The temporal interpretation of Dutch children's root infinitivals: the effect of eventivity

Frank N. K. Wijnen

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Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Language Development and Disorders Child and Animal Learning Development

Abstract

This study concerns the presence and status of Tense in young children's nonfinite main clauses, or root infinitivals (RIs). Verb- containing utterances produced by four Dutch-speaking boys (age range 1;9-3;2) were classified along the following dimensions: finite-infinitive; temporal reference, as indicated by linguistic and non-linguistic context; and type of verb - eventive vs. non- eventive. The data show that (a) the proportion of non-eventive verbs in RIs is close to zero, whereas they make up approximately half of the finite predicates, and (b) RIs are used to refer to present, past as well as (predominantly) future eventualities, while the temporal reference of finite sentences is restricted to 'present'. It is argued that these findings support the assumption that RIs do not contain Tense, and that their temporal reference comes about as a result of the contextual interpretation of an event variable, if available. The results of a pilot experiment suggest that the pattern in production is mirrored in comprehension.

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1973A First Language 1974A First Language: The Early Stages 1957Verbs and Times 1973ON THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF PERCEPTUAL AND SEMANTIC CATEGORIES11This research was supported in part by a grant to the author (under her former name, Eleanor Rosch Heider) from the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry # G67-392, in part by funds made available to the Child Study Center of Brown University from the Grant Foundation and from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, National Collaborative Project (Ph-43-68-13), and in part by research funds made available by the University of California at Berkeley (220 Grant #K9PF-429). I wish to thank Karl G. Heider for his help in the field in West Irian (Indonesian New Guinea), Dr. Robert Olton for assistance in carrying out Experiment 3, and Keith Burton, Randy Street, and Peter Lewitt who assisted with Experiment 4. Experiment 4 was performed with Dr. Richard Millward while the author was a research associate at Brown University.1984The language bioprogram hypothesis 1972On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects 1991Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns 1989Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predicates

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2001Does Agrammatic Speech Constitute a Regression to Child Language? A Three-Way Comparison between Agrammatic, Child, and Normal Ellipsis 2001Root infinitives in Dutch early child language: an effect of input?

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