Aspectual influences on early tense comprehension

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psycholinguistics
• Child Language Acquisition
• Grammatical Aspect and Tense Development

Background:

• The aspect-first hypothesis posits that children initially use verbal morphology for aspect before tense.
• Understanding the developmental order of aspect and tense acquisition is crucial for language development theories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the aspect-first hypothesis in young children's language acquisition.
• To determine if children prioritize aspectual marking over tense marking in early language development.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: 46 two- and three-year-olds completed a sentence-to-scene matching task assessing comprehension of auxiliary-marked tense (present progressive, past progressive, 'going to').
• Experiment 2: 36 two-, three-, and four-year-olds performed a similar task, with scene information varied to include event completion (perfective) or non-completion (imperfective) alongside temporal information.

Main Results:

• Experiment 1: Two-year-olds demonstrated successful comprehension of tense, contrary to the aspect-first hypothesis.
• Experiment 2: Two-year-olds' understanding of past and present auxiliaries was contingent on scene information reflecting event completion, suggesting aspect influences tense interpretation.

Conclusions:

• The findings suggest that grammatical aspect may significantly influence or even precede tense interpretation in early child language.
• The results challenge a strict aspect-first hypothesis but highlight the intertwined development of aspect and tense in young children.