Revisiting the Noun-Verb Debate: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Novel Noun and Verb Learning in English-, Japanese-, and Chinese-Speaking Children

This chapter presents results from a series of cross-linguistic studies which examined how English-, Japanese-, and Chinese-speaking children generalize newly learned nouns and verbs. Based on the results, it evaluates the two competing positions in the nounverb debate. It then explores universal and language-specific factors which affect the ease or difficulty of early noun and verb learning.