At the critical juncture between words and grammar lies the next frontier—verb learning.
Serving as the architectural centerpiece of the sentence, verbs control the argument
structure of grammar and describe relations between objects and events. Verbs are the
means by which language conveys descriptions of events. Though verbs appear in the
vocabulary of very young children (Choi, 1998; Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Choi & Gopnik,
1995; Fenson, Dale, Reznick, & Bates, 1994; Nelson, 1989; Tardif, 1996), noun acquisition …

To appear in TF Shipley & JM Zacks (Eds.), Understanding events: How humans see,
represent, and act on events. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. This work was
supported by NSF Grants SBR9601306 and SBR9615391 to the second and third authors
and NICHD Grant 3U10HD25455-0552 to the second author.