Novel verb experiments

[Robin Campbell]

There might be some point in going back for a look at the antique
experiments of Werner & Kaplan from the 1950s. Two problems with such
experiments with adults are (a) you can't use short novel words, since
short words are all used up and unavailable for neologism, and (b) adult
knowledge of objects is as good as yours, so you need to use novel objects
as well as novel words (which Werner & Kaplan failed to do).

Robin

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 kkennedy at clarku.edu wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> We are currently working on a senior capstone project at Clark University
> trying to replicate with an adult population some of the work Nancy Budwig
> and several of the graduate students (Enila Cenko, Juan Hu, Kaya Ono,
> Smita Srivastava) have been doing with novel verb experiments with
> preschoolers speaking a variety of languages. The question we have been
> curious about is how adults do in similar tasks, in particular whether
> they produce novel verbs modeled in one construction in constructions they
> have not heard the verbs used in, and whether this differs when training
> takes place in transitive versus intransitive constructions. Our own
> search for novel verb experiments with adult populations has not turned up
> much; we would be grateful for recommendations of studies that address
> this topic.
>
> Many thanks for your help.
>
> Kevin Kennedy & Jason Edgarton
> Undergraduate students, Clark U. '07
>
> Kkennedy at clarku.edu
> Jaedgarton at clarku.edu
>
>
>

-- 
The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA.  Privileged/Confidential Information may
be contained in this message.  If you are not the addressee indicated
in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such
person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone
and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is
prohibited and may be unlawful.  In such case, you should destroy this
message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.  Please advise
immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email
for messages of this kind.