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888 - Elizabeth Swanson / Finite expectations

Two women, outside at the end of winter, among bare trees, smiling broadly, both wearing teal v-neck sweater and graphite grey jeans.

888 - Elizabeth Swanson / Finite expectations

Linguistics Wednesday, May 27, 2026 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm Marie Mount Hall, 1401

Wednesday May 27, Elizabeth Swanson defends her 888, "Finite expectations: Children's understanding of tense–aspect marking in embedded clauses," abstracted below. The committee comprises advisors Jeff and Valentine, plus Alexander as Third Man.

Every language has a tense–aspect system. Yet, for child language learners, who must determine the meanings of tense–aspect markers in their language, the substantial cross-linguistic variation and lack of clear correlates in the physical world could pose nontrivial challenges. Previous work has found comprehension of tense–aspect marking from as young as age 2, but findings from children’s naturalistic productions have been used to support claims of non-adult-like knowledge. In particular, it has been claimed that children are initially limited to understanding “prototypical” combinations of tense and aspect marking, and that their uninflected productions may correspond to difficulty representing tense. In this paper, I examine the acquisition of tense–aspect marking in English-learning 3- and 4-year-olds. I report the results of two experiments investigating children’s temporal interpretations of single clause sentences as well as sentences with finite and non-finite embedded clauses (e.g., non-finite: “I expect Bobby to go/to have gone down the slide”; future vs. past orientation). The inclusion of non-finite clauses is novel, and it allows us to shed light on questions that have been raised about children’s developing knowledge of tense and aspect. In Experiment 1, 30 4-year-olds completed a task where they were asked to place a character on an obstacle course based on another character’s clue (which contained past- or future-marking). In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds and 29 4-year-olds participated in an improved version of the study that took the form of a forced-choice task. Overall, we find robust understanding of past- and future-marking from 3 years old, across single-clause sentences and sentences with finite and nonfinite embedded clauses, with one exception: Children did not recognize sentences with embedded bare infinitives (“I expect Bobby to go down the slide”) as future-oriented. I argue that these results speak against a prototype-based account of the acquisition of tense and aspect, and that children’s non-adult-like interpretations of embedded bare infinitives are most likely due to a lack of familiarity with the embedding verb, rather than a true divergence from the adult grammar. I also discuss how these findings relate to the acquisition of attitude verbs and modal auxiliaries, in which knowledge of tense–aspect marking is proposed to play a role.

Add to Calendar 05/27/26 13:00:00 05/27/26 15:00:00 America/New_York 888 - Elizabeth Swanson / Finite expectations

Wednesday May 27, Elizabeth Swanson defends her 888, "Finite expectations: Children's understanding of tense–aspect marking in embedded clauses," abstracted below. The committee comprises advisors Jeff and Valentine, plus Alexander as Third Man.

Every language has a tense–aspect system. Yet, for child language learners, who must determine the meanings of tense–aspect markers in their language, the substantial cross-linguistic variation and lack of clear correlates in the physical world could pose nontrivial challenges. Previous work has found comprehension of tense–aspect marking from as young as age 2, but findings from children’s naturalistic productions have been used to support claims of non-adult-like knowledge. In particular, it has been claimed that children are initially limited to understanding “prototypical” combinations of tense and aspect marking, and that their uninflected productions may correspond to difficulty representing tense. In this paper, I examine the acquisition of tense–aspect marking in English-learning 3- and 4-year-olds. I report the results of two experiments investigating children’s temporal interpretations of single clause sentences as well as sentences with finite and non-finite embedded clauses (e.g., non-finite: “I expect Bobby to go/to have gone down the slide”; future vs. past orientation). The inclusion of non-finite clauses is novel, and it allows us to shed light on questions that have been raised about children’s developing knowledge of tense and aspect. In Experiment 1, 30 4-year-olds completed a task where they were asked to place a character on an obstacle course based on another character’s clue (which contained past- or future-marking). In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds and 29 4-year-olds participated in an improved version of the study that took the form of a forced-choice task. Overall, we find robust understanding of past- and future-marking from 3 years old, across single-clause sentences and sentences with finite and nonfinite embedded clauses, with one exception: Children did not recognize sentences with embedded bare infinitives (“I expect Bobby to go down the slide”) as future-oriented. I argue that these results speak against a prototype-based account of the acquisition of tense and aspect, and that children’s non-adult-like interpretations of embedded bare infinitives are most likely due to a lack of familiarity with the embedding verb, rather than a true divergence from the adult grammar. I also discuss how these findings relate to the acquisition of attitude verbs and modal auxiliaries, in which knowledge of tense–aspect marking is proposed to play a role.

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