1 Ways of expressing a future meaning: evidence from French child

Ways of expressing a future meaning: evidence from French child language
Temptypac Workshop, March 11-12, 2010
Oana Lungu
Université de Nantes / LLING EA-3827
[email protected]
1. Introduction
We present results of a parallel production and comprehension study investigating the
construal of semantic future in complement clauses in French child language.
We show that children produce / accept a future, an imparfait and a conditional (future in the
past) in a future-shifted context (the embedded event occurs after the matrix event, but before
the utterance-time)
We argue that these findings bring evidence for the presence of zero-tenses (cf. Kratzer, 1998)
in L1 French. A zero-tense in child French surfaces as either a present or a past below an
explicit or an implicit modal operator.
The data validate the ‘Multiple Grammar’ approach advocated by Roeper (1999) and Yang
(2000) according to which children go through a multiple grammar stage before they settle on
a single grammar.
2. Background. Future in Complements of Speech Act Verbs
Mary
will be busy.
1.
John :
2. John said that…
a.
…… Mary would be busy.
3a.
EV-T1
EV-T2
UT
——[—|—]——[///////////]––—|——>
SAY
b.
....… Mary will be busy.
EV-T1
UT
EV-T2
b. ——[—|—]—–|–—[////////////]——>
BUSY
SAY
Context 1: Future-shifted before UT
BUSY
Context 2: Future-shifted after UT
4.
John said that Mary was busy.
→ infelicitous in both Context 1 & Context 2
5.
Temporal subsequence in embedded contexts gives rise to 2 possible configurations:
i. Ev-T2 is subsequent to Ev-T1 but prior to UT, as in (3a)
ii. Ev-T2 is subsequent to both Ev-T1 and UT, as in (3b)
English-like languages use 2 morphologically distinct items to express semantic future:
would : used to report a situation where Mary is busy at a time following John’s saying but
anterior to UT ((5i)/(3a)), as well as a situation where Mary’s being busy obtains at a time
following John’s saying & UT ((5ii)/(3b))
 will : used only to report that Mary is busy at a time following both John’s saying time and
the UT ((3b))
3. Analysis of embedded future
Abusch (1988) : will ⇒ woll + present tense
would ⇒ woll + past tense
1 Woll shifts the evaluation-time to the future.
Kratzer (1998): the inventory of English tenses contains indexical (past and present) tenses
and a zero-tense (Ø-tense)
Tenses are pronominal items (Partee, 1973, Heim, 1994, a.o). Just like pronouns they act as
variables, which can be either free or bound.
A Ø-tense is a bound variable which surfaces as either a past or a present in certain
embedded contexts (when c-commanded by a verb with the same temporal feature).
6.
a. John PASTi–say that Mary WOLL-Øi be busy.
b. John PASTi–say that Mary WOLL-PRESj be busy.
[(2a)]
[(2b)]
(6a) contains an embedded Ø-tense  woll locates Ev-T2 in the future wrt Ev-T1 → yields a
dependent construal.
(6b) contains an embedded PRES  woll locates EV-T2 in the future wrt UT → yields an
independent / indexical construal.
7.
Constraint on the use of woll-PRES: PRES cannot be the realization of a Ø-tense.
 Woll-PRES can only be used in contexts following UT.
The indexicality of woll-PRES in a language like English follows from the assumption that
present is always indexical (be it in embedded or simple/independent contexts).
Languages that allow an embedded present to express temporal overlap with the Ev-T1 (i.e.,
so-called non-SOT languages such as Japanese, Korean) would not impose such a constraint
on the use of an embedded woll-PRES.
4. Semantic future in child grammar
•
•
•
Experimental study testing the construal of semantic future in complement clauses in
French child language
(Elicited) production and comprehension (Truth Value Judgment Task, Crain and
Thornton, 1998) tasks with 14 kindergarten children between 3;8 and 5;4 (mean: 4;7)
Stories acted out with props and toys in front of the child. The child is engaged in a game
where s/he is asked to interact with a puppet, Cronos, a penguin from another planet
Future shifted construals tested under 2 experimental conditions :
i. Condition 1: Ev-2 occurs before UT
ii. Condition 2: Ev-2 does not occur before UT
Predictions:
Assuming French is like English, 2 options to express a future meaning:
 a future in the present equivalent to will — FUTPRES
 a future in the past corresponding to would — FUTPAST
• Children who have acquired the Constraint in ((7)) should not produce / allow a future
in the present under Condition 1
• They can produce / accept future in the past under both conditions
2  The acquisition of tense in embedded contexts
Hollebrandse (2000) : the acquisition of Sequence of Tense by Dutch and American children
 < 5 year olds allow (4) in Context 1 ((3a)) as a felicitous report of John’s saying in (1)
℗
Puzzle in Hollebrandse’s experiment :
High rate of acceptance of the future-shifted (FS) reading of (4) in comprehension : (≈ 80%)
Very low rate in production (8%)
The production task was carried out with Dutch children only.
Hollebrandse cannot explain the unexpected production findings.
Hollebrandse’s explanation: children interpret the embedded past as expressing anteriority wrt
UT rather than to Ev-T1 → they allow all readings that are in the past wrt UT, including the
non-adult FS reading in (3a).
8.
Complementation Hypothesis:
The acceptance of the FS reading of (IMP) past is due to the lack of complementation
(temporal dependence between the matrix and the embedded tenses)
(They would therefore interpret a sentence like John said that Mary was busy as “John said
something and Mary was busy.”)
9.
Two important stages in child tense grammar:
(i)
(ii)
Stage 1: children lack complementation (i.e., evaluation time for
EV-2 is UT) → independent construals
Stage 2: children have acquired complementation (i.e., the evaluation time for
Ev-2 is Ev-T1) → dependent construals
Predictions according to Hollebrandse:
•
If children produce / accept the imparfait under Condition 1, they have not acquired
subordination
These children should not accept /produce a future in the present under Condition 1
These children should not accept /produce an imparfait under Condition 2
Production task
Sample stories
10. Condition 1 (Ev-2 occurs before UT) :
Peter and Tommy: “ Oh, look mom, a chimpanzee! We will give the chimpanzee a
banana ! ” [the boys give the chimpanzee a banana].
Experimenter: What did the boys say about the chimpanzee?
Cronos (the puppet): The boys said that…
Oh, I forgot. Can you help me?
11. Condition 2 (Ev-2 does not occur before UT) :
There are two little girls Lucy and Suzy, two big girls, Anne and Mary, and the twins
Tommy and Peter. They are playing together. Tommy and Peter: “We will jump over
the trunk! ” [ The boys do not jump over the trunk.]
Cronos (the puppet): Peter and Tommy said that …
3 Table 1 : % of responses in the production task
Condition 1 (Ev-2 occurs
Condition 2 (Ev-2 does not occur
before UT)
before UT)
Target
Children
FUTPRES
NO
21%
YES
42%
PAST IMP
NO
41%
NO
17%
FUT PAST
YES
26%
YES
35%
Other
Target
12%
Children
6%
Codes: FUTPRES = simple future; periphrastic future (‘aller’ in the present tense + infinitive); PASTIMP = imparfait;
FUTPAST = future in the past (i.e., present conditional, ‘aller’ in the imparfait + infinitive)
•
Future in the present (FUTPRES):
Les garçons ont dit qu’ils donneront / vont donner une bananes au chimpanzé.
‘The boys said they will give a banana to the chimpanzee.’
Children volunteer a FUTPRES under both Condition 1 (21%) & Condition 2 (42%)
The results for Condition 2 are expected since the embedded event (the giving of the banana)
does not occur by the end of the story  FUTPRES is felicitous
The results for Condition 1 (Ev-2 occurs before UT) are surprising and represent an apparent
violation of the Constraint in (7). We will come back to this result later.
•
Imparfait (PASTIMP):
Les garçons ont dit qu’ils ramassaient la neige.
‘The boys said that they were collecting the snow.’
Recall: Dutch children produce an imperfective past 8% of the time under Condition 1 (Ev-2
occurs before UT)
(These) French children, unlike the Dutch children, produce a past (IMP) at a more significant
rate (41%) under Condition 1 and they also produce it under Condition 2 (Ev-2 does not occur
before UT)
Dutch children do not produce an imperfective past under Condition 2
We will discuss these results and their implications shortly.
•
Future in the past (FUTPAST):
Tommy et Pierre ont dit qu’ils sauteraient/ allaient sauter par-dessus le coffre.
‘Tommy and Peter said that they would jump over the trunk.’
Finally, the production of FUTPAST is expected since FUTPAST is felicitous in both contexts.
Comprehension Task
•
•
•
Same experimental conditions
Cronos, the puppet, utters the test-sentence with FUTPRES, PAST IMP, FUTPAST
The child is asked to judge whether the puppet’s sentence is correct or not
4 Table 2: % of YES answers in the Comprehension Task
Condition 1 (Ev-2 occurs
Condition 2 (Ev-2 does not occur
before UT)
before UT)
Target
Children
Target
Children
FUTPRES
NO
88%
YES
96%
PAST IMP
NO
92%
NO
91%
FUT PAST
YES
94%
YES
98%
The overall results in the comprehension task show an extremely high rate of acceptance
ranging between 88% and 98%.
We do not think that children did not understand the task since the control items we used
showed they are capable of giving NO answers, but we admit there may be some other factors
that may have induced a bias for a positive answer (i.e., “The Principle of Charity”)
5. Discussion
5.1.
When future means ‘future in the past’
FUTPRES was produced 21% of the time under Condition 1, where Ev-2 occurs before UT
 FUTPRES can only be construed as a dependent tense (expressing subsequence with respect
to Ev-T1).  Children have subordination.
If French is like English and children have acquired subordination, why do they produce a
FUTPRES in Condition 1 ?1
 Because they have not acquired the constraint in (7) repeated below
7.
Constraint on the use of woll-PRES: PRES cannot be the realization of a Ø-tense.
So, they do not know that, in French, FUTPRES / woll-PRES is only used when Ev-T1 follows the
UT.
12.
a. Pierre et Tommy ont dit qu’ils donneront/vont donner une banane au chimpanzé.
‘Peter and Tommy said that they give-FUT a banana to the chimpanzee.’
b. [IP1
PASTi
[IP2
WOLL-∅i
].
(12b) is the representation of the target sentence in (12a) for Condition 1 ((10)).
Children allow the PRES component of the embedded future to be a ∅-tense. Thus they assign
an interpretation according to which Ev-T2 is in the future with respect to Ev-T1.
Demirdache and Lungu (2008) : French children (aged 5-7) construe present and past as
∅-tenses in both complement and relative clauses.
BUT, notice that children also produced a FUTPAST in the same context (26%)!
So, they do know that their language has this other option to express a future in the past
meaning.
1 It
would be interesting to know how English-speaking children behave in this situation.
Unfortunately, we do not have the relevant data, except for one child, Amina (aged 4;5), who has
never produced a simple future in this context. (Otherwise, Amina has a perfect tense grammar.) 5  In these children’s grammar woll-∅ surfaces as either FUTPRES or FUTPAST (in the same
context they pronounce a ∅-tense as a PAST and as a PRES)
We don’t know of any other adult grammar having both these options.
 Children entertain more than one grammar  plausible on the “Multiple Grammar”
hypothesis (Roeper, 1999; Yang, 2000) according to which children consider more than one
grammar before settling on a single grammar. Deviations from the target grammar are
explained by the presence of default non-target grammars that have not yet been eliminated
during language acquisition.
⇒ Alternative explanation: children treat FUTPRES as an anaphoric tense
Evidence: adult French
Simple Future: English vs. French
13.
a. Le roi mourra en 1715.
b. #The king will die in 1715.
a’. The king would die in 1715.
b’. #Le roi mourrait en 1715.
The French future in (13a) unlike its English counterpart expresses subsequence with respect
to a salient past time.
In simple / unembedded contexts, French future patterns with would, not with will.
French FUTPRES can be an anaphoric / dependent tense.
English will is strictly indexical.
5.2.
When imparfait means ‘future’
Small detour
Recall: the FS reading of past in complements of attitude verbs is unavailable
This is a well-known fact which has received a lot of attention in the tense literature.
 FS readings of past are excluded by ‘The Upper Limit Constraint’ (ULC): “The local
evaluation time is an upper limit for the reference of tenses” (Abusch, 1997).
The ULC is taken to be universal. All languages are supposed to obey this constraint, and
therefore not to allow the FS reading.
Kusumoto (1999) : apparent violations of ULC ( 2 cases where the FS reading of a past is
possible) :
 Schedules events ((14a)) & future oriented verbs ((14b)):
14.
a. The announcer said that the Red Sox played tomorrow.
b. John correctly predicted that the Red Sox won.
(14a) is used when the announcer actually said : ‘Red Sox play tomorrow’.
(14b) with the future oriented verb predict is possible only when the prediction proves to be
correct. Otherwise there is a preference for would :
15.
John wrongly predicted that Red Sox *won/ would win.
Examples such as (14a/b) are not really evidence against the ULC.
In (14a) the embedded past may simply be the result of morphological agreement with the
higher past (SOT environment)
(14b) does not involve subordination.
6 (14b) can be reformulated as ‘John correctly predicted the fact that Red Sox won’.
If (14b) involved subordination we wouldn’t have expected a difference between (14b) & (15)
But, Italian imperfetto
16.
Gianni ha detto (l’altro ieri) che mangiava una banana (ieri / domani).
‘G. said (the day before yesterday) that he eat-IMP a banana (yesterday/tomorrow).’
The imperfetto is used to express temporal subsequence with respect to both EV-T1 and UT2.
Back to French children
French children produce an IMP 41% of the time under Condition 1 (Ev-2 subsequent to Ev-1
but occurs before UT).
17.
a. Pierre et Tommy ont dit qu’ils donnaient une banane au chimpanzee.
‘Peter and Tommy said that they give-IMP a banana to the chimpanzee.’
- expected on Hollebrandse’s complementation hypothesis in (10) repeated below :
10.
Complementation hypothesis:
The acceptance of the FS reading of an imperfective past is due to the lack of
complementation (temporal dependence between the matrix and embedded tenses)
Conclusion following Hollebrandse: these children lack complementation.  they have
independent tenses in their grammar
But, some of these same children also produce a future in the present under Condition 1
(21%) where the embedded tense can only yield a dependent construal !  not predicted by
Hollebrandse
Some of the children also produce an IMP under Condition 2 (17%)  not predicted by
Hollebrandse either.
18.
Condition 2 :
The boys are in the garden. Oh, look it snowing, it’s snowing! Daddy looks desperate!
The boys: Don’t worry dad, we will shovel the snow !” [The embedded event does not
take place].
a. Justine (4;9) : [Ils] ont dit qu’ils ramassaient la neige, mais en fait ils ont changé d’avis.
‘They [the boys] said that they shovel-IMP the snow but they changed
their minds.’
 another child, Julie, not only did she produce an IMP for the story in (18) but also rejected a
future and proposed an IMP, in the same condition, in the comprehension task :
b. Julie (4; 3) : Non, elles [les filles] ont dit qu’elles volaient les chapeaux de pirates.
‘No, they [the girls] said they steal-IMP the pirate hats.’
 IMP in Condition 1 & 2 cannot be due to the lack of subordination
 French children have an Italian grammar
Again, children analyze the IMP as an inherently ∅- tense below an implicit modal (WOLL)
2 The
same seems to be true for Spanish imperfecto, at least in certain dialects of Spanish
7 19.
a. The boys said that they shovel-IMP the snow.
a’. [IP1 PASTi [IP2
(WOLL)- ∅i
].
[(18a)]
b. They [the girls] said they steal-IMP the pirate hats.
b’. [IP1 PASTi [IP2
(WOLL)-∅i
].
[(18b)]
The presence of the implicit modal operator is imputed to the properties of the French
imparfait
French imparfait  tense and modal
20.
a. Un simple coup de téléphone et je venais tout de suite!
A simple phone call and I come-IMP immediately
‘A simple phone call and I would immediately come.’
b. L’instant d’après, le train déraillait.
The next moment the train derail-IMP
‘The next moment the train would have derailed.’
c. L’instant d’après, le train aurait déraillé.
The next moment the train derail-PAST COND
‘The next moment the train would have derailed.’
[Le Goffic, 1986]
Unlike the English imperfective past, French IMP is able to commute with conditional in
certain contexts ((20a), (20b)).
-however, even in modal contexts, the IMP retains the factual3 force of a past tense. Compare
(20b) with its paraphrase in (20c), with a conditional.
6. Conclusions
The present study argued for a unified account of the future and the imparfait as complex
items containing a zero-past / present and a modal component.
These findings corroborate previous results (see Demirdache & Lungu 2008) that revealed
that 5-7 year old French children have and sometimes enforce zero-tense construals of the
present and the imparfait in complement and relative clauses.
The data are compatible with a ‘Multiple Grammar’ approach to language acquisition
(Roeper, 1999, Yang, 2000) according to which language acquisition is language competition
between target and non-target grammars that have not yet been eliminated during the process
of language learning.
3 “[…]
l’imparfait fictif retient bel et bien une assertion sur le mode du certain, au même titre que
l’imparfait du passé effectif. […] D’où l’impression de force, de sincérité, de “vécu”, de ce passé
fictif: on réécrit le passé, on énonce ce qui, véridiquement, pouvait (devait, allait) être […]” (bolds
mine) [Le Goffic, 1986: 66]
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University
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