38
Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge EDY VENEZIANO* Université Paris Descartes CNRS, and Laboratory MoDyCo (UMR ) & LPPS (EA ) AND EVE V. CLARK Stanford University (Received September Revised June Accepted August First published online October ) 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 verb uses from four children between ; and ;. Consistent with the Adjacency Hypothesis, children added clitic subjects rst only to present tense forms (as in il saute he jumps); modals to innitives (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. [*] The data collection for this research was supported in part by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientique Suisse, CH (grants -· and - to H. Sinclair and E. Veneziano), and by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), FR (grant -, Project EMERGRAM: Emergence of Grammaticality, to E. Veneziano). We thank Ruth A. Berman, Herbert H. Clark, Bruno Estigarribia, Lyle Lustigman, and Dan I. Slobin for comments on earlier drafts, and Ewart A. C. Thomas for statistical advice. Addresses for correspondence: Edy Veneziano, Université Paris Descartes, Institut de Psychologie, Avenue Edouard Vaillant, Oce , Boulogne Billancourt, France. e-mail: [email protected]; Eve V. Clark, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA , USA; e-mail : eclark@ stanford.edu J. Child Lang. (), . © Cambridge University Press doi:./S use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000915000471 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Open University Library, on 21 Jan 2017 at 03:42:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

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Page 1: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Early verb constructions in French adjacency on theleft edge

EDY VENEZIANO

Universiteacute Paris Descartes ndash CNRS and Laboratory MoDyCo (UMR )amp LPPS (EA )

AND

EVE V CLARK

Stanford University

(Received September ndashRevised June ndashAccepted August ndashFirst published online October )

ABSTRACT

Children acquiring French elaborate their early verb constructions byadding adjacent morphemes incrementally at the left edge of coreverbs This hypothesis was tested with verb uses from fourchildren between and Consistent with the AdjacencyHypothesis children added clitic subjects first only to present tenseforms (as in il saute lsquohe jumpsrsquo) modals to infinitives (as in fautsauter lsquohas to jumprsquo) and auxiliaries to past participles (as in a sauteacutelsquohas jumpedrsquo) Only after this did the children add subjects to the leftof a modal or auxiliary as in elle veut sauter lsquoshe wants to jumprsquo orelle a sauteacute lsquoshe has jumpedrsquo The order in which these elements wereadded and the development in the frequencies of the constructionsall support the predictions of the Adjacency Hypothesis for left edgedevelopment in early verb constructions

[] The data collection for this research was supported in part by the Fonds National de laRecherche Scientifique Suisse CH (grants -middot and - to H Sinclairand E Veneziano) and by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) FR (grant- Project EMERGRAM Emergence of Grammaticality to E Veneziano) Wethank Ruth A Berman Herbert H Clark Bruno Estigarribia Lyle Lustigman andDan I Slobin for comments on earlier drafts and Ewart A C Thomas for statisticaladvice Addresses for correspondence Edy Veneziano Universiteacute Paris DescartesInstitut de Psychologie Avenue Edouard Vaillant Office BoulogneBillancourt France e-mail edyvenezianoparisdescartesfr Eve V Clark Departmentof Linguistics Stanford University Stanford CA USA e-mail eclarkstanfordedu

J Child Lang () ndash copy Cambridge University Press doiS

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INTRODUCTION

In this study we examine the early acquisition of verbs in French The focusis on very early stages in the acquisition of verb constructions where in theadult language many elements in the verb complex including cliticpronouns (subjects and preposed objects) auxiliaries and modals appearadjacent to the left edge of the core verb These elements distinguishperson number and tense and differentiate the meanings of certainhomophonous forms ndash forms that sound alike but differ in meaning andgrammatical function The initial acquisition of verb constructions inFrench we argue unfolds primarily by adding grammatical elements tothe left edge of the verb starting from the most adjacent element and thenworking outwards on the left Although these elements are grammaticalmorphemes from the standpoint of the adult language we do not claimthat they necessarily have grammatical status for the children from thevery beginning In what follows we refer to these elements with theirgrammatical tags but the road from initial phonological and positionalsimilarities to understanding of their grammatical function is a long one

As previous studies have shown children typically start producing verbsin only one form per verb (eg Aksu-Koccedil for TurkishArmon-Lotem amp Berman for Hebrew Christensen forSwedish Gathercole Sebastiaacuten amp Soto for Spanish Pizzuto ampCaselli for Italian Tomasello for English VenezianoSinclair amp Berthoud Kilani-Schoch for French) The specificverb form children produce first tends to be based on the dominant formof the verb used in child-directed speech and in particular the form thatboth adults and children use in conversational exchanges (Veneziano ampParisse see also Bloom Lifter amp Hafitz Goodman Dale ampLi Rojas-Nieto ) Next children begin to produce some verbsin two distinct forms (Veneziano Veneziano amp Sinclair ) andmay produce filler syllables eg e ə a with no readily assignablegrammatical function at the left edge of words (Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair ) It is only at this point that they also begin toproduce recognizable grammatical elements along with their verb formsThe focus of this study is on the way young children acquiring Frenchadd these elements to core verbs and thereby start to build their earlyverb constructions Before we turn to childrenrsquos early verb constructionswe review some properties of verb classes in French

Verb classes in French

French verbs are generally described as falling into three classes Somerecent accounts propose a division into two major groups (egCarstairs-McCarthy Le Goffic Dressler Kilani-Schoch

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Gargarina Pestal amp Poumlchtrager ) Here we follow the traditionalclassification Class ndash verbs with infinitives in -er (pronounced e inspoken French) ndash is highly regular and comprises ndash of French verbs(New Pallier Ferrand amp Matos ) Class- verbs form all tenses andderived forms from a single stem (Grevisse amp Goosse ) For exampleclass- sauter lsquoto jumprsquo relies on just one stem saut- sot in all its formsNote that sot corresponds to several different orthographic formsincluding present tense je saute lsquoPsg-Pres I jumprsquo tu sautes lsquoPsg-Presyou jumprsquo and ils sautent lsquoPpl-Pres they jumprsquoClass contains around regular verbs with infinitives in -ir eg finir

lsquoto finishrsquo and present participle in -issant These verbs rely on two stems forvarious tenses and derived forms (eg fin- as in je finis lsquoPsg-Pres I finishrsquoand finiss- as in ils finissent lsquoPpl-Pres they finishrsquo)

Class the repository of irregular verbs contains around verbs Theirinfinitives mostly end in -re ʁ (mettre mεtʁ lsquoto putrsquo) or -oir wɑʁ (vouloirvulwɑʁ lsquoto wantrsquo) and the verb tenses may make use of three distinct stemsThis class includes irregular aller lsquoto gorsquo ndash the only irregular verb in -er ndash alsoused as a semi-auxiliary to indicate future (Leeman-Bouix ) (as inEnglish lsquoIrsquom going to jumprsquo) with three stems v- (vais lsquoPsg-Pres gorsquovont lsquoPpl-Pres gorsquo) all- (allons lsquoPpl-Pres gorsquo lsquoalleacute lsquopast participle (PP)gonewentrsquo) and ir- (irai lsquoPsg-Fut will-gorsquo) Class is also home toseveral irregular verbs in -ir characterized by the absence of a second stemfor the present participle (eg courir lsquoto runrsquo and dormir lsquoto sleeprsquo)Class- verbs contain many homophonous forms Although these are

distinguished orthographically they are not distinct in spoken French Forexample the infinitive (INF) and the past participle (PP) of all class-verbs sound alike with the same homophony extending to the nd personplural (Ppl) of the present indicative and subjunctive and to the pluralimperative (Veneziano amp Parisse ) When children produce forms in-e in early utterances as in sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo the addressee cannottell whether the child means lsquoto jumprsquo (INF) or lsquojumpedrsquo (PP) So evenif children intend to differentiate the two meanings adults do not hear thecorresponding verb constructions for doing this In conversation adultsprovide information about this meaning distinction as they systematicallyinterpret these homophonous verb forms on the basis of the context inwhich the child produces them (Clark amp de Marneffe ) In class-verbs the lexical forms for the infinitive and the past participle nearlyalways differ in spoken French Compare mettre mεtʁ lsquoINF to putrsquo andmis mi lsquoPP putrsquo courir kuʁiʁ lsquoINF to runrsquo and couru kuʁy lsquoPP ranrsquo

All homophonous forms cited are given phonetically as are child forms when they departfrom adult pronunciation Child utterances are translated to represent the nearest spokenequivalent in English

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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or asseoir aswɑʁ lsquoINF to sitrsquo and assis asi lsquoPP seatedsatrsquo Homophonousforms do occur in a few class- verbs but the homophony concerns differentmodes eg the past participle (fait) the singular present indicative (faisfait) and the imperative singular (fais) of faire lsquoto dorsquo are all pronouncedfe

On the edges

According to Slobin ( ) children rely on general lsquooperatingprinciplesrsquo in acquiring a first language Data from typologically diverselanguages show that they pay attention early on to variations on both theleft and right edges of words Children also appear to keep together aschunks units that frequently co-occur and store them as such in memory ndash

for example articles or demonstratives with nouns pronouns auxiliariesand inflections with verbsTo acquire contrasting verb meanings French-speaking children must

attend both to different forms within a verb eg the Pres form sot sautelsquojump(s)rsquo versus the INFPP sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo and to the specificgrammatical morphemes appearing in verb constructions as in il saute lsquohejumpsrsquo with a clitic subject pronoun preceding a Pres form or veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo with a modal (mod) preceding an INF form In the caseof homophonous forms (eg sotefor INF sauter and PP sauteacute) only thegrammatical morphemes on the left edge disambiguate the two formsChildrenrsquos early use of fillers (short unaccented front or nasal vowels) justbefore nouns and verbs shows that they already attend to the left edge ofwords (Veneziano amp Sinclair Veneziano ) In French childrenhear a variety of grammatical morphemes adjacent to the left edge ofverbs clitic pronouns (eg je saute lsquoI jumprsquo elle saute (lsquoshe jumpsrsquo)modals (peux sauter lsquocan jumprsquo veux sauter lsquowant to jumprsquo) prepositions(pour sauter lsquoin order to jumprsquo) and auxiliaries (a sauteacute lsquohas jumpedrsquo) Inthis paper we focus on how children build larger verb constructions asthey add grammatical morphemes to the left edge of verbs (see Klein) and specify our predictions about early acquisition on the left edgesof verbs in French on the basis of what we call the Adjacency Hypothesis

The Adjacency Hypothesis takes into account the fact that there isextensive variation in the grammatical morphemes that can be added tothe left edge of French verbs These morphemes are the ones childrenhear most often in the forms addressed to them by adults (see egVeneziano amp Parisse Aringgren amp van de Weijer see also deVilliers Naigles amp Hoff-Ginsberg Ellis amp Sagarra Ashkenazi ) At the same time of course children also attendto right edge variations in the forms of verbs Indeed it is only once theycan produce two forms of a verb that differ on the right edge (eg saute

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sauteacute lsquojump-PPrsquo or vient lsquocomesrsquo vs venu lsquocome-PPrsquo) that theystart adding elements on the left as they elaborate their verb constructions (eg Veneziano amp Sinclair )

The Adjacency Hypothesis predictions

The hypothesis here is that in French children build their initial verbconstructions by adding grammatical morphemes to the left edge of coreverb forms starting with the most adjacent element This hypothesismakes three specific predictionsPrediction Children add clitic subject pronouns to present tense verb

forms before they produce subject pronouns in INF and PP constructionsThis is because for present tense forms the subject clitics on the left edgeof the verb as in il saute lsquohe jumpsrsquo or je cours lsquoI runrsquo are immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of saute and cours respectively Although thelinguistic status of clitic pronouns as subjects is a matter of some debate(eg Miller amp Monachesi Culbertson amp Legendre ) noticethat clitic pronouns cannot stand on their own but act like boundmorphemes with respect to the verb

With infinitives INF and past participles PP though it is not thesubject but the modal (mod) or the auxiliary (aux) that is immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of the verb Children will therefore add adjacentmodals or auxiliaries first to INF and PP forms respectively and onlylater add clitic subjects adjacent to those morphemes So clitic subjects likeje the first person singular (Psg) will appear in Pres constructions beforethey appear in INF constructions like je veux sauter lsquoI want to jumprsquo jepeux courir lsquoI can runrsquo or in PP constructions like il a sauteacute lsquohe jumpedrsquoor il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo We summarize this prediction in ()

a Subj + Pres appears before Subj +mod + INFb Subj + Pres appears before Subj + aux + PP

Prediction follows directly from Prediction Children will produce mod +INF constructions (where the modal is immediately adjacent on the left)before they add a Subj in the form of a clitic pronoun or a lexical nounphrase now in turn adjacent to the modal on the left (eg veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo before il veut sauter lsquohe wants to jumprsquo) they will do thesame with aux + PP constructions producing these combinations beforethey add any subjects again adjacent to the auxiliaries on the left (eg acouru lsquohas run ranrsquo before il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo) This prediction issummarized in ()

a mod + INF before Subj +mod + INFb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction This prediction concerns the addition of modal and auxiliaryforms adjacent to the left edge of INF and PP forms Children will firstproduce bare INFPP forms (indeterminate in Class- verbs because oftheir homophony but unambiguous in class- verbs because of theirdistinct forms) before they add the appropriate morphemes to the leftedge of the verb a modal or some other morpheme appropriate to INFuses (eg mod + INF prep + INF) on the one hand and an auxiliaryverb or the negative particle pas appropriate to PP uses on the other

For class- verbs the homophonous INFPP form precedes thedifferentiated INF and PP constructions (eg sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquobefore veu(xt) sauter (INF) lsquowant(s) to jumprsquo or sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo before a sauteacute lsquoPP has jumpedrsquo For class- verbs theunambiguous bare INF and PP forms precede the constructions with anadjacent mod or prep added to INF on the one hand (eg courir lsquoto runrsquobefore peu(xt) courir lsquocan runrsquo) and with an adjacent aux added to PPon the other (eg mis lsquoPP putrsquo before a mis lsquohas putrsquo) This is summarizedin () below

class INFPP or class INF and PP before mod + INF and aux + PP

To test these predictions for each child we trace both the first appearanceof the relevant constructions for individual verb types and their frequency ofoccurrence in each childrsquos overall production The initial analysis ofindividual VERB TYPES allows us to test whether children produce theconstructions in the predicted order on the basis of their appearance withthe same verb This analysis offers a strong test of the predictions becauseit provides evidence for the developmental progression within each verbtype However it only takes into account the first appearance of aconstruction regardless of how many times it is produced and so pays noattention to the relative productivity of the constructions Moreover thenumber of verb types for which children produce two or more relevantconstructions with the same verb is limited because they do not producethose constructions with every verb For example to support Prediction children need to produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF or Subj +aux + PP after producing Subj + Pres with the same verb and to supportPrediction they must produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF orSubj + aux + PP after mod + INF or aux + PP again with the same verbsHowever all these constructions may have appeared in the childrenrsquosspeech with only a subset of their verbs or they may have appeared in thesimpler and the more elaborate constructions with different verbs atdifferent ages

So to establish further support for our predictions we did a secondanalysis that took into account not only the first appearance but also the

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 2: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

INTRODUCTION

In this study we examine the early acquisition of verbs in French The focusis on very early stages in the acquisition of verb constructions where in theadult language many elements in the verb complex including cliticpronouns (subjects and preposed objects) auxiliaries and modals appearadjacent to the left edge of the core verb These elements distinguishperson number and tense and differentiate the meanings of certainhomophonous forms ndash forms that sound alike but differ in meaning andgrammatical function The initial acquisition of verb constructions inFrench we argue unfolds primarily by adding grammatical elements tothe left edge of the verb starting from the most adjacent element and thenworking outwards on the left Although these elements are grammaticalmorphemes from the standpoint of the adult language we do not claimthat they necessarily have grammatical status for the children from thevery beginning In what follows we refer to these elements with theirgrammatical tags but the road from initial phonological and positionalsimilarities to understanding of their grammatical function is a long one

As previous studies have shown children typically start producing verbsin only one form per verb (eg Aksu-Koccedil for TurkishArmon-Lotem amp Berman for Hebrew Christensen forSwedish Gathercole Sebastiaacuten amp Soto for Spanish Pizzuto ampCaselli for Italian Tomasello for English VenezianoSinclair amp Berthoud Kilani-Schoch for French) The specificverb form children produce first tends to be based on the dominant formof the verb used in child-directed speech and in particular the form thatboth adults and children use in conversational exchanges (Veneziano ampParisse see also Bloom Lifter amp Hafitz Goodman Dale ampLi Rojas-Nieto ) Next children begin to produce some verbsin two distinct forms (Veneziano Veneziano amp Sinclair ) andmay produce filler syllables eg e ə a with no readily assignablegrammatical function at the left edge of words (Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair ) It is only at this point that they also begin toproduce recognizable grammatical elements along with their verb formsThe focus of this study is on the way young children acquiring Frenchadd these elements to core verbs and thereby start to build their earlyverb constructions Before we turn to childrenrsquos early verb constructionswe review some properties of verb classes in French

Verb classes in French

French verbs are generally described as falling into three classes Somerecent accounts propose a division into two major groups (egCarstairs-McCarthy Le Goffic Dressler Kilani-Schoch

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Gargarina Pestal amp Poumlchtrager ) Here we follow the traditionalclassification Class ndash verbs with infinitives in -er (pronounced e inspoken French) ndash is highly regular and comprises ndash of French verbs(New Pallier Ferrand amp Matos ) Class- verbs form all tenses andderived forms from a single stem (Grevisse amp Goosse ) For exampleclass- sauter lsquoto jumprsquo relies on just one stem saut- sot in all its formsNote that sot corresponds to several different orthographic formsincluding present tense je saute lsquoPsg-Pres I jumprsquo tu sautes lsquoPsg-Presyou jumprsquo and ils sautent lsquoPpl-Pres they jumprsquoClass contains around regular verbs with infinitives in -ir eg finir

lsquoto finishrsquo and present participle in -issant These verbs rely on two stems forvarious tenses and derived forms (eg fin- as in je finis lsquoPsg-Pres I finishrsquoand finiss- as in ils finissent lsquoPpl-Pres they finishrsquo)

Class the repository of irregular verbs contains around verbs Theirinfinitives mostly end in -re ʁ (mettre mεtʁ lsquoto putrsquo) or -oir wɑʁ (vouloirvulwɑʁ lsquoto wantrsquo) and the verb tenses may make use of three distinct stemsThis class includes irregular aller lsquoto gorsquo ndash the only irregular verb in -er ndash alsoused as a semi-auxiliary to indicate future (Leeman-Bouix ) (as inEnglish lsquoIrsquom going to jumprsquo) with three stems v- (vais lsquoPsg-Pres gorsquovont lsquoPpl-Pres gorsquo) all- (allons lsquoPpl-Pres gorsquo lsquoalleacute lsquopast participle (PP)gonewentrsquo) and ir- (irai lsquoPsg-Fut will-gorsquo) Class is also home toseveral irregular verbs in -ir characterized by the absence of a second stemfor the present participle (eg courir lsquoto runrsquo and dormir lsquoto sleeprsquo)Class- verbs contain many homophonous forms Although these are

distinguished orthographically they are not distinct in spoken French Forexample the infinitive (INF) and the past participle (PP) of all class-verbs sound alike with the same homophony extending to the nd personplural (Ppl) of the present indicative and subjunctive and to the pluralimperative (Veneziano amp Parisse ) When children produce forms in-e in early utterances as in sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo the addressee cannottell whether the child means lsquoto jumprsquo (INF) or lsquojumpedrsquo (PP) So evenif children intend to differentiate the two meanings adults do not hear thecorresponding verb constructions for doing this In conversation adultsprovide information about this meaning distinction as they systematicallyinterpret these homophonous verb forms on the basis of the context inwhich the child produces them (Clark amp de Marneffe ) In class-verbs the lexical forms for the infinitive and the past participle nearlyalways differ in spoken French Compare mettre mεtʁ lsquoINF to putrsquo andmis mi lsquoPP putrsquo courir kuʁiʁ lsquoINF to runrsquo and couru kuʁy lsquoPP ranrsquo

All homophonous forms cited are given phonetically as are child forms when they departfrom adult pronunciation Child utterances are translated to represent the nearest spokenequivalent in English

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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or asseoir aswɑʁ lsquoINF to sitrsquo and assis asi lsquoPP seatedsatrsquo Homophonousforms do occur in a few class- verbs but the homophony concerns differentmodes eg the past participle (fait) the singular present indicative (faisfait) and the imperative singular (fais) of faire lsquoto dorsquo are all pronouncedfe

On the edges

According to Slobin ( ) children rely on general lsquooperatingprinciplesrsquo in acquiring a first language Data from typologically diverselanguages show that they pay attention early on to variations on both theleft and right edges of words Children also appear to keep together aschunks units that frequently co-occur and store them as such in memory ndash

for example articles or demonstratives with nouns pronouns auxiliariesand inflections with verbsTo acquire contrasting verb meanings French-speaking children must

attend both to different forms within a verb eg the Pres form sot sautelsquojump(s)rsquo versus the INFPP sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo and to the specificgrammatical morphemes appearing in verb constructions as in il saute lsquohejumpsrsquo with a clitic subject pronoun preceding a Pres form or veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo with a modal (mod) preceding an INF form In the caseof homophonous forms (eg sotefor INF sauter and PP sauteacute) only thegrammatical morphemes on the left edge disambiguate the two formsChildrenrsquos early use of fillers (short unaccented front or nasal vowels) justbefore nouns and verbs shows that they already attend to the left edge ofwords (Veneziano amp Sinclair Veneziano ) In French childrenhear a variety of grammatical morphemes adjacent to the left edge ofverbs clitic pronouns (eg je saute lsquoI jumprsquo elle saute (lsquoshe jumpsrsquo)modals (peux sauter lsquocan jumprsquo veux sauter lsquowant to jumprsquo) prepositions(pour sauter lsquoin order to jumprsquo) and auxiliaries (a sauteacute lsquohas jumpedrsquo) Inthis paper we focus on how children build larger verb constructions asthey add grammatical morphemes to the left edge of verbs (see Klein) and specify our predictions about early acquisition on the left edgesof verbs in French on the basis of what we call the Adjacency Hypothesis

The Adjacency Hypothesis takes into account the fact that there isextensive variation in the grammatical morphemes that can be added tothe left edge of French verbs These morphemes are the ones childrenhear most often in the forms addressed to them by adults (see egVeneziano amp Parisse Aringgren amp van de Weijer see also deVilliers Naigles amp Hoff-Ginsberg Ellis amp Sagarra Ashkenazi ) At the same time of course children also attendto right edge variations in the forms of verbs Indeed it is only once theycan produce two forms of a verb that differ on the right edge (eg saute

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sauteacute lsquojump-PPrsquo or vient lsquocomesrsquo vs venu lsquocome-PPrsquo) that theystart adding elements on the left as they elaborate their verb constructions (eg Veneziano amp Sinclair )

The Adjacency Hypothesis predictions

The hypothesis here is that in French children build their initial verbconstructions by adding grammatical morphemes to the left edge of coreverb forms starting with the most adjacent element This hypothesismakes three specific predictionsPrediction Children add clitic subject pronouns to present tense verb

forms before they produce subject pronouns in INF and PP constructionsThis is because for present tense forms the subject clitics on the left edgeof the verb as in il saute lsquohe jumpsrsquo or je cours lsquoI runrsquo are immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of saute and cours respectively Although thelinguistic status of clitic pronouns as subjects is a matter of some debate(eg Miller amp Monachesi Culbertson amp Legendre ) noticethat clitic pronouns cannot stand on their own but act like boundmorphemes with respect to the verb

With infinitives INF and past participles PP though it is not thesubject but the modal (mod) or the auxiliary (aux) that is immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of the verb Children will therefore add adjacentmodals or auxiliaries first to INF and PP forms respectively and onlylater add clitic subjects adjacent to those morphemes So clitic subjects likeje the first person singular (Psg) will appear in Pres constructions beforethey appear in INF constructions like je veux sauter lsquoI want to jumprsquo jepeux courir lsquoI can runrsquo or in PP constructions like il a sauteacute lsquohe jumpedrsquoor il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo We summarize this prediction in ()

a Subj + Pres appears before Subj +mod + INFb Subj + Pres appears before Subj + aux + PP

Prediction follows directly from Prediction Children will produce mod +INF constructions (where the modal is immediately adjacent on the left)before they add a Subj in the form of a clitic pronoun or a lexical nounphrase now in turn adjacent to the modal on the left (eg veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo before il veut sauter lsquohe wants to jumprsquo) they will do thesame with aux + PP constructions producing these combinations beforethey add any subjects again adjacent to the auxiliaries on the left (eg acouru lsquohas run ranrsquo before il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo) This prediction issummarized in ()

a mod + INF before Subj +mod + INFb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction This prediction concerns the addition of modal and auxiliaryforms adjacent to the left edge of INF and PP forms Children will firstproduce bare INFPP forms (indeterminate in Class- verbs because oftheir homophony but unambiguous in class- verbs because of theirdistinct forms) before they add the appropriate morphemes to the leftedge of the verb a modal or some other morpheme appropriate to INFuses (eg mod + INF prep + INF) on the one hand and an auxiliaryverb or the negative particle pas appropriate to PP uses on the other

For class- verbs the homophonous INFPP form precedes thedifferentiated INF and PP constructions (eg sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquobefore veu(xt) sauter (INF) lsquowant(s) to jumprsquo or sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo before a sauteacute lsquoPP has jumpedrsquo For class- verbs theunambiguous bare INF and PP forms precede the constructions with anadjacent mod or prep added to INF on the one hand (eg courir lsquoto runrsquobefore peu(xt) courir lsquocan runrsquo) and with an adjacent aux added to PPon the other (eg mis lsquoPP putrsquo before a mis lsquohas putrsquo) This is summarizedin () below

class INFPP or class INF and PP before mod + INF and aux + PP

To test these predictions for each child we trace both the first appearanceof the relevant constructions for individual verb types and their frequency ofoccurrence in each childrsquos overall production The initial analysis ofindividual VERB TYPES allows us to test whether children produce theconstructions in the predicted order on the basis of their appearance withthe same verb This analysis offers a strong test of the predictions becauseit provides evidence for the developmental progression within each verbtype However it only takes into account the first appearance of aconstruction regardless of how many times it is produced and so pays noattention to the relative productivity of the constructions Moreover thenumber of verb types for which children produce two or more relevantconstructions with the same verb is limited because they do not producethose constructions with every verb For example to support Prediction children need to produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF or Subj +aux + PP after producing Subj + Pres with the same verb and to supportPrediction they must produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF orSubj + aux + PP after mod + INF or aux + PP again with the same verbsHowever all these constructions may have appeared in the childrenrsquosspeech with only a subset of their verbs or they may have appeared in thesimpler and the more elaborate constructions with different verbs atdifferent ages

So to establish further support for our predictions we did a secondanalysis that took into account not only the first appearance but also the

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 3: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Gargarina Pestal amp Poumlchtrager ) Here we follow the traditionalclassification Class ndash verbs with infinitives in -er (pronounced e inspoken French) ndash is highly regular and comprises ndash of French verbs(New Pallier Ferrand amp Matos ) Class- verbs form all tenses andderived forms from a single stem (Grevisse amp Goosse ) For exampleclass- sauter lsquoto jumprsquo relies on just one stem saut- sot in all its formsNote that sot corresponds to several different orthographic formsincluding present tense je saute lsquoPsg-Pres I jumprsquo tu sautes lsquoPsg-Presyou jumprsquo and ils sautent lsquoPpl-Pres they jumprsquoClass contains around regular verbs with infinitives in -ir eg finir

lsquoto finishrsquo and present participle in -issant These verbs rely on two stems forvarious tenses and derived forms (eg fin- as in je finis lsquoPsg-Pres I finishrsquoand finiss- as in ils finissent lsquoPpl-Pres they finishrsquo)

Class the repository of irregular verbs contains around verbs Theirinfinitives mostly end in -re ʁ (mettre mεtʁ lsquoto putrsquo) or -oir wɑʁ (vouloirvulwɑʁ lsquoto wantrsquo) and the verb tenses may make use of three distinct stemsThis class includes irregular aller lsquoto gorsquo ndash the only irregular verb in -er ndash alsoused as a semi-auxiliary to indicate future (Leeman-Bouix ) (as inEnglish lsquoIrsquom going to jumprsquo) with three stems v- (vais lsquoPsg-Pres gorsquovont lsquoPpl-Pres gorsquo) all- (allons lsquoPpl-Pres gorsquo lsquoalleacute lsquopast participle (PP)gonewentrsquo) and ir- (irai lsquoPsg-Fut will-gorsquo) Class is also home toseveral irregular verbs in -ir characterized by the absence of a second stemfor the present participle (eg courir lsquoto runrsquo and dormir lsquoto sleeprsquo)Class- verbs contain many homophonous forms Although these are

distinguished orthographically they are not distinct in spoken French Forexample the infinitive (INF) and the past participle (PP) of all class-verbs sound alike with the same homophony extending to the nd personplural (Ppl) of the present indicative and subjunctive and to the pluralimperative (Veneziano amp Parisse ) When children produce forms in-e in early utterances as in sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo the addressee cannottell whether the child means lsquoto jumprsquo (INF) or lsquojumpedrsquo (PP) So evenif children intend to differentiate the two meanings adults do not hear thecorresponding verb constructions for doing this In conversation adultsprovide information about this meaning distinction as they systematicallyinterpret these homophonous verb forms on the basis of the context inwhich the child produces them (Clark amp de Marneffe ) In class-verbs the lexical forms for the infinitive and the past participle nearlyalways differ in spoken French Compare mettre mεtʁ lsquoINF to putrsquo andmis mi lsquoPP putrsquo courir kuʁiʁ lsquoINF to runrsquo and couru kuʁy lsquoPP ranrsquo

All homophonous forms cited are given phonetically as are child forms when they departfrom adult pronunciation Child utterances are translated to represent the nearest spokenequivalent in English

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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or asseoir aswɑʁ lsquoINF to sitrsquo and assis asi lsquoPP seatedsatrsquo Homophonousforms do occur in a few class- verbs but the homophony concerns differentmodes eg the past participle (fait) the singular present indicative (faisfait) and the imperative singular (fais) of faire lsquoto dorsquo are all pronouncedfe

On the edges

According to Slobin ( ) children rely on general lsquooperatingprinciplesrsquo in acquiring a first language Data from typologically diverselanguages show that they pay attention early on to variations on both theleft and right edges of words Children also appear to keep together aschunks units that frequently co-occur and store them as such in memory ndash

for example articles or demonstratives with nouns pronouns auxiliariesand inflections with verbsTo acquire contrasting verb meanings French-speaking children must

attend both to different forms within a verb eg the Pres form sot sautelsquojump(s)rsquo versus the INFPP sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo and to the specificgrammatical morphemes appearing in verb constructions as in il saute lsquohejumpsrsquo with a clitic subject pronoun preceding a Pres form or veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo with a modal (mod) preceding an INF form In the caseof homophonous forms (eg sotefor INF sauter and PP sauteacute) only thegrammatical morphemes on the left edge disambiguate the two formsChildrenrsquos early use of fillers (short unaccented front or nasal vowels) justbefore nouns and verbs shows that they already attend to the left edge ofwords (Veneziano amp Sinclair Veneziano ) In French childrenhear a variety of grammatical morphemes adjacent to the left edge ofverbs clitic pronouns (eg je saute lsquoI jumprsquo elle saute (lsquoshe jumpsrsquo)modals (peux sauter lsquocan jumprsquo veux sauter lsquowant to jumprsquo) prepositions(pour sauter lsquoin order to jumprsquo) and auxiliaries (a sauteacute lsquohas jumpedrsquo) Inthis paper we focus on how children build larger verb constructions asthey add grammatical morphemes to the left edge of verbs (see Klein) and specify our predictions about early acquisition on the left edgesof verbs in French on the basis of what we call the Adjacency Hypothesis

The Adjacency Hypothesis takes into account the fact that there isextensive variation in the grammatical morphemes that can be added tothe left edge of French verbs These morphemes are the ones childrenhear most often in the forms addressed to them by adults (see egVeneziano amp Parisse Aringgren amp van de Weijer see also deVilliers Naigles amp Hoff-Ginsberg Ellis amp Sagarra Ashkenazi ) At the same time of course children also attendto right edge variations in the forms of verbs Indeed it is only once theycan produce two forms of a verb that differ on the right edge (eg saute

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sauteacute lsquojump-PPrsquo or vient lsquocomesrsquo vs venu lsquocome-PPrsquo) that theystart adding elements on the left as they elaborate their verb constructions (eg Veneziano amp Sinclair )

The Adjacency Hypothesis predictions

The hypothesis here is that in French children build their initial verbconstructions by adding grammatical morphemes to the left edge of coreverb forms starting with the most adjacent element This hypothesismakes three specific predictionsPrediction Children add clitic subject pronouns to present tense verb

forms before they produce subject pronouns in INF and PP constructionsThis is because for present tense forms the subject clitics on the left edgeof the verb as in il saute lsquohe jumpsrsquo or je cours lsquoI runrsquo are immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of saute and cours respectively Although thelinguistic status of clitic pronouns as subjects is a matter of some debate(eg Miller amp Monachesi Culbertson amp Legendre ) noticethat clitic pronouns cannot stand on their own but act like boundmorphemes with respect to the verb

With infinitives INF and past participles PP though it is not thesubject but the modal (mod) or the auxiliary (aux) that is immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of the verb Children will therefore add adjacentmodals or auxiliaries first to INF and PP forms respectively and onlylater add clitic subjects adjacent to those morphemes So clitic subjects likeje the first person singular (Psg) will appear in Pres constructions beforethey appear in INF constructions like je veux sauter lsquoI want to jumprsquo jepeux courir lsquoI can runrsquo or in PP constructions like il a sauteacute lsquohe jumpedrsquoor il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo We summarize this prediction in ()

a Subj + Pres appears before Subj +mod + INFb Subj + Pres appears before Subj + aux + PP

Prediction follows directly from Prediction Children will produce mod +INF constructions (where the modal is immediately adjacent on the left)before they add a Subj in the form of a clitic pronoun or a lexical nounphrase now in turn adjacent to the modal on the left (eg veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo before il veut sauter lsquohe wants to jumprsquo) they will do thesame with aux + PP constructions producing these combinations beforethey add any subjects again adjacent to the auxiliaries on the left (eg acouru lsquohas run ranrsquo before il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo) This prediction issummarized in ()

a mod + INF before Subj +mod + INFb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction This prediction concerns the addition of modal and auxiliaryforms adjacent to the left edge of INF and PP forms Children will firstproduce bare INFPP forms (indeterminate in Class- verbs because oftheir homophony but unambiguous in class- verbs because of theirdistinct forms) before they add the appropriate morphemes to the leftedge of the verb a modal or some other morpheme appropriate to INFuses (eg mod + INF prep + INF) on the one hand and an auxiliaryverb or the negative particle pas appropriate to PP uses on the other

For class- verbs the homophonous INFPP form precedes thedifferentiated INF and PP constructions (eg sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquobefore veu(xt) sauter (INF) lsquowant(s) to jumprsquo or sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo before a sauteacute lsquoPP has jumpedrsquo For class- verbs theunambiguous bare INF and PP forms precede the constructions with anadjacent mod or prep added to INF on the one hand (eg courir lsquoto runrsquobefore peu(xt) courir lsquocan runrsquo) and with an adjacent aux added to PPon the other (eg mis lsquoPP putrsquo before a mis lsquohas putrsquo) This is summarizedin () below

class INFPP or class INF and PP before mod + INF and aux + PP

To test these predictions for each child we trace both the first appearanceof the relevant constructions for individual verb types and their frequency ofoccurrence in each childrsquos overall production The initial analysis ofindividual VERB TYPES allows us to test whether children produce theconstructions in the predicted order on the basis of their appearance withthe same verb This analysis offers a strong test of the predictions becauseit provides evidence for the developmental progression within each verbtype However it only takes into account the first appearance of aconstruction regardless of how many times it is produced and so pays noattention to the relative productivity of the constructions Moreover thenumber of verb types for which children produce two or more relevantconstructions with the same verb is limited because they do not producethose constructions with every verb For example to support Prediction children need to produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF or Subj +aux + PP after producing Subj + Pres with the same verb and to supportPrediction they must produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF orSubj + aux + PP after mod + INF or aux + PP again with the same verbsHowever all these constructions may have appeared in the childrenrsquosspeech with only a subset of their verbs or they may have appeared in thesimpler and the more elaborate constructions with different verbs atdifferent ages

So to establish further support for our predictions we did a secondanalysis that took into account not only the first appearance but also the

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 4: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

or asseoir aswɑʁ lsquoINF to sitrsquo and assis asi lsquoPP seatedsatrsquo Homophonousforms do occur in a few class- verbs but the homophony concerns differentmodes eg the past participle (fait) the singular present indicative (faisfait) and the imperative singular (fais) of faire lsquoto dorsquo are all pronouncedfe

On the edges

According to Slobin ( ) children rely on general lsquooperatingprinciplesrsquo in acquiring a first language Data from typologically diverselanguages show that they pay attention early on to variations on both theleft and right edges of words Children also appear to keep together aschunks units that frequently co-occur and store them as such in memory ndash

for example articles or demonstratives with nouns pronouns auxiliariesand inflections with verbsTo acquire contrasting verb meanings French-speaking children must

attend both to different forms within a verb eg the Pres form sot sautelsquojump(s)rsquo versus the INFPP sote lsquoto jumpjumpedrsquo and to the specificgrammatical morphemes appearing in verb constructions as in il saute lsquohejumpsrsquo with a clitic subject pronoun preceding a Pres form or veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo with a modal (mod) preceding an INF form In the caseof homophonous forms (eg sotefor INF sauter and PP sauteacute) only thegrammatical morphemes on the left edge disambiguate the two formsChildrenrsquos early use of fillers (short unaccented front or nasal vowels) justbefore nouns and verbs shows that they already attend to the left edge ofwords (Veneziano amp Sinclair Veneziano ) In French childrenhear a variety of grammatical morphemes adjacent to the left edge ofverbs clitic pronouns (eg je saute lsquoI jumprsquo elle saute (lsquoshe jumpsrsquo)modals (peux sauter lsquocan jumprsquo veux sauter lsquowant to jumprsquo) prepositions(pour sauter lsquoin order to jumprsquo) and auxiliaries (a sauteacute lsquohas jumpedrsquo) Inthis paper we focus on how children build larger verb constructions asthey add grammatical morphemes to the left edge of verbs (see Klein) and specify our predictions about early acquisition on the left edgesof verbs in French on the basis of what we call the Adjacency Hypothesis

The Adjacency Hypothesis takes into account the fact that there isextensive variation in the grammatical morphemes that can be added tothe left edge of French verbs These morphemes are the ones childrenhear most often in the forms addressed to them by adults (see egVeneziano amp Parisse Aringgren amp van de Weijer see also deVilliers Naigles amp Hoff-Ginsberg Ellis amp Sagarra Ashkenazi ) At the same time of course children also attendto right edge variations in the forms of verbs Indeed it is only once theycan produce two forms of a verb that differ on the right edge (eg saute

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sauteacute lsquojump-PPrsquo or vient lsquocomesrsquo vs venu lsquocome-PPrsquo) that theystart adding elements on the left as they elaborate their verb constructions (eg Veneziano amp Sinclair )

The Adjacency Hypothesis predictions

The hypothesis here is that in French children build their initial verbconstructions by adding grammatical morphemes to the left edge of coreverb forms starting with the most adjacent element This hypothesismakes three specific predictionsPrediction Children add clitic subject pronouns to present tense verb

forms before they produce subject pronouns in INF and PP constructionsThis is because for present tense forms the subject clitics on the left edgeof the verb as in il saute lsquohe jumpsrsquo or je cours lsquoI runrsquo are immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of saute and cours respectively Although thelinguistic status of clitic pronouns as subjects is a matter of some debate(eg Miller amp Monachesi Culbertson amp Legendre ) noticethat clitic pronouns cannot stand on their own but act like boundmorphemes with respect to the verb

With infinitives INF and past participles PP though it is not thesubject but the modal (mod) or the auxiliary (aux) that is immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of the verb Children will therefore add adjacentmodals or auxiliaries first to INF and PP forms respectively and onlylater add clitic subjects adjacent to those morphemes So clitic subjects likeje the first person singular (Psg) will appear in Pres constructions beforethey appear in INF constructions like je veux sauter lsquoI want to jumprsquo jepeux courir lsquoI can runrsquo or in PP constructions like il a sauteacute lsquohe jumpedrsquoor il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo We summarize this prediction in ()

a Subj + Pres appears before Subj +mod + INFb Subj + Pres appears before Subj + aux + PP

Prediction follows directly from Prediction Children will produce mod +INF constructions (where the modal is immediately adjacent on the left)before they add a Subj in the form of a clitic pronoun or a lexical nounphrase now in turn adjacent to the modal on the left (eg veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo before il veut sauter lsquohe wants to jumprsquo) they will do thesame with aux + PP constructions producing these combinations beforethey add any subjects again adjacent to the auxiliaries on the left (eg acouru lsquohas run ranrsquo before il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo) This prediction issummarized in ()

a mod + INF before Subj +mod + INFb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Prediction This prediction concerns the addition of modal and auxiliaryforms adjacent to the left edge of INF and PP forms Children will firstproduce bare INFPP forms (indeterminate in Class- verbs because oftheir homophony but unambiguous in class- verbs because of theirdistinct forms) before they add the appropriate morphemes to the leftedge of the verb a modal or some other morpheme appropriate to INFuses (eg mod + INF prep + INF) on the one hand and an auxiliaryverb or the negative particle pas appropriate to PP uses on the other

For class- verbs the homophonous INFPP form precedes thedifferentiated INF and PP constructions (eg sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquobefore veu(xt) sauter (INF) lsquowant(s) to jumprsquo or sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo before a sauteacute lsquoPP has jumpedrsquo For class- verbs theunambiguous bare INF and PP forms precede the constructions with anadjacent mod or prep added to INF on the one hand (eg courir lsquoto runrsquobefore peu(xt) courir lsquocan runrsquo) and with an adjacent aux added to PPon the other (eg mis lsquoPP putrsquo before a mis lsquohas putrsquo) This is summarizedin () below

class INFPP or class INF and PP before mod + INF and aux + PP

To test these predictions for each child we trace both the first appearanceof the relevant constructions for individual verb types and their frequency ofoccurrence in each childrsquos overall production The initial analysis ofindividual VERB TYPES allows us to test whether children produce theconstructions in the predicted order on the basis of their appearance withthe same verb This analysis offers a strong test of the predictions becauseit provides evidence for the developmental progression within each verbtype However it only takes into account the first appearance of aconstruction regardless of how many times it is produced and so pays noattention to the relative productivity of the constructions Moreover thenumber of verb types for which children produce two or more relevantconstructions with the same verb is limited because they do not producethose constructions with every verb For example to support Prediction children need to produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF or Subj +aux + PP after producing Subj + Pres with the same verb and to supportPrediction they must produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF orSubj + aux + PP after mod + INF or aux + PP again with the same verbsHowever all these constructions may have appeared in the childrenrsquosspeech with only a subset of their verbs or they may have appeared in thesimpler and the more elaborate constructions with different verbs atdifferent ages

So to establish further support for our predictions we did a secondanalysis that took into account not only the first appearance but also the

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

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cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 5: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sauteacute lsquojump-PPrsquo or vient lsquocomesrsquo vs venu lsquocome-PPrsquo) that theystart adding elements on the left as they elaborate their verb constructions (eg Veneziano amp Sinclair )

The Adjacency Hypothesis predictions

The hypothesis here is that in French children build their initial verbconstructions by adding grammatical morphemes to the left edge of coreverb forms starting with the most adjacent element This hypothesismakes three specific predictionsPrediction Children add clitic subject pronouns to present tense verb

forms before they produce subject pronouns in INF and PP constructionsThis is because for present tense forms the subject clitics on the left edgeof the verb as in il saute lsquohe jumpsrsquo or je cours lsquoI runrsquo are immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of saute and cours respectively Although thelinguistic status of clitic pronouns as subjects is a matter of some debate(eg Miller amp Monachesi Culbertson amp Legendre ) noticethat clitic pronouns cannot stand on their own but act like boundmorphemes with respect to the verb

With infinitives INF and past participles PP though it is not thesubject but the modal (mod) or the auxiliary (aux) that is immediatelyadjacent to the left edge of the verb Children will therefore add adjacentmodals or auxiliaries first to INF and PP forms respectively and onlylater add clitic subjects adjacent to those morphemes So clitic subjects likeje the first person singular (Psg) will appear in Pres constructions beforethey appear in INF constructions like je veux sauter lsquoI want to jumprsquo jepeux courir lsquoI can runrsquo or in PP constructions like il a sauteacute lsquohe jumpedrsquoor il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo We summarize this prediction in ()

a Subj + Pres appears before Subj +mod + INFb Subj + Pres appears before Subj + aux + PP

Prediction follows directly from Prediction Children will produce mod +INF constructions (where the modal is immediately adjacent on the left)before they add a Subj in the form of a clitic pronoun or a lexical nounphrase now in turn adjacent to the modal on the left (eg veut sauterlsquowants to jumprsquo before il veut sauter lsquohe wants to jumprsquo) they will do thesame with aux + PP constructions producing these combinations beforethey add any subjects again adjacent to the auxiliaries on the left (eg acouru lsquohas run ranrsquo before il a couru lsquohe ranrsquo) This prediction issummarized in ()

a mod + INF before Subj +mod + INFb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction This prediction concerns the addition of modal and auxiliaryforms adjacent to the left edge of INF and PP forms Children will firstproduce bare INFPP forms (indeterminate in Class- verbs because oftheir homophony but unambiguous in class- verbs because of theirdistinct forms) before they add the appropriate morphemes to the leftedge of the verb a modal or some other morpheme appropriate to INFuses (eg mod + INF prep + INF) on the one hand and an auxiliaryverb or the negative particle pas appropriate to PP uses on the other

For class- verbs the homophonous INFPP form precedes thedifferentiated INF and PP constructions (eg sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquobefore veu(xt) sauter (INF) lsquowant(s) to jumprsquo or sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo before a sauteacute lsquoPP has jumpedrsquo For class- verbs theunambiguous bare INF and PP forms precede the constructions with anadjacent mod or prep added to INF on the one hand (eg courir lsquoto runrsquobefore peu(xt) courir lsquocan runrsquo) and with an adjacent aux added to PPon the other (eg mis lsquoPP putrsquo before a mis lsquohas putrsquo) This is summarizedin () below

class INFPP or class INF and PP before mod + INF and aux + PP

To test these predictions for each child we trace both the first appearanceof the relevant constructions for individual verb types and their frequency ofoccurrence in each childrsquos overall production The initial analysis ofindividual VERB TYPES allows us to test whether children produce theconstructions in the predicted order on the basis of their appearance withthe same verb This analysis offers a strong test of the predictions becauseit provides evidence for the developmental progression within each verbtype However it only takes into account the first appearance of aconstruction regardless of how many times it is produced and so pays noattention to the relative productivity of the constructions Moreover thenumber of verb types for which children produce two or more relevantconstructions with the same verb is limited because they do not producethose constructions with every verb For example to support Prediction children need to produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF or Subj +aux + PP after producing Subj + Pres with the same verb and to supportPrediction they must produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF orSubj + aux + PP after mod + INF or aux + PP again with the same verbsHowever all these constructions may have appeared in the childrenrsquosspeech with only a subset of their verbs or they may have appeared in thesimpler and the more elaborate constructions with different verbs atdifferent ages

So to establish further support for our predictions we did a secondanalysis that took into account not only the first appearance but also the

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 6: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Prediction This prediction concerns the addition of modal and auxiliaryforms adjacent to the left edge of INF and PP forms Children will firstproduce bare INFPP forms (indeterminate in Class- verbs because oftheir homophony but unambiguous in class- verbs because of theirdistinct forms) before they add the appropriate morphemes to the leftedge of the verb a modal or some other morpheme appropriate to INFuses (eg mod + INF prep + INF) on the one hand and an auxiliaryverb or the negative particle pas appropriate to PP uses on the other

For class- verbs the homophonous INFPP form precedes thedifferentiated INF and PP constructions (eg sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquobefore veu(xt) sauter (INF) lsquowant(s) to jumprsquo or sote lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo before a sauteacute lsquoPP has jumpedrsquo For class- verbs theunambiguous bare INF and PP forms precede the constructions with anadjacent mod or prep added to INF on the one hand (eg courir lsquoto runrsquobefore peu(xt) courir lsquocan runrsquo) and with an adjacent aux added to PPon the other (eg mis lsquoPP putrsquo before a mis lsquohas putrsquo) This is summarizedin () below

class INFPP or class INF and PP before mod + INF and aux + PP

To test these predictions for each child we trace both the first appearanceof the relevant constructions for individual verb types and their frequency ofoccurrence in each childrsquos overall production The initial analysis ofindividual VERB TYPES allows us to test whether children produce theconstructions in the predicted order on the basis of their appearance withthe same verb This analysis offers a strong test of the predictions becauseit provides evidence for the developmental progression within each verbtype However it only takes into account the first appearance of aconstruction regardless of how many times it is produced and so pays noattention to the relative productivity of the constructions Moreover thenumber of verb types for which children produce two or more relevantconstructions with the same verb is limited because they do not producethose constructions with every verb For example to support Prediction children need to produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF or Subj +aux + PP after producing Subj + Pres with the same verb and to supportPrediction they must produce the more elaborate Subj +mod + INF orSubj + aux + PP after mod + INF or aux + PP again with the same verbsHowever all these constructions may have appeared in the childrenrsquosspeech with only a subset of their verbs or they may have appeared in thesimpler and the more elaborate constructions with different verbs atdifferent ages

So to establish further support for our predictions we did a secondanalysis that took into account not only the first appearance but also the

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 7: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

FREQUENCY of the relevant constructions for all the childrenrsquos verbsAlthough our predictions focus on the order of appearance of therelevant constructions it is also important to assess how frequently eachconstruction is produced over time Indeed appearance alone doesnrsquotnecessarily attest to mastery of a construction Children may requiresome time before coming to use a new construction frequently orextending it to a variety of verbs Tracking the frequencies ofconstructions regardless of the verbs used adds another piece ofevidence in support of the order of acquisition Here we assume that forconstructions that have been mastered children will use them morefrequently (and presumably with a variety of verbs) than constructionsthat are just beginning to emerge By analyzing both THE APPEARANCE OF

CONSTRUCTIONS WITHIN VERB TYPES and their FREQUENCY OVER TIME wecan also be more confident that complete absence or sporadic use of aconstruction throughout the studies indicates that the construction hasnrsquotyet been acquired

These two analyses together capture the actual acquisition profile of theconstructions targeted here and at the same time mitigate the samplingproblems inherent to much longitudinal research (Tomasello amp Stahl Rowland amp Fletcher ) on the assumption that constructionsmastered earlier will be more frequent and apply to more verbs thanconstructions that are mastered later

Finally to test the general hypothesis that children start with elementsadjacent to the left edge of core verbs and add more and moregrammatical elements in an orderly fashion we also looked at which singleelements were added first on the left edge of verbs ndash are they elements thatcould occupy that position in the adult language ndash and at thedevelopmental progression in the NUMBER OF ELEMENTS added to the leftedge of the verb ndash from zero up to three or more ndash as the children producean increasing number and variety of verb constructions

METHOD

Participants

Our data come from longitudinal video-recordings of four motherndashchilddyads two boys (Arno and Gael) and two girls (Camille and Anaeuml) Threechildren Arno Camille and Gael lived in Geneva Switzerland and oneAnaeuml near Paris France Gael was an only child Arno and Camille weresecond-born and Anaeuml was the youngest in a family of three All fourfamilies were middle-class and spoke only French at home The variety ofFrench spoken did not differ in any way relevant to the predictions madeThe age periods covered in this study were for Camille to for

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 8: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Gael to for Anaeuml to and for Arno to The startingages were chosen to capture childrenrsquos earliest uses of verbs

Data collection and transcription

Audio- and video-recordings were made for about one hour every two weeksfor Arno Camille and Gael and for one hour once a month for Anaeuml Allthe recordings were made in the childrsquos home during everyday interactionswith the mother and occasionally the father a sibling or the observersFilming was done with a shoulder-held camera to follow the childSessions included spontaneous free play (eg block construction gameroutines puzzles manipulating objects etc) book reading symbolic playand sometimes a snack

For the Genevan children (Arno Camille and Gael) two observers (thefirst author and a collaborator) were present taking turns at filming andtaking notes The note-taker sat out of the way of the activities with agenerally friendly non-intrusive attitude only responding when addressedby the child The observers also made an audio-recording from the timethey rang the doorbell until they left the house For the Parisian childthere was just one observer present who did the filming while interactingat times with the child

All the sessions were transcribed and then checked by at least two othertranscribers Disagreements were resolved during repeated joint listeningand viewing of the tapes For the Genevan children transcriberssometimes drew on the audio-tapes and hand-written notes All the datahere were listened to and rechecked by the first author The childrenrsquosspeech was transcribed in SAMPA (a computer-readable phonetic scriptusing ASCII characters developed in the ESPRIT Project in the lates) Specific child utterances cited in this paper are given in IPA orfor standard adult-like pronunciations along with adult speech in Frenchorthography The transcripts were formatted in CHAT and linked to thevideos using CLAN tools (available in the CHILDES archiveMacWhinney ) This linkage made it easier to inspect and check theoriginal recordings together with the non-verbal context during thecoding of each child utterance

Coding

We coded all occurrences of child verb uses for tense and mood (eg presentindicative imperative infinitive past participle imperfect or future) withmultiple coding for homophonous forms For example the child formkaʃe produced as a bare form was coded as INFPP since it could beeither an infinitive cacher lsquoto hidersquo or a past participle cacheacute lsquohiddenrsquoBut if the child form was akaʃe (aas cacheacute lsquohavehas hiddenrsquo) we coded

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 9: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

it as aux + PP similarly fokaʃe (faut cacher lsquoneed to hidersquo) was coded asmod + INF We also coded any other elements produced adjacent to theleft edge of the verb form ndash filler clitic pronoun (subject or object) modalauxiliary preposition negative particle adverb and any combinations ofsuch elements Finally since children began by using only one form foreach verb produced we noted the session in which each child began toproduce two contrasting forms for the same verb type (see Table ) It wasaround or after this point that they began to add elements recognizable asgrammatical morphemes to the left edge of core verb forms

Data

The four children produced a total of lexical verb tokens ( types) ofwhich tokens ( types) were from class- verbs tokens ( types)from class- verbs and tokens ( types) from class- verbs Avoirlsquoto haversquo and ecirctre lsquoto bersquo were coded only for auxiliary status and themodals devoir lsquomustrsquo falloir lsquoto have torsquo and pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo werecoded only for modal status Table presents the total number of tokensand types analyzed for each child by verb class

RESULTS

Overview MLU-V verb forms and first verb constructions

Could childrenrsquos increasingly complex verb constructions in French simplybe the result of increasing utterance length In order to relate changes inchildrenrsquos emerging verb constructions to their capacity for combiningwords for each child we computed the mean length of utterance in words(see Hickey Parker amp Brorson ) on the first utterancescontaining a verb (where available) in each session (MLU-V) Sinceproduction of two forms for the same verb type is crucial for testing ourpredictions we noted the session in which each child first produced twocontrasting forms for one or more verbs (eg both Pres saute lsquojumprsquo and

TABLE Total number of Verbs analyzed by child and verb class

Arno ndash Camille ndash Gael ndash Anaeuml ndash

Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens Types Tokens

Class-

Class-

Class-

Total

NOTE Because the four children produced very few or no class- verbs these verbs wereomitted from our analyses

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 10: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

INFPP sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo) shown with a bold-faceMLU value and we used superscript and to note the constructionswith first clitic subjects first modals and first auxiliary verbs respectivelyThese data are shown in Table

The emergence of word combinations is marked by an MLU value greaterthan If we consider the values in Table we see that before the childrenbegan to add their first grammatical elements (clitic subject pronouns modand aux) to their verb forms (superscripted sessions) at least three of thefour children already produced multiword utterances combining two andsometimes two words with an additional filler or three words

() Camille a afatilde orsquobe enfant(s) tombeacute(s) lsquochild(ren) fallen downrsquo [indicating the

children at the end of a slide in a picture-book]b ədai vy [filler ə]doigt(s) vu lsquoseen [filler ə]finger(s)rsquo [showing the

finger introduced into a little box]() Gael

a sa agʁy ccedila [filler a]grue lsquothis (is) [filler a]cranersquo [pointing at thepicture of a crane in a picture-book]

b sapʁ gaεl ccedila prend Gael lsquothis Gael takesrsquo

TABLE Mean length of utterances (in words) for up to fifty utterancescontaining verbs by age and child dagger

Age Arno Camille Gaeumll Anaeuml

(no verbs) middot middot (only verbs) middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot middot middot middot

middot middot middot ndashndash middot ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot ndashndash ndashndash middot middot middot ndashndash middot middot

middot middot middot

NOTES Fillers were counted as half-words (van Dijk amp van Geert Belikova KupischOumlzccedilelik amp Sadlier-Brown ) dagger Bold-face numbers mark the session at which the childbegan to produce two forms for at least one verb type= first production of Subj + Pres= first production of mod + INF= first production of aux + PP

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 11: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

() Anae a kobebe encore beacutebeacute lsquomore babyrsquob metamɑ mets ta main lsquoput your handrsquo

In short the elements children add to build their verb constructions bothwithin and across constituents cannot be accounted for solely in terms oftheir growing ability to produce longer utterances during the periodstudied As we will show childrenrsquos addition of grammatical elements toverbs goes beyond the ability to combine elements within a single prosodicunit Rather it represents a development specific to the acquisition of verbconstructions and of the first grammatical morphemes found there

Adjacency on the left edge order of appearance of constructions withindividual verb types

To test our predictions about the developmental sequence in which childrenrsquosverb constructions appear in production we first looked at each verb type thatchildren used in at least two different sessions For those verbs we looked atwhether they occurred in two (or more) different constructions relevant to thepredictions and whether the order of appearance of the constructionscomplied with or violated the order predicted This naturally limited thenumber of verb types we could consider for this analysis

To count as support for a specific prediction a child had to have producedfor a given verb type each of the constructions relevant for that predictionin the predicted temporal order (eg Subj + Pres earlier than Subj +mod +INF) The appearance of the relevant forms in reverse order counted againstthe prediction and appearance of both forms in the same session neithersupported nor disconfirmed a prediction Given these criteria for Arno wecould draw on verb types for Camille types for Anaeuml types andfor Gaeumll types We evaluated the adjacency predictions against all thesupporting and disconfirming cases

Coding for the individual verb-type uses was done independently by thetwo authors with any cases of disagreement resolved by discussionOverall agreement between the coders for Arnorsquos data was ForPrediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) for Prediction coder agreement was (Cohenrsquos κ= middot) and for Prediction coderagreement was (Cohenrsquos κ = middot) For the other three children thetwo coders were in agreement of the time

Sequence of development within individual verbs Arno

The evidence for (and against) each prediction for Arno is presented inTable Since we are testing directional predictions we report one-tailedp-values

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 12: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the top panelof Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria here cases out of supported the prediction that Subj + Pres appeared before Subj +mod +INF or before Subj + aux + PP or both Only case went against thisprediction The difference between supporting and disconfirming caseswas tested against the null hypothesis of no difference in developmentalordering (p lt middot Sign Test one-tailed) If we consider the twoconstructions separately cases tested the prediction of Subj + Presbefore Subj + aux + PP with supporting it and against (p = middot SignTest one-tailed) and cases tested it for Subj + Pres before Subj + aux +PP with all supporting the prediction (p = middot Sign Test one tailed)These findings offer strong support for Prediction Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the middle

panel of Table For the verb types that satisfied the criteria casessupported the prediction that for a given verb type mod + INF appearsbefore Subj +mod + INF aux + PP appears before Subj + aux + PP orboth with cases against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed ns) (All fourchildren generally produced clitic pronouns as subjects only rarely didthey produce lexical noun phrase subjects) When the two constructionsare considered separately cases supported the prediction that mod +INF appears before Subj +mod + INF and cases were against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed ns) while for aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP cases supported the order predicted and did not (p = middot Sign Testone-tailed ns) At the same time it is worth noting that this predictionwould have received much stronger support if we took into account severaladditional verb types where the constructions predicted to appear earlierwere attested throughout the recording sessions but the constructionspredicted to appear later did not occur at all in the sessions analyzed forthe present study The number of supporting cases would then have been for and against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed)

Prediction The data relevant to Prediction are shown in the bottompanel of Table To test this prediction we examined whether Arnoproduced undifferentiated INFPP forms of class- verbs or INF and PP

TABLE Predictions and tested for Arnorsquos verb type uses

Prediction Supporting Against p

Pa Subj + PRES before Subj +mod + INF lt middotPb Subj + PRES before Subj + aux + PP lt middot

Pa mod + INF before Subj +mod + INF = middotPb aux + PP before Subj + aux + PP = middot

Pa INFPP (INF) before mod + INF lt middotPb INFPP (PP) before aux + PP lt middot

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 13: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

forms of class- verbs before constructions with INF and PP preceded by theappropriate grammatical morphemes for instance modals or prepositions withINF (mod+ INF or prep + INF) and auxiliaries with PP (aux + PP) Notethat with class- verbs addition of these grammatical morphemestransforms undifferentiated INFPP forms into distinct INF and PP formsAs Table shows of the verbs satisfying the criteria cases supportedthe prediction with against (p= middot Sign Test one-tailed) If weconsider the development of INF and PP separately there were casessupporting the order of undifferentiated class- INFPP forms or class-INF forms before mod + INF or prep + INF with cases against (p= middotSign Test one-tailed) and cases supporting the order of class- INFPPor class- PP before aux + PP and only case against (p= middot Sign Testone-tailed) These results offer strong support for Prediction

Sequence of development within verb types Camille Anaeuml and Gael

For the other three children the number of verb types that satisfied thecriteria for testing the predictions yielded only small numbers mainlybecause the children were developmentally younger than Arno Prediction could be tested on only cases with supporting the appearance ofSubj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP or both and

case against (top panel Table ) Again if we take into account all thecases where Subj + Pres constructions were attested consistently sessionafter session throughout the recordings and the constructions predictedto occur later that didnrsquot appear at all in the study there would have been supporting cases and against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction only two verb types met the criteria and both supported

the hypothesis (middle panel Table ) If we were to take into account thosecases where mod + INF or aux + PP constructions were attested but theirmore complex counterparts with an added Subj were absent throughoutthe study there were additional verb types in support for a total of in support and none against (p = middot Sign Test one-tailed)For Prediction for the verb types that met the criteria cases

supported the prediction that INFPP or bare INF and PP forms appearbefore mod + INF or aux + PP (bottom panel Table ) with only casesagainst (pltlt Sign Test one-tailed) Both Camille ( for against)and Anaeuml ( for against) provided significant individual support forthis prediction (ps = middot and respectively Sign Tests one-tailed)Although the number of cases from each child was sometimes too smallfor statistical analysis the general pattern was consistent with the findingsfrom Arno shown in Table

In summary the results from Arno offer robust support for the predictionsof the Adjacency Hypothesis This was particularly the case for Prediction

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 14: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

(clitic Subjects the dominant subject-type the children produced initiallyappear only in constructions with Pres verb forms) and Prediction

(undifferentiated (homophonous) class- INFPP and class- INF and PPforms appear before children add modals in mod + INF constructions orauxiliaries in aux + PP constructions) For Prediction the results go in theright direction in that the simpler constructions (mod + INF aux + PP)appear before the more complex ones (Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP)

The data from Camille Gael and Anaeuml were consistent with thesefindings Together the four children provide cases in support ofPrediction (with against) cases in support of Prediction (with

against) and cases in support of Prediction (with against)However for the shorter studies of these three children for Prediction the more complex structure could be observed only for a few verbsIndeed for several verbs they produced only the simpler constructionsand never produced the more complex ones during the study Thissuggests that the more complex constructions must be a later acquisition

Adjacency on the left edge development in the frequency of verb constructions

To cast further light on the developmental sequence predicted for childrenrsquosverb constructions we next analyzed all the tokens of verb constructionsrelevant to the three adjacency predictions This analysis took into accountnot only first appearances but also the relative frequencies of theconstructions for all the verbs the children produced As we noted earlierfirst appearance alone is not sufficient evidence that the construction hasbeen acquired Changes in the frequency of use provide this evidence on

TABLE Predictions and tested for Camille Gael and Anaeumlrsquos verb typeuses

Prediction Supporting Against

P Subj + Pres before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

P mod + INFaux + PP before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj +aux + PP

Camille

Gael

Anaeuml

P INFPP before mod + INF andor aux + PPCamille

Gael

Anaeuml

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 15: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

the grounds that constructions appearing frequently earlier in developmentare better established than constructions appearing later or only sporadically

Prediction The overall data relevant to Prediction (that Subj + Preswill appear before Subj +mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP) are shownin Table for Arno and then in Tables a b and c for Camille Gaeland Anaeuml respectively

Arno produced his first Subj + Pres at but it was not until that theconstruction was used more widely ( instances) (see examples in () below)In the following session at he produced his first Subj +mod + INF andhis first Subj + aux + PP constructions (see examples in () below) In thesession that followed he considerably increased his use of Subj + Presconstructions these remained at about that level of frequency for the rest ofthe study Only two months later he began to produce Subj +mod + INFand Subj + aux + PP constructions more frequently (see Table )

() Subj + Pres from Arnoa je bois lsquoI drinkrsquo [before pretending to drink water from an empty toy

cup]b on tourne lagrave lsquowe turn therersquo [just before turning the page of a

picture-book with his mother]c il joue le beacutebeacute lsquohe plays the babyrsquo [indicating a baby pictured in a

picture-book]() Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP from Arno

a tu peux mettre ccedila lagrave lsquoyou can put that therersquo [handing a toy spoon tohis mother]

b jrsquoai fait ccedila moi lsquoI did that mersquo [showing a finished puzzle to theobserver]

In summary analysis of Arnorsquos frequencies of use for the relevantconstructions supports the developmental sequence predicted Comparedto the appearance of each construction within individual verb types (cfTable ) it reveals two additional facts about development (i) Arnoproduced Pres INF and PP forms for some months before his elaboratedconstructions appeared and (ii) the two more complex constructionsappeared AFTER the simpler one (Subj + Pres) had become more frequentand then with the appearance of the more complex constructions thesimpler one became even more widely used and seemed to be fullyconsolidated in Arnorsquos repertoireThe data for Camille are given in Table a Her first Subj + Pres appeared

at with an increase in frequency from on the age at which she alsoproduced her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions

Gaelrsquos data in Table b show that his first Subj + Pres constructionsappeared at middot In the following session when his uses of Subj + Pres

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 16: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

became more frequent he produced his first Subj + aux + PP constructionsBy the time his recordings ended at he had not produced any additionalSubj + aux + PP constructions (Subj +mod + INF hadnrsquot appeared at allthroughout the study) and his Subj + Pres constructions presented littlefurther increase after

Finally as shown in Table c Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres at and her first Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP constructions betweentwo and four months later For Anaeuml the latter constructions appeared whileher Subj + Pres constructions were still few in number but when she beganusing this construction with greatly increased frequency ( occurrences atage accounting for of her present tense verb forms) she alsobegan to produce Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP more often

In summary for all four children analyses of the frequencies of use for thethree constructions relevant to Prediction support the findings on theappearance of constructions within individual verb types (Tables and )The analysis of all uses of these constructions confirms that the Subj +Pres construction was produced before both Subj +mod + INF and Subj+ aux + PP (Gael produced no instances of Subj +mod + INF and justtwo instances of Subj + aux + PP up through the last session of the studysee Table b) Moreover analysis of the frequencies of use of theseconstructions showed that (i) the earliest construction the childrenproduced (Subj + Pres) first appeared only several months after they hadproduced bare verbs in the present tense and (ii) there was a consistentordering between first appearance and increases in use of the simplerconstruction (Subj + Pres) and the appearance and subsequent uses of themore complex constructions (Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP)

Prediction The frequencies of occurrence for the constructions relevantto Prediction that mod + INF and aux + PP constructions would appearbefore Subj +mod + INF or Subj + aux + PP are shown in Tables and

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PPby age

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

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cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 17: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

The results for Arno in Table show that his mod + INF and Subj +mod+ INF constructions on the one hand and his aux + PP and Subj + aux + PPon the other all appeared in the same session at Developmental changesin the frequencies of these constructions however showed that while mod +INF and aux + PP constructions became more frequent in the followingsession at (when they represented and of the relevant verbforms respectively) and remained at that level of frequency through theend of the study Arnorsquos uses of Subj +mod + INF and Subj + aux + PP

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction Subj + Pres before Subj + mod + INF andor Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE At Gael produced one clitic Subj with an Imperfect verb form counted withPres

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

PRES TOTAL

Subj + PRES

INF TOTAL

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 18: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

increased in frequency only two months later when they accounted fornearly of both his INF and PP verb forms Notice that although theabsolute numbers suggest that Subj +mod + INF constructions are morenumerous than Subj + aux + PP ones their occurrence relative to the INFand PP forms he produced accounts for approximately the same overallpercentage ( and respectively) So although the simplerconstructions and their more complex relatives appeared at the same timein Arnorsquos production and so may appear to offer weaker support for thisprediction the developmental progression and the interplay between thefirst appearance and the sequence in the relative increases in frequency ofthese constructions still offers good support for Prediction

The data for the other three children are given in Tables a b and cCamillersquos uses relevant to Prediction were not very numerous Her aux+ PP constructions were the first to appear at with some Subj + aux +PP constructions at The occurrence of both structures remained atthe same level of use through the end of the study at Although Subj+mod + INF appeared before mod + INF at (at the same sessionwhere Subj + aux + PP appeared) she only produced one instance of thisconstruction In the following session at Camille produced a largenumber of mod + INF constructions but her Subj +mod + INFconstructions remained relatively infrequent ( of her INF verb forms)

Gaelrsquos data are shown in Table b Like Camille Gael also produced onlya few instances of the constructions relevant for this prediction aux + PP wasthe first construction to appear at middot He produced one instance ofmod + INF in his last session and never produced any Subj +mod + INFconstructions

Finally Anaeumlrsquos verb uses are shown in Table c She produced both mod +INF and Subj +mod + INF constructions starting at At herproduction of mod + INF constructions increased in frequency as did her

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF and aux + PP before Subj+ aux + PP by age

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within that same month

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

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wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 19: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Subj +mod + INF constructions but the latter remained less frequent thanmod + INF At she also produced her first aux + PP constructions andonly two months later at did she produce her first Subj + aux + PPconstructions At her Subj + aux + PP constructions increased infrequency and outnumbered aux + PP forms

In summary although in a few cases the simpler and more complexconstructions appeared at the same time in the childrenrsquos speech (and inone case in reverse order) the overall order of appearance and inparticular the pattern of relative increases in frequency of theseconstructions support the developmental sequence predicted here with

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions(all tokens) relevant to Prediction mod + INF before Subj + mod + INF andaux + PP before Subj + aux + PP by age

a Camille

V-form Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

NOTE Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted

b Gael

V-form middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

c Anaeuml

V-form middot middot middot middot middot middot Total

INF TOTAL

mod+ INF

Subj +mod+ INF

PP TOTAL

aux + PP

Subj + aux + PP

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 20: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

the simpler constructions appearing earlier and more frequently than themore complex constructions

Prediction The overall verb data relevant for Prediction ndash that childrenwill produce under-determined class- INFPP forms or bare class- INFand PP forms before adding grammatical elements appropriate to the leftedge of INF and PP forms respectively are shown in Tables and

As shown in Table Arno produced class- INFPP forms and class-bare INF and PP forms from his first session in this study (at ) (seeexamples in () below) He sometimes produced the negative particle pasas in pat bε pas tombertombeacute lsquonot to fall not fallenrsquo but the negativeparticle does not distinguish INF from PP in adult speech (cf adult il fautpas tomber lsquohe mustnrsquot fallrsquo and il est pas tombeacute lsquohe hasnrsquot fallenrsquo) Only at did Arno produce his first constructions combining the appropriatemorphemes with INF or PP forms ndash mainly mod before INF and auxbefore PP ndash or in more complex constructions (mod + neg + INF Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) (see examples in () below) From on heproduced these constructions at a steady rate then from on his moreelaborate constructions containing INF and PP outnumbered his uses ofundifferentiated class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP verb forms

() bare class- INFPP and class- INF and PP forms from Arnoa kaʃe cachercacheacute lsquoto hidehiddenrsquob ako pase encore passerpasseacute lsquomoreagain to pass passedrsquoc doʁmiʁ dormir lsquoto sleeprsquod vy vu lsquoseenrsquo

() mod + INF and aux + PP and more elaborate constructions from Arnoa vəzue veux jouer lsquowant to playrsquob εtotildebe est tombeacute lsquohas fallenrsquoc kεlk amiintɑ quelqursquoun a mis ccedila lsquosomeone has put thisrsquod ipətɒmiʁlɑ il peut dormir lagrave lsquohe can sleep therersquo

TABLE Arno ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant toPrediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INFand aux + PP

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+PP

NOTES Starred columns present the mean tokens of two sessions within the same month X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj + Aux orfiller + Aux

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 21: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

TABLE Camille (a) Gael (b) Anaeuml (c) ndash verb forms and verb constructions (all tokens) relevant to Prediction INFPP (class ) and INF or PP (class ) before mod + INF and aux + PP

a Camille

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

b Gael

V-form middot Total

Under-determined INFPPand bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

c Anaeuml

V-form Total

Under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP

X+ INF

Y+ PP

NOTES Camille produced no verbs at so this session is omitted X=Mod Subj +Mod or filler +Mod or a Preposition Y=Aux Subj+Aux or filler + Aux

EARLY

VERB

CON

STRU

CTION

SIN

FREN

CH

use available at httpsww

wcam

bridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471

Dow

nloaded from httpsw

ww

cambridgeorgcore O

pen University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cam

bridge Core terms of

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 22: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

The comparable data for Camille are shown in Table a She producedunder-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP from on with increasing frequency until Her first INF and PPconstructions appeared at but it was not until (her last session)that they became more frequent in particular her constructions with INFIn this session her constructions with INF and PP outnumbered her bareverb forms

Much the same pattern of use appears for both Gael (Table b) and Anaeuml(Table c) as they moved from producing under-determined class- INFPP and bare class- INF and PP forms to clear instances of INF and PPconstructions Like Arno Gael produced under-determined INFPP andbare INF and PP forms from his first session on He began to producegrammatical elements appropriate to INF at and two weeks later alsodid so for PP (at middot) But he produced only a few INF and PPconstructions so their frequency was low overall and neither constructionever outnumbered his under-determined forms up through his last sessionat age (Table b)As shown in Table c Anaeuml produced under-determined class- INFPP

and bare class- INF and PP forms from on She began to useconstructions appropriate to INF and PP at These more elaborateconstructions became more numerous by with a further increase infrequency in her last session at when her elaborated constructionsoutnumbered her under-determined INFPP and bare INF and PP forms(see Table c)

In summary all four children offer further supporting evidence forPrediction all the children produced under-determined class- INFPPand bare class- INF and PP forms before they added appropriategrammatical morphemes to the left edge of INF and PP respectivelyThese constructions for three of the children showed an increase in useuntil they outnumbered bare class- INFPP or class- INF and PPforms that the children were still producing with some frequency upuntil the final recording sessions

Adjacency on the left edge status of first adjacent elements on the left edge

To provide further support for the Adjacency Hypothesis that children startby adding elements that in adult language appear adjacent to the left edge ofcore verbs we looked at whether the first elements children add couldactually occur in that position in the adult language

Table presents these data for Arno for the three forms under particularscrutiny here Pres INF and PP as well as for all other verbs with a singleelement adjacent on the left Of these elements overall correspond to orcan be traced to grammatical morphemes that can occur adjacent to the left

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 23: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

edge of verbs in the adult language This held for of the single elementsadded to Pres forms of those added to INF and of those added toPP Comparing the actual distribution to one based on equal probabilitybetween admissible and non-admissible additions (p = q= middot) theprobability of finding vs ( vs ) for all verbs issignificantly less than p ltlt (for the normal approximation to thebinomial distribution z = middot) The corresponding value for Pres (vs ) is z= middot pltlt for INF ( vs ) is z = middot p ltlt and for PP ( vs ) is z= middot pltlt In short the first elementsArno placed immediately next to verbs on the left edge correspond toelements that can be traced to grammatical morphemes likely to occur inthat position in the adult language

Adjacency on the left edge filling slots on the left

The Adjacency Hypothesis applied to the left edge predicts that childrenwill produce more complex verb constructions by adding grammaticalelements starting at the left edge of core verbs and building progressivelyoutwards in an ordered way In the preceding analysis we saw that whenArno added one element to bare verb forms this was most likely traceableto a grammatical morpheme that could occur on the left edge of core verbsin the adult language

We therefore next examined the developmental progression in the NUMBER

OF ELEMENTS the children added to the left edge of verbs as they producedtheir first verb constructions Figures to show for each child thepercentage of verbs produced with or or more elements added tothe left with increasing age As the Figures show there is a steady changefor all four children from no element at all for most or all verb uses in thefirst sessions to element and then to or more elements

Single elements added to the left edge included filler syllables (mainly withschwa vowels) and a variety of identifiable morphemes such as clitic subjectslike il lsquohersquo or je lsquoIrsquo in Subj + Pres constructions demonstrative ccedila lsquothisthatrsquomodals like faut lsquomustrsquo or veux lsquowantrsquo in mod + INF constructions and

TABLE Number (in parenthesis) and percentages of single elements thateither can or canrsquot occur adjacent to the left edge of verbs in adult language forArno for all verb tokens and for Pres INF and PP forms separately

Verb form

Added elements that Total N Pres INF PP

can occur () () () ()canrsquot occur () () () ()

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 24: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

auxiliaries in aux + PP constructions as well as fillers adverbs prepositionsnegative particles like pas lsquonotrsquo and prepositions like agrave lsquotorsquo or pour lsquoforrsquo (seethe corresponding examples in () below)

() -element additionsa il saute lsquoheit jumpsrsquo [Camille ]b ccedila tourne lsquothat goes roundrsquo [Gael middot]c pas tobe pas tombertombeacute lsquonot fallfallenrsquo [Arno ]d agrave boire lsquofor drinking (want) to drinkrsquo [Camille ]

Once the children started adding two elements to the left edge of theverb they produced such combinations as mod + neg + INF Subj +mod+ INF aux + neg + PP Subj + aux + PP prep +Obj + INF DisjuncPron+ Subj + Pres and Subj +Obj + Pres (see the corresponding examples in() below)

Fig Arno (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 25: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Fig Camille (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+)elements on the left edge by age

Fig Gael (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 26: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

() -element additionsa peut pas tomber lsquocan not fallrsquo [Arno ]b tu peux mettre ccedila maman lsquoyou can put this mommyrsquo [Arno ]c est pas attacheacute lsquois not fastenedrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoai rameneacute ccedila lsquoI have brought thisrsquo [Arno ]e pour le mettre lsquoin order to put itrsquo [Arno ]f moi jrsquoenfile lsquome I thread [it on]rsquo [Camille ]g on la met lsquowe put it [on]rsquo [Camille ]

With threeormore elements addedon the left edge the constructional possibilitiesbecomebothmorevaried andmore elaboratewith combinations suchasfil +mod+neg+Obj + INF Subj +modfut +Obj + INF Subj +mod+neg+Obj +INF or even Subj + semimod+neg+ prep +Obj + INF and demon + cop +NP +Relativizer + aux + PP (see the corresponding examples in () below)

() - and more-element additionsa efaut pas le prendre lsquo[filler e] should not take itrsquo [Arno ]b je vais le deacutefaire lsquoIrsquom going to undo itrsquo [Arno ]

Fig Anaeuml (ndash) ndash percentage of all verb tokens produced with (+) elementson the left edge by age

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Page 27: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

c on peut pas lrsquoenlever ccedila lsquowe can not take it [off] thisrsquo [Camille ]d jrsquoarrive pas agrave la mettre lsquoI donrsquot manage to put it = I canrsquot put itrsquo

[Arno ]e crsquoest un petit bateau qui est casseacute lsquoitrsquos a little boat that is brokenrsquo

[Arno ]

As shown in Figure in the first two sessions (at and ) most ofArnorsquos verbs were produced as bare forms and only to of themwere preceded by one element At he produced more verbs precededby one element than he did bare forms but he produced no verbspreceded by two or more elements Although he continued to produceboth bare forms and verbs preceded by one element until the end of thisstudy at Arno also started to produce some verbs with two precedingelements ( of his verbs) and a few with three or more elements as well() These multiple-element constructions increased in number in thelast two sessions (at and ) with their proportions rising to and of his verb uses respectively

The data for Camille are given in Figure In the first three sessions from to Camille produced all her verbs as bare forms then at sheadded one element on the left edge of just one verb At the number ofverbs she produced with single elements on the left rose to ( of herverb uses) and continued at about that level until the end of the studyOne month later at she produced her first verbs preceded by twoelements () and at her first constructions with three addedelements Finally at the percentage of multi-elements constructionsstill mainly consisting of two added elements increased to

Figure shows that at (his first session) Gael produced all his verbs asbare forms Constructions with one left edge element appeared at andtheir number as well as their percentage fluctuated until middot whentheir number increased from a mean of middot in earlier sessions to

occurrences here (χ= middot p lt middot) From then on Gael continued toproduce these constructions at the same level and by (his final sessionin this study) they far outnumbered his bare forms At whenone-element additions had become fairly frequent ( occurrences in thatsession) he began to produce his first constructions with two elements() These showed little change through the end of the study at Throughout this whole period Gael produced no constructions with threeor more elements

Finally the data for Anaeuml are shown in Figure In her first session at she produced almost all of her verbs () as bare forms along with just oneverb with one element added on the left Only in the next session at didshe start to produce one-element constructions more frequently (now ofher verb uses) At when her constructions with one element increased

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 28: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

and outnumbered her bare forms ( occurrences of her verb uses) shealso produced her first verb constructions with two elements on the left (occurrences ) In the next session (at ) she produced her firstconstruction with three elements At this last session her production ofone-element constructions increased considerably ( occurrences ofher verb uses) and so did her production of constructions with two andwith three or more elements ( and instances respectively) By thistime her bare verb uses accounted for only of all her verb forms

In summary the findings on all four childrenrsquos incremental production ofelements on the left edge of their verbs provides further support for ourproposal that in their first verb constructions children acquiring Frenchbegin by progressively adding elements adjacent to the left edge of coreverbs Just as in the earlier analyses of the overall development in verbconstructions for the number of elements added on the left there is aninterplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrence it is onlywhen simpler constructions have become more frequent and so seem tohave been mastered that children add an additional element to the simplerconstructions and so advance from one to two then to three (andsometimes more) elements added to the left of the core verb

DISCUSSION

Adjacency on the left

The pattern of development in verb constructions for the four childrenstudied here strongly supports the predictions of the AdjacencyHypothesis namely that children initially build verb constructions inFrench by adding adjacent grammatical morphemes incrementally to theleft edge of core verbs The order of acquisition for left-edge elementsholds both for the appearance of different constructions within verb types(Tables and ) and for the subtler picture provided by taking intoaccount the interplay between first appearance and frequency of occurrenceof all verb constructions (Tables to ) That is the order of appearancefor constructions with individual verb types and the frequency ofoccurrence for all relevant constructions for all verbs go hand-in-handwith simpler forms appearing earlier and increasing in number as morecomplex constructions appear

Our longitudinal data show that (i) when children add subjects to verbs(that is elements that are subjects for the adult) they do so at first onlywith Pres forms (ii) with INF and PP forms children add modals orprepositions to build early INF constructions and auxiliaries to build PPconstructions before they add subjects to the left of these constructions(again elements that are modals auxiliaries and subjects for the adult)The analysis of the appearance of a construction within individual verb

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 29: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

types could not establish this trend for the children observed over a shortertime and even for Arno the overt evidence was weaker This was becausethere were only a few verbs for which the children used all the relevantconstructions However indirect evidence for this trend was provided bythe observation that while the children used the simpler constructions forseveral verb types for many of these verbs the more complexconstructions didnrsquot occur at all up to and including the last recordedsession In particular this developmental trend was established by theinterplay between appearance and frequency of occurrence in thedevelopmental analysis of the different constructions across all verbsThe more complex constructions appeared later and were used morefrequently later on than was the case for the simpler constructions Andif they appeared at the same time as in Arnorsquos case the more complexconstructions increased in frequency only after the simpler constructionshad done so (iii) after a period of undifferentiated use of thehomophonous INFPP class- forms and of the distinct bare INF and PPclass- forms children begin to produce the appropriate grammaticalmorphemes that are adjacent to these forms in the adult language ndash mainlymodals and prepositions before INF and auxiliaries before PP It isinteresting to note that the distinct lexical forms of class- INF and PPjust like the undifferentiated class- INFPP forms require a certainamount of time before children add the appropriate elements on their leftedge

The general pattern of adding adjacent elements to the left edge of verbs inverb constructions is also supported by the highly significant results of ouranalysis of all the single elements added to bare verbs by Arno elementstraceable to grammatical morphemes that can occur in that position in theadult language This pattern also shows up in the results of a still moregeneral analysis of all the elements the children added to the left of theirverbs over time (Figures to ) The pattern of development shows thatonce children produce verb constructions with one element they move onto adding two-element constructions and when these in turn becomeestablished they begin on three-element constructions

Overall all these analyses support the Adjacency Hypothesis for left-edgeadditions This pattern of development can be thought of as a series oforderly steps taken as children exhibit growing mastery over theproduction of the grammatical elements specific to each verb constructionIn doing this they start with one element (eg identifiable as Subj + Presmod + INF aux + PP) Once children produce several constructions withone element they start producing constructions with two elements on theleft (eg identifiable as Subj +mod + INF Subj + aux + PP) When theseconstructions with two elements become established children begin toproduce constructions with three and later on with a greater number of

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 30: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

elements Interestingly even in more complex constructions children do notseem to make order errors Rather they seem to track the patterns ofoccurrence for each type of element ndash Subj and Obj clitics negativemodal and auxiliary ndash with respect to the left edge of the core verbwhether this is a Pres INF or PP form Such attention to surface order isconsistent not only with the Adjacency Hypothesis but also with Slobinrsquos() cross-linguistic observations children rarely make order errors intheir production of sequences of grammatical morphemes

Utterance length constituency and verb constructions

When children start to produce verb constructions these constructions donrsquotsimply result from childrenrsquos ability to combine words in their utterances(see Table )

For the three children for whom we have relevant data (Camille Gael andAnaeuml) we see that Camillersquos first Subj + Pres and aux + PP constructionsappeared after she had begun to produce her first -word utterances withmod + INF constructions appearing still later The same pattern held forGael who started producing his first Subj + Pres and aux + PPconstructions three months after his first word combinations his mod +INF constructions appeared another four months later (when his MLU-Vreached middot) Finally Anaeuml produced her first Subj + Pres constructionssome two months after she began to combine words and another twomonths later (when her MLU-V reached middot) she began to produce mod+ INF and aux + PP constructions Increasing utterance length thenprecedes the appearance of these verb constructions Arnorsquos first Subj +Pres constructions occur at the first session analyzed here Inspectionof the previous session (at ) shows a few - and -word combinationslike mwa dəlo moi dans lrsquoeau lsquome in (the) waterrsquo ʃyprεtlɑ suis precircte lagravelsquoam ready therersquo paʃəlɑ = pas ceux-lagrave lsquonot thosersquo Only five months laterdid he start producing aux + PP and mod + INF constructions (when hisMLU-V had increased to middot)

As children elaborate their verb constructions they are not guided byconstituent boundaries either Indeed if the subject noun phrase as aconstituent played a role then the children should have added cliticsubjects or lexical NP as subjects as soon as they started to elaborate theirverb constructions But this was not the case in their first constructionsthe children produced clitic subjects (the favored subject type) only withpresent tense verbs not with any other verb forms That is children buildup verb constructions in French by starting on the left edge of the verbregardless of the constituent status of the element(s) normally found therein adult speech The Adjacency Hypothesis then explains both thepresence of clitic subjects with present tense verbs and their absence with

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 31: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

non-present INF and PP forms It also predicts that children will add modaland auxiliary verbs adjacent on the left of core verbs before they add cliticsubjects to the left of these modals and auxiliaries

When children elaborate their verb constructions by adding an adjacentmorpheme they either add a constituent to produce an utterance withtwo constituents as when they add clitic subjects (in adult language) toPres (eg NPsubj + VP) or they expand a constituent to produce forexample mod + INF or aux + PP both elaborations of VP (see alsoBowerman ) In short in this early period of acquisitiondevelopment seems to favor adding morphemes rather than constituents

Continuity in development

A variety of studies have shown that children set up some representation ofgrammatical morphemes ndash necessary for comprehension ndash before they canproduce them (eg Shipley Smith amp Gleitman Hirsh-Pasek ampGolinkoff Shady amp Gerken Houmlhle amp Weissenborn Soderstrom White Conwell amp Morgan ) In early productionone-year-olds typically omit all grammatical morphemes then producesome filler-syllables before nouns and verbs (eg Peters amp Menn Veneziano amp Sinclair Demuth amp Tremblay ) Some time afterthis their fillers appear to be used as proto-versions of such grammaticalmorphemes as articles (before nouns) and clitic subjects modals orauxiliaries (before verbs) and so provide evidence for continuity in theirlater production of grammatical morphemes

Further evidence for continuity comes from Dyersquos () cross-sectionalstudy of two-year-olds acquiring French She showed that what appearedto be bare verb forms in their speech were in fact not entirely bare Whilethe modals or auxiliaries these children produced were often barelyaudible revealed only with instrumental analysis of the sound files theyshowed that children already had some representation and were attemptingto produce the modal and auxiliary elements that appear there in adultspeech Dye however did not collect any earlier data from these childrenand so made no claims about their development from bare verb forms toearly verb constructions

Moreover childrenrsquos production of bare forms combined with a subjectsometimes proposed as evidence for the so-called lsquooptional infinitiversquo stagein early verb acquisition was rare or entirely absent in Dyersquos data just asin ours One reason for this is probably that while children hear cliticpronouns adjacent to present tense forms they hear no evidence of suchadjacency to the left edge of INF and PP forms Another reason might bethat young children rely on contrast and assume that a difference in formmarks a difference in meaning from the earliest stages in acquisition

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

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of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

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clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 32: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

(Clark ) Indeed contrast in meaning here would preclude anyoptionality in production (see also Dye )

Possible sources for verb constructions

How do children learn verb constructions and their meanings When adultstalk to children they expose them to linguistic constructions in the ambientlanguage they also expose them to the meanings of these structures InFrench both right and left edges are important for contrasts in formonce children have acquired some contrasts on the basis of right-edgevariations (eg Pres vs INFPP or Pres vs INF vs PP) they also beginto attend to the left edge where adult speakers produce differentgrammatical elements and to look for meaningful distinctions correlatedwith specific variations in verb constructions (eg Clark amp de Marneffe) That is childrenrsquos attention to adult speech in context should helpthem identify specific left- and right-edge elements adult usage offersyoung children consistent and detailed information about the functions ofspecific linguistic forms (Clark Diesendruck ampMarkson )

Another source of information about the meanings of grammaticalelements appears in adult reformulations Adults frequently reformulatechild erroneous utterances and children show that they attend to suchrepairs by repeating the repaired word or phrase in a third turn(Veneziano Chouinard amp Clark Clark amp Bernicot Clark amp de Marneffe ) At just the right time attention toadult reformulations might also make specific left- and right-edge elementsmore salient and so help children identify the different meanings ofhomophonous forms as well as the meanings of grammatical elementspresent at the left or right edges of verbs

In identifying the meanings at stake children must attend to the relationbetween the timing of an event and those elements for instance thatdistinguish present from non-present or anticipated from completedevents Clark and de Marneffe () found that when children used anindeterminate class- INFPP verb form PRIOR to the action referred toadults typically reformulated such uses with aller lsquoto be going torsquo ormodals like pouvoir lsquoto be ablersquo or vouloir lsquoto wantrsquo in construction withINF But when children used an indeterminate INFPP AFTER the actionreferred to had already occurred adults reformulated with aux + PPconstructions And children appear sensitive to the meaning differencesconveyed by these verb constructions This shows up early incomprehension in the general association of modal constructions withfuture actions and past tense constructions with completed actions (seeeg Harner Valian see also Jordens )

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 33: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Yet another source of information may be found in features of the Frenchverb system In French class- verbs may help children distinguish themeanings of homophonous class- INFPP forms Class- INF and PPhave distinct forms (with the exception of aller) such that children hearone form for INF (eg mettre lsquoto putrsquo) and another for PP (eg mis lsquoPPputrsquo) The two forms with distinct meanings occurring in different verbconstructions offer a bridge that could help children differentiate the INFand PP meanings carried by a single form in class- verbs Under thisview class- verbs may have a pivotal role in establishing two distinctmeanings for one form in class- verbs by leading children to attend tothe different constructions where class- homophonous forms appear Thisis an issue we plan to explore further

Adjacency and typology

How general is the Adjacency Hypothesis In the present study we focusedon the left edge as the site for a variety of early emerging constructions inFrench The left edge is also primary in prefixing languages wheregrammatical modulations of verb meaning are marked by ordered prefixesadded to the core verb as in Mohawk or Quicheacute Mayan (Mithun Pye ) But few languages rely exclusively on prefixes in Mohawk apolysynthetic language both edges are in use In languages like thesechildren must work on the information added both by prefixes on the leftand suffixes on the right edge of the verb

In contrast in languages where suffixation dominates children must anddo attend to the right edge In Turkish for example they must attend to theright edge almost exclusively as they learn which suffixes are used to markpast progressive negation person and any combination of these elements(Kuumlntay amp Slobin ) When young children learning Turkish begin toproduce verb forms they produce the suffixes in the right order but dothey add adjacent elements in succession on the right edge Maybe notexactly they may start with some unanalyzed chunks early verb formslike koy (IMPERATIVE lsquoputrsquo) or koyma (put +NEG lsquodonrsquot putrsquo) andthen for example add -d- for PAST to the right edge with both forkoy-d-um (lsquoput + PAST+ Psg = lsquoI putrsquo) or koy-ma-d-im (lsquoput +NEG+PAST+ Psg = I didnrsquot putrsquo) Notice that past tense -d- immediatelyfollows the core verb koy- in koy-d-um but follows the negative element-ma- in koy-ma-d-im So Turkish children add adjacent elements on theright edge but they must also attend to the relative ordering of particularmorphemes Establishing just how soon they do this will require analysisverb by verb of fine-grained longitudinal dataChildren acquiring a language like French we have proposed attend to

adjacency on the left edge as they build early verb constructions As we

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 34: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

have seen they first add adjacent elements incrementally to the left of thecore verb But our hypothesis about development holds essentially forearly verb constructions in French At a certain point children must alsolearn about the structure-dependent ordering of morphemes For exampleonce they produce both clitic subjects and clitic objects they must attendto the fact that with present tense forms one says il jette (Subj + Pres lsquohethrowsrsquo) but il le jette (Subj +Obj + Pres lsquohe it throws = he throws itrsquo)with the clitic object between the clitic subject and the verb The sameapplies in past tense forms with il lrsquoa jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + PP lsquohe ithas thrown = he has thrown threw itrsquo) but in INF constructions theclitic object has to go between the modal and the INF as in il veut le jeter(Subj +mod +Obj + INF lsquohe wants it to throw = he wants to throw itrsquo)The addition of a negative morpheme doesnrsquot require reordering withpresent tense verb forms (eg il (ne) jette pas il (ne) le jette pas (lsquohethrows not he it throws not = he doesnrsquot throw he doesnrsquot throw itrsquo) butit does with past tense forms where the negative particle pas has to gobetween the auxiliary and the PP as in il (nrsquo)a pas jeteacute (Subj + aux + neg+ PP lsquohe hasnrsquot thrownrsquo) When also a clitic object is added as in il (ne)lrsquoa pas jeteacute (Subj + Obj + aux + neg + PP lsquohe it has not thrown = he hasnrsquotthrown itrsquo) the aux + neg + PP part of the construction remainsunchanged This contrasts with mod + INF constructions where thenegative particle pas follows the modal but the clitic object follows pasand precedes INF as in je (ne) veux pas le faire (Subj +mod + neg +Obj+ INF lsquoI want not it to do = I donrsquot want to do itrsquo) Note that incolloquial French speakers frequently omit ne and rely mainly on pas Butchildren also hear ne pas from adults and eventually learn how to orderthe morpheme ne as well (after clitic subjects but before clitic objectsbefore modal or auxiliary verbs and so on)

Constructions like these were just beginning to emerge in Arnorsquos data Asin Turkish to produce these still more complex constructions children needto attend to the structure-dependent relative ordering of such morphemes

At the same time children acquiring French also attend to the right edgeof verbs and do so even before they start on the left edge In class- verbsright-edge distinction differentiates the Pres from the INFPP forms sotsaute lsquojump(s)rsquo vs sote sautersauteacute lsquoto jump jumpedrsquo in class- verbsit distinguishes for example the Pres from the INF and the PP me met(s)lsquoput(s)rsquo vs mettre metʁ lsquoto putrsquo vs mis mi lsquoputrsquo Later still Frenchchildren will acquire the imperfect future and conditional tenses allmarked with right-edge inflectionsThe extent to which children attend early on to the left edge and add

adjacent morphemes on the left depends on the typology of the languageand to some degree on how dominant certain forms and constructions arein adult speech Languages also vary in the extent to which modulations

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 35: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

of verb meaning depend on free morphemes or on affixes Most rely more onsuffixes hence right-edge elements than on prefixes (see eg CutlerHawkins amp Gilligan Hupp Sloutsky amp Culicover ) Somelanguages rely on both prefixes and suffixes and as we noted a few favorprefixes Spoken French exhibits some variation on the right edge of theverb for some number and tense distinctions but has only a small numberof contrasting inflectional endings compared to the greater variation on theleft edge where grammatical morphemes commonly mark person andnumber with clitic subject pronouns as well as modality tense negationand direct and indirect clitic objects

The current account leaves several questions outstanding First to whatextent might childrenrsquos first uses of an element on the left edge of a verbreflect uptake of an unanalyzed chunk or formulaic utterance When areearly clitic subjects modals and auxiliaries identified by children asindependent grammatical elements To assess this requires among otherthings detailed analyses of variations in the constructions used inconversational exchanges between adult and child To what extent doesthe frequency of adult uses of specific verb forms and constructions affectthe order of acquisition observed in childrenrsquos speech Here we need toknow more about both absolute and relative frequencies in adult usage(dominant verb uses and verb constructions in adult speech) Does thefrequency of topicalization and dislocation in adult speech affect whichgrammatical morphemes children add first in early verb constructions (seeeg Richards amp Robinson Estigarribia ) The answer here maybe important in considering the development of subjects in childrenrsquosspeech ndash whether clitic pronouns (which ones) strong or disjunctivepronouns (moi je lui il etc) uses of demonstrative ccedila (often used fornon-focused elements introduced into the conversation) or lexical nounphrases (eg Salazar Orvig Marcos Morgenstern Hassan Leber-Marin ampParegraves ) Indeed patterns of adult verb construction uses inconversation with children may account better for childrenrsquos first uses thansimple frequency of verbs in adult speech (Veneziano amp Parisse )The overall nature of adultndashchild conversational exchanges merits furtherexploration as we aim for a more complete account of childrenrsquos acquisitionof verb constructions

CONCLUSION

In summary this detailed longitudinal study of early verb constructionsproduced by four children acquiring French has shown that early onchildren attend to elements on the left edge of verbs Around the time thatthey start producing two forms for certain verb types they also startadding elements to the left edge of core verbs These elements include

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 36: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

clitic subject pronouns and modal and auxiliary verbs But addition of theseelements is highly selective and follows an ordered incremental adjacencyprinciple namely work outwards from the left edge of the core verb Soin elaborating their earliest verb constructions children first add thosegrammatical elements that in adult language appear appropriately on theleft edge of present tenses infinitives and past participles The elementsthey add play a central role in their growing understanding of themeanings and grammatical functions these verb constructions generallycarry in French and in their grasp of the structure-dependent nature ofmorphemes in specific verb constructions

REFERENCES

Aringgren M amp van de Weijer J () Input frequency and the acquisition of subjectndashverbagreement in number in spoken and written French Journal of French Language Studies ndash

Aksu-Koccedil A () The role of input vs universal predispositions in the emergence oftensendashaspect morphology evidence from Turkish First Language ndash

Armon-Lotem S amp Berman R A () The emergence of grammar early verbs andbeyond Journal of Child Language ndash

Ashkenazi O () Inputndashoutput relations in the early acquisition of Hebrew verbsUnpublished PhD dissertation The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of EducationTel Aviv University

Belikova A Kupisch T Oumlzccedilelik Ouml amp Sadlier-Brown E () Fillers as functionalcategories evidence from GermanndashEnglish bilingual acquisition In J CrawfordK Otaki amp Masahiko Takahashi (eds) Proceedings of the rd Conference on GenerativeApproaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA ) ndashSomerville MA Cascadilla Proceedings Project Online ltwwwlingrefcomgt document

Bloom L Lifter K amp Hafitz J () Semantics of verbs and the development of verbinflection in child language Language ndash

Bowerman M () Structural relations in childrenrsquos utterances syntactic or semantic InT E Moore (ed) Cognitive development and the acquisition of language ndashNew York Academic Press

Carstairs-McCarthy A () Current morphology London RoutledgeChouinard M M amp Clark E V () Adult reformulations of child errors as negativeevidence Journal of Child Language ndash

Christensen L () Early verbs in child Swedish ndash a diary study on two boys Nordlund Smaringskrifter fraringn Nordiska spraringk University of Lund

Clark E V () The principle of contrast a constraint on language acquisition InB MacWhinney (ed) Mechanisms of language acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Clark E V () The pragmatics of contrast Journal of Child Language ndashClark E V () The lexicon in acquisition Cambridge Cambridge University PressClark E V amp Bernicot J () Repetition as ratification how parents and children placeinformation in common ground Journal of Child Language ndash

Clark E V amp de Marneffe M-C () Constructing verb paradigms in French adultconstruals and emerging grammatical contrasts Morphology ndash

Culbertson J amp Legendre G () Qursquoen est-il des clitiques sujet en franccedilais oralcontemporain In J Durand B Habert amp B Laks (eds) Actes du er Congregraves Mondialde Linguistique Franccedilaise ndash Paris EDP Sciences

Cutler A Hawkins J A amp Gilligan G () The suffixing preference a processingexplanation Linguistics ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 37: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

Demuth K amp Tremblay A () Prosodically-conditioned variability in childrenrsquosproduction of French determiners Journal of Child Language ndash

de Villiers J G () Learning how to use verbs lexical coding and the influence of theinput Journal of Child Language ndash

Diesendruck G amp Markson L () Childrenrsquos avoidance of lexical overlap a pragmaticaccount Developmental Psychology ndash

van Dijk M amp van Geert P () Disentangling behavior in early child developmentinterpretability of early child language and its effect on utterance length measures InfantBehavior and Development ndash

Dressler W U Kilani-Schoch M Gargarina N Pestal L amp Poumlchtrager M () Onthe typology of inflection class systems Folia Linguistica ndash

Dye C () Reduced auxiliaries in early child language converging observational andexperimental evidence from French Journal of Linguistics ndash

Ellis N C amp Sagarra N () Learned attention in adult language acquisition Studies inSecond Language Acquisition ndash

Estigarribia B () Facilitation by variation right-to-left learning of English yesnoquestions Cognitive Science () ndash

Gathercole V C M Sebastiaacuten E amp Soto P () The early acquisition of Spanish verbalmorphology across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge International Journal ofBilingualism ndash

Goodman J C Dale P S amp Li P () Does frequency count Parental input and theacquisition of vocabulary Journal of Child Language ndash

Grevisse M amp Goosse A () Le Bon Usage Grammaire Franccedilaise th ed BruxellesDe Boeck Duculot

Harner L () Comprehension of past and future reference revisited Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology ndash

Hickey T () Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

Hirsh-Pasek K amp Golinkoff R M () The origins of grammar evidence from earlylanguage comprehension Cambridge MA MIT Press

Houmlhle B amp Weissenborn J () German-learning infantsrsquo ability to detect unstressedclosed-class elements in continuous speech Developmental Science ndash

Hupp J M Sloutsky V M amp Culicover P W () Evidence for a domain-generalmechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language Language and CognitiveProcesses ndash

Jordens P () Finiteness in early child Dutch Linguistics ndashKilani-Schoch M () Early verb development in two French-speaking children Zentrumfuumlr Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Papers in Linguistics ndash

Klein W () The information structure of French In M Krifka amp R Musan (eds) Theexpression of information structure ndash Berlin Mouton

Kuumlntay A amp Slobin D I () Putting interaction back into child language examplesfrom Turkish Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Leeman-Bouix D () Grammaire du Verbe Franccedilais Des Formes aux SensndashndashModesAspects Temps Auxiliaires Paris A Colin

Le Goffic P () Les Formes Conjugueacutees du Verbe Franccedilais Paris OphrysMacWhinney B () The CHILDES Project tools for analyzing talk vols rd edMahwah NJ Erlbaum

Miller P amp Monachesi P () Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes InD Godard (ed) Les Langues Romanes Problegravemes de la Phase Simple ndash ParisCNRS

Mithun M () The acquisition of polysynthesis Journal of Child Language ndashNaigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Input to verb learning evidence for theplausibility of syntactic bootstrapping Developmental Psychology ndash

Naigles L R amp Hoff-Ginsberg E () Why are some verbs learned before other verbsEffects of input frequency and structure on childrenrsquos early verb use Journal of ChildLanguage ndash

EARLY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN FRENCH

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of

Page 38: Early verb constructions in French: adjacency on the left edge · including present tense je saute ‘ Psg-Pres: I jump’, tu sautes ‘ Psg-Pres: you jump’, and ils sautent ‘

New B Pallier C Ferrand L amp Matos R () Une base de donneacutees lexicales dufranccedilais contemporain sur internet LEXIQUE Anneacutee Psychologique ndash

Parker M D amp Brorson K () A comparative study between mean length of utterancein morphemes (MLUm) and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) First Language ndash

Peters A M amp Menn L () False starts and filler-syllables ways to learn grammaticalmorphemes Language ndash

Pizzuto E amp Caselli M C () The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective In Y Levy (ed) Other children other languages issues in the theory oflanguage acquisition ndash Hillsdale NJ Erlbaum

Pye C () Mayan telegraphese intonational units in the development of Quicheacute MayanLanguage ndash

Richards B J amp Robinson W P () Environmental correlates of child copula verbgrowth Journal of Child Language ndash

Rojas-Nieto C () Developing first contrasts in Spanish verb inflection usage andinteraction In I Arnon amp E V Clark (eds) Experience variation and generalizationlearning a first language ndash Amsterdam Benjamins

Rowland C F amp Fletcher S L () The effect of sampling on estimates of lexicalspecificity and error rates Journal of Child Language ndash

Salazar Orvig A Marcos H Morgenstern A Hassan R Leber-Marin J amp Paregraves J() Dialogical factors in toddlersrsquo use of clitic pronouns First Language ndash

Shady M amp Gerken L A () Grammatical and caregiver cues in early sentencecomprehension Journal of Child Language ndash

Shipley E F Smith C S amp Gleitman L R () A study in the acquisition of languagefree responses to commands Language ndash

Slobin D I () Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar In CA Ferguson amp D I Slobin (eds) Studies of child language development ndashNew York Holt Rinehart amp Winston

Slobin D I () Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity In D I Slobin(ed) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition vol ndash Hillsdale NJLawrence Erlbaum

Soderstrom M White K S Conwell E amp Morgan J L () Receptivegrammatical knowledge of familiar content words and inflection in -month-oldsInfancy ndash

Tomasello M () First verbs a case study of early grammatical development CambridgeCambridge University Press

Tomasello M amp Stahl D () Sampling childrenrsquos spontaneous speech How much isenough Journal of Child Language ndash

Valian V () Young childrenrsquos understanding of present and past tense LanguageLearning and Development ndash

Veneziano E () Vocalndashverbal interaction and the construction of early lexicalknowledge In M D Smith amp J L Locke (eds) The emergent lexicon the childrsquosdevelopment of a linguistic vocabulary ndash New York Academic Press

Veneziano E () Early lexical morphological and syntactic development in French somecomplex relations International Journal of Bilingualism ndash

Veneziano E () The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition ofFrench Psychology of Language and Communication ndash

Veneziano E () Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisitionwhen both caregivers and children matter In B Bokus (ed) Studies in the psychology ofchild language essays in honor of Grace Wales Shugar ndash Warsaw Matrix

Veneziano E amp Parisse C () The acquisition of early verbs in French assessing the roleof conversation and of child-directed input First Language ndash

Veneziano E amp Sinclair H () The changing status of lsquofiller syllablesrsquo on the way togrammatical morphemes Journal of Child Language ndash

Veneziano E Sinclair H amp Berthoud I () From one word to two words repetitionpatterns on the way to structured speech Journal of Child Language ndash

VENEZIANO AND CLARK

use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0305000915000471Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore Open University Library on 21 Jan 2017 at 034217 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of