Hostname: page-component-76c49bb84f-t6sgf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-12T12:47:26.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A functional account of verb use in the early stages of English multiword development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2011

THEA CAMERON-FAULKNER
THEA CAMERON-FAULKNER*
Affiliation:
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
*
Address for correspondence: Thea Cameron-Faulkner, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL. e-mail: t.cameron@manchester.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study investigates flexibility of verb use in the early stages of English multiword development, and its relationship with patterns attested in the input. The data is taken from a case study of a monolingual English-speaking boy aged 2 ; 5–2 ; 9 and his mother while engaged in daily activities in the home. Data were coded according to Halliday's (1975) functional system. The findings suggest that early multiword verb use is functionally restricted and closely tied to verb use in the input.

Information

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , September 2012 , pp. 885 - 897
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

[*]

Parts of the research reported here were supported by funding from the ESRC (Grant no. RES-000-22-1125). We are extremely grateful to Michael Tomasello, the editor, the action editor and reviewers for their valuable feedback.

References

REFERENCES

Dore, J. (1974). A pragmatic description of early language development. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 3, 343–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, C. (2002). The role of abstract syntactic knowledge in language acquisition: A reply to Tomasello (2000). Cognition, 82, 259–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning to mean–explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Lieven, E., Pine, J. & Baldwin, G. (1997). Lexically-based learning and early grammatical development. Journal of Child Language, 24, 187–220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacWhinney, B. & Snow, C. E. (1990). The Child Language Data Exchange System: An update. Journal of Child Language 17, 457–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naigles, L. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17, 357–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naigles, L., Bavin, E. & Smith, M. (2005). Toddlers recognise verbs in novel situations and sentences. Developmental Science, 8, 424–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naigles, L. R., Hoff, E. & Vear, D. (2009). Flexibility in early verb use: Evidence from a multiple-N diary study. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 74, 1–143.Google ScholarPubMed
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 38, 1–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. (1978). Early speech in its communicative context. In Minnifie, F. & Lloyd, L. (eds), Communicative and cognitive abilities: Early behavioral assessment, 443–75. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Ninio, A. (1992). The relation of children's single word utterances to single word utterances in the input. Journal of Child Language 19, 87–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ninio, A., Snow, C. E., Pan, B. A. & Rollins, P. R. (1994). Classifying communicative acts in children's interactions. Journal of Communication Disorders 27, 158–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pine, J. & Lieven, E. (1993). Reanalysing rote-learned phrases: Individual differences in the transition to multi word speech. Journal of Child Language 20, 551–71.Google ScholarPubMed
Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E. V. M., Pine, J. M. & Rowland, C. F. (2004). Semantic generality, input frequency and the acquisition of syntax. Journal of Child Language 31, 61–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (1992). First verbs: A case study of early grammatical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition 74, 209–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Abbot-Smith, K. (2002). A tale of two theories: Response to Fisher. Cognition 83, 207–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. & Brandt, S. (2009). Flexibility in the semantics and syntax of children's early verb use. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 74, 113–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed