A Japanese child's use of stative and punctual verbs

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary A. Cziko ◽  
Keiko Koda
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Process ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Early Use ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Present Progressive

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the use of stative, process, punctual, and non-punctual verbs by a child acquiring Japanese as a first language between the ages of 1;0 and 4;11 in an attempt to find evidence for two of Bickerton's (1981) proposed language acquisition universals, which form part of the language bioprogram hypothesis of language acquisition. As predicted by Bickerton's state-process hypothesis, it was found that all sampled present progressive verb forms occurred with process verbs while these forms were never used with stative verbs. Also, with only one exception, all omissions of present progressive forms occurred with the early use of ‘mixed’ verbs, i.e. verbs which behave syntactically as process verbs in Japanese but are nonetheless semantically stative. However, contrasting with Bickerton's hypothesis that children initially use the past tense to mark punctuality, no relationship between past tense use and punctuality was found.

scholarly journals Target Variation as a Contributing Factor in TAML2 Production

2021 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
Paz González ◽  
Carmen Kleinherenbrink
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
First Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Past Tenses

This study aims to clarify whether variation in the target language can influence its acquisition. More specifically, this study describes the acquisition of Spanish as a second language (L2) by examining the learning process based on (a) the first language (L1) of the learner and (b) which Spanish dialect is being learnt (the target). The phenomenon under scrutiny is the use of past tenses in the L2, as it has been proven to adequately measure the competence of the learner. Data from two L2 at-home-classroom student groups in the Netherlands, divided by either a European or Latin American oriented study program, has been collected. The task that they have made is a written narrative that elicits past verb forms in hodiernal and prehodiernal contexts. Our data shows a clear distinction in the preference of the past tense forms that each of the groups has, that can only be explained by looking at the Spanish variety which both program offers

Preverbation and narrativity in Lithuanian. The distribution of finite simplex and compound verbs in narrative main clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Lea Sawicki
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Text ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Compound Verbs ◽  
Finite Verb

The article deals with the use of simplex and compound (prefixed) verbs in narrative text. Main clauses comprising finite verb forms in the past and in the past habitual tense are examined in an attempt to establish to what extent simplex and compound verbs exhibit aspect oppositions, and whether a correlation exists between the occurrence of simplex vs. compound verbs and distinct textual units. The investigation shows that although simple and compound verbs in Lithuanian are not in direct aspect opposition to each other, in the background text portions most of the verbs are prefixless past tense forms or habitual forms, whereas in the plot-advancing text portions, the vast majority of verbs are compound verbs in the simple past tense.  

scholarly journals “The Trout Breaks the Ice” by Mikhail Kuzmin: Verse and Grammar

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Marina Akimova
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
Complex Composition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Astronomical Time ◽  
Mikhail Kuzmin ◽  
Iambic Pentameter ◽  
Finite Verb

The author explores various compositional levels of the Russian modernist author Mikhail Kuzmin’s long poem “The Trout Breaks the Ice”. The levels are: (1) the grammatical tenses vs. the astronomical time (non-finite verb forms (imperative) are also assumed to indicate time); (2) the meters of this polymetric poem; (3) realistic vs. symbolic and (4) static vs. dynamic narrative modes. The analysis is done by the chapter, and the data are summarized in five tables. It turned out that certain features regularly co-occur, thus supporting the complex composition of the poem. In particular, the present tense and time regularly mark the realistic and static chapters written in various meters, whereas the past tense and time are specific to the realistic and dynamic chapters written in iambic pentameter. The article sheds new light on the compositional structure of Kuzmin’s poem and the general principles of poetic composition.

scholarly journals The Golok Dialect and Written Tibetan past-tense verb forms

1979 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Sprigg
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Present Tense

Tibetan orthography looks phonetically challenging, to say the least; and one may well wonder whether such tongue-twisting combinations as the brj of brjes, the blt- of bltas, or the bst- of bstan ever did twist a Tibetan tongue, or whether the significance of these and other such orthographic forms might not have been morphophonemic in origin, with the letters r, l, and s in the syllable initial of forms such as these serving to associate these past-tense forms lexically with their corresponding present-tense forms; e.g. Viewed in relation to Tibetan orthography the past-tense forms of a class of verbs in the Golok dialect seem to support this hypothesis. Table 1, below, contains a number of examples of Golok verbs in their past-tense and present-tense forms to illustrate a type of phonological analysis suited to that view of the r syllable-initial unit in the Golok examples, and, indirectly, in the WT examples too (the symbols b and b will be accounted for in section (B) below).

scholarly journals Tense and aspect in sentence interpretation by children with specific language impairment

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD ◽  
PATRICIA DEEVY
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Scene Matching ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Progressive

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are sensitive to completion cues in their comprehension of tense. In two experiments, children with SLI (ages 4 ; 1 to 6 ; 4) and typically developing (TD) children (ages 3 ; 5 to 6 ; 5) participated in a sentence-to-scene matching task adapted from Wagner (2001). Sentences were in either present or past progressive and used telic predicates. Actions were performed twice in succession; the action was either completed or not completed in the first instance. In both experiments, the children with SLI were less accurate than the TD children, showing more difficulty with past than present progressive, regardless of completion cues. The TD children were less accurate with past than present progressive requests only when the past actions were incomplete. These findings suggest that children with SLI may be relatively insensitive to cues pertaining to event completion in past tense contexts.

scholarly journals Verb Form and Tense in Arabic

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 284
Author(s):  
Yasir Alotaibi
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Neutral Context ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
English Verb ◽  
Modern Standard

This paper discusses tense in Arabic based on three varieties of the language: Classical Arabic (CA), Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and the Taif dialect (TD). We argue against previous analyses that suggest that Arabic is a tenseless language, which assume that tense information is derived from the context. We also argue against the suggestion that Arabic is tensed, but that its tense is relative, rather than absolute. We propose here that CA, MSA, and TD have closely related verb forms, and that these are tensed verbs. Tense in Arabic is absolute in a neutral context and verb forms take the perfective and imperfective aspect. Similar to other languages including English, verb forms in Arabic may take reference from the context instead of the present moment. In this case, we argue that this does not mean that tense in Arabic is relative, because this would also imply that tense in many languages, including English, is relative. Further, we argue that the perfective form indicates only the past tense and the imperfective form, only the present; all other interpretations are derived by implicature.

scholarly journals Obligatory Movement Operations for Verbal Roots in Najdi Arabic

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Al Qahtani Khulud ◽  
Al Zahrani Mohammad
Keyword(s):  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Functional Categories ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Najdi Arabic

This paper focuses on the obligatory movement operations that Najdi Arabic (NA) verb forms must undergo to satisfy the morphosyntactic requirements within the minimalist program (MP). Recall that the practice of the MP syntactic theory, including its further advancements, proposed by Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001) springs from the fact that the grammar of a language starts basically from the lexicon from which suitable words are selected to form clauses. The selected words undergo some syntactic operations such as Merge, by which larger constituents are formed, and Move, by which the formed constituents move to higher positions in the hierarchy to fulfil some specific syntactic purposes. When the elements have undergone the operations of Merge and Move they are spelled out into phonetic forms (PF) and logical forms (LF). In light of this, we argue that NA verbs start out as roots in the head of VP before merging with the vocalic affixes in the head of Tax-AspP to satisfy the subjectverb agreement requirements and mark the aspect features. Perfective verb forms must then continue to move to T to merge with the past tense abstract features while imperfective forms stay in Tax-AspP. The thematic subject is generated in Spec,VP; it may stay there to derive the VSO order, or move higher to derive the SVO order. The findings show that obligatory movements indicate interactions between the functional categories of TP, Tax-AspP and VP: NA verbal roots obligatorily move to Tax-Asp to derive (im)perfective forms; perfectives obligatorily move to T.

Yiddish–Lithuanian bilingualism: Incomplete acquisition, change through contacts, or both?

2020 ◽  
pp. 136700692093266
Author(s):  
Anna Verschik
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
First Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Significant Factors ◽  
Incomplete Acquisition

Aims and Objectives/Purposes/Research Questions: Studies on incomplete first language (L1) acquisition emphasize restricted input, the low prestige of heritage/immigrant/minority languages, and age of acquisition as significant factors contributing to changes in L1. However, it is not always clear whether it is possible to distinguish results of incomplete acquisition and contact-induced language change. This article deals with two Yiddish–Lithuanian bilinguals who acquired both languages at home (recorded in 2010 and 2011). The focus of the article is the absence of the Yiddish past tense auxiliary in both informants and the replacement of Yiddish discourse-pragmatic words by their Lithuanian or English equivalents in the speech of the second informant. Design/Methodology/Approach: Qualitative analysis of the speech of two Yiddish–Lithuanian bilinguals. Data and Analysis: Two sets of recordings analyzed for the past tense use and other features mentioned in Yiddish attrition studies. Findings/Conclusions: Restricted input is to be considered as a factor in any case. However, it is argued that phenomena reported in the heritage language literature are often the same as in the contact linguistic literature: impact on non-core morphosyntax, prosody, and word order are usually mentioned as primary candidates of contact-induced structural change. Based on purely linguistic phenomena, it is not possible to distinguish between the results of acquisition under the conditions of limited input and in other contact situations where limited input is not necessarily the case. Many features of the informants’ Yiddish are a result of Lithuanian impact. Originality: Yiddish–Lithuanian early bilingualism is extremely rare nowadays. The data and analysis contribute to a general understanding of the interplay between contact-induced language change and limited input. Significance/Implications: Unlike what is often presumed, it is not always possible to make comparisons to monolinguals or balanced bilinguals because monolingual speakers of Yiddish do not exist.

Comparing generativist and constructivist accounts of the use of the past tense form in early child Japanese

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1365-1384 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMOKO TATSUMI ◽  
JULIAN M. PINE
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Japanese Children ◽  
Early Child ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
Distributional Patterns ◽  
Early Use ◽  
General Preference

AbstractThe present study investigated children's early use of verb inflection in Japanese by comparing a generativist account, which predicts that the past tense will have a special default-like status for the child during the early stages, with a constructivist input-driven account, which assumes that children's acquisition and use of inflectional forms reflects verb-specific distributional patterns in their input. Analysis of naturalistic data from four Japanese children aged 1;5 to 2;10 showed that there was substantial by-verb variation in the use of inflectional forms from the earliest stages of verb use, and no general preference for past tense forms. Correlational and partial correlational analyses showed that it was possible to predict the proportional frequency with which the child produced verbs in past tense versus other inflectional forms on the basis of differences in the proportional frequency with which the verb occurred in past tense form in the child's input, even after controlling for differences in the rate at which verbs occurred in past tense form in input averaged across the caregivers of the other children in the sample. When taken together, these results count against the idea that the past tense has a special default-like status in early child Japanese, and in favour of a constructivist input-driven account of children's early use of verb inflection.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE GRONINGEN ASSEMBLY ON LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.Charlotte Koster and Frank Wijnen (Eds.). Groningen, The Netherlands: Centre for Language and Cognition Groningen, 1996. Pp. 389.

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-520
Author(s):  
Robert Yates
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Lively Discussion ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Language And Cognition

This volume contains 34 papers presented at the Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition in September 1995. According to the editors, the conference was designed to promote “a lively discussion about the merits and constraints of different approaches to language acquisition.” Not surprisingly, in a conference that explicitly mentions it is continuing in the tradition of GALA 1993, Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, 23 of the papers in one way or the other deal with the innate properties of language and their status in language acquisition, whereas 7 papers have a connectionist perspective. Only 2 of the connectionist papers provide data from language learners. Two papers describe aspects of first language acquisition without an obvious theoretical allegiance. Only 1 paper considers how children make use of negative input provided in an experimental setting for learning about irregular verb forms. There is not a single paper on how interaction with caregivers influences language acquisition or how language is socially constructed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document