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Considerable evidence shows that English-learning children use argument structure in understanding verb meaning. Hearing He orked him the book, children can infer that ork means 'transfer'. However, the structure of other languages is quite different: Tamil leaves out noun phrases and preposition phrases (i.e., argument dropping) that are obligatory in English. He gave her the book is grammatical in English but He gave, He gave her, and He gave the book are ungrammatical; all are acceptable in Tamil. Tamil-learners may not rely on argument structure in the same way as English-learners.

Do children exposed to argument-dropping and "argument-preserving" languages differ in how they learn and use argument structure? We consider three developmental possibilities:

1) Argument structure is learned similarly, and children learning argument-dropping languages use real-world context to constrain the argument structures used with a verb.

2) Argument structure is less important in developing verb meanings, and as a consequence, verbs are used to refer to a more diverse array of events.

3) Argument structure is learned more slowly, using explicit marking of arguments. Two experiments provide evidence on these issues.

Experiment 1 examines argument structures used by adult and child speakers of Tamil and English in actual speech. 10 adults and 8 children (ages 3;2-4;9, average 4;0) in each language group are asked to describe videos of everyday actions. Tamil-speakers are found to drop arguments much more frequently than English-speakers.

Experiment 2 asks how broadly verbs are extended. Participants indicate which pictures could be appropriately referred to by a verb. Explicitly depicted arguments varied (e.g., biting pictures: woman biting an apple, same action without the apple, apple bitten into but no agent, etc.) 24 adults and 16 children (ages 2;3-4;11, divided into younger/older) in each language group participated. Adult Tamil-speakers were more likely to circle more pictures than adult English-speakers, suggesting they have broader interpretations of verb meanings. All English-speaking children favored the full argument structure picture. By contrast, Tamil-speaking children showed a developmental trend in which the younger children were equally likely to choose any depiction and the older were most likely to choose the full argument structure picture. Tamil-learners learn argument structure, but more slowly and perhaps differently.

Argument structure may be more important for learning verbs in some languages. It is the case that argument structure helps English-learners learn verb meaning; however, it could that in other languages, verb meaning drives the learning of argument structure