The Acquisition of Tense: Bootstrapping into Syntax

Abstract

In this talk I will suggest that the linguistic category of tense plays an important role in language acquisition. There is an interesting relation between the representations underlying tense and the representations of syntax. Both require the property of scope. Scope is essential in the semantic representation of tense, and is also essential for syntactic representation. Thus, when they have acquired the category of tense children have all they need to construct full syntactic representations. Full-fledged syntactic representation involves both hierarchy and scope. I assume that children develop the basis for hierarchical representations at the first stage of active language acquisition – the lexical stage with which children begin to produce utterances. At the next stage, I propose, the conceptual structure of tense gives children a leg up into syntax.