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The defective tense hypothesis: on the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Richard M. Weist ,
Hanna Wysocka ,
Katarzyna Witkowska-Stadnik ,
Ewa Buczowska  and
Emilia Konieczna
Richard M. Weist
Affiliation:
State University of New York
Hanna Wysocka
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University
Katarzyna Witkowska-Stadnik
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University
Ewa Buczowska
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University
Emilia Konieczna
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract

Longitudinal and cross-sectional designs were combined in this analysis of the evolution of children's capacity to represent deictic relationships. The longitudinal component contained the naturalistic observation of three relatively young children (1; 7–1; 9) and three somewhat older children (2; 0–2; 2). These children were tape-recorded in caretaker–child interactions. The analysis of the corpora from these children revealed: (1) imperfective activity verb phrases in the past tense, (2) telic verb phrases in the past tense used independently of resulting states, (3) moderately remote past references, and (4) deictic future references. The cross-sectional component contained an experiment in which elicitation procedures were used to obtain past and future references to atelic and telic situations. Nine 2½- and nine 3½-year-old children were tested. Generally high levels of performance reinforced the outcome of the longitudinal analysis.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 347 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, No. BNS 8121133, the Kościuszko Foundation, SUNY College at Fredonia, and the Polish Academy of Science. We would like to thank Zofia Baranowska, Ewa Domżalska and Jolanta Stawicka for their contributions to the project, and Dan Slobin for drawing our attention to Gvozdev's observations. Address for correspondence: Dept. of Psychology, SUNY College at Fredonia, Fredonia, New York 14063.

References

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