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The unfolding of the verbal temporal system in French children's speech between 18 and 36 months

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2012

CHRISTOPHE PARISSE*
Affiliation:
MoDyCo, INSERM, CNRS, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense
ALIYAH MORGENSTERN*
Affiliation:
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3
*
Christophe Parisse, Modyco, Bat A, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 200 Avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre cedex, France e-mail: cparisse@u-paris10.fr
Addresses for correspondence: Aliyah Morgenstern, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, 5 rue de l'Ecole de médecine, 75006 Paris, France e-mail: Aliyah.Morgenstern@univ-paris3.fr

Abstract

In this paper, our aim is to analyze the relationship between the development of verbal forms and verbal functions. We examine all verbal forms produced longitudinally by two French children in terms of their morphosyntactic marking of tense, aspect, mood and situation type, and compare them to their contextually interpreted meanings. We introduce the main issues relevant to the unfolding of the verbal temporal system in children's data. Our data consists in two longitudinal corpora of French speaking children aged 1;06 to 3;01. The paper focuses on: 1) the relationship between form and function within the verbal system in the earlier stage of development; 2) the children's ability to mark a displacement between speech time and event time.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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