Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

EMERGENCE OF TENSE AND AGREEMENT
assert that agreement is established. Though we cannot rule out that type of
performance. The two children rarely used 1 st singular inappropriately,
however, they substituted the 3 rd masculine form which is unmarked for
other suffixes. Due to the recording setting, it is unexpected that children
would use the 2 nd masculine, however Sara and Osama implemented the
suffix. It is important to emphasize that both children used that inflection
in the formula s#if-t “did you (m) see?” which raises the question whether
this form is lexicalised rather than productive.
Besides substitution errors discussed above, the children also erred in
other categories as illustrated in Table 7. The Table shows stem errors
when the imperfective stem is used instead of perfective one or vice versa,
transitivity errors when a transitive verb (Class II) is used instead of
intrasitive (Class V), mood errors when the imperative is used instead of
declarative, causative errors when a verb is used instead of the causative
form of it and voice errors when the active voice is used instead of the
passive. Looking at the table below, it is clear that stem errors are very rare
which indicates that children use correctly the internal vowel quality that is
considered as marking aspect (for more detail look at section 2) quite early.
For example: in sample 7 Sara said after closing the watch $araf ‘know’
instead of a-$arif ‘I know’. In that example not only did she not mark the
verb with the 1 st singular present tense inflection as required but also she
used the wrong stem. However, since this is the only case of stem error it
could be a performance error.
Table 7 Other types of error in the two children’s production
Type Sara Osama
Stem 2 1
Transitivity 11 10
Mood 1 1
Causative 2
Voice 3
Total 17 14
Children display similarities in having the same transitive verb error on
one verb sabba! ‘give someone a bath’ while the child should say
tesabba! ‘took a bath’. Most importantly, sabba!, or sometimes babba!,
are adult forms to babies and very young children, where they mean ‘take a
bath’. This suggests that adults are using the least marked form to children
and in their part children pick up on that form and use it frequently.
Further, Sara and Osama used, twice each, other type of verb incorrectly
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