Applied Psycholinguistics 22 (2001), 253–267

Printed in the United States of America

The acquisition of English

dative constructions
AIMEE L. CAMPBELL
Emory University

MICHAEL TOMASELLO
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE

Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Inselstrasse 22, D-04103
Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: tomas@eva.mpg.de

ABSTRACT
We analyzed the three main types of English dative constructions – the double-object dative, the to
dative, and the for dative – in the spontaneous speech of seven children from the age of 1;6 to 5;0.
The main findings were as follows. First, the double-object dative was acquired by most of the
children before either of the prepositional datives; this was attributed to the greater frequency with
which children heard this construction with individual verbs. Second, the verbs children used with
these constructions were not only the adult prototypical ones, but also a number of the less prototypi-
cal ones; again, this was very likely due to their frequency and saliency in the language children
heard. Third, no support was found for Ninio’s (1999) analysis of the emergence of constructions
in terms of a single “pathbreaking” verb; rather, children began using the double-object dative with
many different verbs and did not follow the trajectory proposed by Ninio (i.e., a single verb is used
for some months before an “explosion” of new verbs is introduced in the construction). Finally,
most of the verbs initially used in the three dative constructions were first used in other constructions
(e.g., a simple transitive); this was even true for some obligatory datives, such as give and show.
The current results provide a starting point for determining the underlying representations for the
different kinds of dative constructions and for explicating how children understand the interrelations
among these and other constructions.

All languages of the world have grammatical constructions for expressing the
transfer of objects (and other things) between people (Newman, 1996). In
English, a constellation of three related constructions is responsible for doing
this: the to dative, the for dative (or benefactive), and the double-object
dative (or ditransitive). These English constructions are interesting from a
developmental point of view for several reasons: (a) each refers to a salient
semantic situation for children and so is acquired relatively early; (b) each is
relatively coherent semantically in that it is always used for some kind of trans-
fer between people (either literal or metaphorical); and (c) each is cognitively

 2001 Cambridge University Press 0142-7164/01 $9.50

Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 254
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

complex in that it involves three participants (donor, recipient, gift) (Dixon,

1991).
Although virtually all accounts of children’s early acquisition of English note
the existence of these constructions, few studies have directly examined them.
One exception is a study by Snyder and Stomswold (1997) in the UG frame-
work; the authors used children’s acquisition of the dative constructions as part
of an argument about parameter setting in language acquisition. Specifically,
they argued from UG analyses, presenting some suggestive evidence, that chil-
dren should always acquire the double-object dative before they acquire the
other two constructions. Another exception is a study by Osgood and Zehler
(1981); here, the authors provided evidence that children understand prototypi-
cal instantiations of these constructions (in which two human participants ex-
change an inanimate entity) before they understand less prototypical uses. Fi-
nally, Tomasello (1998) gave a descriptive account of one child’s use of
expressions of possession; he found that dative constructions were among the
earliest constructions to emerge.
In addition, a number of proposals have been made about the relation between
children’s grasp of verb meanings and constructions in general, often granting
a prominent role to the dative constructions. First, Gropen, Pinker, Hollander,
Goldberg, and Wilson (1989) studied children’s acquisition of the dative alterna-
tion (i.e., their ability to identify verbs that do and do not participate in both
double-object dative and to dative constructions). The basic question involved
children’s identification of the verb classes that do and do not alternate; this
was part of a larger set of questions about the relation between verbs and con-
structions in general (e.g., Pinker, 1989). Second, Goldberg and Sethuraman
(n.d.) argued that all of the most basic verb-argument constructions of English
have one or more basic verbs – usually a “light” verb – as their central sense.
In the case of the dative constructions, this verb is give. They provided some
evidence that many children learn their first dative construction with give. Fi-
nally, Ninio (1999) presented a related argument that children acquire their earli-
est constructions on the basis of one or two “pathbreaking” verbs (again, usually
a light verb), which pave the way for the acquisition of other verbs for use in
that construction. Although Ninio did not address the dative constructions in
particular, her proposals are relevant here, as these constructions form a very
distinctive group.
This article presents the results of a corpus study of seven children from the
CHILDES database. The purpose of the study was to document the manner in
which children acquired their earliest to dative, for dative, and double-object
dative constructions. The following questions were posed. First, which of the
three constructions did children use first? Second, which verbs were used (and
which of these were used first) in the three constructions? Third, did the verbs
used first in these constructions have a prior history of use in other construc-
tions? Finally, what was the role of child-directed speech in the acquisition of
dative constructions? In answering these questions we hoped to provide insight
not only into children’s acquisition of these particular constructions, but also
into the general processes of language acquisition – especially with regard to
the relation between verbs and constructions.
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Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

METHOD

Data
Participants consisted of seven children from the CHILDES database (Mac-
Whinney, 1995). These children were chosen to represent a large span of early
language development during the preschool years. Included in the study were
all the transcripts for Eve, from ages 1;6 to 2;3 (Brown, 1973); Adam, from
ages 2;3.4 to 4;10.23 (Brown, 1973); Sarah, from ages 2;3.5 to 5;1.6 (Brown,
1973); Peter, from ages 1;9.7 to 3;1.21 (Bloom, 1970); Abe, from ages 2;4.24
to 5;0.11 (Kuczaj, 1976); Naomi, from ages 1;2.29 to 4;9.3 (Sachs, 1983); and
Nina, from ages 1;11.16 to 3;3.21 (Suppes, 1974).

Analytic procedure
All transcripts were initially searched by hand, as a part of a larger study of the
development of early verb-argument constructions. As a part of this process, all
utterances identified as to datives, for datives, or double-object datives were
collated. In all cases, the utterance in question had to have two postverbal argu-
ments and had to convey some kind of transfer of objects or information (e.g.,
telling people secrets, reading books to children, and making things for people).
In double-object datives, the recipient appeared postverbally before the gift (as
in X gives Y the Z). In to datives, the gift appeared before the recipient, which
was marked by either to (as in X gives the Z to Y) or a schwa. In for datives,
the gift also appeared before the recipient, which was marked by for (as in X
makes the Z for Y). For purposes of the present study, the authors analyzed and
tabulated these utterances as needed for each of the specific research questions.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results address three main questions. First, what was the order of first uses
of the three different dative construction types? Second, which verbs were used
in these constructions? Third, when were the very earliest uses of these construc-
tions and verbs?

First uses of the constructions

Snyder and Stomswold (1997) claimed that all of the children in their sample
(some of whom overlap with the current sample) learned double-object datives
before to datives. This generalization has some truth to it, but the situation is
actually more complex than this if we look at both individual children and their
individual verbs. First of all, there was a large range in the age of acquisition
for the constructions. Eve produced her first construction when she was only 18
months of age, whereas Sarah was 33 months of age when she initially used a
dative. The other five children began producing constructions somewhere in
between these two ages. Although the age of initial production showed large
variance among the children, patterns in the order of acquisition were apparent.
As can be seen in Table 1, five of the seven children produced double-object
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 256
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 1. Age of first use of the three dative constructions for the
seven children

Double-object
datives To datives For datives
a
Eve 1;6 1;10 1;11
Nina 1;11.29a 2;0.17 2;1.15
Peter 2;1.21 2;0.7a 2;1.21
Naomi 2;1.7a 2;5.3 2;3.19
Adam 2;3.4a 2;11.13 2;10.30
Abe 2;6.14 2;6.18 2;5.20a
Sarah 2;9.29a 3;2.23 3;0.18
a
Indicates the first construction type used by the child.

datives before either to datives or for datives. After the initial production of
double-object datives for these five children, there did not seem to be an advan-
tage of one of the remaining constructions over the other: three children pro-
duced a for dative, and two children produced a to dative. On average, 3.4
months separated the initial production of the double-object dative from that of
the next dative construction, whereas, on average, only 1.2 months separated
the emergence of the remaining constructions. This pattern supports the intuitive
observation that to datives and for datives are more closely related to each other
than either is to the double-object dative. For the two children who did not
initially produce double-object datives, Abe first produced a for dative, and
Peter first produced a to dative. Their first uses of the three constructions were
much more closely spaced in time than were those of the other children. For the
five children who initially produced double-object datives, the time from pro-
ducing the double-object dative to having produced all three constructions was
an average of 4.6 months; for Abe and Peter, all three constructions were ini-
tially produced within one to two months.
Based on these observations, it would seem that, if one construction were
going to be used first by these children, it would be the double-object dative
construction, followed by to datives and for datives, which would emerge ap-
proximately at the same time a few months later. However, contrary to the
predictions of Snyder and Stomswold (1997), there were two children who did
not show a distinct preference for one construction over the others. Snyder and
Stomswold did not analyze Abe’s language, but they did analyze Peter’s data;
they came up with a later age of emergence for his to datives than we did. But
on the transcript at 2;0.7, Peter produced the utterance “I’ll show it to you,”
which is clearly a to dative construction by our criteria; this predated his first
double-object dative by about 6 weeks. Thus, we believe that Peter represents an
exception (as does Abe, if for datives are counted) to Snyder and Stomswold’s
generalization that double-object datives always emerge first.
It should be noted that, in general, some of our ages of emergence for double-
object datives and to datives differ from those cited in Snyder and Stomswold
(1997). These discrepancies are likely due to different criteria for identifying
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Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

the constructions. In the present study, the initial use of a dative for Eve was
“Send the box a Sheila,” which was produced at the age of 1;10. Snyder and
Stomswold (1997) placed Eve’s initial production two months later (at 2;0)
when she uttered the word to in the phrase. Similarly, in our study, the initial
production of a to dative by Nina was “Miriam gave it me.” Because of differ-
ences in criteria, some of the ages of acquisition in our analyses are earlier than
those presented in Snyder and Stomswold. In addition, some of the ages of
acquisition cited in Snyder and Stomswold are earlier than those presented in
our analyses. We double-checked by hand every instance in which Snyder and
Stomswold gave an earlier date of acquisition than we did, but we could not
find any evidence of such constructions until the dates presented here.
The question arises as to why the double-object dative would be learned ear-
lier in general, if not in every case. Snyder and Stomswold (1997) argued that
it was not based on adult frequency, although their data showed that it very
likely was. Their conclusion was based on one analysis. They compared the
relative percentage of to datives in the parent speech with the child’s age of
acquisition of to datives, but they found no correlation. However, this is a very
indirect way to assess this relationship and as such does not justify their conclu-
sion that there is no correlation between adult frequency and child acquisition.
A closer look at their Table 2 (p. 290) tells a very different story: across all
parents, children heard double-object datives an average of 73.2% of the time,
whereas they heard to datives only 26.8% of the time (both calculated as a
proportion of all datives heard, with the parent value based on the analysis of
the verb give). Moreover, 11 of the 12 children in their sample had mothers
who used more double-object datives than to datives (with the verb give), most
by a margin of more than 2 to 1. This pattern of results – much more than any
indirect correlational analyses – supports the hypothesis that children first ac-
quire the type of dative construction they hear most often in their mother’s
speech. On this hypothesis, Snyder and Stomswold’s complex UG justifications
for the earlier emergence of double-object datives are superfluous.
Gropen et al. (1989) also argued that frequency of adult use was not a factor
in children’s early acquisition of the double-object dative. The problem in this
case was that they looked at overall frequencies, combining all verbs, which
may have obscured some of the lexically specific relationships. A much more
sensitive analysis would be to look at each verb that was used in both the
double-object dative and one of the prepositional datives and to tabulate adult
frequency and child frequency for each verb separately. We performed such an
analysis; the results are displayed in Table 2. When we looked at the 26 verbs
that the children used in alternation (and both parent and child had one value
higher than the other), we found that, in 21 of 26 cases, adult and child had the
same preference ( p < .01, binomial test). Note that not all of these were prefer-
ences for double-object datives. Peter and Adam each had one verb that showed
the opposite pattern (i.e., both they and their mothers preferred the to dative).
In addition, of the five verbs that did not match, three were cases in which the
child but not the mother preferred the to dative, and two were cases in which
the child but not the mother preferred the double-object dative. Thus, the overall
pattern seemed to be that children learned the double-object dative first because
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Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 2. Percentage of parent use and child use for the verbs the child used in both
double-object datives and to datives

Child Parent

Double-object To Double-object To

Eve
Give 14 8 54 20
Read 6 5 4 4
Show 3 1 8 1
Total 23 14 66 25
Proportion 62% 38% 73% 27%
Nina
Give 65 22 273 91
Bring 4 3 30 34
Read 4 15 43 39
Send 2 2 30 28
Show 3 1 58 15
Total 78 43 434 207
Proportion 64% 36% 68% 32%
Peter
Give 85 19 16 12
Get 4 11 1 2
Make 4 2 2 1
Bring 3 1 4 0
Show 16 2 7 1
Total 112 35 30 16
Proportion 76% 24% 65% 35%
Naomi
Read 3 6 5 2
Total 3 6 5 2
Proportion 33% 67% 60% 40%
Adam
Read 3 3 2 12
Show 12 5 23 12
Give 80 8 93 46
Make 5 10 3 5
Get 14 10 2 5
Buy 4 4 2 1
Total 118 40 125 81
Proportion 75% 25% 61% 39%
Abe
Show 10 1 24 5
Get 61 26 78 21
Make 8 7 14 13
Give 10 7 50 27
Bring 2 2 13 0
Read 1 1 2 8
Total 92 44 181 74
Proportion 68% 32% 71% 29%
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 259
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 2 (continued)

Child Parent

Double-object To Double-object To

Sarah
Give 77 10 213 63
Read 7 1 11 1
Bring 5 2 29 3
Get 21 10 24 8
Show 12 5 40 10
Make 1 3 10 0
Total 123 31 327 85
Proportion 80% 20% 79% 21%

this was what they heard from their parents most often. Indeed, in contrast to
Gropen et al., we found a 2 to 1 advantage for double-object datives in the
mother’s language. But in the case of alternating verbs, children sometimes
heard one of the prepositional datives more often than the double-object dative,
and in many cases that was the form they used as well.

Use of verbs in the constructions

One interesting fact about the English dative constructions is that they are used
with a delimited set of verbs, although the for dative has a much wider range:
many different types of transitive activities can, in the right context, be con-
ceived of as being done for the benefit of someone other than the actor. Of
interest, then, was to see which verbs the children would initially use in the
dative constructions.
Table 3 lists the different verbs the children used in the dative constructions
(the two prepositional datives were combined). The verbs that were used the
most by the children were those that were generally most frequent in adult
language. The verbs used by at least six of the seven children in one or another
dative construction were give, read, bring, take, show, tell, get, buy, and make.
Note that the first six verbs are classic dative-alternation verbs in which the
double-object dative and to dative are both possible. Buy and make alternate the
double-object dative and the for dative. Get appeared in all three constructions:
children said such things as “Get that to Mommy” and “Get that for Daddy.”
Indeed, at least five of the seven children used six verbs in alternation: give,
get, make, show, bring, and read. However, many verbs that could potentially
alternate were not used in this way by the children. For example, reasonably
frequent alternating verbs such as tell, feed, hand, and pay were limited to the
double-object construction by many children. Conversely, reasonably frequent
alternating verbs such as fix, leave, open, and take were limited to one of the
prepositional datives by many children. (All but take were used as for datives.)
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 260
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 3. Verbs used in different constructions by more than one child
up to the age of 3;0

Prepositional
Both Double-object dative Neither

Get 6 0 1 0
Give 6 1 0 0
Make 6 0 1 0
Show 6 1 0 0
Read 5 0 2 0
Bring 5 1 0 1
Buy 2 3 1 1
Take 1 1 4 1
Tell 0 5 1 1
Find 1 3 1 2
Do 0 0 5 2
Send 1 1 2 3
Throw 1 1 2 3
Call 0 4 0 3
Fix 0 1 3 3
Leave 0 1 3 3
Open 0 0 4 3
Want 0 0 4 3
Ask 1 2 0 4
Draw 1 1 1 4
Feed 0 2 1 4
Have 0 0 3 4
Hold 0 0 3 4
Put 0 0 3 4
Say 0 0 3 4
Build 1 0 1 5
Write 1 0 1 5
Cut 0 1 1 5
Hand 0 2 0 5
Paint 0 1 1 5
Pay 0 2 0 5

Note: Each verb has a total of 7; each child falls somewhere on the
continuum for each verb. Verbs used by one child were: bite, catch,
carry, cook, forget, grate, hit, keep, lend, loan, lower, mail, move,
peel, pour, push, repeat, set, sell, sing, spell, teach, tie, untie, wash,
wave, whisper, wrap.

There were, however, many individual differences. Eve, Sarah, Nina, and Adam
acquired some verbs that alternated and some that were confined to a specific
construction. On the other hand, Naomi used only one verb in alternating form,
and Peter had no verbs that he used solely in double-object datives.
Also of interest were the semantic classes into which the children’s early
dative verbs fell. According to Goldberg (1995), the double-object dative con-
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 261
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 4. Semantics of the children’s dative verbs that could be a double-object dative in
adult language

A. Central sense
Giving: give, hand, lend, loan, sell, feed
Motion: hit, push, throw
Deictics: bring, take
B. Non-prototypical
Promising:
Refusing:
Permission:
Future transfer: leave
Creation: make, build, cook, cut, draw, fix, grate, paint, pour,
tie, untie
Obtaining: get, buy, catch, find, hold, pay
C. Metaphors
Sending: send, mail
Communicative message: ask, read, show, sing, tell, spell, teach, write
Instrument of
communication:

Source: Based on Goldberg (1995).

struction in adult language has a prototypical meaning (or central sense) in

which an agent successfully causes the transfer of a patient to a recipient (in
Dixon’s [1991] terms, the donor causes the recipient to receive a gift). The
verbs that most faithfully convey the central sense of the construction can be
divided into three types: (a) verbs that inherently signify acts of giving (give,
pass, hand, serve, feed, etc.), (b) verbs of instantaneous causation of ballistic
motion (throw, toss, kick, poke, fling, etc.), and (c) verbs of continuous causation
in a deictically specified direction (bring, take, etc.). Goldberg (1995) noted
some other, less prototypical senses as well: verbs of giving but with satisfaction
conditions (guarantee, promise, etc.), verbs of refusal (refuse, deny, etc.), verbs
of permission ( permit, allow, etc.), verbs of creation (make, bake, build, cook,
etc.), verbs of obtaining (get, grab, win, earn, etc.), and verbs of future transfer
(leave, bequeath, allocate, grant, etc.). Finally, she claimed that some senses
are derived metaphorically from the central sense in that they do not designate
the physical transfer of an object, as would the central sense and most of the
less prototypical senses. These include verbs of sending (send, mail, ship, etc.),
verbs of communicated message (tell, show, ask, teach, read, etc.), and verbs
of instrument of communication (radio, e-mail, telephone, fax, etc.).
Table 4 presents the verbs that the children used before age 3 that fall into
these semantic categories. Contrary to what we might expect, the children did
not begin with the prototypical senses of the dative verbs. They used many
giving verbs (e.g., give, hand, etc.), but they used just as many obtaining verbs
(e.g., get, find, buy, etc.) and even more verbs in which someone creates some-
thing for someone (e.g., make, cook, draw, etc.) or someone conveys informa-
tion to someone (e.g., read, tell, ask, etc.). The latter two verb classes in particu-
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Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

lar are non-prototypical, the last being designated by Goldberg (1995) as a

metaphorical extension. Returning to Table 3, we can see that, of the six verbs
used by at least five children, one is a giving verb, one is an obtaining verb,
one is a deictic motion verb, one is a verb of creation, and two are verbs of
communicated message. Apparently, children do not begin to use this construc-
tion with verbs that linguistic analysis has designated as prototypical in adult
language, and verbs of communicated message are not, developmentally, meta-
phorical extensions (although historically they may be so). A more likely expla-
nation for the children’s choice is that these particular verbs are used most often
by their parents in talking to them about activities that are of interest to them
(for evidence of a correlation between parent use of particular verbs and child
use of those same verbs, see De Villiers, 1985; Naigles & Hoff-Ginsburg, 1998;
Tomasello & Kruger, 1992).

First uses of the constructions

Ninio (1999) proposed that children begin learning a new syntactic construction
with a “pathbreaking” verb, which then paves the way for the relatively rapid
acquisition of subsequent verbs in this construction. She described these verbs
as follows: “The ‘pathbreaking’ verbs that begin the acquisition of a novel syn-
tactic rule tend to be generic verbs expressing the relevant combinatorial prop-
erty in a relatively pure fashion” (p. 619). Although her analysis was confined
to basic transitivity in English and Hebrew, her hypothesis may be extended to
the dative constructions – perhaps especially the double-object construction in
that it has unique syntactic properties (i.e., there is a core argument intervening
between the verb and the direct object). In this case, Ninio would predict that
the prototypical verb of giving (give) should be the pathbreaking verb for most
children in that it is the lightest verb that can be used with the double-object
dative. (It also expresses a “fundamental object relation of incorporation into
and ejection from the personal” [p. 620], which Ninio considered essential for
pathbreaking verbs.)
Table 5 presents the first five verbs that were used with the double-object
dative and the prepositional datives, along with the age of first use. The first
verbs used in the double-object construction were give (4), show (2), bring, feed,
send, read, get, make (some children used more than one of these verbs in the
initial sample). Thus, not all of the children began with give; three of the four
who did begin with give began with another verb in the same month as well.
Moreover, many of these verbs did not appear to be pathbreaking verbs and/or
did not seem to be the best at “expressing the relevant combinatorial property
in a relatively pure fashion” (Ninio, 1999, p. 619). Feed, send, show, and read
are fairly heavy verbs; get and make have more frequent uses in other construc-
tions, and so they would not seem to be great candidates for expressing the
dative relation. Again, in our view, the most important variable seems to be
whether the parents used these verbs frequently and in salient contexts (for some
evidence, see Goldberg & Sethuraman, in press). The fact that children acquired
many light verbs early in development is probably the result of these verbs
being used widely and frequently in many different contexts.
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 263
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 5. First five verbs used by each child in each
construction type (the two prepositional datives were
combined)

Double-object dative Prepositional dative

Verb Age Verb Age

Naomi
Give 25 Say 28
Bring 25 Get 29
Call 27 Read 29
Read 35 Open 31
— Put 35
Nina
Feed 23 Give 24
Send 23 Bring 25
Make 25 Take 25
Give 25 Get 26
Get 25 Read 27
Eve
Show 18 Send 22
Give 19 Bring 22
Make 20 Fix 23
Read 21 Read 23
Bring 21 Hold 23
Sarah
Give 33 Make 36
Pour 35 Get 37
Get 36 Give 38
Tell 37 Want 38
— Forget 39
Adam
Give 27 Get 34
Read 27 Show 35
Hand 30 Throw 35
Tell 36 Give 36
Buy 38 Put 37
Peter
Get 25 Show 24
Make 25 Get 25
Give 25 Give 26
Bring 27 Throw 27
Show 27 Loan 28
Abe
Show 30 Make 29
Get 31 Give 30
Send 33 Get 30
Give 34 Take 30
Call 34 Show 32
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 264
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

Figure 1. Cumulative number of verbs used with double-object data construction as a func-
tion of age in months.

The other part of Ninio’s (1999) claim is that a new construction is initially
used by a child for a relatively extended period with the pathbreaking verb (in
her study of transitives, about 1 month) before it is used with other verbs; from
the acquisition of the second verb onward, the construction expands to include
new verbs quickly. We examined this hypothesis for the double-object dative
construction by looking at each child’s addition of verbs to the construction as
a function of age (see Figure 1, modeled on Ninio’s Figures 1 and 2). Overall,
we found that only one child fit this hypothesis of a relatively long period with
a pathbreaking verb before the rapid extension to other verbs. The results may
be summarized as follows (in descending order from those that fit best the
hypothesis; see Table 5 for data). Sarah started with give in the double-object
dative, only added a second verb two months later, and then added more verbs
fairly rapidly over the next months. She fit the hypothesis reasonably well.
Eve, at the first recording, was already using show, which may have had a
history before observation began; show, however, did not seem to be a path-
breaking verb. Nina was using feed and send at her first recording, but neither
was a pathbreaking verb. Adam was using give and read at his first recording;
give may have had a history prior to our observation. Adam added only four
new verbs during the next thirteen months. Abe started with show some months
after his first recording and then rapidly added new verbs (five new verbs in the
next four months); there was no protracted period with show alone. Naomi
started with two verbs, give and bring, some months after her first recording;
she then added only three more verbs during the next fifteen months. Peter
suddenly began using three verbs with the double-object dative some months
after his first recording.
A related issue is that many dative verbs may also be used as simple transi-
tives (e.g., “Give it” or “I throw this”) or in other structures. In order to identify
where the dative verbs came from, we looked at all verbs that appeared in more
Applied Psycholinguistics 22:2 265
Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions
Table 6. Construction in which verbs were first used

Dative Ditransitive Transitive Intransitive Other

Bring 5
Call 2 1
Fix 3 1
Get 1 1 3 2
Give 1 2 4
Make 5 1 1
Put 2 1
Read 5 1 2
Send 3 1
Show 2 4 1
Take 4 1
Tell 3 3
Throw 2 1 1
Totals 7 3 43 7 10

Note: Verbs are those that appear in more than one child’s first five verbs as
either a prepositional dative or a double-object dative. Numbers in the cells
are number of children

than one child’s first five productions of either the double-object dative or the
prepositional dative construction. As can be seen in Table 6, the major finding
was that, for most children, verbs generally began as transitives. Many were
requests in which the implied recipient was the self (e.g., “Send that,” “Read
story,” or “Give that”) or comments on an activity for which, on some later
occasion, the child would specify a recipient (e.g., “Make a cake” or “I may
give some”). With respect to Ninio’s (1999) hypothesis, this suggests that the
dative constructions are, in some sense, not primary constructions in that the
verbs used in them have previous histories; perhaps this is why these construc-
tions do not fit very well into her pathbreaking verbs hypothesis. The most
surprising finding in this analysis was that even the verbs that were obligatorily
dative (e.g., give, send, show, tell, and call – in the sense of “call someone a
name”) quite often began their careers without both postverbal arguments being
expressed, typically for very good pragmatic reasons in the context of adult–
child conversation. This suggests that even the double-object dative is not a
primary construction in that it may come from simpler constructions.

CONCLUSION
In the present article, we provided some basic information about young chil-
dren’s use of the three main dative constructions of English: the double-object
dative, the to dative, and the for dative. We used children’s acquisition of these
constructions to test some of the more general hypotheses about how young
children acquire the basic verb-argument structures of the English language.
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Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

Following other researchers, we found that the double-object dative was most
often the first to appear in children’s language, but this was not invariably the
case. Indeed, a lexically specific analysis of the verbs used in alternation be-
tween constructions showed that the children basically used each verb in the
way their mothers used it. This kind of analysis vitiates the need for a formal
linguistic analysis that explains why double-object datives are used first by most
children, as proposed by Snyder and Stomswold (1997) and Gropen et al.
(1989). Frequency effects were also apparent in the verbs the children initially
used with these constructions – especially with the double-object dative – which
accords with De Villiers (1985), Tomasello and Kruger (1992), and Naigles and
Hoff-Ginsburg (1998). Contrary to the notion that children begin with light
verbs and/or verbs that are prototypical for the construction, we found that some
children used many verbs that, from the point of view of adult analyses, are not
prototypical for the double-object dative: for example, verbs of creation (e.g.,
make, cook, etc.) and verbs of communicated message (tell, show, etc.), the
latter being considered a metaphorical extension of the construction in adult
language.
Our analysis found no support for Ninio’s (1999) hypothesis that children’s
initial entry into a syntactic construction is with a single pathbreaking verb that
is semantically light and central to the prototypical constructional meaning, and
that they use this verb for some months before learning other verbs in that
construction. This pattern was only found with the double-object dative for one
of the seven children – this construction being the most distinctive of the three.
At the same time, we found that most verbs that were used early in the various
dative constructions had been previously used in simpler constructions (espe-
cially simple transitives). This was even true of several verbs (e.g., give and
show) that in adult language require both postverbal arguments to be expressed;
children typically used reduced constructions (e.g., give it or show it). It may
be that the dative constructions are not primary constructions, and so they are
not strictly appropriate for Ninio’s hypothesis. This raises the question as to the
nature of this very special set of constructions – some of the only ones to
express three core arguments – from the child’s point of view.
There is no evidence in the present study to elucidate children’s understand-
ing of the abstractness of the three dative constructions or their understanding
of the relationship among the three constructions. However, other data from
both naturalistic and experimental studies suggest that most English-speaking
children do not really have an abstract understanding of the transitive construc-
tion until about 3 to 31⁄2 years of age (see Tomasello, 2000, for a review). Thus,
it is likely that children’s initial use of the three dative constructions is based
on the individual verbs involved and not on an abstract schema or construction.
But, given the dependence of the dative constructions on the general transitive
construction (both conceptually and developmentally), it may be that the dative
constructions begin life with a head start on the process of becoming abstract.
Toward that end, experimental studies of children’s productivity with these con-
structions during the early phases of their use would be useful in helping to
decide among the competing hypotheses.
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Campbell & Tomasello: Acquisition of English dative constructions

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (Number
R01 HD 35854-01) to the second author.

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