Abstract
The present study examined the acquisition of deictic verbs by asking children (5; 6–9; 5) to identify the speaker or the addressee of utterances containing come, go, bring, and take. The results showed that the youngest children appeared to understand come and bring, but not go and take. Analysis of the strategies used showed that children go through several stages: (a) they identify both speaker and addressee with the goal of the motion; (b) they identify only the addressee with the goal; (c) they identify the addressee of go with the goal, but are otherwise correct; (d) they give adult-like responses. These data provided further evidence that strategies play an important role in the acquisition of word meanings.
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