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THE ACQUISITION OF TENSE, MODAL AND ASPECT

6.2 AN OVERVIEW OF TENSE, MODAL & ASPECT IN JC

6.4.2 Acquisition of Tense in JC

The data reveals 5765 occurrences of unmarked verbs with a past time interpretation as exemplified in (25) – (27), and 4404 unmarked verbs with a present interpretation as exemplified in (28) – (30).

25) Moesha du dem. (TYA 2;06)

Moesha do 3PL

“Moesha did them.”

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26) Mi kuk ih kou. (RJU 2;03)

1SG cook DET cow

“I cooked the cow.”

27) Dadi bai i fi mi. (SHU 2;02)

Daddy buy it for me

“Daddy bought it for me.”

28) Mi waa tek yo picha. (ALA 2;05) 1SG want take 2SG picture

“I want to take your picture.”

29) I luk priti. (COL 2;05)

3SG look pretty

“It looks pretty.”

30) Iih av iih baik. (KEM 2;09)

3SG have 3SG bike

“He has his bike.”

Based on the option of using the unmarked verb to express a past or present reading, it is impossible to determine at what exact point children acquire the concept of tense. Children rarely select the option of using the overt past tense markers, as of the 5836 utterances with a past time interpretation only 71 overtly marked past tense markers were found in the entire corpus. This is detailed in Table 10. The minimal use of the overt markers is expected, as

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these markers also occur rarely in the speech of adults. Only 1765 overt past markers were attested in the input data of the corpus.

AGE

Table 10: Production of overt tense markers

The data reveals much individual variation with regards to the use of the overt markers: while there are 20 utterances by ALA, SHU, and KEM, it is never attested in the production of TYA

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and virtually unattested in COL’s and RJU’s production. There are also variations in the age of the informants regarding their first production of the overt past tense forms.

Closer examination of the data reveals that of the 71 utterances, 38 were actually expressing past-progressive, as in (31) as compared to only 33 which yields a simple past interpretation as in (32):

31) Mi ben a kaal yo. (KEM 3;00)

1SG PAST PROG call 2SG

“I was calling you.”

32) A dis did kom an mi an. (ALA 3;00) FOC DEM PAST come on 1SG hand

“It is this that came on my hand.”

As done for the modals, presented in Tables 11 and 12 is the age where the past tense marker is used productively with 2 and 5 predicates respectively, both with a past progressive interpretation and in its bare form. It is shown that ALA is the first child to use the past-progressive marker productively in keeping with both the 2 and 5 predicate criterion, while it never gained productive use in COL’s and TYA’s productions. COL was the first informant to use the bare past productively based on the 2 predicate criterion, but except for KEM, its productive use is unattested with the 5 predicate treshold. We will return to a discussion of the combination of the overt past marker and the progressive aspect marker in Section 6.7.1.

TENSE COL ALA RJU TYA KEM SHU

PAST-PROG - 2;7,5 2;8,12 - 3;0,24 2;11,3

PAST 2;5,0 2;11,1 2;8,12 - 3;0,24 2;9,5

Table 11: Use of overt past tense with 2 different predicated

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TENSE COL ALA RJU TYA KEM SHU

PAST-PROG - 2;7,18 - - 3;3,11 3;2,30

PAST - - - - 3;0,24 -

Table 12: Use of overt past tense with 5 different predicated

In order to verify the claim that children initially use past marking on accomplishment and achievement verbs more frequently than on activity and stative verbs, we examined all the verbs with which the children produced the overt past marker, which demonstrate only a past reading. In keeping with the literature, we see that the production of the past marker with verbs of accomplishment and achievement (such as fiks ‘fix’, fain ‘find’, slaid ‘slide’,etc.) is more frequently attested than with verbs of activity and states.

The huge individual variation and the limited production of the overt past tense markers, does not lend itself to an indepth comparative analysis of the acquisition of the phenomenon in the present corpus. Nonetheless, despite the scarcity of the data, the data becomes relevant for the

‘aspect before tense hypothesis’, which we discuss in the following section. We will now examine aspects, the zone following tense in the functional hierarchy.

6.5 ASPECT

In JC aspectual markers form the group of inflectional particles located closest to the VP.

They do not occur with stative verbs (Lamiroy, 1987: 284). Data presented in Durrleman-Tame (2008) uphold that the aspectual zone in JC is highly articulate, involving various projections that host functional material. The structure arrived at for the aspectual zone is as follows:

33) Asp [retrospective] > Asp [progressive] > Asp [prospective] > Asp [completive]

100 6.5.1 Acquisition of Aspect

There are varying accounts in studies of children’s acquisition of aspects in terms of the age of acquisition of the aspectual zone, the order of the acquisition of different aspectual expressions, the frequency of production and the interaction between aspect and tense (See Andersen and Shirai (1996) for discussion). Shirai and Andersen (1995) put forward that children acquiring English first use progressive marking mostly with activity verbs, then extending it to accomplishment and achievement verbs. Additionally, children do not incorrectly overextend progressive markings to stative verbs. This, Bickerton (1981) claimed is because children are born with what he calls the ‘state-process distinction’. He argues that children have innate knowledge of the difference between process and state: process verbs, in contrast to stative verbs, are marked with the help of a non-punctual marker. He argues that if children did not possess this knowledge, they would generalize the progressive marker just as they do past and plurals in English. Moreover, Bickerton proposed that creole languages exhibit striking evidence of linguistic universals in the area of tense and aspect. He states that there are at least four basic binary semantic distinctions which form an integral part of the core grammar which constitutes the totality of preexperiential linguistic knowledge. Three of these distinctions are related to the TMA system and appear to be shared by almost all creoles.

We will now present a detailed examination of aspect in JC.