Constructing verb paradigms in French: adult construals and emerging grammatical contrasts

Children acquiring French at first use just one form of each verb, where the meaning identifies only the event-type. How and when do they add additional forms, with the appropriate meanings? In this paper, we explore the information available to children from adult reformulations of these early verb-form uses, and show how adult construals contribute to children’s learning to distinguish between the homophonous infinitival (donner ‘give-Inf’) and participial (donné ‘give-PP’) forms, both /done/, of class 1 verbs. We argue that conversational exchanges, with the construals adults contribute, enable children to differentiate the meanings of homophonous forms, and so begin to construct verb paradigms.