Does past tense marking indicate the acquisition of the concept of temporal displacement in children's cognitive development?

Abstract

The acquisition of past tense markers has often been considered to parallel conceptual development in the domain of time (e.g., Weist, 1986). However, the precise relationship between linguistic marking of time in childrenís speech and conceptual development has not been investigated in data-based research. This study analyses longitudinal speech data from four Japanese children to determine whether the use of the past tense form actually coincides with its use to signal past time. The results show that the relationship between contrastive use of the form and truly deictic past is not a straightforward one; for all the children, deictic use emerges later than the contrastive use of past and nonpast forms.

Keywords

Japanese grammaticization past tense perfect tense-aspect -ta

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aksu-KoÁ, A. (1998). The role of input vs. universal predispositions in the emergence of tenseaspect morphology: Evidence from Turkish . First Language, 18, 255ñ280 .

Ando, S. (1986). Eigo no ronri, nihongo no ronri [The logic of English, the logic of Japanese]. Tokyo: Taishukan .

Antinucci, F. & Miller, R. (1976). How children talk about what happened . Journal of Child Language, 3, 169ñ189 .

Atanassova, M. (2001). On the acquisition of temporal conjunctions in Finnish . Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30, 115ñ134 .

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000). Tense and aspect in second language acquisition: Form, meaning, and use. Oxford: Blackwell .

Bickerton, D. (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Publishers .

Bloom, L. , Lifter, K. & Hafitz, J. (1980). Semantics of verbs and the development of verb inflection in child language . Language, 56, 386ñ412 .

Bronckart, J. P. & Sinclair, H. (1973). Time, tense, and aspect . Cognition, 2, 107ñ130 .

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .

10.

Bybee, J. L. (1985). Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .

11.

Bybee, J. L. , Perkins, R. & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press .

12.

Choi, S. (1991). Early acquisition of epistemic meanings in Korean: A study of sentence-ending suffixes in the spontaneous speech of three children . First Language, 11, 93ñ119 .

13.

Clancy, P. (1985). The acquisition of Japanese. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 1: The data (pp. 373ñ524). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum .

14.

Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

15.

Dahl, Ö. (1985). Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell .

16.

Douglas, G. (2000). Catastrophes in semantic space: Signs of universality . Semiotica, 132, 179ñ280 .

17.

Engel, D. M. & Ritz, M.-E. A. (2000). The use of the present perfect in Australian English . Australian Journal of Linguistics, 20, 119ñ140 .

18.

Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (1997). Morfemas de concordancia con el sujeto y con los objetos en el castellano infantil. In A. T. Perez-Leroux & W. R. Glass (Eds), Contemporary perspectives on the acquisition of Spanish, Vol. 1: Developing grammars(pp. 21ñ36). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press . Cited in Gathercole et al. (1999).

19.

Fernández Martínez, A. (1994). El aprendizaje de los morfemas verbales: Datos de un estudio longitudinal. In S. López Ornat, A. Fernández, P. Gallo & S. Mariscal (Eds), La adquisición de la lengua espaòola (pp. 29ñ46). Madrid: Siglo XXXI de Espaòa Editores. Cited in Gathercole et al. (1999).

20.

Gathercole, V. C. (1986). The acquisition of the present perfect: Explaining differences in the speech of Scottish and American children . Journal of Child Language, 13, 537ñ560 .

21.

Gathercole, V. C. M. , Sebastián, E. & Soto, P. (1999). The early acquisition of Spanish verbal morphology: Across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge? International Journal of Bilingualism, 3, 133ñ182 .

22.

Haspelmath, M. (2000). Why canít we talk to each other? Lingua, 110, 235ñ255 .

23.

Kinsui, S. (1997). Genzon no sonzai o arawasu ita ni tuite [On ita that denotes existence at present]. In Watanabe minoru hakake koki kinen ronsyu. Tokyo: Hitsuji Shobo .

24.

Krasinski, E. (1995). The development of past marking in a bilingual child and the punctualnonpunctual distinction . First Language, 15, 239ñ276 .

25.

Labelle, M. , Godard, L. & Longtin, C. M. (2002). Grammatical and situational aspect in French: A developmental study . Journal of Child Language, 29, 301ñ326 .

26.

Lee, H.-S. (1993). Tense or aspect: The speakerís communicative goals and concerns as determinant, with reference to the anterior -Ùss- in Korean . Journal of Pragmatics, 20, 327ñ358 .

27.

Leone, P. (1990). Tense and aspect in Italian: A bias in the distribution of verbal inherent semantics and verbal morphology. Unpublished paper, Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles.

28.

Li, P. & Shirai, Y. (2000). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect (Studies on Language Acquisition, 16). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter .

29.

MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk(3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum .

30.

MacWhinney, B. & Snow, C. E. (1985). The child language data exchange system . Journal of Child Language, 12, 271ñ296 .

31.

McCormack, T. & Hoerl. C. (1999). Memory and temporal perspective: The role of temporal frameworks in memory development . Developmental Review, 19, 154ñ182 .

32.

Minami, M. (1998). Politeness markers and psychological complements: Wrapping-up devices in Japanese oral personal narratives . Narrative Inquiry, 8, 351ñ371 .

33.

Miyata, S. (1992). Wh-questions of the third kind: The strange use of wa -questions in Japanese children . Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College, 31, 151ñ155 .

34.

Miyata, S. (1995). The Aki Corpus: Longitudinal speech data of a Japanese boy aged 1;5.7ñ3;0.0 . The Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College, 34, 183ñ191 .

35.

Miyata, S. (1998). Question acquisition in a Japanese child: The analysis of Kii (1;4ñ3;0) data using CHILDES . The Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College, 37, 209ñ218 .

36.

Miyata, S. (2000). The Tai Corpus: Longitudinal speech data of a Japanese boy aged 1;5.20ñ3;1.1 . The Bulletin of Aichi Shukutoku Junior College, 39, 77ñ85

37.

Naka, N. & S. Miyata . (1999). CLAN o mochiita Nihongo Keitaiso Kaiseki Puroguram JMOR [JMOR: The morphological analysis program for Japanese using CLAN]. Educational Psychology Forum Report No. FR-99-0001. Tokyo: The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology .

38.

Nelson, K. (1991). The matter of time: Interdependencies between language and thought in development. In S. A. Gelman & J. P. Byrnes (Eds), Perspectives on language and thought: Interrelations in development(pp. 278ñ318). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

39.

Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

40.

Oshima-Takane, Y. , MacWhinney, B. , Sirai, H. , Miyata, S. & Naka, N. (Eds) (1998). Nihongo no tame no CHILDES manyuaru [CHILDES manual for Japanese] (2nd ed.). Nagoya: The JCHAT Project .

41.

Pizzuto, E. & Caselli, M. C. (1994). The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Y. Levy (Ed.), Other children, other languages (pp. 137ñ187). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum .

42.

Reichenbach, H. (1947). The elements of symbolic logic. Berkeley: University of California Press .

43.

Schwenter, S. A. (1994). íHot newsî and the grammaticalization of perfects . Linguistics, 32, 995ñ1028

44.

Shirai, Y. (1998). The emergence of tense-aspect morphology in Japanese: Universal predisposition? First Language, 18, 281ñ309 .

45.

Shirai, Y. (2000). The semantics of the Japanese imperfective -teiru: An integrative approach . Journal of Pragmatics,32, 327ñ361 .

46.

Shirai, Y. & Andersen, R. W. (1995). The acquisition of tense/aspect morphology: A prototype account . Language, 71, 743ñ762 .

47.

Shirai, Y. , Slobin, D. I. & Weist, R. M. (1998). Introduction: The acquisition of tense/aspect morphology . First Language, 18, 245ñ253 .

48.

Slobin, D. I. (1997). The origins of grammaticizable notions: Beyond the individual mind. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol. 5: Expanding the contexts (pp. 265ñ323). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum .

49.

Smith, C. S. (1997). The parameter of aspect (2nd ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer .

50.

Stephany, U. (1986). Modality. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds), Language acquisition (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

51.

Stoll, S. (1998). The role of Aktionsart in the acquisition of Russian aspect . First Language, 18, 351ñ377 .

52.

Takahashi, T. (1976). Nihongo doosi no asupekuto kenkyuu syoosi [A short history of research on aspect in Japanese verbs]. In H. Kindaichi (Ed.), Nihongo doosi no asupekuto (pp. 329ñ360). Tokyo: Kurosio .

53.

Teramura, H. (1982). Nihongo no sintakusu to imi II [Syntax and semantics in Japanese, Vol. 2]. Tokyo: Kurosio .

54.

Vendler, Z. (1957). Verbs and times . Philosophical Review, 66, 143ñ160 .

55.

Wagner, L. (2001). Aspectual influences on early tense comprehension . Journal of Child Language, 28, 661ñ681 .

56.

Weist, R. M. (1986). Tense and aspect. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds), Language acquisition (2nd ed.) (pp. 356ñ374). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

57.

Weist, R. M. (1989). Time concepts in language and thought: Filling the Piagetian void from two to five years. In I. Levin & D. Zakay (Eds), Time and human cognition: A life-span perspective (pp. 63ñ118). Amsterdam: Elsevier .

58.

Weist, R. M. , Atanassova, M. , Wysocka, H. & Pawlak, A. (1999). Spatial and temporal systems in child language and thought: A cross-linguistic study . First Language, 19, 267ñ311 .

59.

Weist, R. M. , Lyytinen, P. , Wysocka, J. & Atanassova, M. (1997). The interaction of language and thought in children's language acquisition: A crosslinguistic study . Journal of Child Language, 24, 81ñ121 .

60.

Weist, R. M. , Pawlak, A. & Carapella, J. (2004). Syntactic-semantic interface in the acquisition of verb morphology . Journal of Child Language, 31, 31ñ60 .

61.

Weist, R. M. , Wysocka, H. , Witkowska-Stadnik, K. , Buczowska, E. & Konieczna, E. (1984). The defective tense hypothesis: On the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish . Journal of Child Language, 11, 347ñ374 .

62.

Yokoyama, M. (1991). Yoozi wa naze mokutekigo o kakuzyosi ga de hyoozi suru no ka [Why infants mark object by means of the case marker - ga]. In F. C. C. Peng et al. (Eds), Syakai ni okeru gengo kinoo no syosoo (pp. 144ñ163). Hiroshima: Bunka Hyoron .