ABSTRACT
A dults shape the way children speak by displaying for them the conventional ways of saying things and doing things with language. Not surprisingly, the story of how children engage in learning the conventions of their rst language is a complicated one. Conventions govern language use in every community of speakers. Conventions govern the associations of forms and meanings for words and for constructions in a language, and thereby allow speakers to maintain differences in meaning, with consistency, over time. Conventions underlie speakers’ choices of words: squirrel to designate squirrels in English, écureuil to designate squirrels in French; they also underlie choices of constructions as in He wiped the table clean with a resultative construction in English, Il nettoya la table with a direct causative construction in French. Conventions govern how speakers pronounce words as well, within each community. (There are often quite different conventions from one community to the next on this, even within the same language.) They also govern the patterns of use that speakers favor in a particular community, during a particular era.
