She has also worked on the acquisition and use of word-formation, including comparative studies of English and Hebrew in children and adults.
Some of her research examines what children can learn about conventional ways to say things based on adult responses to child errors during acquisition.
Clark earned her PhD in Linguistics in 1969, studying with John Lyons at the University of Edinburgh.
An example of the way the words were said to the children are as follows: "Deictic term (this/that/here) + new word (This) is an + owl (Here) is a + whisk" (Clark & Wong, 2002) The five corpora, or collection of written/spoken speech, were analyzed by three researchers who each observed specific children: Stanley Kuczaj (child: Abe), Jacqueline Sachs (child: Naomi) and Roger Brown (children: Adam, Eve and Sarah).
Children who moved on from the new word continued the conversation in the same semantic field, meaning that although the grasping of the new word may not be verbally recognized, the meaning behind the continued conversation displays a possible grasp on integrating the context into their understanding.
Eve Clark furthered her research on children's understanding of new words, while focusing specifically on the knowledge and identification of colors.
Clark emphasized joint attention as a key piece of acquiring the terms for colors.
Without direct attention, the child will struggle to grasp concepts on their own because there is nobody to tell them what is right or wrong.
The child's understanding of the tints or shade of a hue increases when presented by older individuals around them.
Convention is defined as a norm, a standard everyone must follow to ensure proper communication.
While this rule can differentiate between nouns, this also applies when children figure out which tense of a verb to use (telled [sic] vs. told).
[13] Clark's accomplishments and reputation in linguistics is shown in her ability relate language acquisition to cognition.
Clark expresses that words might be regarded as invitations to form categories and to individuate object kinds.
Also, Clark believes that language might enable analogies that allow for greater complexity of thought.
When discovering language, Clark says that children learn most from their adult figures in their life and how infants pick up on the most frequent nouns, verbs, and adjectives first before extending their range.