Poulin-Dubois and James N. Forbes
11 Verbs, Actions, and Intentions 286
Douglas A. Behrend and Jason Scofield

Part III When Action Meets Word: Children Learn Their First Verbs
12 Are Nouns Easier to Learn Than Verbs? Three Experimental
Studies 311
Jane B. Childers and Michael Tomasello
13 Verbs at the Very Beginning: Parallels Between
Comprehension and Input 336
Letitia R. Naigles and Erika Hoff
14 A Unified Theory of Word Learning: Putting Verb
Acquisition in Context 364
Mandy J. Maguire, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
15 Who’s the Subject? Sentence Structure and Verb Meaning 392
Cynthia Fisher and Hyun-joo Song
Part IV How Language Influences Verb Learning: Cross-Linguistic Evidence
16 Verb Learning as a Probe Into Children’s Grammars 429
Jeffrey Lidz
x CONTENTS
17 Revisiting the Noun-Verb Debate: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Novel
Noun and Verb Learning in English-, Japanese-, and Chinese-Speaking
Children 450
Mutsumi Imai, Etsuko Haryu, Hiroyuki Okada, Li Lianjing,
and Jun Shigematsu
18 But Are They Really Verbs? Chinese Words for Action 477
Twila Tardif
19 Influences of Object Knowledge on the Acquisition of Verbs in
English and Japanese 499
Alan W. Kersten, Linda B. Smith, and Hanako Yoshida
20 East and West: A Role for Culture in the Acquisition of
Nouns and Verbs 525
Tracy A. Lavin, D. Geoffrey Hall, and Sandra R. Waxman
21 Why Verbs Are Hard to Learn 544

Dedre Gentner
Author Index 565
Subject Index 577
CONTENTS xi
This page intentionally left blank
Contributors
xiii
Dare Baldwin
Department of Psychology
1227 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97405
Douglas A. Behrend
Department of Psychology
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Jui Bhagwat
Department of Human
Development
G38 MVR Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Camille W. Brune
Department of Psychiatry
University of Chicago
5841 S. Maryland Avenue, MC3077
Chicago, IL 60637
Jennifer Sootsman Buresh
Department of Psychology
University of Chicago
5848 S. University Avenue

Chicago, IL 60637
Marianella Casasola
Department of Human Development
G38 MVR Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Jane B. Childers
Department of Psychology
One Trinity Place
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Soonja Choi
Department of Linguistics and Oriental
Languages
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182
Morten H. Christiansen
Department of Psychology
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
xiv CONTRIBUTORS
Kim T. Ferguson
Department of Human
Development
G38 MVR Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Cynthia Fisher
Department of Psychology

University of Illinois
Champaign, IL 61820
James N. Forbes
Department of Psychology and
Sociology
Angelo State University
ASU Station #10907
San Angelo, TX 76909
Dedre Gentner
Department of Psychology
Northwestern University
633 Clark Street
Evanston, IL 60208
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
D. Geoffrey Hall
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Canada
Etsuko Haryu
Graduate School of Education
University of Tokyo
7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-0033
Japan
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Department of Psychology
1801 N. Broad Street
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Erika Hoff
Department of Psychology
Florida Atlantic University
2912 College Avenue
Davie, FL 33314
Derek Houston
Department of Otolaryngology—
Head and Neck Surgery
Indiana University School of Medicine
699 West Drive/RR 044
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Mutsumi Imai
Keio University at Shonan-Fujisawa
5322 Endo, Fujisawa
Kanagawa 252-8520
Japan
Alan W. Kersten
Department of Psychology
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991
Tracy A. Lavin
Department of Psychology
Northwestern University
2029 Sheridan Rd.
Evanston, IL 60208
Li Lianjing

International Office
Renmin University of China
No. 59, Zhongguancun Street
Haidian DIST
Beijing 100872
P. R. China
CONTRIBUTORS xv
Jeffrey Lidz
Department of Linguistics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Jeffery T. Loucks
Department of Psychology
1227 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97405
Mandy J. Maguire
School of Behavioral and Brain
Sciences
University of Texas—Dallas/Callier
Center
1966 Inwood Road
Dallas, TX 75235
Jean M. Mandler
Department of Cognitive
Science—0515
University of California
San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0515
Toben H. Mintz

Department of Psychology
SGM 501, MC-1061
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061
Padraic Monaghan
Department of Psychology
University of York
York YO10 5DD
UK
Letitia R. Naigles
Department of Psychology
University of Connecticut
406 Babbidge Road, U-20
Storrs, CT 06269-1020
Thierry Nazzi
Laboratoire Cognition et
Développement
CNRS—Université René Descartes
71 Avenue Edouard Vaillant
92100 Boulogne Billancourt
France
Hiroyuki Okada
Tokai University, School of Science
1117, Kitakaname, Hiratsuka-shi
Kanagawa-ken 259-1292
Japan
Diane Poulin-Dubois
Centre for Research in Human
Development
Department of Psychology (PY-170)

Concordia University
7141 Sherbrooke Street West
Montréal, Québec H4B 1R6
Canada
Shannon Pruden
Temple University Infant Laboratory
580 Meetinghouse Road
Ambler, PA 19002
Rachel Pulverman
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan
530 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Sara J. Salkind
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Jason Scofield
College of Human Environmental
Sciences
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
xvi CONTRIBUTORS
Jun Shigematsu
Keio University at Shonan-Fujisawa
5322, Endo, Fujisawa-shi
Kanagawa-ken 252-0816
Japan
Linda B. Smith
Department of Psychology

Indiana University
1101 E. Tenth Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
Hyun-joo Song
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois
Champaign, IL 61820
Twila Tardif
Department of Psychology and
Center for Human Growth
and Development
University of Michigan
300 North Ingalls, 10th Floor
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0406
Michael Tomasello
MPI EVAN
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Germany
Sandra R. Waxman
Department of Psychology
Northwestern University
2029 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
Amanda Woodward
Department of Psychology
University of Chicago
5848 S. University
Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637

Hanako Yoshida
Department of Psychology
Indiana University
1101 E. Tenth Street
Bloomington, IN 47405
Action Meets Word
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction: Progress on the Verb
Learning Front
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
—Charles Dickens
When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented
out my room.
—Woody Allen
As the quotations above suggest, action is central to life—and central
to language. It is through action that we carry out our thoughts and plans. But we
don’t just act; we talk about action, too, from the toddler commenting on his own
actions (e.g., “Me run!”) to the adult commenting sarcastically on the unseen ac-
tions of others (e.g., “She said she went to Brazil but she really went to Brooklyn”).
While not all verbs capture action per se, some events elicit many more verbs of
action than others, as when we watch a football game or a tennis match. Verbs al-
low us to talk about the relationships that exist between the objects and individu-
als in our lives. Without verbs, we would be unable to specify just what took place
between Sally, the brick, and John. At the critical juncture between words and
grammar lies the frontier of verb learning. Until recently, however, the study of
how young children learn how to talk about action has taken a back seat to how

they talk about the objects found in their world. Arguably, the study of verb learn-
ing is the study of language learning. This volume signals the progress we have
made in entering this frontier and appropriately elevating the expression of action
to its central position in language learning.
3
What Is a Verb?
Verbs are the architectural centerpiece of the grammar, determining the argument
structure of a sentence. Verbs can be defined syntactically or semantically. Syntacti-
cally, a verb is a word that takes a subject (or agent) or an object or both. Verbs, for
example, can take different morphological forms based on gender, person, number,
animacy, and indefiniteness, and they can be passivized or dativized in many lan-
guages. Semantically, verbs are words that “encode events: A cover term for states
or conditions of existence . . . processes or unfoldings . . . and actions or executive
processes” (Frawley, 1992, p. 141). A verb is a description of a relation that occurs
over time. However, verbs are not the only syntactic categories that express action
and events, and this surely complicates the child’s verb learning task! As Lidz
points out in chapter 16, one can comment on events by using a noun, as in “The
race was exciting,” or an adjective, as in “The birds are noisy today.” In general, how-
ever, the first relational terms are verbs and the first verbs are motion verbs. If verbs
exist in the vocabulary of young children from the outset,
1
why has noun acquisi-
tion has been the dominant focus for the field? Why did the study of verbs fail to
capture most researchers’ interests (but see Bloom, Lightbown, & Hood, 1975;
Gleitman, 1990) while the study of nouns took center stage?
For early researchers in language acquisition, nouns offered a good foundation
for studying word learning for a number of reasons. First, nouns appeared to be
more predominant in the child’s first 50 words (Fenson et al., 1994; Goldin-
Meadow, Seligman, & Gelman, 1976). (Some might argue that even that claim
was ethnocentric or limited to Western Indo-European languages; e.g., Tardif,

1996.) Second, and importantly, nouns are learned quickly and easily compared to
other types of words (e.g., chapters 12 and 17). Thus, for both researchers and
children, nouns offered a convenient and tractable toehold into the word-learning
system.
Although the literature on nouns shaped theories of word learning, some
heralded the importance of studying verbs (Bloom, Lifter, & Hafitz, 1980; Landau
& Gleitman, 1985). Further, two influential articles appeared that jolted the field
and moved it forward, chastising researchers in early word learning for their my-
opic attention to nouns (Bloom, Tinker, & Margulies, 1993; Nelson, 1988). Both
articles pointed out that the field was studying word learning qua noun learning,
despite the fact that children’s early vocabularies included diverse word types.
In response, researchers started to branch out and investigate other form classes
including adjectives (Waxman & Klibanoff, 2000) and verbs (Tomasello & Merri-
man, 1995). Importantly, the initial focus on nouns and the call to include verbs
set us on a trajectory that focused on word learning as it developed within partic-
ular syntactic categories. This lens often obscured our study of lexical acquisition
in general. Thus, as the field progressed, we attempted to understand the develop-
ment of nouns or of verbs or of adjectives, rather than finding a more global and
comprehensive theory of word learning.
4 INTRODUCTION
Are Verbs Really Harder to Learn Than Nouns?
A classic and influential article by Gentner (1982) makes this point. Gentner
posits that verbs pose special challenges for word learners. Verbs label events that
are comprised of components like manner (walk vs. swagger), instrument (ham-
mer, shovel ), path (ascend, descend ), and result (open, break)—any of which can be
the dominant focus for the label (Talmy, 1985). Further, across languages, different
components are highlighted such that manner is often conflated in English verbs
(e.g., skip), while path is often an integral part of Spanish verbs (e.g., ascendere; see
Slobin, 2001, or Talmy, 2000, for reviews).
Verbs also describe events in the world and events are by nature more

ephemeral than the objects that nouns tend to label (Langacker, 1987; Slobin,
2001). Furthermore, in speech to children, verbs often label these events even
before the action has taken place (Tomasello & Kruger, 1992), while nouns tend
to label enduring entities available for prolonged inspection. Another difference
between nouns and verbs is that nouns have a tendency to have more restricted
meanings than do verbs. For example, the average dictionary entry for the noun
ball has only two definitions, while the verb run has a dramatic 53 entries, all under
the verb classification (Pickett et al., 2000). Finally, verbs are inherently relational;
the use of a verb implies the presence of an actor to carry out that action. These
factors (and more—see Golinkoff, Jacquet, Hirsh-Pasek, & Nandakumar, 1996)
suggest that verbs are harder to learn than nouns.
Indeed, in the last 10 years both word count studies and experimental studies
of language acquisition support the claim that nouns and verbs are learned and
processed quite differently. Overall, this work has largely affirmed the noun bias in
early word learning and has supported the claim that verbs seem more difficult to
learn than nouns.
Are Verbs Really Harder to Learn Than Nouns? The Evidence
Goldin-Meadow, Seligman, and Gelman (1976) were the first to note that chil-
dren’s productive vocabularies were overwhelmingly composed of nouns. Gen-
tner’s 1982 article spawned even more work in this area as a flurry of studies
literally counted the number of nouns and verbs in children’s vocabularies. Gen-
tner’s original work collected data from six languages (English, German, Japanese,
Kaluli, Mandarin Chinese, and Turkish) and concluded that nouns were the largest
and earliest class of words to be acquired, with verbs lagging behind. Other studies
in Spanish (Jackson-Maldonado, Thal, Marchman, Bates, & Gutierrez-Clellen,
1993), Italian (Caselli et al., 1995), and French (Bassano, 2000; Parisse & Le Nor-
mand, 2000; Poulin-Dubois, Graham, & Sippola, 1995), among other languages, af-
firmed this finding. The most recent large-scale study that counted nouns and verbs
looked at the relative prevalence of word classes across comparable 20-month-old
INTRODUCTION 5

children from seven countries (Bornstein et al., 2004). Using the Early Language
Inventory (a precursor of the CDI), 269 families participated in research that con-
trolled for a number of factors including family income, birth order, and whether
they lived in an urban or a rural area. Results suggest that the early vocabularies of
children evidence more nouns than verbs in Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew,
Italian, Korean, and American English. Thus, even when the method of data collec-
tion was controlled and the sample sizes were large, there seems to be a substantial
noun bias. Though most of the comparison of noun and verb acquisition has
occurred in the word-counting studies, experimental studies also show the relative
difficulty in learning verbs as opposed to nouns. One particularly interesting exam-
ple comes from what Gleitman and her colleagues refer to as the “human simula-
tion” project (Gillette, Gleitman, Gleitman, & Lederer, 1999; Snedeker & Gleitman,
2004). In these studies, adults viewed a series of video clips of a mother and child
playing. A beep occurred coincident with either the missing noun or verb. Partici-
pants guessed what word the speaker might have used at that point.The findings in
these studies were dramatic. Adults, who presumably had no conceptual difficulties
with the objects and events represented on the tapes, correctly guessed the missing
nouns in 45% of the cases. Their proportion correct for guessing the verbs, how-
ever, was a paltry 15%. In fact, if one looked solely at responses for the verbs repre-
senting mental actions, the proportion of correct verb guesses dropped to zero!
These results demonstrate that mapping from word to action is considerably more
challenging than from word to object. There is a lesson in these studies on the diffi-
culty of verb learning given that the participants were adults and the task was one
of simply mapping known verbs to events.
For children learning a novel verb, the verb disadvantage appears to be even
more pronounced. A number of investigators have found that verbs are harder
to learn than nouns for a variety of reasons, including a preference to attach a
new word to an unknown object rather than to its unknown action (chapters 12
and 19; Childers & Tomasello, 2002; Kersten & Smith, 2002), a preference for la-
beling simple actions over complex actions (chapter 14), and a preference for la-

beling actions of the self over the actions of others (Huttenlocher, Smiley, &
Charney, 1983). Importantly, this noun advantage is not limited to English, where
verbs appear in a disadvantaged position in the middle of the sentence, but also
holds true for languages such as Japanese and Chinese, where verbs can appear in
isolation or at the end of the sentence (chapter 18; Tardif, 1996). Cross-linguistic
experimental research in both Japanese and Chinese supports the claim that
children are worse at mapping and extending labels to verbs than nouns (chap-
ter 17; Imai, Haryu, & Okada, 2005) even at the age of five and later! Thus, even
in those languages that are thought to have a verb advantage, children struggle
with verbs for years after they have mastered noun learning in seemingly identical
situations.
Interestingly, there is a convergence in the neurological evidence. Studies have
described a dissociation between the processing of nouns and verbs (Caramazza
6 INTRODUCTION
& Hillis, 1991; Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983; Hillis & Caramazza, 1995; McCarthy
& Warrington, 1985; Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza, 1988; Miceli,
Silveri, Villa, & Caramazza, 1984; Saffran, Berndt, & Schwartz, 1989; Thompson,
Lange, Schneider, & Schapiro, 1997). However, while it may be the case that
nouns and verbs are processed differently in the adult brain, in early acquisition
the distinction between nouns and verbs may not be that clear. There may be a
better way to explain these data other than appeal to form class.
Is It Really Nouns Versus Verbs?
The data seem clear. Nouns are easier to process than verbs. But is the distinction
really between these syntactic form classes, or do the differences in learning
across form classes represent a more general division in the types of concepts that
words represent? That is, the relevant distinction may not be between nouns and
verbs per se but rather between concepts that are more or less abstract and rela-
tional. Gentner and Boroditsky (2001) and Snedeker and Gleitman (2004) first
mentioned this alternative, and Maguire et al. (in press) have developed the argu-
ment even further. Nouns and verbs might be better thought of as falling on a

continuum defined by the concreteness (or imageability or individuability or
shape; see Maguire et al., in press) of the named concept. At the “easy” end of the
continuum are the words that children learn early—nouns like shoe and car and
verbs like kiss and eat. At the “difficult” end, however, are words for concepts that
are less perceptually tied and less bound to context. So nouns like uncle (part of
the kinship system) and passenger (a relation an individual has with respect to a
vehicle) and verbs like imagine and believe (that require an understanding of the-
ory of mind) will both be learned late.
The prediction this view makes is that children should first learn the names of
concrete objects and of actions that are visible and part of routines. It also predicts
that because verbs in general are inherently relational and capture ephemeral
events, they are further along that continuum and should be on the whole learned
somewhat later than nouns. This prediction also suggests that, as Gleitman (1990)
and Gentner and Boroditsky (2001) pointed out, when verb meanings are depend-
ent on the linguistic system in which they are embedded for their meanings, they
will be harder to learn. Second, when young children are said to have verbs in their
vocabularies, the meanings of these verbs might be somewhat impoverished. They
might not rise to the relational level that they do in adults (Gallivan, 1988; Theak-
ston, Lieven, Pine, & Rowland, 2002).
Whether this view is correct or not, the important point is this: The very fact
that a debate has emerged about whether there is a distinction between nouns and
verbs or between concrete and abstract words is a sign of progress made in the
area of verb learning. In the last ten years, aspects of verb learning not previously
considered have come to the fore.
INTRODUCTION 7