Providing Support for ‘Support’: Parents’ Use of Verbs and Prepositions When Describing Support Configurations to Their Children

ABSTRACT

Support (one object preventing another from falling) is linguistically encoded by adults and children in a highly structured and differentiated way, with basic locative expressions or Light verbs (e.g., in English, the block is on/put on the box) encoding Support-from-Below, and lexical verbs (e.g., she stuck the block on the box) encoding Mechanical Support. We ask whether parents use such highly differentiated language when describing support configurations to their young children and whether the age of the child moderates this effect. We found that when parents of children 6-months to 3.5 years of age described events of Support-from-Below and Mechanical Support to their children, they did use distinct linguistic expressions, encoding Support-from-Below with Light verbs (e.g., put on) and Mechanical Support with other lexical verbs (e.g., stick on/to). This differentiation was especially prominent for parents of the oldest children, who used more lexical verbs (stick), and fewer Light verbs (put), to encode Mechanical Support. These findings are the first to demonstrate that parents’ spatial language to their young children distinguishes between two distinct types of support and suggest that parent input may play an important role in helping children learn to linguistically carve up the semantic domain of support. This sets the stage for future research to test the causal connection between the two.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Gabrielle Moya who helped code and analyze the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Since the children participated in different studies, it is not possible to examine the child data in relation to the current data. Rather, the current study’s goal is to test the nature of parent input, which will set the stage for future studies. Given the current results, future studies should specifically relate parent input to child outcomes (see Discussion).

² While the children participated in the prior, non-related study, they were seated on the parent’s lap. Parents closed their eyes and wore headphones playing music to avoid being influenced by the visual stimuli and to mask any audio.

³ When parents didn’t use a Light or MoA verb for SFB they used BE (3.2%; N = 6/190), lift (1%; N = 2/190), watch (.5%; N = 1/190) or they omitted a verb (3.2%; N = 6/190). When parents didn’t use a Light or MoA verb for Mechanical Support they used BE (3.2%; N = 6/190), lift (.5%; N = 1/190), or push (1.6%; N = 3/190).

⁴ It may also be of interest to note that for the Mechanical Support events when put was used, an agent was included in the large majority of the utterances (e.g., “She put the block on the side of the box”; only three utterances did not include an agent). When stick was used – the most frequently used verb to encode the Mechanical Support – an agent was specified 73.84% of the time (e.g., “Someone stuck it to a big white square”); 27.16% of the time an agent was not specified (e.g., “The square stuck to the side of the box”). Thus, for Mechanical Support, parents use more MoA verbs, and they use these in mixed constructions. Future research may examine how the varied verb constructions for MoA verbs may play a role in children acquiring their meanings. Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this point.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by NSF grant 1650861 awarded to Laura Lakusta and Barbara Landau.