Constructing Verbs and Their Meanings: The Interface between Morphology and Syntax and its Relation to Conversational Usage

In order to use verbs in an adult-like manner, children, depending on the language they are learning, need to know several inter-related pieces of knowledge: their core meaning; that verbs can take different forms and how the meanings of those forms contrast with each other; which meaning dimensions are added by inflection (e.g., person, number, aspect, tense, negation) and where else such dimensions are expressed (e.g., in auxiliaries, semi-auxiliaries, and modal verbs; in pronouns; in negative particles); and how these elements are linearly ordered with respect to the core verb and to each other. In short, learning what a verb means and how to use it is a complex task for the language learner, a task we focus on in this symposium. This symposium will address the construction of knowledge about the use of verbs and about their paradigms in first language acquisition from different perspectives and in three languages: (a) the contrasting forms children start to produce and are exposed to in Mexican Spanish (Rojas); (b) the interface between verb morphology and syntax in the development of French verb and the contribution of conversation to this development (Veneziano & Clark) (c) adults' uses of verb constructions in reply to their children's use of homophonous verb forms in French (Clark and de Marneffe), and (d) the contexts (comparison and contrast) that favor children's learning the meanings of new verbs in children acquiring English (Childers)