The Acquisition of Verb Propositional Schemata *

Abstract

In addition to componential aspects of verb meaning, children must also acquire a representation of each verb's combinatorial properties or propositional schema, i.e., the number of arguments with which it is obligatorily or optionally associated. The present study investigated developmental changes in children's awareness of the combinatorial requirements of 22 early learned verbs, through their judgments and corrections of sentences from which obligatory and optional arguments had been omitted. Twenty-five children in each of three age groups (mean chronological ages: 4;4, 7;2, and 10;0) were asked to judge and correct 44 sentences constructed to contrast verb pairs for which the same argument was obligatory or optional. Results showed significant changes across age groups in awareness of verb argument requirements, with an apparent progression from: (1) initial ignorance of argument requirements, (2) gradually increasing awareness of these requirements, (3) over generalization of requirements to sentences lacking optional arguments, to (4) an adultlike representation of obligatory and optional arguments for each verb.