Tense Without Agreement in Early Clause Structure

Abstract

Research has provided evidence for an Optional Infinitive (OI) stage of syntactic development (Wexler (1994)), raising the issue of when and how children leave this stage. This article reports case study data from a British child age 2;6 to 2;9, which indicates a stage in development without a subject agreement projection (AgrSP) but with a tense phrase (TP). Negation and adverbial positioning indicated at least one functional projection above verb phrase (VP). A sharp contrast in the use of verb forms was observed, indicating that the child had left the OI stage: Bare verb forms were almost entirely restricted to present-time referring contexts, whereas in past-time referring contexts morphologically marked verb forms were almost always used. Other reflexes of tense (Tns), such as modals, were plentiful. However, the Case and agreement contrasts that would support an AgrSP were virtually absent in clauses. Because in nominals Case and agreement were regularly observed, the child's lack of Case and agreement in clauses is attributed to a clausal architecture without AgrSP rather than to a general inability to represent Case and agreement relations.