The Italian indicativo imperfetto compared to the Finnish conditional verb form — Evidence from child language

Abstract

The unique usage of (imperfect) past tense verb forms in children's pretend play has been reported in studies on many Indo-European languages, for example Italian. Finnish children, however, do not express unreality or plan their pretend play via the past tense verb form. Instead, they tend to use the conditional verb form. The aim of this paper is to test the assumption that the discrepancy between Finnish and Italian in pretend speech need not be caused by differences in a cognitive approach. More probable reasons are the grammatical structures of the respective languages, and especially the labels given to the verb forms in grammars. The conventions of adults in talking to their children also are likely to exert an immediate influence. The Finnish conditional verb form seems to have much in common with the Italian indicativo imperfetto, though the former is categorized in grammars as a modal form and the latter as a tense.