Finiteness in early child Dutch

Abstract

Finiteness is a property of the functional-category system in Dutch. In this article, it will be claimed that in early child Dutch finiteness is not yet part of the children's productive grammatical system. In utterances in which adults would use a finite verb, children regularly produce infinitives. Examples from a corpus of diary data collected from the present author's two children are oppe nek zitte 'on the neck sit' (Jasmijn 1;10), poes bal hebbe 'kitty ball have' (Jasmijn 1;11), papa uitdoen 'daddy outdo' (Andrea 2;0) apie da zitte 'monkey there sit' (Andrea 2;1). Finiteness, so it is claimed, is a grammatical property of the target language that has to be achieved through processes of acquisition. The acquisition of finiteness is a developmental process. At the initial stage of acquisition, it seems that properties of finiteness are expressed through the use of a few modal operators. These modal operators occur holistically, that is, they have scope over the topic-predicate structure as a whole. The holistic use of clausal operators is most prominently present with nee 'no' meaning 'I don't want'. As positive alternatives to nee Dutch children make use of elements such as ulle or unne, which are based on the target verb form wil(len) 'want', or mag-ikke 'may I', which serves as an unanalyzed phrase. The holistic use of modal operators expressing volition is characteristic of the initial stage of acquisition. Examples are utterances such as nee Cynthia afpakke 'no C snatch away' (Jasmijn 1;9), ulle ik sijfe 'want I write' (Jasmijn 1;9), pop pot nee 'doll broken no' (Andrea 1;10), mag-ikke fomme, ja? 'may-I swing, yes?' (Andrea 2;0). After the holistic stage, a major development occurs with the acquisition of a closed class of modal phrases, which consists not only of the previously used expressions nee 'no', ulle 'want', mag-ikke 'may-I', but also of the elements kanniet 'cannot', kanwel 'can-indeed', magniet 'may-not