Constructing verb paradigms in French: Adult construals and emerging grammatical contrasts

Clark, Eve V.;de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine
(2012) Morphology — Vol. 22, n° 1, p. 89-120 (2012)

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Children acquiring French at first use just one form of each verb, where the meaning identifies only the event-type. How and when do they add additional forms, with the appropriate meanings? In this paper, we explore the information available to children from adult reformulations of these early verb-form uses, and show how adult construals contribute to children’s learning to distinguish between the homophonous infinitival (donner ‘give-Inf’) and participial (donné ‘give-PP’) forms, both /done/, of class 1 verbs. We argue that conversational exchanges, with the construals adults contribute, enable children to differentiate the meanings of homophonous forms, and so begin to construct verb paradigms.
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Clark, E. V., & de Marneffe, M.-C. (2012). Constructing verb paradigms in French: Adult construals and emerging grammatical contrasts. Morphology, 22(1), 89-120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-011-9193-6 (Original work published 2012)