Abstract
First, two main views on the development of tense and aspect in child language will be presented. The issue whether children can differentiate between tense and aspect at an early age is central to research on temporality in language acquisition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
In contrast to Comrie (1976) who avoids the term’ Aktionsart’, Meisel and others include the distinction between durative and punctual as part of Aktionsart. For them perfective and imperfective are regarded as part of aspect.
See Comrie for more detail.
See Bickerton (1984, 1986 and 1988).
The late acquisition of tense has been attributed to its syntactic and semantic complexity.
Researchers who argue that aspect develops before tense are following Piaget’s model of conceptual development. The latter argues that children till around the age of 6 live in the present and they evaluate the past only in terms of results.
Children, according to Weist et al. do not lack concept of time. However the acquisition of tense depends very much on the encoding of tense morphology of a particular language.
Based on my intuition as a native speaker of MC, I also reject example 7.
Stephany (1981) suggested that patterns found in early Modern Greek child language can be best accounted for by patterns found in the input.
This preference for the use of adverbs is also observed in adult second language acquisition (cf. also Klein 1986).
(ASP) means ASP in early MC and not in adult grammar.
See Adone (1990) for more detail.
References
Adone, D. (1990): The Acquisition of Mauritian Creole as a First language. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Duesseldorf.
Aitchison, J. (1983): “On roots of language.” Language and communication 3(1), 83–97.
Aksu, A. (1978) Aspect and Modality in the child’s acquisition of the Turkish past tense. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Berkeley.
Aksu, A. (1988) The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality. The Case of Past Reference in Tur-kish. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Antinucci, F. & R. Miller, (1976): “How Children talk about what happened.” Journal of Child Language 3, 167–189.
Baker, P. & C. Come, (1982): Isle de France Creole. Affinities and Origins. Ann Arbor: Karoma.
Baker, P. & C. Corne, (1986): “Universals, Substrata and the Indian Ocean Creoles.” In Muysken, P/N. Smith, N. eds., Substrata versus universale in Creole genesis. Amsterdam.
Bickerton, D. (1981): Roots of Language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.
Bickerton, D. (1984): “The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis.” The Behavioural and Brain Sciences. 7, 173–221.
Bickerton, D. (1988): Creole languages and the Bioprogram. In: Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey vol II, 268–284.
Bronckart, J.P/H Sinclair, (1973): “Time, tense and aspect.” In: Cognition 2, 107–130.
Bronckart, J-P. (1976): Genese et organisation des formes verbales chez l’enfant. Brüssel.
Brown, R. (1973): A first language. The early stages. Cambridge.
Comrie, B. (1976): Aspect. Cambridge.
Cziko, G. & K. Koda, (1987): “A Japanese child’s use of stative and punctual verbs.” Journal of Child Language 14, 99–111.
Cziko, G. (1989): “A review of the state-process and punctual-nonpunctual distinctions in children’s acquisition of verbs.” First Language, 9, 1–31.
Kuno, S. (1973): The structure of Japanese Language. Cambridge, MA.
Meisel, J. (1985):. “Les phases initiales du developpement de notions temporelles, aspectuelles et de modes d’action.” Lingua 66, 321–374.
Meisel, J. (1986): “Word order and case-marking in early child language. Evidence from simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: French and German.” Linguistics 24, 123–83.
Ping, L. (1990): Aspect and aktionsart in child Mandarin. Proefschrift aan der Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden.
Youssef, V. (1990): “The early development of perfect aspect: adverbial, verbal and contextual specification.” Journal of Child Language 17, 295–312.
Radulovic, L. (1975): Acquisition of language: studies of Dubrovnik children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Stephany, U. (1981): “Verbal grammar in Modern Greek early child language.” In: P.S Dale & D. Ingram, eds., Child language: an international perspective. Baltimore.
Weist, R.M, et al. (1984): “The defective tense hypothesis: on the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish.” Journal of Child language, 11, 347–374.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1990 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Adone, D. (1990). The Acquisition of TMA Markers in Mauritian Creole. In: Rothweiler, M. (eds) Spracherwerb und Grammatik. Linguistische Berichte, vol 3. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-14309-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-14309-3_4
Publisher Name: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-531-12237-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-663-14309-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive