The Verb Mutability Effect: Noun and Verb Semantics in English and Japanese

The Verb Mutability Effect: Noun and Verb Semantics in English and Japanese Caitlin M. Fausey (cmfausey@psych.stanford.edu) Department of Psychology, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 420 Stanford, CA 94305 USA Hanako Yoshida (hayoshid@indiana.edu) Department of Brain and Psychological Sciences, 1101 East Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405 USA Jennifer Asmuth (asmuth@northwestern.edu) Dedre Gentner (gentner@northwestern.edu) Department of Psychology, 2100 Sheridan Rd. Evanston, IL 60201 USA Verbs are more difficult to translate between languages than are nouns; (f) Verbs are less often borrowed across languages than nouns; and (g) Verbs are slower to be acquired by children (and in second-language learning) than nouns. Gentner (1981) theorized that the first three phenomena are connected via differential adjustability. If verbs are more likely to undergo meaning adjustment during comprehension, they will of course be more mutable under semantic strain. This leads to poorer memory for verbs than nouns, because verb meanings as encoded have been contextually altered to suit the noun (Kersten & Earles, 2004). Finally, to the extent that similar verb adjustments occur repeatedly, verbs will accrue more meaning senses than nouns. In this research, we asked whether the processing pattern of greater mutability for verbs than for nouns might be a semantic universal. As discussed below, a plausible case can be made in either direction: i.e., for a universal processing pattern, or for an English-specific pattern. Japanese is an interesting language to contrast with English with respect to the mutability of verbs, because there is reason to believe that verbs are more central in Japanese than in English. If indeed verbs are more central, we might expect them to be less mutable. Arguments for verb centrality in Japanese. There are typological differences between Japanese and English that may render verbs more salient in Japanese than in English. For example, Japanese word order is SOV, placing the verb in the salient sentence-final position (Slobin, 1973), in contrast to the SVO order of English (which places the verb in a low-salience middle position). Another typological factor that may increase verb salience in Japanese is pro- drop: that is, the ability of a language to omit pronouns when the reference has been established or is obvious from context. In Japanese, for example, instead of saying Watashi wa byōki desu ( I am sick ), one can simply say Byōki desu ( Am/Is/Are sick ). Thus, a single verb can constitute a complete sentence: e.g., “Yatta! ” (I /we/ they) did (it! ) . Researchers have theorized that speakers of pro- drop languages may experience verbs as more central (Choi Abstract To what extent are the processing patterns for nouns and verbs universal across languages? Under conditions of semantic strain, English speakers tend to adapt the meaning of the verb to fit the noun in the sentence. We asked Japanese and English speakers to paraphrase simple sentences of the form “The noun verbed,” varying in semantic strain (e.g., “The blender talked”). We then assessed the degree to which speakers adjusted the default word meanings in their paraphrases by asking a new group of speakers to read the paraphrases and to guess (“retrace”) which word had occurred in the original sentence. As predicted, English speakers retraced more nouns than verbs, suggesting that verb meanings were adjusted to a greater degree than noun meanings in the paraphrases. However, the results for Japanese speakers did not differ between nouns and verbs. We discuss implications for the universality of a noun−verb mutability difference. Introduction Research has revealed important psychological differences in the acquisition and processing of nouns and verbs. This has been taken to be evidence of deep semantic differences between the two. But how universal are these differences? Languages appear to vary significantly in the salience and emphasis that verbs are given relative to nouns, and it is possible that the psychological noun-verb differences will also vary by language. This paper examines these issues, exploring cross-linguistic differences in noun-verb processing patterns. Synthesizing linguistic and psychological research, Gentner (1981; 1982; Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001) has argued for a deep semantic distinction between nouns and verbs. Gentner has emphasized the following: (a) Verbs are more mutable than nouns, in that their meanings are adjusted more than noun meanings under semantic strain; (b) Verbs are poorer in memory—more difficult to recall and recognize—than nouns; (c) Verbs are more polysemous than nouns: at all frequency levels, verbs have a greater number of word senses than do nouns; (d) Verb meanings differ more cross-linguistically than do noun meanings; (e)