Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge

Abstract

Children acquiring French elaborate their early verb constructions by adding adjacent morphemes incrementally at the left edge of core verbs. This hypothesis was tested with 2657 verb uses from four children between 1;3 and 2;7. Consistent with the Adjacency Hypothesis, children added clitic subjects first only to present tense forms (as in il saute 'he jumps'); modals to infinitives (as in faut sauter 'has to jump'); and auxiliaries to past participles (as in a sauté 'has jumped'). Only after this did the children add subjects to the left of a modal or auxiliary, as in elle veut sauter 'she wants to jump', or elle a sauté 'she has jumped'. The order in which these elements were added, and the development in the frequencies of the constructions, all support the predictions of the Adjacency Hypothesis for left edge development in early verb constructions.

Exposure and feedback in language acquisition: adult construals of children's early verb-form use in Hebrew

“…This is because both opaque and rote-learned forms of verbs are used initially for any instances of the particular activity-type, as when a child produces saxek '[s-x-k, P3]' for any event of 'playing', for past, present, or future; for any person -1, 2, or 3; and for singular or plural. Such use of a single form is common in children's earliest verb uses in other languages as well (e.g., Rojas Nieto, 2011;Veneziano & Clark, 2016). Once children start to produce two distinct forms for any one verb, they must work on how these different forms contrast in meaning: this is the point at which they can begin to construct verb paradigms.…”

“…When children add a second form for that same verb (e.g., caer 'fall-INF = to fall' or caído 'fall-PP = fell'), they begin to identify some of the distinctions made on the verb stem (Rojas Nieto, 2011). But constructing verb paradigms takes time (see, e.g., for Estonian: Vihman & Vija, 2006;for French: Bassano, 2000;Clark & de Marneffe, 2012;Veneziano & Clark, 2016;for Hebrew: Ashkenazi, Ravid, & Gillis, 2016;Berman, 1978Berman, , 1982Lustigman, 2012Lustigman, , 2013for Hungarian: MacWhinney, 1975; for Italian: Pizzuto & Caselli, 1994; for Spanish: Gathercole, Sebastián, & Soto, 1999;Rojas Nieto, 2011;for Tzeltal: Brown, 1998;for Tzotzil: de León, 1999a, 1999b.…”

The development of constructions from the right edge: a multinomial regression analysis of clitic left and right dislocation in child French

“…Inflectional morphemes, even those realized phonologically, have also been excluded for this reason. 5 The study of Veneziano and Clark (2016) mentioned in the background section above also suggests that the development of the verbal nucleus occurs incrementally for each separate word (first participle, then auxiliary and finally clitic pronoun), and did not consider bound morphemes.…”

“…Bloom (1990Bloom ( , 1993 suggests that the most informative part of the utterance is usually towards the right edge, and that, as a result, it is less frequently omitted by children. Veneziano and Clark (2016) investigate the development of the verbal nucleus in child French, and argue that it develops from the rightmost to the leftmost element. Hence, French children start by producing verbs in a simple form, like saute 'jump', or only the participle, such as tombé 'fallen'.…”

“…Veneziano and Clark (2016) investigate the development of the verbal nucleus in child French, and argue that it develops from the rightmost to the leftmost element. Hence, French children start by producing verbs in a simple form, like saute ‘jump’, or only the participle, such as tombé ‘fallen’.…”