The communicative contexts of grammatical aspect use in English.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
In many of the world's languages grammatical aspect is used to indicate how events unfold over time. In English, activities that are ongoing can be distinguished from those that are completed using the morphological marker -ing. Using naturalistic observations of two children in their third year of life, we quantify the availability and reliability of the imperfective form in the communicative context of the child performing actions. On average, 30% of verbal descriptions refer to child actions that are grounded in the here-and-now. Of these utterances, there are two features of the communicative context that reliably map onto the functions of the imperfective, namely, that events are construed as ongoing and from within. The findings are discussed with reference to how the context in which a child hears aspectual language may limit the degrees of freedom on what these constructions mean.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Ibbotson, P; Lieven, E; Tomasello, M
Published Date
- May 2014
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 41 / 3
Start / End Page
- 705 - 723
PubMed ID
- 23714767
Pubmed Central ID
- 23714767
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1469-7602
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0305-0009
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1017/s0305000913000135
Language
- eng