Cross-linguistic regularities and learner biases reflect "core" mechanics.

ABSTRACT: Recent research in infant cognition and adult vision suggests that the mechanical object relationships may be more salient and naturally attention grabbing than similar but non-mechanical relationships. Here we examine two novel sources of evidence from language related to this hypothesis. In Experiments 1 and 2, we show that adults preferentially infer that the meaning of a novel preposition refers to a mechanical as opposed to a non-mechanical relationship. Experiments 3 and 4 examine cross-linguistic adpositions obtained on a large scale from machines or from experts, respectively. While these methods differ in the ease of data collection relative to the reliability of the data, their results converge: we find that across a range of diverse and historically unrelated languages, adpositi

SUBMITTER: Strickland B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5764231 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature