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 frst only to present tense forms (as in…

The aim of this article is two-fold: to test the Aspect Hypothesis, according to which the early use of tense-aspect morphology patterns by semantic/aspectual features of verbs, and Tense is initially defective (e.g. Antinucci and Miller, 1976; Bloom et al., 1980; Andersen and Shirai, 1994; 1996; Robison, 1995; Shirai and Andersen, 1995;…

Presents the Lexical/Semantic Hypothesis, which proposes that early learning is more lexically oriented, and that early word combinations can be explained by more semantically oriented accounts than the Full Competence Hypothesis. The article also replaces the Grammatical Infinitive Hypothesis with the Modal Hypothesis. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Describes two experiments using apparent contradictions of the form "Did you like your supper:--I did and I didn't" to show that non-set theoretic interpretive structures are accessible to adults and 3-year-olds. (17 references) (Author/CK)

Argues that early French relative clauses (RCs) with gaps involve movement of the relative head. The article suggests that children lack relative operators for maturational reasons. This account shows that the deviation of early RCs from adult grammar is due to this lacuna and is compensated for in a manner consistent with Universal Grammar. (39…