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This volume investigates the linguistic development of children with regard to their knowledge of the verb and its grammar. The selection of papers gives empirical evidence from a wide variety of languages including Hebrew, German, Croatian, Japanese, English, Spanish, Dutch, Indonesian, Estonian, Russian and French. Findings are interpreted with a focus on cross-linguistic similarities and differences, without subscribing to either a UG-based or usage-based approach. Currently debated topics, such as the role of frequency, as well as traditional ones such as bootstrapping are integrated into the presentation of language-specific, learner-specific and more general properties of the acquisition process. The papers are united by their focus on discovering what determines rule-governed behavior in language learners who are coming to terms with the grammar of verbs.

Language acquisition. --- Grammar, Comparative and general --- Verb. --- Linguistics. --- Applied linguistics. --- Grammar. --- Psycholinguistics. --- Applied Linguistics. --- Theoretical Linguistics. --- Language, Psychology of --- Language and languages --- Psychology of language --- Speech --- Linguistics --- Psychology --- Thought and thinking --- Linguistic science --- Science of language --- Psychological aspects --- Verb --- Acquisition of language --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language development in children --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Verb phrase --- Verbals --- Reflexives --- Acquisition --- Grammar, Comparative and general. --- Comparative grammar --- Grammar --- Grammar, Philosophical --- Grammar, Universal --- Philosophical grammar --- Philology --- Grammar, Comparative

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Language acquisition is a developmental process. Research on spontaneous processes of both children learning their mother tongue and adults learning a second language has shown that particular stages of acquisition can be discriminated. Initially, learner utterances can be accounted for in terms of a language system that is relatively simple. In studies on second language acquisition this learner system is called the Basic Variety (Klein and Perdue 1997). Utterance structure of the Basic Variety is determined by a grammar which consists of lexical structures that are constrained, for example, by semantic principles such as "The NP-referent with highest control comes first" and a pragmatic principle such as "Focus expression last". At some point in acquisition this lexical-semantic system is given up in favour of a target-like system with morpho-syntactic features to express the functional properties of finiteness, topicality, the determiner system, etc. Insights into how this process evolves may also provide an answer to the question of why it takes place. Within this functional perspective on language acquisition research focuses on questions such as the following.1. What is the driving force behind the process that causes learners to give up a simple lexical-semantic system in favour of a morpho-syntactic functional category system?2. What is the added value of morpho-syntactic properties of inflection, word-order variation, definiteness and agreement?3. Why is it that in cases of specific language impairment it is mainly morpho-syntactic properties of the target language that are affected?

Language acquisition. --- Second language acquisition. --- Second language learning --- Language acquisition --- Acquisition of language --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language and languages --- Language development in children --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Acquisition --- Grammaticalization. --- Language Acquisition. --- Second Language Acquisition.