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This research project studies first language acquisition of theta-role assignment for transitive participial adjectives. Theta-roles are the linguistic mechanism for distinguishing a verb's agent from its patient (recipient of the action). Interestingly, adults interpret the noun phrase “the thrown man” to mean that something has thrown the man rather than that the man has thrown something. The central focus of this study is to ask whether children approach the role assignment task in a similar way. Results suggest that children assign theta-roles for agent/patient verbs like “thrown” as easily as adults do, but have greater difficulty assigning theta-roles for sensory perception verbs like “heard” in “the heard man” and experiencer verbs like “feared” in “the feared man.” The results of this study provide background for a potential reanalysis of verb distinctions and offer further evidence for age-grading in language acquisition. |
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