Modal verbs and their meanings in Dutch first language acquisition
(2013) Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition — Location: Oldenburg (5.September.2013)
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- Abstract
- Modal verbs appear early and frequently in child Dutch, especially the verbs kunnen (‘can’) and moeten (‘must’) (Jonkers, in prep.). In adult Dutch, modals have several nonepistemic meanings (see e.g. Mortelmans, Boye & van der Auwera 2009). The question is whether modal verbs in child Dutch are already polysemous as well. It has been claimed that participant-internal modal source (‘dynamic’) occurs before participant-external (‘deontic’) in spontaneous child speech (see e.g. Shatz & Wilcox 1991; Stephany 1993; Choi 2006). However, this claim is not supported by much data, nor has the comprehension of modals with non-epistemic meanings been investigated. Moreover, the division participant-internal/- external ignores the difference within participant-external modality, i.e., whether the modal source comes from the speaker, norms or rules or from situational factors (see e.g. van der Auwera & Plungian 1998; Nuyts 2006). Furthermore, the difference in modal force; necessity (e.g. requirement, obligation) versus possibility (e.g. ability, permission), has not been taken into account. The question arises whether children distinguish between the different modal sources and modal forces in their production and interpretation of Dutch modals. In order to answer this, we conducted a comprehension and a production task. In a truth value judgment task, 87 Dutch speaking children (age: 3;4-6;2) assessed frequent, infrequent and incorrect interpretations of the two frequent modal verbs (39 items in total). In a story retelling task, they had to realize frequent and infrequent modal meanings for which both frequent as well as infrequent modal verbs were offered in the investigator’s input (20 items in total). The results on the comprehension experiment show that children interpret moeten (‘must’) and kunnen (‘can’) non adult-like, with increasing performance by age (correlation: ρ =.62, p <.01). The same is true for the production experiment: children express the target-like modal verbs less often than the adult control group, but again the child performance increases by age (correlation: ρ =.53, p <.01). Thus, in spite of their early and frequent appearance, nonepistemic meanings of modal verbs clearly develop further between the age of 3;4 and 6;2. Unexpectedly, modal source (i.e., dynamic, deontic and situational modality) cannot explain the differences in performance between adults and children. Although the children express situational modality less target-like in the story retelling task, the same is true for the adults (see table). In contrast, modal force seems to interact with the difference in performance between both groups: children both interpret and produce possibility less adultlike than necessity (see table). This might be linked to developing cognitive capacities, since modal possibility requires understanding of the notion of optionality; this notion of ‘choice’ does not exist in the modal necessity meanings. The idea of developing mental concepts can also be linked to the later acquisition of epistemic modality (i.e., certainty, probability), which is suggested to be caused by developing mental abilities as well (see e.g. Schatz & Wilcox 1991; this might be connected to a developing Theory of Mind, see Papafragou 1998). In the truth value judgment task, children not only accept modal interpretations that are not accepted by adults, but also non-modal interpretations (e.g. ongoing, near future). The deviant performance of children thus seems to be due to a less restrictive interpretation of modal verbs, especially so for moeten (‘must’). This might lead to an ‘overuse’ of this verb in early child language, as indicated by its high frequency in spontaneous child speech (Jonkers, in prep.). In the story retelling task, moeten (‘must’) is the most frequently produced modal, both in target-like situations and even in some non-target-like ones. These results indicate that children treat moeten as a dummy modal (comparable to other ‘dummies’ in child language, see e.g, van Koert, van Hout & Hollebrandse 2010). Moeten in early child language could then be argued to be ‘semantically underspecified’ (following e.g. Clark 1979).
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Jonkers, S. (2013). Modal verbs and their meanings in Dutch first language acquisition. Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, Oldenburg. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/73695