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'I want hold Postman Pat': An investigation into the acquisition of infinitival marker 'to'

Kirjavainen, Minna; Theakston, Anna; Lieven, Elena; Tomasello, Michael

Authors

Anna Theakston

Elena Lieven

Michael Tomasello



Abstract

Infinitival-to omission errors (e.g., *I want hold Postman Pat) are produced by many English-speaking children early in development. This article aims to explain these omissions by investigating the emergence of infinitival-to, and its production/omission in obligatory contexts. A series of corpus analyses were conducted on the naturalistic data from one to 13 children between the ages of approximately 2;0 and 3;1 testing three hypotheses from two theoretical viewpoints. The data suggest that the errors are associated with different verb sequences (e.g., going-to and going-X) and their frequencies in the language to which children are exposed. The article concludes that these constructions compete for output when children are producing those verbs and that this supports the usage-based/constructivist account of the omission errors. Copyright © 2009 The Author(s).

Citation

Kirjavainen, M., Theakston, A., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2009). 'I want hold Postman Pat': An investigation into the acquisition of infinitival marker 'to'. First Language, 29(3), 313-339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723709105312

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 1, 2009
Online Publication Date Jul 13, 2009
Publication Date Aug 1, 2009
Deposit Date Apr 3, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal First Language
Print ISSN 0142-7237
Electronic ISSN 1740-2344
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 29
Issue 3
Pages 313-339
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723709105312
Keywords frequency, infinitival-to, omission errors, to-infinitive clauses, two-word chunks
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/993856
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142723709105312