ABSTRACT
The objective of this chapter is to contribute to a realistic explanation of how the semantic representations of verbs are acquired. The narrower focus of this chapter is the question of information sources; that is, what sources of information are used by children to establish the semantic representation of a verb? In particular, it is proposed that children as young as 18 months old take note of the communicative intents of conversational partners and the pragmatic status of referents, overt and implied, and that children use this information when constructing the meaning of a predicate.
