This is a study of the kinds of processes involved in learning the meaning of individual lexical items, and in particular how the acquisition of lexical meaning is related to the cognitive structuring of events on the one hand and the ability to produce syntactic paraphrases of a word's meaning and other related constructions on the other. It is proposed that errors involving the use of noncausative verbs in a causative sense come about through inference of a derivational or inclusive relationship between causative verbs and their noncausative counterparts and through a generalization by analogy with these causative verbs. It is further argued that when a child first begins to use causative verbs, they are essentially unanalyzed forms, i.e., the child uses a linguistic form without being aware of its internal structure. The evidence that unanalyzed forms have been analyzed is the creation of novel forms which are made up of same or similar components combined according to the same rules. Thus, a fundamental distinction is made between cognitive knowledge and knowledge of a linguistic structure. (AM)