Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Relationship Between Pre-Verbal Event Representations And Semantic Structures: The Case Of Goal And Source Paths, Laura Lakusta, Danielle Spinelli, Kathryn Garcia

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We explored the nature of infants’ concepts for goal path and source path in motion events (e.g., the duck moved into the bowl/out of the bowl), specifically asking how infants’ representations could support the acquisition of the semantic roles of goal path and source path in language. The results showed that 14.5-month-old infants categorized goal paths across different motion events (moving to X, moving on Y), and they also categorized source paths if the source reference objects were highly salient (relatively large in size and colorful). Infants at 10 months also categorized goal paths, suggesting that the broad concept GOAL …