The study investigates the emergence and early development of epistemic modality, a linguistic sub-system devoted to the expression of speakers' cognitive attitudes. It is based on the longitudinal analyses of the naturalistic productions of a French child between 1;9 and 4;0. Analyses indicate that epistemic modality emerges later than dynamic/deontic categories and shows a specific developmental progression from 2;3 on. The study examines in particular: (1) the ontogenesis of epistemic functions, as primed by early meanings (prediction, ignorance) that anticipate core meanings related to certainty and uncertainty (possibility, belief, hypothesis); (2) the development of epistemic markings, where it is found that lexicalized devices emerge before grammaticalized ones; (3) the role of specific constraints concerning modal and propositional subject references. Results are discussed in a cross-linguistic perspective to specify how functional and formal constraints interact in the acquisition of epistemic modality.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abbeduto, L. & Rosenberg, S. (1985). Children's knowledge of the presuppositions of 'know' and other cognitive verbs. Journal of Child Language , 12, 621-41.
2.
Aksu-Koç, A. (1988). The Acquisition of Aspect and Modality. The Case of Past Reference in Turkish (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
3.
Aksu-Koç, A. & Slobin, D. (1986). A psychological account of the development and use of evidentials in Turkish. In W. L. Chafe & J. Nichols (eds), Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology ( Norwood, NJ: Ablex).
4.
Bally, C. (1942). Syntaxe de la modalité explicite ( Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure).
5.
Bassano, D. (1982). Étude sur la modalité croire: l'interprétation d'énoncés avec 'croire que' chez des enfants de 6 à 11 ans. Archives de Psychologie, 50, 165-90.
6.
— (1985a). Five-years-olds' understanding of 'savoir' and 'croire' (verbs know and think. Journal of Child Language , 12, 417-32.
7.
— (1985b). Modalités de l'opinion: quelques expressions de la croyance et de la certitude et leur differenciation entre 6 et 11 ans . Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 5,65-87.
8.
— (1990). De la logique au langage: vers une psycholinguistique de l'énonciation. Archives de Psychologie, 58, 213-34.
9.
Bassano, D. & Champaud, C. (1983). L'interprétation d'énoncés modaux de type assertif ('savoir que') chez l'enfant de 6 à 11 ans. L'Année Psychologique , 83, 53-73.
10.
Bassano, D., Hickmann, M. & Champaud, C. (1992). Epistemic modality in French children's discourse: 'to be sure' or 'not to be sure'? Journal of Child Language , 19,389-413.
11.
Bassano, D. & Maillochon, I. (1994). Early grammatical and prosodic marking of utterance modality in French: a longitudinal case study . Journal of Child Language, 21, 649-75.
12.
Benveniste, E. (1965). Structure des relations d'auxiliarité. Acta Linguistica Hafnensia, XI (1), 1-15.
13.
Bloom, L., Rispoli, M., Gartner, B. & Hafitz, J. (1989). Acquisition of complementation. Journal of Child Language, 16, 101-20.
14.
Bloom, L., Tackeff, J. & Lahey, M. (1984). Learning to in complement constructions. Journal of Child Language, 11, 391-406.
15.
Bowerman, M. (1986). First steps in acquiring conditionals. In E.C. Traugott, A. ter Meulen , J. S. Reilly & Ch. Ferguson (eds), On Conditionals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
16.
Bybee, J. (1985). Morphology: A study of the Relation between Meaning and Form (Amsterdam: John Benjamins ).
17.
Chafe, W. & Nichols, J. (eds) (1986). Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology (Norwood, NJ: Ablex ).
18.
Champaud, C. & Bassano, D. (1984). L'interpretation d'énoncés avec 'savoir si' chez des enfants de 6 à 11 ans. Bulletin de Psychologie, 364, 299-311.
19.
Champaud, C., Bassano, D. & Hickmann, M. (1993). Modalité épistémique et discours rapporté chez l'enfant français. In N. Dittmar & A. Reich (eds), Modality in Language Acquisition (Berlin: De Gruyter).
20.
Choi, S. (1991). Early acquisition of epistemic meanings in Korean: a study of sentence-ending suffixes in the spontaneous speech of three children . First Language, 11, 93-119.
21.
Ducrot, O. (1993). A quoi sert le concept de modalité? In N. Dittmar & A. Reich (eds), Modality in Language Acquisition ( Berlin: De Gruyter).
22.
Fleischman, S. (1982) The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic Evidence from Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
23.
Gee, J. ( 1985). An interpretative approach to the study of modality: what child language can tell the linguist. Studies in Language , 9, 197-229.
24.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1970). Functional diversity in language as seen from a consideration of modality and mood in English. Foundations of Language, 6, 322-61.
25.
Hickmann, M., Champaud, C. & Bassano, D. (1993). Pragmatics and metapragmatics in the development of epistemic modality: evidence from French children's reports of think-statements . First Language, 13, 359-89.
26.
Hidi, S.E. & Hildyard, A. (1979). Four-year-olds' understanding of pretend and forget: no evidence for propositional reasoning. Journal of Child Language, 6, 493-510.
27.
Hirst, W. & Weil, J. (1982). Acquisition of epistemic and deontic modals. Journal of Child Language, 9, 659-66.
28.
Hopmann, M.R. & Maratsos, M.P. (1978). A developmental study of factivity and negation in complex sentences. Journal of Chtld Language, 5, 295-309.
29.
Johnson, C.N. & Maratsos, M.P. (1977). Early comprehension of mental verbs: think and know. Child Development, 48 (4), 1743-7.
30.
Johnson, C.N. & Wellman, H.M. (1980). Children's developing understanding of mental verbs: remember, know, and guess. Child Development, 51, 1095-102.
31.
Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics: 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
32.
MacNamara, J., Baker, E. & Olson, C.L. (1976). Four-year-olds' understanding of pretend, forget and know: evidence for propositional operations. Child Development , 47, 62-70.
33.
MacWhinney, B. & Snow, C. (1990). The child language data exchange system: an update . Journal of Child Language, 17, 457-72.
34.
Mawby, R.W., Pea, R.D. & MacKain, S.J. (1983). The development of modals as embodiements of mind . Unpublished.
35.
Mitchell, P. & Robinson, E.J. (1992). Children's understanding of the evidential connotation of 'know' in relation to overestimation of their own knowledge. Journal of Child Language, 19, 167-82.
36.
Moore, C. & Davidge, J. (1989). The development of mental terms: pragmatics or semantics? Journal of Child Language, 16, 633-41.
37.
Moore, C. & Furrow, D. (1991). The development of the language of belief: the expression of relative certainty. In D. Frye & C. Moore (eds), Children's Theories of Mind (Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum).
38.
Palmer, F.R. (1986). Mood and Modality (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press).
39.
Perkins, M.R. (1983). Modal Expressions in English ( London: Frances Pinter).
40.
Robinson, E.J. & Mitchell, P. (1990). Children's failure to make judgements of undecidability when they are ignorant. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 13, 467-88
41.
Scoville, R.P. & Gordon, A.M. (1980). Children's understanding of factive presuppositions: an experiment and a review. Journal of Child Language, 7, 381-99.
42.
Shatz, M., Wellman, H. & Silber, S. (1983). The acquisition of mental verbs: a systematic investigation of the first reference to mental state. Cognition , 14, 301-21.
43.
Sheperd, S. (1982). From deontic to epistemic: an analysis of modals in the history of English, creoles, and language acquisition. In A. Ahlqvist (ed.), Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Philadelphia: Benjamins).
44.
— (1993). The acquisition of modality in Antiguan Creole . In N. Dittmar & A. Reich (eds), Modality in Language Acquisition (Berlin: De Gruyter).
45.
Shields, M.M. (1974). The development of the modal auxiliary system in the verb phrase in children between three and five years. Educational Review, 26, 180-200.
46.
Stephany, U. (1986). Modality. In P. Fletcher & H. Garman (eds), Language Acquisition ( Cambridge University Press).
47.
— (1993). Modality in first language acquisition: the state of the art. In N. Dittmar & A. Reich (eds), Modality in Language Acquisition (Berlin: De Gruyter).
48.
Van Valin R.D. (1991). Functionalist linguistic theory and language acquisition . First Language, 11, 7-40.
49.
Wells, G. (1979). Learning and using the auxiliary verb in English . In V. Lee (ed.), Language Development (Croom Helm: London ).
50.
Wells, G. (1985). Language Development in the Preschool Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
