Actores

In this section, I argue that aspect rather than tense is involved in a number of examples that have been taken to show the existence of functional categories in early child language; and that aspect is not ‘functional’ in the relevant sense. As touched upon above, I argue that an E(vent)-role, which is present universally in the VP, is bound by aspect in early child grammars (cf. the discussion about the relation between aspect and tense in chapter 4, where I claim that aspect acted as

a binder in much earlier languages like ancient Greek). Furthermore, in

conformity with my analysis o f early child grammars, I claim that aspect does not project in the clause structure as a functional category in either PE or earlier languages.

The claim that aspect does not constitute a syntactic functional projection in adult PE is supported by evidence from language acquisition. Data from several languages show that child grammars contain aspectual information at this

F irs t Language Acquisition

prefunctional stage. In the traditional literature early verbal forms at the

prefunctional stage are said to exhibit distinctions between aspectual categories in

a consistent way (cf. Tsimpli 1996, 50). Brown (1973) points out that the -ing

form in early child English is consistently used with non-stative verbs from the

very beginning. According to Antinucci and Miller (1976), the distinction

between stative and non-stative verbs is one of the earliest to appear in early child Italian, where the stative/non-stative distinction is a manifestation of situation type aspect according to Smith (1991). (See section 4 of chapter 4 for more details). This suggests that aspect is not a functional category. Accordingly, my discussion will henceforth presuppose that child grammars do not have functional categories: one of the main claims of Tsimpli (1996), on whose work my argument is built.

Stephany (1986, 379), examining data from Greek children, claims that perfective and imperfective verb stems are already formally distinguished at the prefunctional stage, as shown in the examples below:

(26) a. zoso katali (1 year and 7 months)

give-perfective-1 s spoon

b. valume musiki (1 year and 8 months)

put-Perf.-lp music

c. kopeles hoevune (1 year and 9 months)

girls dance-imperfective-3p

(These examples are cited from Tsimpli 1996, 55)

The examples in (26a&b) are marked for perfective aspect while the past tense prefix is not present. In the corresponding adult Greek speech, a modal/tense marker must be realised syntactically as the head of TP/IP. The example (26c) has imperfective aspectual specification. Examples like (26a&b) are abundantly observed in the corpus of Greek child data. It is concluded that overt tense marking is absent from early child Greek grammars.

F irs t Language Acquisition

Tsimpli (1996) has also examined the crosslinguistic data from Modem Greek, German, French, Irish, Spanish and English, and has concluded that tense marking is absent in general from early child grammars. For example, children utter verbs in the infinitival form in matrix clauses. Data from French children have already been given in section 1. Some examples from child German are given below:

(27) a. papa suchen

daddy look for

b. mama sitzen

mummy sit (Tsimpli 1996,58)

In both the French and the German data, finite tense marking is lacking. As pointed out by Lightbown (1977) and by Atkinson (1996, 460), one problem with

identifying the French examples as “infinitival” is that -er endings in French are

orally indistinguishable from participial forms. Therefore, it is not impossible to analyze these examples as participles. A better example for deciding on the

finite or non-finite status of verbs is provided by irregular verbs like venir, or voir,

the past participles of which are phonologically different from infinitival forms. One example found in Pierce (1989) and cited by Wexler (1994, 311) is shown below:

(28) voir F auto papa

see the car of daddy

Wexler (op.cit.) also cites eight “infinitival” examples of -ir verbs whose past

participle forms are different from non-finite forms. However, none of those

examples co-occur with the negative particle pas, and hence are irrelevant to the

issue of the presence of a T/I-node. As I have discussed in section 1 of this

F irst Language Acquisition

for the presence (or absence) of a T/I-node. The difference in position of the

verb with respect to pas can provide evidence for T/I since the verb moves around

pas to T/I, a possible landing site. Wexler rejects the option that the relevant

forms be regarded as participles, relying on Lightbown's (op.cit.) interpretation that they refer to ongoing activity rather than a completed action. However, as Tsimpli (1996, 60) points out, completion vs non-completion of an event should be interpreted as an aspectual rather than a tense distinction.

Early child French and German exhibit verbal forms with finite endings as well as non-finite forms, although children use more non-inflected forms in contexts where adults use finite verbs:

(29)

(30)

(31)

a. das auch passt

this also fits

b. oma kommt

granny comes

a. lit maman

reads mummy

b. fait du bruit la voiture

make the noise the car

c. papa travaille

daddy works

est tombé moi

is fallen me

(Pierce 1989)

(Tsimpli 1996, 58-9)

It would appear that child grammars already have tense forms as well as compound past forms. However, the “compound forms” appear rarely and are frequently used without the auxiliary verb (Grégoire 1947, Clark 1985). Many researchers point out that children treat the past participle as an adjective: it describes a state of the object (Antinucci and Miller 1976, 172, Meisel 1985). Therefore, there is not sufficient evidence to argue for the presence of the alleged

F irs t Language Acquisition

“compound fomis”. The question of how to analyze est, which looks functional,

remains as a future task.

In adult French the marking of aspect and tense is morphologically merged in

the same inflectional affixes. Hence, it is not clear whether the sporadic

appearance of inflectional affixation like (30) expresses tense or aspect. However, judging from the examples in (30), it can safely be said that these forms refer to ongoing activities, and hence that they encode an aspectual meaning. If both forms, i.e. apparent finite and non-finite forms can be used to refer to ongoing activities, the presence of these two different forms cannot be supporting evidence that children use these forms in terms of a [+/- finite] distinction.

As far as the German data are concerned, as in French, verbs with the -t ending

in (29), which are argued to predominate over infinitival ones (cf. Clahsen 1991a, 1991b), may be analyzed as participial forms in some cases rather than as having a third person singular ending (Jordens 1990). Tracy (1991) has also suggested

that the -t ending is used to denote the completion of an event or action (see

Tsimpli 1996, 63). If this is correct, they are assumed to denote an aspectual meaning.

All in all, the sporadic use of different inflectional affixes in early child

grammars encodes aspectual rather than tense distinctions. Hence, we can

conclude that aspectual distinctions are operative at the prefunctional stage, while tense distinctions are missing. Aspect morphemes attached to the verb stem are not the result of syntactic affixation, but of a morphological rule such as lexical affixation and aspect binds the E-role at the prefunctional stage.

Behind this there lies a basic difference between aspect and tense: tense is a functional category, while aspect perhaps belongs to a substantive category, although further detailed discussion would be necessary to confirm this conclusion. However, it is necessary to make it clear that tense and aspect are systematically different and that the latter is not functional in the way the former is.

F irs t Language Acquisition