Future temporal reference in child language

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter investigates the acquisition of future temporal reference in child language within the framework of the emergence of the ‘Event time’ and the ‘Reference time’ temporal systems and within a cross-linguistic perspective. The chapter probes the developmental language–thought relationship between the emergence of the event time and the reference time systems in the child’s language and the child’s capacity for autobiographical memory and ‘episodic future thinking’. An argument for a precocious understanding of the deictic relations of the child’s tense morphology is presented. Further, the chapter explains how children acquire the capacity to establish reference time at relatively remote locations away from speech time creating a complex system of temporal reference. These accomplishments in child language are linked to the conceptual capacity for past and future time travel, re-experiencing and pre-experiencing episodic representations. The potential relevance of the Whorfian hypothesis as it applies to child language and future temporal reference is explored.