Meanings of modal verbs in Dutch child language
(2015) Annual Day Linguistic Society — Location: Brussel (9.May.2015)
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- Modal verbs are polysemous: they can express epistemic and several non-epistemic meanings, differing in modal force (necessity versus possibility) and modal source (internal, external and situational) (Kratzer, 1991; Palmer, 2001; van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998). In Germanic child languages, modal verbs are frequent and appear early (Adamzik, 1985; Choi, 2006; Wells, 1979). A corpus study with 9 children confirmed this for Dutch: modal verbs occur from 1;10 onwards and from 2;6 onwards more than 10% of all utterances contains a modal. The question is whether children’s modals are already polysemous, i.e., do they already have all possible (non-epistemic) meanings? It has been claimed that internal modal source (e.g., volition, ability) occurs before external modal source (e.g., permission, obligation) (Choi, 2006; Shatz & Wilcox, 1991; Stephany, 1993). However, this claim has not been supported by much (comprehension) data, nor has the role of modal force been studied. I investigated how exactly children interpret modal verbs and whether they distinguish between modal sources and modal forces. 67 Dutch speaking children (mean age: 4;10, range: 3;4-6;2) plus 18 adult controls participated in a truth-value-judgment task, assessing correct and incorrect interpretations of moeten (‘must’) and kunnen (‘can’) in different modal source and modal force conditions. The results, summarized in Table 1, show that the children performed non-adult-like in all conditions (adults: 94%, children: 71%). Performance increases with age (ρ =.62, p <.01). Children have a more liberal interpretation of the modals; especially moeten (‘must’) was over-accepted: not only correct, but also incorrect meanings were accepted. Moreover, the results show an interaction of modal force and group (in contrast to modal source): possibility is interpreted less adult-like than necessity (F(1, 83)= 18.27, p < .001). Preschoolers are thus still in the process of acquiring the differences between various non-epistemic meanings. Despite their early and frequent appearance, modal verbs do not have (fully) adult-like meanings yet. I argue that moeten (‘must’) is ‘semantically underspecified’ (Clark, 1979), leading to an overuse in child speech. Children use moeten (‘must’) as a ‘dummy’ modal, which is ‘semantically empty’ (Adamzik, 1985; Schlichting, 1996), merely indicating some general notion of modality. The development into a more restricted interpretation may be triggered by a changing sensibility for the semantic nuances of modal verbs in the input, in the form of ‘constraints’, channeling children’s attention towards e.g., necessity (Shatz & Wilcox, 1991). This ‘necessity-based constraint’ can be explained through developing cognitive abilities of children: possibility is cognitively more complex than necessity (following Noveck, Ho & Sera, 1996). Moreover, since necessity involves a change of the state of affairs, it has more direct consequences for the child than possibility. This role of modal force has already been suggested to explain acquisitional differences in the domain of epistemic modality, i.e., why certainty is acquired before uncertainty (Bassano 1996; Moore, Pure & Furrow, 1990; Noveck et al., 1996). However, the importance of modal force – in contrast to modal source – in the acquisition of non-epistemic modality has not been established before.
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Jonkers, S. (2015). Meanings of modal verbs in Dutch child language. Annual Day Linguistic Society, Brussel. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/182162