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Aspectual influences on early tense comprehension.

L Wagner1

  • 1Department of Psychology, 6 Washington Place, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA. lmwagner@ling.upenn.edu

Journal of Child Language
|January 19, 2002
PubMed
Summary
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Children may prioritize grammatical aspect over tense when learning language. This study suggests young children

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.

Related Experiment Videos

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.