Development of argument structure in the early phases of language acquisition

Tomasello (1992) suggests that young children initially learn verbs and their arguments as lexical constructions, on an item-by-item basis, and only later begin to generalize the patterns they have learned for one verb to another. As to Tomasello, an abstract `verb? category develops, as children become more familiar with different verbs and their argument structure. Taking into consideration Tomasello?s position, in this study, development of argument structure was examined on the data gathered from five female children who were at the early phases of their language acquisitions, within two developmental stages: MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) Stage I and II. Firstly, argument structure frames developing around verbs were characterized and following this, the question if argument structure develops around individual verbs in a lexically specific way in the early phases of language development was investigated. The results showed some evidence for verb?specific knowledge of early argument structure. Verbs first appeared in ACT --- / OBJ--- frames, then combinations of arguments along with the verbs in ACT OBJ --- / ACT OBJ GL --- frames were observed. These findings revealed that acquisition of argument structure was cumulative: It starts with no overt arguments and ends up with multiple arguments.