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Article
The Acquisition Path for Aspect: Remote Past and Habitual in Child African American English
Language Acquisition (2007)
  • Lisa J Green, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • Thomas Roeper
Abstract
This article considers the comprehension of tense-aspect markers remote past BIN and habitual be by 3- to 5-year-old developing African American English (AAE)-speaking children and their Southwest Louisiana Vernacular English (SwLVE)-speaking peers. Overall both groups of children associated BIN with the distant past; however, the AAE-speaking children were twice as likely to give a distant past response on the BIN went task. These results are discussed in terms of event realization, the Aspect Hypothesis, and feature agreement. We delineate a path that uses the lexical part of the Aspect Hypothesis, the role of semantics in defining the end state of a refined aspectual system, and an interface between syntax and semantics to explain subtle steps involving agreement in the acquisition process. The AAE-speaking children scored significantly higher on the habitual be tasks than the SwLVE-speaking children, whose scores were not significantly different from chance. The results suggest that the AAE-speaking children have developing native knowledge of habitual be and are beginning to associate it with eventualities that recur.
Publication Date
2007
Citation Information
Lisa J Green and Thomas Roeper. "The Acquisition Path for Aspect: Remote Past and Habitual in Child African American English" Language Acquisition (2007)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/lisa_green/7/