The Acquisition of Tense in 17 Languages

Different temporal forms can be used to describe one temporal relation (IT: camminava vs. cammino, walk-past- imperfective vs. walk-past-perfective) ; one form can be used to describe different temporal relations (D: life, walk-past- imperfective vs. walk-past-perfective) ; these relations concern objects not directly perceivable. This can make their acquisition a complicated task. We tested 355 children, 5 years-old, on tense comprehension in 17 languages. Participants watched movies where a protagonist walks along a road performing the same action at different locations (Wagner 2001). The test-questions were of the form: Where V-past? ; Where V-present? ; Where V-future? We found differences across languages (χ2(16)=100.14, p<.0001) and tenses (χ2(16)=100.14, p<.0001) and an interaction between the two (χ2(21)=103.31, p=.0203). These differences concerned past (χ2(5)=53.08, p<.0001) and future (χ2(5)= 57.78, p<.0001) tenses. We argued that children acquire tense earlier in languages where we find small domains of synonymy and ambiguity in conveying temporal meanings than in languages with larger domains.