Verbs Matter: Verb Frequency and Phonological Complexity in Four Morphosyntactic Contexts

Abstract

Research indicates that when teaching grammatical forms to children, the verbs used to model specific grammatical inflections matter. When learning grammatical forms, children have higher performance when they hear many unique verb forms that vary in their frequency and phonological complexity. This dataset includes verbs derived from the language samples of English-speaking children aged 5 to 8.9 years used in one of the following four contexts: regular past tense -ed, third person singular -s, is/are + verb+ing, and do/does questions. We ranked verbs based on frequency and phonological complexity using the Word Complexity Measure developed by Stoel-Gammon (2010). We used this data to identify verbs to use when assessing the grammatical skills of children and when providing interventions for the targeted forms.