Learning the meaning of change-of-state verbs : : A case study of German child language / / Angelika Wittek.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Wittek, Angelika,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2011]; ©2002
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Edition: Reprint 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] , 17
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (233 p.)

Causative change-of-state verbs like 'to open', 'to fill', and 'to wake' are central to both recent theories of grammatical development and theories of lexical structure. This book focuses on how German-speaking children learn the meaning of change-of-state verbs. It offers a thorough characterization of the acquisition of German, embedded in a crosslinguistic perspective. The author provides a comprehensive review of the acquisition literature on that topic and introduces a new account as to how the meaning of these verbs can be learned. The empirical backbone of the investigation are a set of carefully designed experimental studies.

Table of Contents

i-iv -- Contents -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. A paradox: Learning the meaning of change-of-state verbs should be easy, but it isn’t -- Chapter 3. Is the learning problem due to mapping problems? Testing the Transparent Endstate Hypothesis -- Chapter 4. A subtle learning problem: The Weak Endstate -- Chapter 5. Modifiers as cues to verb meaning -- Chapter 6. Testing the Adverbial Modification Cue Hypothesis -- Chapter 7. Summary: The status of the endstate in children’s semantic representations of change-of-state verbs -- Appendices -- Notes -- References -- Subject index -- Author index