'Can I put--I want a slippers to put on': young children's development of request forms in a code-switching...

This paper concerns the development of semi-modal want/want to, and modals may, can and could in two Trinidadian children, whose Verb Phrase development was studied in naturalistic settings, between the ages of 2;3 and 4;1, and 2;4 and 4;9. The similarities and differences in development between the two are important for underlining a number of key factors in the acquisition process. Accepting the salience of requests/demands in early child language, the study draws attention to the child's propensity for using the means most readily available to him/her in the input, for expression of this function. Additionally, there is evidence of the child's ability to make stylistic discriminations at a very early age and of the propensity for making semantic distinctions among forms. The study indicates that work on the development of grammatical features is incomplete without consideration of sociolinguistic aspects of usage as integral to grammatical acquisition from the outset.