Article published in:
The Acquisition of the PresentEdited by Dalila Ayoun
[Not in series 196] 2015
► pp. 21–56
Chapter 2. Zero-present under past in child French
Evidence from the future
This chapter discusses novel data from two experimental studies testing the acquisition of futurity and providing evidence in favor of Demirdache and Lungu’s (2009, 2011) zero-tense hypothesis, according to which child grammars display both zero-present and zero-past tenses, alongside indexical present/past tenses. Extending Kratzer (1998), Demirdache and Lungu argue that simultaneous construals of past/present in adult languages arise via a zero-tense analysis of the embedded tense. The claim is that while some adult languages (English, French) allow zero-tense construals of past and others (Japanese) allow zero-tense construals of present, child French in particular and, by hypothesis, child language in general, allows zero-tense construals of both past and present. We argue that once we admit the existence of a zero-present tense in child French, we expect children to allow non-adult, non-indexical construals of other tenses that have a present component. On the basis of two experiments testing the interpretation of futurity in L1 French, we show that this prediction is borne out.
Published online: 09 October 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.196.02lun
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.196.02lun
References
Abusch, D
Altshuler, D
Crain, S. & Thornton, R
De Saussure, L
Demirdache, H. & Lungu, O
Grønn, A. & von Stechow, A
Han, C, Lidz, J. & Musolino, J
Heim, I
Hollebrandse, B
2000 The Acquisition of Sequence of Tense. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Khomitsevich, O
2008 Dependencies across Phases: From Sequence of Tense to Restrictions on Movement. PhD dissertation, University of Utrecht.
Kratzer, A
Kroch, A
Kusumoto, K
1999 Tense in Embedded Contexts. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Lungu, O
2012 Tense in Embedded Contexts: The View from (French) Child Language. PhD dissertation, Université de Nantes.
Lungu, O. Submitted
The embedded present in Romanian: An issue of (non)commitment.
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Tense, Aspect and Modality (CHRONOS 9)
.
Matsuo, A. & Hollebrandse, B
Ogihara, T
1989 Temporal Reference in English and Japanese. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
Ogihara, T. & Sharvit, Y
Partee, B
Percus, O. & Lungu, O
Schmeißer, M
2014 Present last. Production-comprehension asymmetries in the acquisition of tense in monolingual French and Italian. Ms, Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
Smith, C
Valian, V
Vet, C
von Stechow, A
Yang, C
2000 Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language
. PhD dissertation, MIT.