ABSTRACT
Using a Chinese child of 1;02-3;07 years of age, this chapter presents a detailed longitudinal study of the acquisition of six directional verbs in the "up, down" groups, including their order of acquisition, output frequency, patterns of semantic development, and so on. The development of children's semantics-syntax is generally consistent with their cognitive development, but pragmatic frequency factors may overwhelm cognitive principles and thus make certain semantic acquisitions contrary to the general sequence of acquisition. Research regarding directional verbs has always been the focus of attention for Chinese linguistics. Jinxi Li, Yuen-Ren Chao, Shuxiang Lu, Dexi Zhu, Shengshu Ding, Jianming Lu, Yuehua Liu, Bojiang Zhang, and other scholars have discussed the relevant issues from different perspectives. The chapter examines children’s acquisition of the entire directional verb system – doing so might lead to mistakes by trying to cover too much superficially.
