On the Role of Aspect in Determining Finiteness and Temporal Interpretation in Early Grammar

Abstract

"Over the past several years there has been increasing interest in the temporal and aspectual properties of root infinitive (RI) and other non-finite structures in child language. One generalization that has emerged concerns the relationship between finiteness and the lexical aspect of the verb. Various studies have shown that RIs in languages such as Dutch, German and French are restricted to eventive predicates while statives are typically finite (Ferdinand 1996; Wijnen 1997; Becker and Hyams 2000). Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) refer to this finding as the Eventivity Constraint (EC) on RIs. Based on this earlier work, Gavruseva 2003 develops an analysis of RIs and English bare verbs that purports to derive the RI phenomenon from the aspectual properties of the predicate"