Novel verb experiments

[Keith Nelson]

Hi Kevin, Jason, Nancy--

	Maybe because I have just been snowed by snow in our current 
central PA blizzard, then I am thinking that the "nouniness " and 
"verbiness" of varied words and the cross language work of Melissa 
Bowerman on such constructions as in, on, under, around  and so forth 
may be relevant background, along with second language learning by 
adults.   Melissa I believe had some wonderful examples from 
Northwestern Canadian languages on how simple words sometimes can map 
complex relationships.    But all that said, no, I don't recall a 
definite experiment that address your questions--the closest 
possibility I can think of would be Liz Bates may have included some 
adults as well as kids in her demonstrations of learning of nonce 
verbs such as bloop.

	Best,  Keith (Keith Nelson)




At 6:38 PM +0000 2/14/07, Robin Campbell wrote:
>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
>>
>>
>>
>
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-- 



Keith Nelson
Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
423 Moore Building
University Park, PA   16802


keithnelsonart at psu.edu

814 863 1747



And what is mind
and how is it recognized ?
It is clearly drawn
in Sumi  ink, the
sound of breezes drifting through pine.

--Ikkyu Sojun
Japanese Zen Master    1394-1481