This project explores certain relations between verb syntax and verb semantics through studies of child language learning and adult sentence representation. Children who speak the Indian language Kannada will be asked to interpret known verbs in novel syntactic structures in an act-out task Their responses will be taken as evidence regarding () the extent to which syntax plays a role in verb acquisition, and (b) a proposed typology of semantic properties of syntactic structures. Adult speakers of English will be asked to make identify judgements of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences with the expectation that reaction time to ungrammatical sentences will be slower than to grammatical sentences. Their responses will allow us to further develop the proposed typology of semantic properties of syntactic structures.
