Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T19:02:30.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Japanese child's use of stative and punctual verbs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Gary A. Cziko  and
Keiko Koda
Gary A. Cziko*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Keiko Koda
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
*
Bureau of Educational Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1310 South Sixth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigated the use of stative, process, punctual, and non-punctual verbs by a child acquiring Japanese as a first language between the ages of 1;0 and 4;11 in an attempt to find evidence for two of Bickerton's (1981) proposed language acquisition universals, which form part of the language bioprogram hypothesis of language acquisition. As predicted by Bickerton's state-process hypothesis, it was found that all sampled present progressive verb forms occurred with process verbs while these forms were never used with stative verbs. Also, with only one exception, all omissions of present progressive forms occurred with the early use of ‘mixed’ verbs, i.e. verbs which behave syntactically as process verbs in Japanese but are nonetheless semantically stative. However, contrasting with Bickerton's hypothesis that children initially use the past tense to mark punctuality, no relationship between past tense use and punctuality was found.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 1987 , pp. 99 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Antinucci, F. & Miller, R. (1976) How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Language 3. 167–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E. (1984) Bioprograms and the innateness hypothesis. The Behavioural and Brain Sciences 7. 188–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1983) Establishing a schema: children's construals of verb-tense marking. Language Sciences 5. 61–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, D. (1981) Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D. (1983) Creole languages. Scientific American 249, 1. 116–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, D. (1984) The language bioprogram hypothesis. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 173–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L. (1984) A bioprogram for language: not whether but how? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 190–1.Google Scholar
Bloom, L., Lifter, K. & Hafitz, J. (1980) Semantics of verbs and the development of verb inflection in child language. Language 56. 386–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronckart, J. & Sinclair, H. (1973) Time, tense and aspect. Cognition 2. 107–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973) A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cziko, G. A. (in press) Testing the language bioprogram hypothesis: a review of children's acquisition of the specific-non-specific distinction. Language.Google Scholar
Kuczaj, S. A. (1976) -ing, -s, and -ed: a study of the acquisition of certain verb inflections. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Kuczaj, S. A. (1978) Why do children fail to generalize the progressive inflection? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 167–71.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1973) The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Marantz, A. (1984) Creolization: special evidence for innateness. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 199–200.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1984) How degenerate is the input to Creoles and where do its biases come from? The Behavioural and Brain Sciences 7. 200–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D. (1966) Developmental psycholinguistics. In Smith, F. & Miller, G. A. (eds), The genesis of language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Noji, J. (1976) Yojiki no gengo seikatsu no jittai. Vols 1–4. [The language development of a child]. Hiroshima: Bunka Hyoron.Google Scholar
Posner, R. (1984) Creolization of linguistic change? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 204–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, P. A. (1984) Problems with similarities across Creoles and the development of Creoles. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 205–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samarin, W. J. (1984) Socioprogrammed linguistics. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 206–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, G. (1984) Do Creoles prove what ‘ordinary’ languages don't? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 207–8.Google Scholar
Seuren, P. A. M. (1984) The bioprogram hypothesis: facts and fancy. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 208–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1982) La construccion de la gramática par el niño. Paper presented at II Simposium de logopedia, Madrid.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1984) Child language and the bioprogram. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7. 209–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1985) Cross-linguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 2. Theoretical issues. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. & Aksu, A. A. (1980) Acquisition of Turkish. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar