The input surrounding action verbs in speech to infants and toddlers

Infants and toddlers learning action verbs are confronted with an array of linguistic and cognitive challenges, and possibly as a result, verbs are relatively late learned in comparison to object nouns. Although theories exist as to why action verbs are difficult to acquire, no study has aptly examined the presentation of action verbs in the input to infants and toddlers. Two bodies of research guided an investigation into the presentation of verbs to young language learners, research surrounding the features of infant-directed speech that have been linked with the acquisition of specific linguistic abilities and theories of scaffolding and verbal support that assist children's understanding of complex concepts.;Analyses of action-focused storybook interactions reveal that adults describe actions to infants and toddlers in a dramatically different way than they describe actions to adults. Adults elongate verbs, place action verbs in utterance-final position, repeat verbs, use multiple syntactic frames when presenting verbs, and introduce verbs with their arguments when speaking to infants and toddlers, but not to adults. Mothers also use a wide variety of scaffolding strategies to foster an understanding of actions depicted when speaking to infants and toddlers. Importantly, adults scaffold the understanding of action concepts by using a series of contextualized language supports. Adults regularly frame actions in the here-and-now by performing target actions and/or by requesting that infants and toddlers perform those actions. Adults also routinely relate actions and activities to their children's own experience. The verbal support provided by mothers likely makes these linguistically and cognitively challenging action concepts more accessible to children. The extent to which the presentation of verbs is related to individual differences in children's receptive and expressive vocabulary levels remains to be determined. In light of what is already known about the presentation of object nouns to infants and toddlers in similar settings, it might be safely concluded that content words that are the intended focus of an interaction are highlighted in special ways, regardless of their part of speech.