The Mandarin resultative verb compound (RVC; e.g., "tui dao" "push fall" and "pa shang" "climb ascend") encodes complex events composed of an initiating action and resulting activity or state. This study investigated when Mandarin-speaking children acquired this language-specific device. Specifically, we…

Many studies have examined language acquisition under morphosyntactic or semantic inconsistency, but few have considered "word-form" inconsistency. Many young learners encounter word-form inconsistency due to accent variation in their communities. The current study asked how preschoolers recognize accent-variants of newly learned words.…

Although prior research on the development of causal reasoning has focused on inferential abilities within the individual child, causal learning often occurs in a social and communicative context. In this paper, we review recent research from our laboratory and look at how linguistic communication may influence children's causal reasoning. First,…