Does sentence structure boost early word learning? An artifical language learning study

This paper examines the semantic consequences of the presence and absence of the verbal particle in Hungarian sentences containing a verb of creation. Since these verbs are Definiteness-Effect verbs, the aspectual interpretation does not depend merely on the verbal particle’s position – or even presence – in the sentence, as in other cases, but rather on the specific/non-specific interpretation of the object. The main claim of the paper is that the verbal particle’s role in such sentences can be defined in terms of collectivity and distributivity: the Definiteness-Effect constructions – the ones without verbal particle – can only refer to collective events, and the non-Definiteness-Effect-constructions – the ones containing a verbal particle – can refer to both collective and distributive events.