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The early development of perfect aspect: adverbial, verbal and contextual specification*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Valerie Youssef
Valerie Youssef*
Affiliation:
The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad
*
Department of Language and Linguistics, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, West Indies.
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Abstract

In a longitudinal study concerned to assess Verb Phrase (VP) development in three Trinidadian children, adverbials were found to be crucial in delineating specific areas of semantic intent, and to develop early (between ages 2;3 and 3;0). The children were studied over a two-year period, from the onset of morphological marking on the verb, and were recorded two to four hours per month, in their home environments, with a variety of addressees. Two of the children were exposed to, and acquired, both TC and SE verb categories and the third, TC, but the existence of TC past-completive zero 0 as a prominent verbal marker in all their systems made for reliance on adverbial and extralinguistic context in delineating meaning intentions at an early stage;the use which they made of adverbial specification, in particular for marking perfect aspect, indicates how useful these elements may be for precise specification of the development of tense-aspect categories. When they are considered alongside other VP features a clearer overall assessment of tense–aspect development may be made.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 295 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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Footnotes

*

I wish to acknowledge the continued encouragement, support and criticism of Lawrence Carrington and Donald Winford throughout the study of which this paper is a very small part.

References

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