In syntactic bootstrapping, which cue helps classify a newly heard word as a verb?

• A. The word appears in a position typically associated with a noun after a determiner.
• B. The word rhymes with other words.
• C. The word is never used with auxiliary verbs.
• D. The word appears in a position typically associated with verbs, such as after "is" or with -ing form.

Answer: (D)

Syntactic bootstrapping relies on where a word appears in sentences to guess its class. Verbs show up in verb-like frames, such as after a form of “to be” (for example, “is …” as in “is running”) or in the -ing form (running) that marks a verb form. When a newly heard word appears in these positions, it strongly signals that the word is a verb. This kind of distributional cue is more reliable for classifying words than cues like rhyming or avoiding auxiliaries, which don’t map as clearly to word class. If a word tends to occur after a determiner (the …), that pattern would more suggest a noun rather than a verb.