Figure 4.

Sample segment from Korean dialogue, and test-event stimuli from Jin et al. (in prep.).

This example is taken from Jin et al.’s Experiment 2. Children had to rely on the contribution of discourse structure (and a modest noun animacy cue) to establish the number of arguments assigned to the verb. Abbreviations are loc (locative), nom (nominative), pst (past progressive), q (question), decl (declarative), conn (connective), and IMP (imperative). Note the repeated answer in the Intransitive dialogue places a nominative case marker on the intransitive subject; this was included because Korean speaking adults sometimes judged that repeated use (as opposed to omission) of terms such as ‘Grandma’ suggested a different grandmother was being acted on.