modality/gerund

[elma blom]

Dear Info-Childes subscribers,

Can anybody help me with one of the following questions (or perhaps both)?

1. How do English speaking children (in particular between 2-3 years old)
express their wishes, needs, desires and intentions? Are there, for
example, studies on the use of verb forms like "gonna" and "wanna"?

2. Do English speaking children (2-3 years old) use the gerund (V-ing)? I
would also appreciate any references on this topic.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Elma Blom

Elma Blom
Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS
Trans 10
NL-3512 JK Utrecht
tel: 0031.(0)30.2536040
fax: 0031.(0)30.2536000
e-mail: elma...@let.uu.nl

[Lois Bloom]

Well, for starters. . .

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, elma blom wrote:

> Dear Info-Childes subscribers,
>
>
> Can anybody help me with one of the following questions (or perhaps both)?
>
> 1. How do English speaking children (in particular between 2-3 years old)
> express their wishes, needs, desires and intentions? Are there, for
> example, studies on the use of verb forms like "gonna" and "wanna"?

First, in general:

Bloom, L., Lahey, M., Hood, L., Lifter, K., & Fiess, K. (1980). Complex
sentences: Acquisition of syntactic connectives and the meaning relations
they encode. Journal of Child Language, 7, 235-261.

And 2nd, more specifically re: wanna, gonna, etc:

Bloom, L., Tackeff, J., & Lahey, M. (1984). Learning to in complement
constructions. Journal of Child Language, 11, 391-406.

> 2. Do English speaking children (2-3 years old) use the gerund (V-ing)? I
> would also appreciate any references on this topic.

Bloom, L., Lifter, K., & Hafitz, J. (1980). The semantics of verbs and the
development of verb inflections in child language. Language, 56, 386-412.