The early development of perfect aspect: adverbial, verbal and contextual specification

Abstract

In a longitudinal study concerned to assess Verb Phrase (VP) development in three Trinidadian children, adverbials were found to be crucial in delineating specific areas of semantic intent, and to develop early (between ages 2; 3 and 3; 0). The children were studied over a two-year period, from the onset of morphological marking on the verb, and were recorded two to four hours per month, in their home environments, with a variety of addressees. Two of the children were exposed to, and acquired, both TC and SE verb categories and the third, TC, but the existence of TC past-completive zero phi as a prominent verbal marker in all their systems made for reliance on adverbial and extralinguistic context in delineating meaning intentions at an early stage; the use which they made of adverbial specification, in particular for marking perfect aspect, indicates how useful these elements may be for precise specification of the development of tense-aspect categories. When they are considered alongside other VP features a clearer overall assessment of tense-aspect development may be made.