The acquisition of non-agent subjects in child Hebrew: The role of input

The present study examines the role of input in the acquisition of non-agent subjects occurring with change-of-state (COS) verbs in child Hebrew. Data for the study derive from naturalistic longitudinal speech samples of two Hebrew-speaking girls Smadar (l;6-2;4) and Lior (l;5-2;9) and their mothers (Berman & Weissenborn 1991). The findings reveal that both the mothers and their daughters start out with a small number of COS verbs and subject types, and gradually expand their inventory to include more verbs, subject types and variations of [subject + verb] clusters. Thus, the development of non-agent subjects points to a gradual emergence of SUBJECT. The findings further suggest that in the acquisition process children rely on semantic and pragmatic information as well as on parental input. These findings are in line with a developmental, usage-based, approach to language acquisition