Might and might not: Children's conceptual development and the acquisition of modal verbs

When a child acquires her first modal verbs, is she learning how to map words in the language onto innate concepts of possibility, necessity, and impossibility? Or does also have construct concepts? If are constructed, talk about possibilities play role construction process? Exploring this hypothesis space requires testing children's acquisition vocabulary alongside nonverbal tests their concepts. Here we report study with 103 children from 4;0 through 7;11 24 adults. We argue that data fit best development proceed hand-in-hand. However, more research needed, especially 3-year-olds.