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Possibly no other area of the lexicon is as complex as verbs. They not only convey information about events and states but also about motives, intentions, causality-to mention but a few dimensions. In addition, verbs can be inflected for tense and aspect and thus are the major means of conveying temporal information. An account of how the child masters the verb system would necessarily playa central role in a complete account of language development. Among the questions that require answering are at least the following: In the early stages of language acquisition, what types of verbs are learned first? Are certain types of verbs acquired earliest as a result of input frequency or as a result of conceptual limitations on what events can be encoded by the young child? What is the developmental course of establishing the accurate denotation of a verb? Are the earliest learned verbs organized in a single category or in …