Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:32:46.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The unfolding of the verbal temporal system in French children's speech between 18 and 36 months

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2012

CHRISTOPHE PARISSE*
Affiliation:
MoDyCo, INSERM, CNRS, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense
ALIYAH MORGENSTERN*
Affiliation:
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3
*
Christophe Parisse, Modyco, Bat A, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 200 Avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre cedex, France e-mail: [email protected]
Addresses for correspondence: Aliyah Morgenstern, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, 5 rue de l'Ecole de médecine, 75006 Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

In this paper, our aim is to analyze the relationship between the development of verbal forms and verbal functions. We examine all verbal forms produced longitudinally by two French children in terms of their morphosyntactic marking of tense, aspect, mood and situation type, and compare them to their contextually interpreted meanings. We introduce the main issues relevant to the unfolding of the verbal temporal system in children's data. Our data consists in two longitudinal corpora of French speaking children aged 1;06 to 3;01. The paper focuses on: 1) the relationship between form and function within the verbal system in the earlier stage of development; 2) the children's ability to mark a displacement between speech time and event time.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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

Aksu-Koç, A. (1988). The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality: The Case of Past Reference in Turkish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Applebee, A. N. (1978). The Child's Concept of Story: Ages Two to Seventeen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory and language: an overview. Journal of Communication Disorders, 36 (3): 189208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Behrens, H. (2001). Cognitive-conceptual development and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes: the development of time concepts and verb tense, In: Bowerman, M. and Levinson, S. C. (eds), Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 450474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronckart, J.-P., and Sinclair, H. (1973), Time, tense and aspect. Cognition, 2: 107130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, S. and Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: the influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition, 41: 83121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, M. (1924). Sur les langages successifs de l'enfant. In: Mélanges linguistiques offerts à M. J. Vendryes par ses amis et ses élèves, Paris, E. Champion, collection publiée par la socité de linguistique, XVII, 109–127.Google Scholar
Cromer, R. F. (1968). The development of temporal reference during the acquisition of language. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Culioli, A. (2000). Pour une linguistique de l'énonciation. Tome 1. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Decroly, O., and Degand, J. (1913). Observations relatives au développement de la notion du temps chez une petite fille, Archives de psychologie, vol. XIII, 50: 113161.Google Scholar
Fayol, M. (1982). Le plus que parfait. Etude génétique en compréhension et production chez l'enfant de quatre à dix ans, Archives de psychologie, 50: 113161.Google Scholar
Ferreiro, E. (1971), Les Relations temporelles dans le langage de l'enfant. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar
Gerhardt, J. (1988). From discourse to semantics: The development of verb morphology and forms of self-reference in the speech or a two year old. Journal of Child Language, 15: 337394.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning how to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language. New York: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, W. (1992). The present perfect puzzle. Language, 68: 525552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labelle, M. (1994). L'utilisation de la valeur des temps du passé par les enfants francophones. Revue Québécoise de linguistique, 23/1: 99121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. (1985). Les phases initiales du développement de notions temporelles, aspectuelles et de modes d'action. Etude basée sur le langage d'enfants bilingues français-allemand, Lingua, 66: 321374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgenstern, A., Parisse, C., and Sekali, M. (2009). A la source du futur: premières formes verbales dans les productions spontanées de deux enfants français de 18 mois à 3 ans. Faits de Langues: Le futur, 33:163175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. (1996). Language in Cognitive Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rossi, C. and Parisse, C. (2012) Categories in the making. Journal of French Language Studies (this issue).Google Scholar
Sabeau-Jouannet, E. (1977). L'expression de l'organisation spatiale et temporelle, son évolution chez l'enfant de 2 à 5 ans, In: François, F., François, D., Sabeau-Jouannet, E. and Sourdot, M. (eds), La syntaxe de l'enfant avant 5 ans, Paris: Larousse, pp. 193204.Google Scholar
Shirai, Y., and Andersen, R. W. (1995). The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: a prototype account. Language 71: 743762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. (1991). Learning to think for speaking: native language, cognition and rhetorical style. Pragmatics 1: 725.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (1985). Crosslinguistic evidence for the Language-Making Capacity. In: Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. 2: Theoretical Issues. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 11571249.Google Scholar
Smith, C. S. (1980). The acquisition of Time Talk: relation between child and adult grammar. Journal of Child Language, 7: 263278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smoczynska, M. (1995). The acquisition of Polish verb morphology. Paper presented at the Colloquium on Developmental Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Swift, M. (2004). Time in Child Inuktitut: A Developmental Study of an Eskimo-Aleut Language. Berlin/New-York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vandenplas-Holper, C. (1975). La compréhension d'expressions verbales de la succession temporelle par des enfants de 6 à 11 ans, Revue française de pédagogie, 31: 415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, L. (1998). Children's Developing Knowledge of Tense and Aspect. Paper presented at NECSS graduate student Cognitive Science forum, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Weist, R. M. (1986). Tense and aspect: temporal systems in child language. In: Fletcher, P. and Garman, M. (eds), Language Acquisition, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 356374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weist, R. M., Wysocka, H. and Lyytinen, P. (1991). A cross-linguistic perspective on the development of temporal system, Journal of Child Language, 18: 6792.CrossRefGoogle Scholar