EVENT KNOWLEDGE AND EARLY LANGUAGE-ACQUISITION

The role of event knowledge in early language acquisition was investig ated. Thirteen two-year-olds were observed interacting with their moth ers over a five-week period. During weekly observational sessions, dya ds interacted in both a familiar-event context and an unfamiliar-event context. Events were represented by complex toys (e.g. airport, marin a, etc.). In the familiar-event, dyads interacted with the same event- toy during each observation period. In the unfamiliar-event, these sam e dyads interacted with a different novel toy during each observation period. The results indicated that children's increasing event knowled ge facilitated their language development. Specifically, children's le xical type use, action verb use, and MLU increased in the familiar-eve nt, but remained unchanged in the unfamiliar-event. Event knowledge al so facilitated children's lexical token use. Results are discussed in terms of the role of event knowledge in language acquisition.