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The Force of Language: How Children Acquire the Semantic Categories of Force Dynamics

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The Force of Language: How Children Acquire the Semantic Categories of Force Dynamics THE FORCE OF LANGUAGE: HOW CHILDREN ACQUIRE THE SEMANTIC CATEGORIES OF FORCE DYNAMICS A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Nathan R. George May 2014 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Advisory Chair, Developmental Psychology Dr. Nora Newcombe, Examining Chair, Developmental Psychology Dr. Peter Marshall, Developmental Psychology Dr. Thomas Shipley, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dr. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, University of Delaware Dr. Phillip Wolff, Emory University © Copyright 2014 by Nathan R. George ii ABSTRACT Nathan R. George Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2014 Dissertation Advisory Committee Chair: Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Dissertation Examination Chair: Dr. Nora Newcombe Verbs and prepositions encode relations within events, such as a child running towards the top of a hill or a second child pushing the first away from the top. These relational terms present significant challenges in language acquisition, requiring the mapping of the categorical system of language onto the continuous stream of information in events. This challenge is magnified when considering the complexities of events themselves. Events consist of part-whole relations, or partonomic hierarchies, in which events defined by smaller boundaries, such as the child running up the hill, can be integrated into broader categories, such as the second child preventing the first from reaching the top (Zacks & Tversky, 2001). This dissertation addresses how this partonomic hierarchy in events is paralleled in the structure of relational language. I examine the semantic category of force dynamics, or “how entities interact with respect to force” (Talmy, 1988, p. 49), which introduces broad categories (e.g., help, prevent) that incorporate previously independent relations in events, such as paths, goals, and causality. Two studies ask how children and adults navigate the tension between fine and broad categories in their nonlinguistic representations of force and motion events and whether language – in the form of both labels and syntactic cues – helps children to integrate previously independent relations into these higher order constructs. Participants iii completed a novel task designed to assess the saliency of force dynamics relations across events. Participants viewed an animated event depicting a force dynamics relation (e.g., prevent, cause) and were asked to identify which of two perceptually varied events (i.e., different characters and setting) depicted the same relation. Study One extends previous research, showing that adults encode force dynamics relations in nonlinguistic contexts. Study Two examined these representations in 4-year-olds, both with and without linguistic cues. Absent linguistic cues, children showed no evidence of encoding force dynamics; however, the presence of language highlighted these relations, improving children’s attention to these broader categories in events. The results are the first to explore the problem of hierarchies in relational language and demonstrate a novel role for language in drawing children’s attention to the presence of relations between relations. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank God for fearfully and wonderfully creating creatures worthy of lifetimes of study, and for instilling in me the curiosity to explore the wonders of His creation. I am indebted to Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Nora Newcombe, Roberta Golinkoff, and Peter Marshall for their unwavering support and unparalleled guidance. I would also like to thank Tim Shipley and Philip Wolff for their insightful comments on this work. I am extremely blessed by the wonderful community of colleagues whom I consider dear friends. I thank Tilbe Göksun for her irreplaceable mentorship, Jessa Reed, for being my doctoral twin and occasional therapist, Justin Harris for being a valued collaborator, and my cohort for going on this ride with me. Finally, I thank those that contributed unselfishly to this work, including Melissa Hansen, Max Freeman, Shana Ramsook, Junko Kanero, Jamie Jirout, Kristie Denlinger, Jessica Weinstein, Nicole Kwak, Minjae Kim, Nora Sweeney, Sarah Rutter, and members of the Temple Infant and Child Lab and Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, past and present. I owe more than I can say to my family and friends. I thank my parents, Robert and Cathy, for their unfailing love and unwavering support, which gave me the strength to travel down this path, Tim, Tama, Roe, and Ben for continually providing their younger brother with love and companionship, and of course, Andrew and Sierra, for keeping me sane through a regular dose of craziness. I also thank my friends, whom I consider family, for their fellowship, support, and prayers throughout this journey. This research was supported by the NSF Spatial Intelligence Learning Center (SBE-0541957, SBE-1041707) and is only possible thanks to the wonderful children and families that gave graciously of their time. v DEDICATION To Adolph Amend Jr. My grandfather, whose love of learning has inspired generations of scholars, including me and Raymond Miller Whose discipleship continues to bear fruit in my life vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xii 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 Verb Learning: Reviewing the Evidence ........................................................................ 5 Cognitive Semantics in Linguistics ............................................................................ 5 Nonlinguistic Event Processing .................................................................................. 7 Containment and Support ....................................................................................... 7 Figure and Ground .................................................................................................. 9 Path and Manner ................................................................................................... 10 Basic Causality...................................................................................................... 12 Summary ............................................................................................................... 13 How Language Highlights Semantic Relations ........................................................ 15 Trading Spaces: A Theoretical Framework for Verb Learning .................................... 17 Forging Forward: Force Dynamics ............................................................................... 19 Force Dynamics Theory ............................................................................................ 20 Force Dynamics in Psychology ................................................................................ 23 Encoded in All Languages .................................................................................... 23 Represented Differently Across Languages.......................................................... 24 Perceptually Available .......................................................................................... 25 vii Developmental Questions of Force Dynamics ......................................................... 26 Encoding Force Dynamics .................................................................................... 27 Language as an Integrator ..................................................................................... 32 The Current Studies ...................................................................................................... 36 2. STUDY ONE: ADULT CONCEPTIONS OF FORCE DYNAMICS ......................... 39 Method .......................................................................................................................... 39 Participants ................................................................................................................ 39 Stimuli ....................................................................................................................... 40 Training Events ..................................................................................................... 41 Slope Events.......................................................................................................... 41 Sand Events ........................................................................................................... 43 Measures ................................................................................................................... 45 Background Survey ............................................................................................... 45 Causal Matching Task........................................................................................... 45 Receptive Vocabulary ..........................................................................................
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