Twelve 21/2-year-old children received adult verbal intervention selectively directed toward acquisition of either question forms or verb forms. Findings showed that children who received verb intervention acquired new verb structures while children who received question intervention acquired new forms of questions. (Author/JMB)

Examined the extent to which maternal linguistic input enabled children to use syntactic bootstrapping. Studied uses of 25 common verbs in speech of 57 mothers to their 1-year olds and 2-year olds. Found that verbs can be used to create informative syntactic frames, syntactic frames can cue appropriate verb class, and multiple syntactic framing…