The distributional and embodied contexts of verbs in caregiver-infant interactions

This study investigated caregivers' use of verbs, which have highly abstract meanings, during unscripted toy-play. We examined how verbs co-occurred with distributional and embodied factors including pronouns, caregivers' manual actions, and infants' locomotion, gaze, and object-touching. Object-action verbs were used significantly more often during caregiver-infant joint attention interactions. Movement and cognition verbs showed distinct co-occurrences with different contexts. Cognition and volition verbs were differentiated by pronouns. These findings provide evidence for how verb acquisition may be supported by the distributional and embodied contexts in caregiver-infant interactions.PMID:38189210 | DOI:10.1017/S0305000923000636
Source: Journal of Child Language - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Source Type: research