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How children talk about what happened*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Francesco Antinucci  and
Ruth Miller
Francesco Antinucci
Affiliation:
Instituto di Psicologia, CNR, Rome and University of California, Berkeley
Ruth Miller
Affiliation:
Instituto di Psicologia, CNR, Rome and University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

This study investigates the development of past tense expressions in the speech of children from 1; 6 to 2; 6. It is shown that this development depends crucially on the child's cognitive construction of the time dimension, as described by Piaget (1954, 1971). In this process two different cognitive routes are followed, depending on the type of event the child has to encode. Past events resulting in the end state of some object are gradually grasped and encoded by means of a practical process–effect coordination. Past states and activities, on the contrary, i.e. past events that do not result in an end state, are referred to through a more primitive distinction between a pretend vs. a real world. This difference is formally reflected in the differential past-tense marking appearing on verbs which describe the two different types of event.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 167 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

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