(Blom, Elma) The Acquisition of Finiteness

The Acquisition of Finiteness
Elma Blom
Mouton de Gruyter
≥
Studies in Generative Grammar 94
Editors
Henk van Riemsdijk
Jan Koster
Harry van der Hulst
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
by
Elma Blom
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
The series Studies in Generative Grammar was formerly published by

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blom, Wilhelmina Bernardina Theodora, 1972⫺

The Acquisition of Finiteness / by Elma Blom.
p. cm. ⫺ (Studies in generative grammar ; 94)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-11-019083-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Language acquisition. 2. Grammar, Comparative and gen-
eral ⫺ Verb. 3. Cognition in children. 4. Germanic languages ⫺
Acquisition. I. Title.
P118.B588 2008
4151.6⫺dc22
2008021357
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detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
ISBN 978-3-11-019083-0
ISSN 0167-4331
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Acknowledgements
The research reported in this book was supported by grants of the Dutch-
Flemish Cooperative Programme on language and culture (VNC nrs. 200-
41.031 and G.2201.96 titled A data-driven model of language acquisition:
Computational and psycholinguistic investigations), sponsored by NFWO
and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and in addi-
tion by NWO grant nr. 254-70-010 (Variation in Inflection).
During this research I could profit from the outstanding research envi-
ronments provided by the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS (University
of Utrecht), the Linguistics Department of the University of California Los
Angeles, the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (Uni-
versity of Amsterdam), and from close collaborations with my colleagues
from the University of Antwerp and Groningen University.
There were many people who contributed to this book in many different
ways. I want to thank my colleagues at the aforementioned research insti-
tutes, the researchers and students who contributed to the CHILDES data-
base, an excellent source of data that I used for my research, the parents,
daycares, schools that enabled me to undertake experiments, and my family
and friends for their support and patience. In particular I want to mention
Hans Broekhuis, Jan Don, Paul van Geert, Nina Hyams, Alexander Kaiser,
Evelien Krikhaar, Daniela Polišenská, Henk van Riemsdijk, Henriette de
Swart, Sharon Unsworth, Fred Weerman, and Frank Wijnen for the special
role they played in the making of this book. Last but not least, I am grateful
to all the children I had the pleasure to work with and whose language I
had the opportunity to analyze.
Elma Blom
Contents
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... v
Chapter 1
Introduction ................................................................................................ 1
Chapter 2
Background ................................................................................................. 5
1. Introduction .................................................................................. 5
2. Verb Second ................................................................................. 6
3. Three early accounts .................................................................... 9
3.1. Small Clause Hypothesis.............................................................. 9
3.2. Lexical Learning Hypothesis ..................................................... 11
3.3. Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis ........................................................ 12
3.4. Summary .................................................................................... 14
4. No overlap versus optional infinitives ....................................... 15
4.1. No Overlap Hypothesis .............................................................. 15
4.2. Optional Infinitive Hypothesis................................................... 16
4.3. Summary .................................................................................... 17
5. Underspecification and full competence.................................... 18
5.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis ................................... 18
5.2. Underspecification of Number Hypothesis................................ 19
5.3. Agreement and Tense Omission Model ..................................... 20
5.4. Truncation Hypothesis ............................................................... 22
5.5. Summary .................................................................................... 23
6. Aspects of meaning .................................................................... 23
6.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis ................................... 24
6.2. Underspecification of Telicity Hypothesis ................................ 25
6.3. Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis ...................... 26
6.4. Summary .................................................................................... 27
7. Summary .................................................................................... 28
Chapter 3
Theoretical framework ............................................................................ 29
1. Assumptions ............................................................................... 29
2. Hypotheses ................................................................................. 31
Contents vii
Chapter 4
Form and meaning ................................................................................... 34
1. Introduction ................................................................................ 34
2. A working definition of modality............................................... 35
3. The Elsewhere Hypothesis......................................................... 38
4. Root infinitives........................................................................... 41
4.1. Method ....................................................................................... 41
4.2. Results ........................................................................................ 44
4.3. Discussion .................................................................................. 45
4.4. Conclusion.................................................................................. 46
5. Other verb constructions ............................................................ 47
5.1. Past participles ........................................................................... 47
5.2. Finite verbs................................................................................. 49
6. The modal shift .......................................................................... 52
6.1. Overall increase of modality? .................................................... 54
6.2. The elsewhere effect .................................................................. 55
7. Summary .................................................................................... 59
Chapter 5
Differences across languages ................................................................... 61
1. Introduction ................................................................................ 61
2. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis............................... 63
3. Naturalistic data ......................................................................... 66
3.1. The Modal Bias Hypothesis ....................................................... 67
3.2. A reanalysis of Dutch corpus data ............................................. 69
3.3. Implications of the Modal Bias Hypothesis ............................... 70
3.4. Conclusion.................................................................................. 71
4. Experimental data....................................................................... 71
4.1. Why an experiment?................................................................... 72
4.2. Picture selection ......................................................................... 73
4.3. Elicited production..................................................................... 74
5. Recapitulation ............................................................................ 77
6. Incorrect bare verbs.................................................................... 78
7. Summary .................................................................................... 81
Chapter 6
Developmental patterns ........................................................................... 83
1. Introduction ................................................................................ 83
2. Growing Overlap Hypothesis..................................................... 84
viii Contents
3. Cause of no overlap.................................................................... 86
4. Morphological Cueing Hypothesis ............................................ 88
4.1. Increasing number of errors ....................................................... 91
4.2. Increasing type frequency .......................................................... 93
4.3. Conclusion.................................................................................. 94
5. Verb Second ............................................................................... 95
6. Null subjects............................................................................... 96
7. Summary .................................................................................. 101
Chapter 7
Discussion ................................................................................................ 102
1. Introduction .............................................................................. 102
2. Summary .................................................................................. 102
3. Implications.............................................................................. 104
4. Second language learners......................................................... 111
5. Null subject languages ............................................................. 116
6. Receptive grammar................................................................... 117
7. Concluding remarks ................................................................. 120
Appendix.................................................................................................. 121
Appendix 1: Selected CHILDES files...................................................... 121
Appendix 2: Properties of selected files................................................... 122
Appendix 3: Coding modality .................................................................. 123
Appendix 4: Permutation test ................................................................... 125
Appendix 5: Jack knife method................................................................ 130
Appendix 6: Verb constructions per stage ............................................... 132
Appendix 7: Experimental material.......................................................... 133
Appendix 8: Verb constructions (experimental data) .............................. 136
Appendix 9: Finite verb types in stage I/II ............................................... 137
Appendix 10: Coding subjects ................................................................. 138
Appendix 11: Null subjects ...................................................................... 139
Notes......................................................................................................... 140
References ............................................................................................... 143
Index ........................................................................................................ 160
Chapter 1
Introduction
This book is about the acquisition of finiteness, with a focus on the mor-
phosyntax of finiteness. In this chapter we will first describe the main
properties of finite verbs. Then we will introduce the developmental issue
at stake: The apparent absence of finiteness in the early child grammar.
This is followed by a brief summary of the approach taken here to analyze
child data. The outline of the book will be given at the end of this introduc-
tory chapter.
Depending on the language, finite verbs can have a variety of proper-
ties. Finite verbs express tense (e.g. past, present and future) and denote a
relation between speech time and event time (Reichenbach 1947). Finite
verbs also encode aspect. Comrie (1985) called aspect the internal tempo-
ral structure of an event. Notions like ‘ongoing’, ‘progressive’, ‘inchoa-
tive’, ‘prospective’, ‘perfective’, ‘telic’ or ‘punctual’ describe aspectual
properties.1 Klein (1994: 4) defines finiteness as a complex notion that
contains information about topic time and assertion. Finite verbs can fur-
thermore indicate the mood of a sentence, and distinguish between indica-
tive (used to express perceived reality) and subjunctive sentences (which
express doubt, probability, certainty, etc.). Structurally, finite verbs agree
with the grammatical subject of the sentence and typically assign nomina-
tive case to the subject.
Intriguingly, across different languages, young children systematically
omit finite verbs and use infinitival verbs instead. Therefore, a study on the
acquisition of finiteness crucially deals with the question why young chil-
dren do not use finite verbs. (1) – (4) below exemplify children’s early
infinitival sentences in child Dutch, French (Ferdinand 1996), Russian
(Brun, Avrutin, and Babyonishev 1999) and Hebrew (Armon-Lotem 1996):
(1) Jij de walvis maken. Daan 2;04.28

you the whale make-inf
(2) Pas tomber la poupée. Nathalie 2;2.2

not fall-inf the doll
‘The doll does not fall.’
2 Introduction
(3) Papa peèku topit.' Zhenya 1;9

daddy stove keep-going-inf
‘Daddy keeps the stove going.’
(4) Tapuax lishtot. Lior 1;8.08

apple drink-inf
‘I want to drink an apple.’
The same characteristic that is shared by many different child languages

reveals a difference between child and adult language. Just to illustrate the
contrast between children and adults: Daan, one of the Dutch-learning
children whose language is examined in this book, utters (1) in a context
where his parents would use either (5) or (6):
(5) Jij moet de walvis maken.

you must-aux the whale make-inf
‘You have to make the whale.’
(6) Jij maakt de walvis.

you make-fin the whale
‘You are making the whale.’
A comparison between (1) on the one hand and (5) and (6) on the other
hand shows that Daan does not produce a finite verb. He either leaves out
the finite auxiliary or fails to inflect and move the verb to second position,
which is, in Dutch, the syntactic slot for finite verbs. On the basis of this
comparison, we could hypothesize that Daan does not know the words
and/or rules how to make finite verbs, and that he therefore is unable to
produce finite sentences.
Although Daan’s parents would use a finite sentence instead of (1), it is
not the case that they always use finite sentences. In telling a story to the
investigator who audiotaped his son, Daan’s father said:
(7) Oeh hij krijsen.

uh he scream-inf
‘And then he started to scream.’
Dutch adults can and, obviously do, use infinitival sentences. These adult
utterances are restricted by certain discourse conditions, like embedding in
Introduction 3
a narrative context, as in (7). Adults obey these discourse rules, whereas

young children seem to violate them. Examples as in (7) give rise to a sec-
ond hypothesis about children’s infinitival sentences. This hypothesis
states that young children lack the knowledge of where to use finite verbs.
In recent years there have been a mounting number of studies on chil-
dren’s use of infinitival sentences, commonly known as root infinitives. As
a result, detailed empirical data on various properties of this particular
construction are available. In addition, numerous explanatory hypotheses
have been raised that aim to answer the question Why do children use root
infinitives? In the above, two possible hypotheses are described. According
to the first, children use root infinitives because they are not in command
of the grammatical means to mark finiteness. According to the second,
children lack the resources or knowledge to fulfill the pragmatic require-
ments of finiteness marking. Before we can draw the conclusion that chil-
dren use root infinitives as the effect of (processing limitations that lead to)
pragmatic deficits, we first have to know whether the finite alternatives for
root infinitives are available to the children. If these alternatives are not yet
acquired, children are forced to violate the discourse conditions by using
root infinitives. Then, their use of root infinitives is not due to pragmatic
deficits, but to the unavailability of finite forms.
In this book it will be argued that children (over)use of root infinitives
because they have not yet acquired finite verb forms. The basic premise
that underlies the analyses proposed here is that children’s use of root in-
finitives and properties of root infinitives can be understood as phenomena
at the interface between syntax and the lexicon. Our analysis finds a natu-
ral embedding in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Especially the
assumption that the syntactic component and the morphological component
are separated and the assumption that vocabulary items can be underspeci-
fied (which are both critical notions in Distributed Morphology) provide
ways to account for a range of empirical observations. In our view, root
infinitives contain underspecified vocabulary items (infinitives) that are
acquired prior to the specified finite alternatives. This analysis explains not
only the developmental patterns of root infinitives and their finite counter-
parts (e.g. relative frequencies, subject use), but also allows us to under-
stand several aspects of the semantics of root infinitives (e.g. variability in
the meaning assigned to root infinitives, changes in meaning over time and
cross-linguistic differences in the meaning of root infinitives).
The empirical focus of this book is on the language development of
monolingual Dutch children, who are roughly between ages two and three.
4 Introduction
From these children were longitudinal spontaneous speech data as well as

experimental data analyzed. In a cross-linguistic experiment, we compared
the data of monolingual Dutch-speaking and English-speaking children.
Many analyses are, however, applicable to other languages, data from other
learner groups and other types of data, as will be pointed out in the final
chapter.
After providing an empirical and theoretical background in Chapter 2,
we will introduce in Chapter 3 our framework and hypotheses. Chapters 4,
5 and 6 describe different types of empirical data that substantiate our
claims. In appendices 4 and 5 detailed information is given on the statisti-
cal procedures used to analyze the child data. Variation is the running
theme of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. In Chapter 4 we will show that Dutch root
infinitives can have various temporal and modal interpretations. In this
respect they differ from the other verb forms that children use. Chapter 5
deals with variation across two root infinitive languages (Dutch and Eng-
lish). In this chapter we will also discuss the relation between two seem-
ingly nonfinite verb forms, that is, the verb that has infinitival morphology
and the (ungrammatical) bare verb stem that lacks finite morphology.
Chapter 6 is about variation over time. Important issues discussed in this
chapter are the type frequency of finite verbs and infinitives, the resulting
increase of lexical overlap between the two verb forms, changes in the
error patterns of finite verbs and changes in subject use in finite sentences
and root infinitives. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the main claims and
observations present in our study, discusses their empirical, theoretical and
methodological implications and their relevance for other learner groups,
languages and types of data.
Chapter 2
Background
1. Introduction
As will be illustrated in this chapter, root infinitives are certainly among

the most frequently investigated topics in the field of child language re-
search. An impressive amount of ideas fuelled the collection of new em-
pirical data; reversely, new data resulted in a better understanding of root
infinitives. The aim of this chapter is to single out and evaluate a number
of influential root infinitive studies that constitute the root infinitive tradi-
tion. Providing a background, this overview may help appreciating the
central questions in this book, and the solutions that will be given.
Many studies on root infinitives addressed the question whether Dutch
children – and children acquiring other verb second languages - use root
infinitives because they do not know the verb placement rules of their lan-
guage. Therefore, we will start in section 2 with a brief description of the
Dutch verb placement rules and the Verb Second mechanism. In section 3,
three studies will be described that had a major influence on the debate of
root infinitives, albeit that it later turned out that the analyses proposed in
these studies could not be upheld because of empirical inadequacy. In sec-
tion 4, two other, potentially promising but contrastive, proposals will be
discussed that present a different analysis of the early child grammar dur-
ing the period of time in which children use both finite sentences and root
infinitives (Optional Infinitive stage). According to one view, root infini-
tives show that children lack the knowledge of verb placement rules. Ac-
cording to the other view, children have full access to verb placement rules
in the Optional Infinitive stage, yet they do not always use them. Section 5
elaborates on the question as to why children would avoid using grammati-
cal marking of finiteness. Semantic properties of children’s finite clauses
and root infinitives are discussed in section 6. Section 7 gives a brief sum-
mary.
6 Background
2. Verb Second
One of the questions that has figured prominently in the root infinitive
debate is whether or not children that use root infinitives have knowledge
of verb movement. And, if they have this knowledge, what keeps them
from using it? Before turning to some answers to these questions, we will
start with a brief explanation of verb movement.
In the declarative Dutch sentence in (1) the finite verb zal ‘will’ is
placed in second position, directly following the topicalized temporal ad-
verb ooit ‘once’, and the infinitival verb beklimmen ‘climb’ is in final sen-
tence position:
(1) Ooit zal zij de berg beklimmen.

once will-fin she the mountain climb-inf
‘One day she will climb the mountain.’
Adv – Vfin – Subj – Obj – Vinf
The sentence in (1) contains two clues on the syntactic derivation. First,
finite and nonfinite verbs appear in distinct positions. Secondly, the finite
verb precedes the subject, in contrast to the more standard sentences with-
out topicalization, as illustrated in (2):
(2) Zij zal ooit de berg beklimmen.

she will-fin once the mountain climb-inf
Subj – Vfin – Adv – Obj – Vinf
Further comparison of (1) with (3) and (4), which also contain a topical-
ized object and display inversion of subject and finite verb reinforces the
conclusion that the finite verb in Dutch does not necessarily follow the
subject, but that the finite verb has to be placed in second position, irre-
spective of whether or not the preceding constituent is the subject:
(3) De berg zal zij ooit beklimmen.

the mountain will-fin she once climb-inf
Obj – Vfin – Subj – Adv - Vinf
(4) De berg beklimt zij nooit.

the mountain climbe-fin she never
Obj – Vfin – Subj - Adv
Verb Second 7
According to the standard analysis, the bare verbal stem is base-generated

in the head position of the Verb Phrase where it follows its internal argu-
ments. Inflection, i.e. the morphological realization of finiteness, is gener-
ated in the head of the Inflection Phrase. The verbal stem moves past its
internal arguments to the head position of the Inflection Phrase to pick up
inflection, which encodes in Dutch tense and agreement features. The in-
flected verb moves further on to the head of the Complementizer Phrase to
be in a proper tense position (Den Besten 1983; Koster 1975). This analy-
sis, referred to as the ‘V-to-C movement’ analysis, is illustrated in the tree-
diagram of the sentence Jan ziet Marie ‘John sees Mary’ in (5):2
(5)
CP
ru
Spec C'
Jani ru
C IP
zietj ru
Spec I'
ti ru
I VP
tj ru
Spec V'
ru
Marie tj
More recent proposals are embedded in the minimalist program as pro-

posed by Chomsky (1993, and later work).3 The minimalist account of verb
movement differs from the Government and Binding analysis in several
respects. First of all, the head of the Verb Phrase is not occupied by a bare
stem but by a fully inflected form. This form contains inflectional features
– in Dutch these are restricted to tense and agreement - that project func-
tional structure – in Dutch Tense and Agreement -. The Inflection Phrase is
split into a Tense Phrase and an Agreement Phrase, and the inflected verb
moves to these functional positions in order to check its features. Move-
8 Background
ment takes place in overt or covert syntax, depending on feature strength.

Strong inflectional features require movement in overt syntax (prior to
spell-out), while weak inflectional features lead to procrastination of
movement (until Logical Form). This strong-weak distinction involves a
reformulation of the notion ‘parameter’. Previously, Dutch was a head-
final language with a positive value for the Verb Second parameter (+V2).
In minimalist terms, Dutch is a head-final language with strong inflectional
features.
A language like Dutch stands in opposition with another Germanic lan-
guage like English. Consider the sentences in (6) and (7):
(6) One day she will climb the mountain.

Adv – Subj – Vfin – Vinf - Obj
(7) She will climb the mountain one day.

Subj – Vfin – Vinf – Obj -Adv
In English the finite verb follows the subject even if a constituent other
than the subject is in first position. Also, overt syntax does not distinguish
between placement of the finite and nonfinite verb (as in Dutch). English
has therefore been analyzed as a head-initial language with weak inflec-
tional features. Movement of the finite verb in such a language is procras-
tinated until Logical Form, taking place in covert syntax (Ouhalla 1999;
Pollock 1989).
Consider now again the Daan’s root infinitive given in (8).
(8) Jij de walvis maken. Daan 2;04.28

you the whale make-inf
In (8), the Daan does not apply Verb Second: The infinitival verb is placed
in final position. Thus, verb placement in early child Dutch is like adult
Dutch in some respects (infinitive in sentence-final position), but not in all
(no finite verb). It is precisely this incongruity that dominated much of the
early work on root infinitives: Do children who use root infinitives, know
verb movement? What is the structure that underlies root infinitives? Does
use of root infinitives illustrate deficits in children’s knowledge of syntax?
In the following section, three early answers to these questions will be
described.
Three early accounts 9
3. Three early accounts
According to the Small Clause Hypothesis, functional categories are absent

in the early child grammar. The absence of functional categories disables
movement of the verb. The Lexical Learning Hypothesis holds that the
initial state is a grammar which has one underspecified functional category.
Root infinitives are analyzed as one of the effects of this type of initial
state grammar. The Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis states that children have all
functional categories, but in root infinitives the landing site for the finite
verb is occupied by a silent auxiliary.
3.1. Small Clause Hypothesis
According to the Small Clause Hypothesis (also: Reduced Grammatical

Competence Hypothesis), a root infinitive is a sentence that lacks func-
tional structure (Lebeaux 1990; Radford 1988, 1990). It is argued that this
complete lack of functional structure characterizes all early child utter-
ances. Thus, young children do not only omit finite verbs, but determiners
and complementizers are left out as well (the examples in (9) are from
Radford 1990):
(9) a. Bear in chair.

‘The bear is in the chair.’
b. Bow-wow go?
‘Where did the bow-wow go?’
Syntax in this pre-functional stage is, according to the Small Clause Hy-
pothesis, reduced to thematic relations between words. The early clause
encodes the thematic relationships between the verb and its arguments, and
is, in this respect, a projection of a verb’s lexical properties. An operation
such as movement of the verb to the Inflection Phrase cannot take place, as
there is no Inflection Phrase. Consequently, the verb surfaces in nonfinite
form.
Although the Small Clause Hypothesis successfully explains why chil-
dren omit various different elements, the hypothesis makes developmental
predictions that are not borne out. The claim is that functional categories
are in the early stages entirely absent. Around the age of 24 months, func-
tional categories mature. It is expected that at this age child language un-
10 Background
dergoes a sudden transition from a nonfinite to finite stage. De Haan

(1987), however, observes in the data of the Dutch-learning boy Tim
(2;01.15 and 2;02.15) that finite sentences and root infinitives co-occur.
Tim uses (10) next to (11):
(10) a. Gaat niet.

goes-fin not
AUXfin – Neg
b. Moet daar in.
must-fin there in
AUXfin – Adv – Prep
(11) a. Ik een keertje doen.

I one time do-inf
Subj - Obj - Vinf
b. Even buiten kijken.
just outside look-inf
Adv - Adv - Vinf
In their study on early child German - with respect to verb placement Ger-
man strongly resembles Dutch - Poeppel and Wexler (1992) observe in
Andreas’ (2;1) data the following sentences in one and the same session.
The sentences in (12) contain finite hab and mach while (13) contains the
infinitival form haben ‘to have’:
(12) a. Ich hab ein dossen Ball.

I have-fin a big ball
b. Ich mach das nich.
I do-fin that not
(13) a. Thorsten Caesar haben.

Thorsten Caesar (= doll) have-inf
b. Du das haben.
you that have-inf
There is no sudden transition from nonfinite to finite stage; instead there is

a period of co-occurrence of finite sentences and root infinitives. This ob-
servation is unexpected given the maturational view of the Small Clause
hypothesis.
3.2. Lexical Learning Hypothesis
In order to explain developmental stages, Clahsen proposes that children

start out with one underspecified functional category F. On the basis of the
acquisition of functional morphemes, children specify this category and
posit additional, specific functional categories (Lexical Learning Hypothe-
sis). The early underspecification accounts for Clahsen’s observation that
children in the earliest stage (25-29 months) do not stick to a fixed order of
constituents and that all verbal elements occur in first/second and final
position with a preference for final position (Clahsen 1982; Clahsen and
Smolka 1985). Clahsen interprets the finding that all verbal elements, in-
cluding verbal complexes, can appear in first/second position as an indica-
tor of early verb movement. If children start out with only one general
functional projection, there is no specific trigger for finite verbs and both
finite and nonfinite verbs can appear in sentence-initial position (Clahsen
1990; Clahsen, Eissenbeiss, and Penke 1994; Clahsen and Penke 1992).
This would explain the co-occurrence of finite sentences and root infini-
tives and the initial random distribution of finite and nonfinite verb forms.
De Haan (1987) examined Tim's spontaneous speech data to investigate
if verb placement in Dutch child language resembles verb placement in
German child language. Tim's data did not confirm Clahsen’s claims re-
garding random distribution. Already in the earliest stages, Tim’s data
show a strong contingency between verb form and verb placement: Finite
forms (ending on either the suffix -ø or –t) are placed in first or second
position while nonfinite forms (ending on the suffix –en) are sentence-
final. Thus, only morphologically finite verbs are fronted (Jordens 1990;
Verhulst-Schlichting 1985; Wijnen 1999).
Poeppel and Wexler (1993) describe data of the German-learning boy
Andreas. Like De Haan (and others), they observe that finite verbs and
nonfinite verbs appear in different positions. In his data, there are 197 sen-
tences with the finite verb in second position; 180 contain an overt subject
and in 50 examples, the finite verb is preceded by a nonsubject i.e. an ob-
ject or adverb. Thus, Andreas does not stick to the canonical subject-verb
order, but he is able to topicalize constituents. If he topicalizes a constitu-
ent, he does this in accordance with the German adult grammar and applies
subject-verb inversion so that the finite verb is located in second position.
In all, early morphosyntactic dissociation between finite and infinitival
verb forms is a robust finding in both Dutch and German child language,
and Clahsen’s observation that finite verbs appear in second and in final
12 Background
position seems the odd one out. Jordens (1990) explains why: He points
out that the sentence-final finite verbs Clahsen mentions are, in fact, past
participles with an omitted prefix. Past participles with an omitted prefix
that end with the suffix –t are superficially indistinguishable from simple
present tense forms, and can only be distinguished from each other on se-
mantic grounds.
3.3. Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis
Given the correct placement of the infinitival verb in root infinitives, one
may think of a simple and straightforward explanation for children’s root
infinitives: They are full-fledged finite structures containing a phonetically
not realized (also: A dropped or a null) auxiliary. This would explain the
strong correlation between infinitival morphology and position, because
omission of the auxiliary results directly in a root infinitive, as illustrated
with Daan’s root infinitive (2;04.28), in (14):
(14) Jij moet de walvis maken.

you must the whale make-inf
This idea has been proposed by Boser et al. (1992). Ferdinand (1996) nar-
rows it down to the Modal Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis. She assumes that
the underlying auxiliary in root infinitives must be auxiliaries that are used
by the children elsewhere. Ferdinand’s first relevant observation is that the
children use overt auxiliaries (that select infinitival complements) with
either a future (‘inchoative’) or deontic denotation. Epistemic modals are
absent. A second relevant observation is that epistemic modals select for
states, but that the modal auxiliaries used by the children are incompatible
with states (Barbiers 1995; McDowell 1987; Steedman 1977).
The examples in (15)-(16) below illustrate the relation between denota-
tions of modal auxiliaries and predicate types. The ‘minimal pair’ weten
‘know’/leren ‘learn’ shows that [-dynamic] state-denoting predicates force
an epistemic reading of the modal auxiliary (15), while with [+dynamic]
event-denoting predicates a deontic reading is preferred (16). The lexical
meaning of the two predicates is quite similar, but their dynamicity values
differ:
(15) Jan moet het antwoord weten.

John must the answer know
‘I conclude that John knows the answer.’
(16) Jan moet Frans leren.

John must French learn
‘John is required to learn French.’
Thus, Ferdinand interprets the observation that root infinitives are eventive
as support for the presence of a (deontic) modal auxiliary in root infini-
tives.
The basic idea of the Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis and its more restricted
variant, the Modal Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis, is straightforward and
hence attractive. As long as it remains unclear why children should drop
the auxiliary (assuming that they can, in principle, produce it), the hy-
pothesis is stipulative, however. In addition, there are a number of empiri-
cal problems.
First of all, it is predicted that overt subjects are obligatory in root in-
finitives, because, according to Boser et al., the overt subject acts as the
licensor of the null auxiliary. One of the characteristics of root infinitives
is that overt subjects are, at best, optional though. A comparison with chil-
dren’s early finite sentences indicates that null subjects are a property of
root infinitives (Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Hyams and Wexler 1993;
Krämer 1993; Sano and Hyams 1994).
Secondly, one could argue that in order to drop the auxiliary, children
must be able to use auxiliaries in the first place. Analyses of longitudinal
data show that the bulk of periphrastic verbs, containing auxiliaries, are
produced after the root infinitive stage (Jordens 1990; Wijnen 2000), and,
that although there is a phase in which root infinitives and periphrastic
verbs co-occur, there is also an early stage in which only root infinitives
occur and periphrastic verbs are not used (Blom and Wijnen submitted).
Thirdly, if root infinitives were like finite sentences, as proposed by the
(Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis, then it is expected that root infinitives
and finite sentences pattern alike. However, both topicalization as well as
WH-movement are unattested in root infinitives, whereas they are found in
children’s early finite utterances. Asymmetries in use of WH-movement
between root infinitives and finite sentences are observed in Dutch, Ger-
man, Swedish and French child language (Haegeman (1994) for Dutch,
14 Background
Poeppel and Wexler (1993) and Kursawe (1994) for German, Santelmann
(1994) for Swedish and Crisma (1992) for French).4
The fourth, and final point of criticism that could be raised against the
(Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis concerns the independent support
brought up by Ferdinand (1996). Ferdinand argues that the eventivity of
root infinitives provides support for drop of a modal auxiliary. However, it
is not the case that all types of modality used by young children obey an
eventivity constraint ánd it is not the case that only modal utterances obey
such a constraint, witness the Dutch examples in (17) and (18):
(17) James wil gelukkig zijn.

James want happy be-inf
‘James wants to be happy.’
(18) *James is gelukkig aan het zijn.

James is happy on the be-inf
‘James is being happy.’
The modal sentence in (17) expresses volition (or dynamic modality),

which Ferdinand treats on par with deontic modality, but that, unlike deon-
tic modality, does not shift to an epistemic reading in case the auxiliary
selects a state-denoting predicate. The nonmodal sentence in (18), which
expresses progressive aspect, can, by contrast, not select for state verbs.
3.4. Summary
Children pass through a stage in which they use both finite sentences and
root infinitives. This observation is incompatible with the claim that the
use of root infinitives is caused by complete absence of functional struc-
ture. The idea that children initially have access to one underspecified
functional category does not hold either, because this would predict ran-
dom use of finite verb forms in finite and nonfinite position. Dutch and
German observations show the opposite: Morphologically finite verb forms
appear in second position whereas morphologically nonfinite verb forms
occur in final base position. Finally, children’s root infinitives do not seem
to be full fledged finite structures with a null modal, since the null modal
is not syntactically licensed in root infinitives and root infinitives and finite
sentences do not pattern alike. In addition, there is no evidence that chil-
No overlap versus optional infinitives 15
dren who use root infinitives are capable of using auxiliaries, it remains
unclear as to why the auxiliary would be dropped and the eventivity of root
infinitives does not provide unequivocal support for the presence of a null
modal.
4. No overlap versus optional infinitives
Although none of three hypotheses discussed in the previous section pro-

vides a satisfactory explanation, they have all been of significant influence,
not in the least because they contributed to a more precise description of
the properties of root infinitives. This section focuses on two analyses of
root infinitives that seem more fruitful. De Haan (1987) argues on the basis
of a lack of lexical overlap between the finite verbs in children’s early fi-
nite clauses and infinitives in their nonfinite sentences that children do not
know verb movement, and hence, that the early child grammar is different
from the adult grammar. Poeppel and Wexler (1993) defend, on the basis
of observed overlap, that young children have full command of syntax and
are able to move the verb.
4.1. No Overlap Hypothesis
De Haan (1987) observed that the Dutch child Tim uses systematically
different lexemes in finite and infinitival form. Tim’s finite verbs are re-
stricted to auxiliary-like verbs that denote temporal, modal and aspectual
meanings whereas Tim’s infinitives denote typically dynamicity i.e. ‘act’
or ‘change’. This contrast is crucial for his analysis. Relevant examples of
finite sentences and root infinitives given in (10) and (11), are repeated
here in (19) and (20):
(19) a. Gaat niet.

goes-fin not
AUXfin – Neg
b. Moet daar in.
must-fin there in
AUXfin – Adv – Prep
16 Background
(20) a. Ik een keertje doen.

I one time do-inf
Subj - Obj - Vinf
b. Even buiten kijken.
just outside look-inf
Adv - Adv - Vinf
De Haan argues that Dutch children do not move the verb from final to
second position. Rather, the early Dutch child grammar contains two cate-
gories AUX(iliary) and V(erb) that are syntactically, morphologically and
semantically distinct. AUX lacks finite as well as nonfinite suffixes. AUX
denotes temporal, modal and aspectual meanings and is generated in a left-
peripheral position in the sentence. V is marked by the infinitival suffix
-en, denotes ‘act’ and ‘change’ and is generated in sentence-final position.
Why would children hypothesize a classification that differs from the
adult classification, and how do they unlearn the ‘wrong’ classification?
According to Pinker (1984, 1989), children apply semantic bootstrapping
to detect syntactic categories, and attach categorical features on the basis
of semantic primitives such as ‘action’ or ‘motion’. Through linking rules,
these primitives are linked to the syntactic category V. From this perspec-
tive, it is understandable that children end up with two different categories:
The predicates that denote tense, aspect and modality (nonaction predicates
or - in terms of De Haan - members of the category ‘AUX’) are assigned a
different categorical feature than action-denoting predicates (members of
the category ‘V’). To arrive at one category V that contains all verbal
predicates, AUX and V must be merged, for instance on the basis of finite
inflectional morphology. In that case finite inflection would be the feature
that generalizes over the categories AUX and V.
4.2. Optional Infinitive Hypothesis
Poeppel and Wexler (1993) argue against De Haan’s observation that there
is a no overlap stage. They report that out of the 28 verbs that are used by
the German-speaking boy Andreas twice or more, 8 verbs appear in finite
as well as nonfinite form. The 20 remaining verbs that show no overlap do
not fit De Haan's classification: The finite verbs are not only modals such
as können ‘can’ and mögen ‘want’ or the copula sein ‘be’, but they denote
also activities like fliegen ’fly’ or umkippen ‘fall over’. The nonfinite
No overlap versus optional infinitives 17
forms are nearly all verbs that denote actions. The only ambiguous predi-
cate in nonfinite form is stehenbleiben ‘stay’. Poeppel and Wexler (1993:
12) conclude: “... the argument that there is no syntactic similarity between
verbs used in second position and verbs used in final position is hard to
defend in this context. Moreover, the claim that there is no semantic over-
lap between sets is difficult to maintain...”.
Poeppel and Wexler (1993) and, in later work Wexler (1994, 1998) ar-
gue that children have full-fledged syntactic knowledge from the earliest
observable stage in syntactic development. They conclude that Andreas
has, at the age of 2;01, full mastery of verb movement and agreement.
Their conclusion is backed up with data showing a correlation between
finite/nonfinite suffixes and initial/final position, Verb Second in topicali-
zation structures, lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives and
correct agreement. With regard to agreement, Poeppel and Wexler (1993:
6) observe that: “Andreas used predominantly singular subjects with cor-
rect agreement morphology on the verb”, which they interpret as support
for the claim that children have full mastery of agreement from early on.
Although the data presented by Poeppel and Wexler seem in full sup-
port of their claims, it is questionable whether or not their claim is really
falsifiable on the basis of spontaneous speech data from the earliest devel-
opmental stages (Polišenská forthcoming). For one thing, the early correct
agreeing verbs may be stored in Andreas’ lexicon as such. If Andreas
knows agreement morphology, we expect him to use correct agreement
with subjects that differ in person and number (ideally on more than one
occasion). Unfortunately, data that give insight into the variation of agree-
ing verbs in Andreas’ speech are not provided.
4.3. Summary
Two contrasting analyses have been discussed i.e. the No Overlap Hy-
pothesis and the Optional Infinitive Hypothesis. At this point, none of the
two is unequivocally supported by empirical observations. The two con-
trasting empirical generalizations that go with these hypotheses are sum-
marized in (21) and (22) below:
18 Background
(21) There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in

root infinitives and finite verbs used in co-occurring finite sen-
tences. The predicates of root infinitives belong to a different
class than the predicates of co-occurring finite sentences (based
on De Haan 1987; Jordens 1990; Ferdinand 1996; Wijnen 1997,
2000).
(22) The same lexemes appear as infinitival and finite verb in re-
spectively root infinitives and co-occurring finite sentences
(based on Poeppel and Wexler 1993).
5. Underspecification and full competence
Suppose that Poeppel and Wexler are right and that Andreas indeed knows
all about verb movement: Why doesn’t he move the verb? Wexler (1994,
1998) and various others (Hoekstra and Hyams 1995; Rizzi 1992, Rizzi
1994; Schütze 1997; Schütze and Wexler 1996) explain this in terms of
‘underspecification’. The notion of underspecification was already men-
tioned in relation to the Lexical Learning Hypothesis. According to this
hypothesis, children start out with only one underspecified functional cate-
gory and specify the other functional categories of the ambient language on
the basis of grammatical morphemes in the input. In contrast, the under-
specification accounts discussed in this section combine underspecification
with the premise that children have full grammatical competence from
early on.
5.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis
Wexler claims that children have the option to use root infinitives, because
Tense is underspecified. Thus, verbs do not move to Tense; the only trigger
for verbs is Agreement. In finite sentences, the verb is raised, resulting in a
correctly agreeing form (Poeppel and Wexler 1993). In root infinitives, the
verb is lowered, resulting in a form that is not agreeing.5 Wexler illustrated
his claims with data from French (Pierce 1989, 1992). Young French-
speaking children have moved or raised the finite verb, while the verb in
root infinitives is unmoved (or lowered, in terms of Wexler). The French
examples below illustrate that a verb that precedes the negation pas (hence
Underspecification and full competence 19
moved) is finite, while a verb that follows pas (hence unmoved) is an in-
finitive (examples are from Pierce 1992).
(23) a. Marche pas.

walk-fin not
b. Ça tourne pas.
this turn-fin not
(24) a. Pas casser.

not break-inf
b. Pas rouler en vélo.
not roll-inf on bike
Root infinitives do not occur anymore as the acquisition of forms to mark

temporal distinctions (that is, present versus past) leads to obligatory mark-
ing of tense.
With respect to the cross-linguistic pattern of root infinitives, Wexler
(1994, 1998) generalizes that null subject languages (like Italian or Span-
ish) do not exhibit an Optional Infinitive stage. The Optional Infinitive
stage does occur in non null-subject languages (such as Dutch, German and
English). This correlation has been supported by Hebrew data showing that
Hebrew children only use root infinitives in contexts in which adult He-
brew does not license null subjects (Rhee and Wexler 1995).
5.2. Underspecification of Number Hypothesis
Hoekstra and Hyams (1995) and Hyams (1996, 1999) proposed that not
Tense but Number is underspecified. Cross-linguistic patterns are pre-
sented in support of this claim. In Germanic languages, such as Dutch,
German and English, root infinitives are frequent, whereas root infinitives
are infrequent in a Romance language such as Italian. The two language
types differ in the richness of their inflectional paradigms. Italian has per-
son as well as number agreement in the present tense paradigm, whereas
the Germanic languages only mark Number i.e. the difference between
singular and plural. Hyams (1999: 402) states that in German-type lan-
guages “number is the morphosyntactic reflex of tense binding”. If in these
languages Number is underspecified, Tense cannot be bound: Hence a verb
20 Background
form that has no morphological tense features surfaces, namely the infini-
tive.
Underspecification of Number prevents children (acquiring languages
that have Number agreement) from using finite sentences. As long as
Number is underspecified, root infinitives surface. To explain the Optional
Infinitive stage itself and to account for the shift to a finite stage, Hyams
(1999) gives an additional explanation. In the Optional Infinitive stage,
children have two ways to bind Tense. In root infinitives, they bind Tense
deictically to speech time. In finite sentences, Tense is bound grammati-
cally through a tense chain. Children escape from the Optional Infinitive
stage when they learn that Tense, being anaphoric, must be bound gram-
matically. As long as the general pragmatic principle that prescribes gram-
matical binding is not acquired or has not matured, finiteness is optional
for children.
Bar-Shalom and Snyder (1998) contrast the Underspecification of
Tense Hypothesis (which was discussed in the previous section) with the
Underspecification of Number Hypothesis. They address the question
whether or not Russian has an Optional Infinitive stage, since Russian can
be analyzed as a non pro-drop language that has rich verbal morphology
(Franks 1995). Hoekstra and Hyams hence predict that child Russian
should not display an Optional Infinitive stage, whereas Rhee and Wexler
(1995) predict that Russian children do pass through an Optional Infinitive
stage. The findings reported by Bar-Shalom and Snyder are in favor of the
second approach: A comparison of child data from Russian and Polish –
which form, according to Bar-Shalom and Snyder a near minimal pair with
respect to their pro-drop status - reveals that Russian children do use root
infinitives whereas root infinitives are nearly absent in the Polish data (see
also Brun, Avrutin, and Babyonishev 1999). Both languages have rich ver-
bal morphology.
5.3. Agreement and Tense Omission Model
The gist of the Agreement and Tense Omission Model is that in root infini-
tives, Agreement and/or Tense is/are underspecified (Schütze 1997;
Schütze and Wexler 1996). The Agreement and Tense Omission Model
extends the analysis of adult infinitival clauses to child root infinitives. It is
argued that the dropped subject in root infinitives is a null subject, and that
this null subject is identified as the empty category PRO (‘big pro’). Why
is the subject PRO and is the child not allowed to simply drop the subject?
Chomsky (1986) argued that Universal Grammar contains a principle stat-
ing that all sentences must have subjects. This principle, known as the Ex-
tended Projection Principle, explains (among other things) the insertion of
the expletive subjects in sentences like (25):
(25) a. There is a man in the garden.

b. It is fun for Jane to play badminton.
The Extended Projection Principle makes direct predictions for the analysis
of subjectless sentences. To obey the Extended Projection Principle it must
be assumed that (26) contains a null subject: A subject that is structurally
present but does not have a phonetic representation.
(26) It would be wrong [ NULL SUBJECT to leave now ].
As the null subject in (26) has a syntactic function but is not spelled
out, it is an empty category. In generative theory, there are different types
of empty categories, each with their own licensing conditions. According
to Chomsky (1981), there is only one empty category that must remain
ungoverned, namely PRO.6 Infinitival clauses lack a finite verb, hence the
head of the Inflection Phrase is empty and its specifier position (the ca-
nonical subject position) is ungoverned. Thus, PRO is licensed in this posi-
tion.
According to the Agreement and Tense Omission Model, Tense li-
censes overt subjects, underspecified Tense licenses PRO, and the overt
subject’s Case is assigned by Agreement. As a result, subjects are dropped
if Tense is underspecified. If Agreement is underspecified, and Tense is
not, the subject is assigned default Case. This may result in incorrect Case
if the default Case is nonnominative, as in English. As accusative is the
default Case in English, it is correctly predicted that English children use
root infinitives with accusative subjects. The examples in (27) are from
Schütze (1997):
(27) a. Him fall down. Nina 2;3.14

b. Her have a big mouth. Nina 2;2.6
22 Background
Thus, the Agreement and Tense Omission Model explains optional use of
subjects in root infinitives as well as the occurrence or Case errors in Eng-
lish child root infinitives.
5.4. Truncation Hypothesis
The central tenet of the Truncation Hypothesis is that children under-

specify the Root Principle in (28) and, as a result, lack the knowledge that
the Complementizer heads every sentence (Haegeman 1994, 1995; Rizzi
1992, 1994; Weissenborn 1994):
(28) Root Principle

The Complementizer Phrase is root.
Underspecification of the Root Principle results in (29):7
(29) Verb Phrase or Tense Phrase or Complementizer Phrase is root.
The effect of (29) is that children do not necessarily project the entire adult
structure, though they have to obey the canonical order of projections that
is given by Universal Grammar. In the resulting, truncated, trees the root of
a sentence can be the Complementizer Phrase or any projection below this
phrase. Thus, children cannot omit material from the middle of a syntactic
tree; only top nodes can be dropped.8
The optional use of infinitives follows from the optional projection of
the Tense Phrase and the Complementizer Phrase. In the case of root infini-
tives, children take the Verb Phrase as root:
(30) VP
ru
Spec V'
ru
V
In the case of finite utterances, either the Tense Phrase or the Comple-
mentizer Phrase is root. Truncation hypotheses focus on the absence of a
Complementizer Phrase in child language. According to these accounts, the
dropped subject in child language is not PRO, but it is a null constant,

which is allowed to be antecedentless by virtue of the absence of an ante-
cedent position. The specifier of the Complementizer Phrase is an antece-
dent position, thus absence of the Complementizer Phrase leads to absence
of an antecedent position and hence allowance of the null constant. Trunca-
tion accounts predict that root infinitives have a null subject, while finite
sentences can have null subjects and overt subjects.
5.5. Summary
Full competence approaches generally assume that children pass through a

stage in they use both finite sentences and root infinitives, the Optional
Infinitive stage. Optional use of infinitives is explained via underspecifica-
tion of Tense, Number, Agreement or the Root Principle. The proposals
focus on the relation between finiteness and subject use and cross-
linguistic differences in the use of root infinitives. The empirical observa-
tions that they account for are summarized in (31) and (32):
(31) In root infinitives, children drop subjects significantly more

frequently than in co-occurring finite sentences (based on Hae-
geman 1994, 1995; Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Krämer 1993;
Rizzi 1994; Sano and Hyams 1994; Schütze 1997, amongst oth-
ers).
(32) Null-subject languages do not have an Optional Infinitive stage,

whereas non null-subject languages do have an Optional Infinitive
stage (based on Bar-Shalom and Snyder 1998; Guasti 1993/94,
2002; Rhee and Wexler 1995; Torrens 1995; Wexler 1994, 1998).
6. Aspects of meaning
Poeppel and Wexler (1993) rejected the No Overlap Hypothesis proposed

first by De Haan (1987) on the basis of observed lexical overlap in the
Optional Infinitive stage. Yet, a number of findings on the semantics of
root infinitives are consistent with the No Overlap Hypothesis.
Ferdinand (1996) has shown that there is evidence for an early dichot-
omy between finite sentences and root infinitives, based on evidence from
24 Background
early child French. Following Vender (1967: 106), she formulates this in
terms of states and events. The generalization approximates De Haan’s
(1987) distinction between auxiliary-like finite verbs and infinitives that
denote actions: States are, like the reference of most auxiliaries, not dy-
namic whereas events (comprising activities, accomplishments and
achievements) are dynamic.9 Wijnen (1997) confirms Ferdinand’s observa-
tion for early child Dutch, on the basis of a study of spontaneous speech
data of four children. He makes use of the distinction between stage-level
predicates that denote temporal properties and individual-level predicates
that denote permanent properties (Carlson 1979; Kratzer 1989). Eventive
verbs are thus a subset of stage-level predicates while state verbs are a
subset of individual-level predicates. Gavruseva (2001, 2002) draws the
line between predicates that are inherently specified for telicity - these
occur in finite sentences - and predicates that are not specified for telicity -
these appear in root infinitives -. Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) follow the
state-event contrast, but point out that there is a cross-linguistic difference
in this respect: The asymmetry holds for languages like Dutch and German,
but not for child English: English root infinitive do contain state-denoting
predicates.
6.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis
Ferdinand (1996) argued that root infinitives are eventive because they
contain a deontic modal auxiliary (see, for details, section 3.3). On her
view, the underspecification of Tense in the early child grammar accounts
for the stativity of finite sentences in the Optional Infinitive stage. Under-
specified Tense is valued as [+Tense] and lacks further specifications for
[-past] or [+past]. The value of the underspecified Tense is determined by
speech time S, yielding a here-and-now or present tense reading. Ferdinand
(p. 88) crucially assumes that only stative predicates can survive when
Tense is underspecified:
“Non-eventive verbs lack internal temporal structure, they denote states.
This entails that they can be [ +tense ] without being linked to a specific part
of the time axis. Eventive verbs, on the contrary, have internal temporal
structure; they denote changes taking place in time. For this reason, when-
ever an eventive verb is marked for [ +tense ] it must be linked to a specific
moment in time.”
Aspects of meaning 25
Wijnen (1997), conversely, claims that only eventive predicates can sur-
vive if Tense is underspecified. Following Kratzer (1989), Wijnen assumes
that stage-level predicates (i.e. events) contain an event-variable while
individual-level predicates (i.e. states) do not. According to Kratzer, there
is a syntactic difference as well: Subjects of stage-level predicates (i.e.
events) originate in the specifier of the Verb Phrase while subjects of indi-
vidual-level predicates (i.e. states) are generated in the specifier of the
Inflection Phrase. Wijnen argues that there are two ways to bind the event
variable: By means of a temporal operator (Tense) and by means of a deic-
tic operator. If Tense is present, the event variable is bound by Tense. In
root infinitives, the alternative, deictic, strategy is applied. Stative predi-
cates do not have an event variable, and, therefore, a temporal interpreta-
tion cannot be assigned deictically.10 As a result, stative predicates are
(necessarily) overtly marked for Tense while eventive predicates can re-
main untensed.
Two objections can be raised against Wijnen’s analysis. First of all, if a
deictic operator binds the event variable in root infinitives, we expect that
root infinitives receive a present tense interpretation because the event
variable will be bound to speech time. The data suggest that most root in-
finitives are modal, however (Ferdinand 1996; Ingram and Thompson
1996; Wijnen 1997). Secondly, if the assignment of a temporal interpreta-
tion via grammar is achieved through binding of a variable to Tense, it is
still unexplained how states can receive a temporal interpretation. They do
not have an event variable and, hence, there is nothing that Tense can bind.
6.2. Underspecification of Telicity Hypothesis
Gavruseva (2001, 2002) argues that the eventivity of root infinitives fol-
lows from aspectual underspecification, in particular, underspecification of
the functional head Telicity. Verbal predicates differ with respect to their
telicity value. Some predicates are telic and have an inherent endpoint e.g.
close, die, arrive. Other predicates are nontelic and do not have an inherent
endpoint e.g. dance, walk, eat. There are also verbs that are transient: They
can be telic as well as nontelic. For instance, the event denoted by eat an
apple has finished when the apple is eaten. However, eat by itself is not
telic. As the addition of an object influences the telicity value, telicity is
argued to be compositionality derived (Verkuyl 1972). Gavruseva claims
that children lack the ability to compute the telicity value. Thus, if a tran-
26 Background
sient predicate is used the telicity value of the Verb Phrase remains unde-
termined in child language. As the Verb Phrase must be specified for telic-
ity to establish a tense chain, the chain is blocked.11 The effect is that an
untensed form surfaces. Stative predicates are inherently specified for telic-
ity: They are nontelic. Punctual events are telic. In both cases, a tense chain
can be established and a finite sentence is used.
Gavruseva’s account makes a cross-linguistic prediction. In languages
with rich aspect morphology, telicity does not have to be computed via
syntax. The claim is that these languages do not have an Optional Infinitive
stage. In this respect, the results of the study conducted by Bar-Shalom and
Snyder (1998) are problematic for Gavruseva’s account: Both Russian and
Polish have rich verbal morphology, encoding aspectual distinctions, but
Russian children use root infinitives whereas in child Polish, root infini-
tives are rare.
6.3. Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis
Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) do not focus on the question as to why chil-
dren’s finite sentences are stative while their root infinitives are eventive,
but they rather concentrate on the question as to why root infinitives in
certain languages are eventive (obey an “Eventivity Constraint”), whereas
root infinitives in other languages do not. The crucial contrast here is be-
tween languages that have a morphologically marked infinitive (such as
Dutch, German and French) and languages that do not have a morphologi-
cally marked infinitive (English).
Although English has no distinct infinitival form, it has been argued
that English children do go through an Optional Infinitive stage, just like
Dutch, German, French, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish children (Harris
and Wexler 1996; Wexler 1994): Uninflected verb forms, illustrated in
(33), are actually infinitives. In English, these infinitives happen to be in-
distinguishable from stems in the entire simple present tense paradigm
except third person singular contexts:
(33) a. Eve sit floor. Eve 1;7

b. Where penny go? Adam 2;4.30
c. That truck fall down. Nina 2;0.24
Aspects of meaning 27
This morphological difference between English and other root infinitive

languages is important for Hoekstra and Hyams’ (1998) explanation of
cross-linguistic differences in predicate selection in root infinitives. Pursu-
ing the idea that the infinitive itself has a modal meaning, instantiated in
the infinitival suffix, Hoekstra and Hyams predict that the modal restriction
is absent in English root infinitives, simply because English root infinitives
do not contain an infinitival suffix. Referring to the work Giorgi and Pi-
anesi (1996), Hoekstra and Hyams assume that the English bare verb form
has an inherent meaning which differs from the meaning of the infinitive,
namely [+perfective] (see, for further discussion, Blom 2002). In later
work, Hyams (2001, 2002) assumes that the English bare form has no par-
ticular meaning, however.
Hoekstra and Hyams substantiate their analysis with Dutch data from
Wijnen (1997) who found over 80% modal root infinitives in the Dutch
data.12 Deen (1997) and Madsen and Gilkerson (1999) report the reverse
for English. Like Ferdinand (1996) - this chapter, section 3.3 -, Hoekstra
and Hyams relate eventivity to modality. They argue that because English
root infinitives are not restricted to modal meanings, they also do not have
to obey the eventivity constraint. This prediction is borne out: Deen (1997)
reports that 75% of the root infinitives in the English data he studied are
eventive, Madsen and Gilkerson (1999) found that only 60% of the English
root infinitives they examined are eventive (data reported by Hyams 2001,
2002). This contrasts strongly with the Dutch results, reported by Wijnen
(1997).
6.4. Summary
We have discussed three hypotheses on semantic properties of finite

clauses and root infinitives in the Optional Infinitive stage. Wijnen’s pro-
posal and Gavruseva’s proposal make predictions on root infinitives that
are not borne out by the data. The empirical inadequacy of these two ac-
counts leaves us with Hoekstra and Hyams’s proposal. Their proposal can
account for the following empirical generalizations:
(34) Root infinitives express modal meanings, whereas co-occuring

finite sentences are nonmodal (based on Ferdinand 1996; Hoekstra
and Hyams 1998; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Van Ginneken
1917; Wijnen 1997).
28 Background
(35) Root infinitives that contain a distinct infinitival suffix (Dutch,

German, French) are modal, whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives
(English) are not restricted to modal meanings (based on Hoekstra
and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002).

German, French) are restricted to event-denoting predicates,
whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives (English) contain also state-
denoting predicates (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams
2001, 2002).
7. Summary
In this chapter we gave an overview of various accounts of root infinitives,

and summarized seven relevant empirical generalizations on morphologi-
cal, syntactic, semantic and typological properties of root infinitives. We
related existing accounts and assessed them on the basis of available em-
pirical data. Some hypotheses have been refuted; with respect to others the
data are either indecisive or available data seem to support them. One of
the aims of this book is to provide additional empirical data in order to
further assess the last two types of hypotheses on root infinitives. A second
aim is to propose an alternative analysis of root infinitives that can account
for known facts and is able to explain any new findings. In the next chapter
we will introduce our analysis.
Chapter 3
Theoretical framework
1. Assumptions
In this book we will analyze children’s use of root infinitives as a phe-

nomenon at the lexicon-syntax interface. The analysis proposed in this
book assumes the basic premises from the framework of Distributed Mor-
phology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Harley and Noyer 1999). In this chapter
we will first introduce the relevant background assumptions, followed by a
summary of our analysis and hypotheses.
Within Distributed Morphology, insertion of vocabulary items is post-
syntactic, and there is an independency between affixes and their functions.
This premise goes back to Beard’s Separation Hypothesis (Beard 1982,
1995). On this view, affixes are not the source of semantic and syntactic
distinctions (DiSciullo and Williams 1987), but rather spell-out morpho-
syntactic features. For this reason, Distributed Morphology is often re-
ferred to as a late-insertion theory.
Post-syntactic lexical insertion works as follows. When syntactic check-
ing has been finished, syntactic slots are occupied by bundles of features
(‘morphemes’). In order to spell-out the morphemes, the lexicon is
searched for the most appropriate vocabulary item (i.e. a relation between a
phonological string and information about the position of this string). Se-
lection of the most appropriate vocabulary item can be seen as a competi-
tion in which the Elsewhere Principle determines the winner. Formally, the
Elsewhere Principle states that: “if there are two rules, A and B, and (i) A
(the specific) case includes B (the general case) and (ii) the application of
rule A yields a distinct result from the application of rule B, A is applied
first. If A takes effect, B is not applied” (Kiparsky 1982: 8). If applied to
related vocabulary items in the mental lexicon, the effect of the Elsewhere
Principle is that the vocabulary item that matches most features in the syn-
tactic target slot wins out; this vocabulary item is inserted (Anderson 1992;
Halle and Marantz 1993). If for whatever reason the most specific affix
cannot be inserted, the next specific affix comes into play and so on, until
30 Theoretical framework
the last affix, often referred to as ‘the default’ or ‘elsewhere form’, will be
inserted.
Insertion is furthermore determined by the Subset Principle (Halle
(1997: 428); see also Harley and Noyer (1999: 5)), which states the follow-
ing:
“The phonological exponent of a vocabulary item is inserted into a mor-
pheme if the terminal string of the item matches all or a subset of the gram-
matical features specified in the terminal morpheme. Insertion does not take
place if the vocabulary item contains features not present in the morpheme.
Where several vocabulary items meet the conditions for insertion, the item
matching the greatest number of features specified in the terminal morpheme
must be chosen.”
Thus, it is not only the case that a selected vocabulary item is the most
specific vocabulary item that is available, but the features of this vocabu-
lary item are also identical to or a subset of the features in syntax, i.e. the
features of the terminal morpheme. From the Elsewhere Principle it fol-
lows that an underspecified vocabulary item will only be selected if a more
specified and appropriate form is not available.
An example, which accounts for finite inflection in Dutch, illustrates
the basic idea. In Dutch, the bare verb is inserted if the subject is the
speaker, whereas the affix -t occurs in nonspeaker, singular contexts. The
affix -en shows up in plural contexts. Finite –en is homophonous with the
infinitival form in Dutch. Table 1 illustrates the Dutch present tense indica-
tive paradigm:
Table 1. Dutch present tense indicative paradigm

Person-Number Inflection Example (lopen ‘to walk’)
1-SG Stem + Ø Ik loop ‘I walk’
2-SG Stem + t Jij loopt ‘You walk’
3-SG Stem + t Hij loopt ‘He walks’
1/2/3-PL Stem + en Wij/jullie/zij lopen ‘We/you/they walk’
The contexts in which the different verbal affixes appear can be formalized
as in (1), which can be seen as a set of disjunctively ordered vocabulary
items in the lexicon, with the most specific vocabulary items ordered
first.13 In (1), the features on the right-hand side trigger insertion of the
Assumptions 31
affix on the left-hand side. The features [±past], [±sp] and [±plur] stand for
tense, speaker and number, respectively:
(1) /t/ ↔ [-past, -sp]

/en/ ↔ [-past, +plur]
/ø/ ↔ [-past]
/en/ ↔ []
Post-syntactic lexical insertion of the vocabulary items in (1) is regulated

through underspecification and disjunctive ordering of rules according to
the Elsewhere Principle. Because of the Subset Principle, it is allowed to
insert underspecified vocabulary items (such as, for instance, the nonfinite
affix –en) in many different syntactic positions (this follows from the Sub-
set Principle). However, the Elsewhere Principle will prevent insertion of a
default affix if a more specified alternative is available (that obeys the
Subset Principle).
Note that in Dutch the infinitival form and finite plural forms are syn-
cretic. As (1) shows, we assume that these two syncretic forms have a dif-
ferent underlying representation, hence are two different vocabulary items.
Motivation for this assumption is provided by Dutch dialects, showing that
this syncretism does not exist throughout the Dutch language system (Aal-
berse 2007; A. MacLean, personal communication). Therefore, it is likely
that the two suffixes –en in standard Dutch are a case of accidental ho-
mophony. This assumption is in our analysis represented by the two differ-
ent vocabulary items in (1) that share their phonological form /en/ but dif-
fer in morphosyntactic feature specification (see also Wexler, Schaeffer,
and Bol 2004).
2. Hypotheses
Various basic assumptions of the framework of Distributed Morphology

will play an important role throughout this book (e.g. post-syntactic lexical
insertion, Elsewhere Principle, Subset Principe, underspecification). This
section introduces the most important ideas of this book, which provide
alternatives for the hypotheses discussed in this chapter.
Elsewhere Hypothesis. With regard to the meaning assigned to root infini-

tives, it will be proposed in Chapter 4 that infinitives in child language can
32 Theoretical framework
be analyzed as underspecified vocabulary items (elsewhere forms) that lack

specific information, contra the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hy-
pothesis. Other proposals discussed in this chapter also make use of the
notion of underspecification, but assume that syntactic knowledge is un-
derspecified (e.g. children’s knowledge of (certain) functional categories or
principles). The focus of this work is on underspecification in the lexicon,
because this analysis is able to account for the observed variation. Support
for the Elsewhere Hypothesis for root infinitives is provided by naturalistic
(Chapter 4) and experimental data (Chapter 5).
Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. In the field of second language

acquisition it has been argued that children learning English (L2) drop
finite inflection (Haznedar 2001; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Ionin and
Wexler 2002; Prévost 2003). According to this analysis, the ungrammatical
bare verbs in third person singular contexts that lack a final suffix -s in
child L2 English are underlyingly finite. Brown (1973) gave a similar
analysis for the bare verbs produced by monolingual children learning Eng-
lish, but, later on, Harris and Wexler (1995) refuted this analysis, arguing
that the ungrammatical bare verbs in child English are nonfinite. We will
argue in Chapter 5 that both analyses are right, and that the ungrammatical
bare verbs in child English are partially finite, partially nonfinite. This
accounts for the observation that root infinitives in child English denote
more often modal meanings ánd contain more often stative predicates than
the Dutch child root infinitives.
Modal Bias Hypothesis. In previous studies it was concluded that Dutch

root infinitives are more often modal than English root infinitives. Arguing
that children drop of inflectional markers, we agree with this conclusion.
However, we will also show in Chapter 5 that previous studies overesti-
mated the cross-linguistic difference in meaning. According to the Modal
Bias Hypothesis, root infinitives in which speaker (first person singular) or
addressee (second person singular) are the subject are more often modal
than root infinitives with third person singular subjects. The exclusion of
root infinitives with first and second person singular subjects in studies on
English root infinitives and the inclusion of such root infinitives in studies
on Dutch root infinitives will therefore contribute to the cross-linguistic
difference in meaning.
Hypotheses 33
Growing Overlap Hypothesis. Chapter 6 is dedicated to variation over

time. It will be argued that two, apparently contradictory, observations in
the literature concerning lexical overlap between verbs used in early finite
sentences and verbs used in root infinitives (De Haan 1987 versus Poeppel
and Wexler 1993) hold for two different phases in the language develop-
ment of Dutch children. Thus, under a longitudinal analysis of the Optional
Infinitive stage, the contradictory observations turn out to complete each
other. On the basis of analyses of Dutch input data, it will be argued that
the initial absence of lexical overlap is caused by input distributions.
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. According to the Morphological Cue-

ing Hypothesis (Chapter 6), finite inflection is a clue for Dutch children to
merge the finite and infinitival verb lexicon. This will allow them to pass
the No Overlap stage. The consequences for the acquisition of the syntactic
aspects of finiteness are twofold. Firstly, inflectional morphology provides
Dutch children with the necessary information to acquire Verb Second.
Secondly, because inflectional morphology bears a close relation to subject
use, the acquisition of inflectional morphology helps Dutch children to
treat subjects in a way that is consistent with the target grammar.
Chapter 4
Form and meaning
1. Introduction
We begin this chapter with the observation in (1):

finite sentences are nonmodal (based on Ferdinand 1996; Hoekstra
and Hyams 1998; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Van Ginneken
1917; Wijnen 1997).
Already in 1917, Jacques van Ginneken found support for the generaliza-
tion in (1): He reported that Dutch children tend to use root infinitives to
express wishes and desires. Almost a century later, this observation has
become the starting point for various theories on root infinitives.
The impossibility to generalize the specific modal meaning of not only
Dutch, but also German and French root infinitives, to English child lan-
guage led researchers to the proposal that infinitival morphology, which is
present in Dutch, German and French but not in English, carries the modal
meaning that is assigned to root infinitives. Although this theory provides
an attractive explanation for various different observations, we will argue
that the basic assumption - encoding of the modal meaning in the infinitival
suffix - leads to a model that is too rigid to account for the variability in the
meaning of root infinitives. According to our hypothesis, the Elsewhere
Hypothesis, root infinitives contain an underspecified, or elsewhere, form.
In this chapter it will be shown that the Elsewhere Hypothesis accounts for
the differences in the interpretations assigned to co-occuring verbs in the
Optional Infinitive stage. In addition, the hypothesis makes the correct
predictions for developmental changes in the meaning carried by root in-
finitives.
Section 2 specifies the use of the notion ‘modality’ in this chapter. This
is followed in section 3 by a brief explanation of the most promising ex-
planation for the meaning of root infinitives to date (Early Morphosyntac-
A working definition of modality 35
tic Convergence Hypothesis) and a proposal for an alternative account

(Elsewhere Hypothesis). Section 4 discusses naturalistic data on the mean-
ing of Dutch root infinitives, whereas section 5 deals with the meaning
assigned to various types of finite sentences used in the Optional Infinitive
stage. Section 6 focuses on changes in the meaning of root infinitives. Sec-
tion 7 summarizes the main findings and conclusions of this chapter.
2. A working definition of modality
In this section, we will formulate a working definition that is applicable to

modality in early child language. We will start with discussing a number of
basic modal distinctions developed for adult language. This will then be
narrowed down to the types of modality that are relevant for children be-
tween ages two and three, which is the age of children in the Optional In-
finitive stage.
One of the most well known distinctions is that between epistemic and
deontic (also: Root or circumstantial) modality. Obligation, requirement
and permission are deontic modal notions, which always involve a morally
responsible agent that acts necessarily or possibly (Lyons 1977). Epistemic
modality is speaker-oriented and refers to a speaker’s beliefs or judgments.
Often, reasoning is involved.
Palmer (1986) makes a distinction between deontic and dynamic modal-
ity (both can be considered as root or circumstantial modalities). Dynamic
modality is subject-oriented, as opposed to deontic modality. Palmer uses
the label ‘dynamic modality’ for wishes or abilities, which refer to a neces-
sity or possibility that is somehow internal to the subject (also: Volition or
boulemaic modality). The distinction between dynamic and deontic modal-
ity can be illustrated with the sentence in (2) - the example is taken from
Kratzer (1991) - :
(2) I can play the trombone, but I cannot play the trombone now
‘I know how to play the trombone, but I am not allowed to play
the trombone now’
The first clause of (2) expresses dynamic modality. The subject tells us that
he has learned to play the trombone, hence (s)he is able to play the trom-
bone. The second clause expresses deontic modality. The subject an-
nounces that he is not allowed to play the trombone at the time he utters
36 Form and meaning
(2), because he is not permitted to do so, maybe because he is in a place

where silence is required. Note that the paraphrase in (2) is not the only
accessible interpretation. Other possible interpretations are: ‘I am allowed
to play the trombone, but I am not in the physical condition to play the
trombone’ or ‘I know how to play the trombone, but I am not in the physi-
cal condition to play the trombone’, etc. For assigning a particular interpre-
tation, the utterance situation must be taken into account (Kratzer 1991:
42).
Because the use of the full range of modal expressions requires cogni-
tive maturity, it is expected that modality in adult language is crucially
different from modality in child language. Deontic and dynamic modality
are, for instance, expected to be present in children’s utterances from very
early on. Lyons (1977: 826), whose use of the term ‘deontic modality’
includes dynamic modality, says on this issue:
“The origin of deontic modality, it has often been suggested, is to be sought
in the desiderative and instrumental function of language: That is to say, in
the use of language, on the one hand, to express or indicate wants and de-
sires and, on the other, to get things done by imposing one’s will on other
agents. It seems clear that these two functions are ontogenetically basic, in
the sense that they are associated with language from the earliest stage of its
development in the child. It is equally clear that they are very closely con-
nected. It is a small step from a desiderative utterance meaning “I want the
book” to an instrumental utterance meaning “Give me the book”; and par-
ents will commonly interpret the child’s early desiderative utterances as
mands, thereby reinforcing, if not actually creating, the child’s developing
awareness that he can use language in order to satisfy his wants and de-
sires.” (Lyons 1977: 826).
By contrast, epistemic modality is used by children at a later age. In studies
that concentrate on children’s cognitive development, it has been argued
that this ‘delay’ of epistemic modality is due to the absence of a Theory of
Mind (cf. Carey 1985; Wellman 1990; Wimmer and Perner 1983). Because
young children lack a concept of the mind, they neither talk about or un-
derstand their own mental states nor talk about or understand those of oth-
ers. As epistemic modality concerns knowledge of beliefs, and hence of
mental states, children will not use epistemic modality before they have a
Theory of Mind. In the literature, the emergence of a Theory of Mind is
described as a sudden change that takes place halfway during the third
year. (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985).
A working definition of modality 37
What may play a role in the developmental dissociation between epis-

temic modality, on the one hand, and deontic/dynamic modality on the
other, is that mental states like beliefs are categorically different from men-
tal states such as intentions and desires. In order to describe this difference,
Gopnik (1993) makes use of Searle’s (1983) distinction between a mind-to-
world and a world-to-mind direction-to-fit. In the case of a mind-to-world
direction-to-fit, the mind is altered to fit the world, whereas in the other
case, a world-to-mind direction-to-fit, the world is altered to fit the mind.
Beliefs are examples of the first, whereas intentions/desires exemplify the
latter. There is evidence that young children perform better on tasks that
involve world-to-mind direction-to-fit such as intentions and desires than
on experimental tasks that require a concept of mind-to-world direction-to-
fit such as belief (Astington and Gopnik 1991; Flavell et al. 1990; Wellman
and Woolley 1990). Flavell et al. (1990) found for instance that three-year-
olds perform better on desire tasks than on belief-tasks, but the proportions
of errors that occurred when talking about the desires of others were still
considerable (between 30% and 40%).
Available data on children’s linguistic development corroborate the
cognitive dissociation: Markers of dynamic and deontic modality appear
before the age of three while epistemic modal markers appear after three.
Boland (2006) provides an extensive cross-linguistic overview of chil-
dren’s production data, confirming that the above generalization holds
across different language and, hence, that it relates to cognitive rather than
linguistic factors. The understanding of epistemic certainty by English-
speaking children begins during the fourth year (Gonsalves 1998; Hirst and
Weil 1982
Thus, in adult language, the notion modality refers to a range of differ-
ent denotations and is divided into many ‘submodalities’, based on subtle
interpretative differences. For children in the Optional Infinitive stage, who
are roughly between ages two and three, the class of modal expressions is
much more restricted. Because of their cognitive immaturity, children’s
modal utterances predominantly refer to intentions and desires. This is
reflected in the definitions that try to capture the modal meaning of chil-
dren’s root infinitives. Ferdinand (1996) calls children’s root infinitives
deontic (but includes in her analysis root infinitives that denote volition
and inchoative aspect). Ingram and Thompson (1996: 102) define modality
in root infinitives as “that some activity will, can or should occur” and
Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) as denoting events “that have not been real-
ized”. In aspectual rather than in modal terms, Lasser (1997: 46) concludes
38 Form and meaning
that “the predicate of a root infinitive cannot refer to a completed event”.

Note that Hoekstra and Hyams’ “not yet realized” and Lasser’s “non-
completedness” generalization are crucially different: The former excludes
ongoingness/present tense - making “not yet realized” rather “not yet
started” - whereas the latter includes ongoingness/present tense.
The working definition of modality used in this book combines the
definitions given in previous studies on root infinitives: An utterance is
modal if it does not denote present or past tense. Thus, modal utterances
describe events or states that do not take place simultaneous to speech time
or that happened prior to speech time:
(3) Working definition of modality

Modal utterances describe events or states that do not take place
simultaneous to speech time or that happened prior to speech time.
3. The Elsewhere Hypothesis
The hypothesis proposed in this chapter, the Elsewhere Hypothesis, pro-

vides an alternative for the representation of infinitival forms as stated in
the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis (Hoekstra and Hyams
1998; Hyams 2001, 2002). Before introducing the Elsewhere Hypothesis,
we will first explain the constrasting hypothesis in some more detail.
Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) and Hyams (2001, 2002) assume that the
modal/nonmodal distinction is a grammatical primitive that is operative in
the child grammar from a very early age on (“Early Morphosyntactic
Convergence”). In the grammar, this primitive is instantiated by the Mood
projection and the morphosyntactic feature [±realis]. Guided by the
opposition between nonmodal and modal, or realis and irrealis mood,
children search the ambient language for appropriate morphophonological
forms that can be mapped onto the feature [±realis]. The opposition is
realized in morphosyntax through the specification or underspecification of
inflectional categories. In Dutch child language, irrealis is expressed
through infinitival verb forms; the Dutch infinitival suffix –en is specified
as [-realis]. This feature is checked in the Mood Phrase, yielding the modal
meaning in Dutch root infinitives. This effect is absent in simple finite
sentences; since finite sentences stand in opposition to root infinitives, they
express realis mood.
The Elsewhere Hypothesis 39
English root infinitives differ from Dutch root infinitives in four ways:
They are less often modal, are not restricted to event-denoting predicates,
they lack an infinitival suffix and the nonfinite verb immediately follows
the subject. In (4) three Dutch root infinitives are given, in (5) three exam-
ples of English root infinitives are given:
(4) a. Vrachtwagen emmer doen. Matthijs 2;04.24

truck basket do-inf
b. Koppie thee pakken. Abel 2;03.02
cup-dim tea get-inf
c. Bob op bank liggen. Peter 2;00.28
Bob on couch lie-inf

b. That truck fall down. Nina 2;0.24
c. He bite me. Sarah 2;9
The English bare stem has no carrier for [-realis]. English root infini-
tives contain, therefore, no modal feature that yields a modal interpretation.
By implication, English root infinitives have a free temporal and modal
reference. As it is assumed that the modality children use, correlates with
eventivity (see Chapter 2, section 3.3), it is argued that the absence of the
modal restriction in English child language correctly predicts the possibil-
ity of state-denoting predicates in this language.
According to the above, the modality of root infinitives follows from
the infinitival suffix, which spells out [-realis]. In the following, an alterna-
tive analysis will be formulated according to which the infinitival suffix
does not carry specific semantic features, but is underspecified:
(6) Elsewhere Hypothesis

Root infinitives contain an underspecified verb form.
Recall that Hoekstra and Hyams argued that the difference in meaning
between Dutch and English root infinitives is directly related to a morpho-
logical difference between the two languages, namely the presence of an
infinitival suffix in Dutch and its absence in English. Contrary to this, we
believe that there is no inherent difference in meaning between the Dutch
infinitive and the English bare verb.
40 Form and meaning
If a feature can be valued as [+realis] or [-realis] or can be unspecified,

it can be assumed that, according to Hoekstra and Hyams, Dutch infinitives
are represented by the vocabulary item in (7), with phonological informa-
tion on the left-hand side of the arrow and morphosyntactic information on
the right-hand side:
(7) /en/ ↔ [-realis]
According to the Elsewhere Hypothesis in (6), (8) provides a more appro-

priate description of Dutch infinitives, however:
(8) /en/ ↔ []
In the adult Dutch system, (8) is part of the ordered list of vocabulary items
in (9). The three relevant features in (9) are [±speaker], [±plural] and
[±past]:
(9) /t/ ↔ [-past, -sp]

/ø/ ↔ [-past]
/en/ ↔ []
Recall that the effect of the Elsewhere Principle is that the most specific
vocabulary item will be inserted. The Subset Principle holds that the speci-
fication of the inserted vocabulary item equals the specification of the syn-
tactic position, or is a subset thereof (see Chapter 3 for more explanation
on the two principles and further motivation of (9)). On the basis of (9), the
interplay of the Elsewhere Principle and Subset Principle can be nicely
illustrated. The Subset Principle prohibits insertion of the suffix -t in first
person singular contexts since the value for the speaker feature is not in
accordance with the morpheme, i.e. the syntactic features in this position.
The Subset Principle also prohibits insertion of specified –en in first per-
son singular contexts. Insertion of the unspecified suffix –en would not
violate the Subset Principle, but would imply a violation of the Elsewhere
Principe, since a more specified alternative, i.e. the zero-suffix, is avail-
able. In first person singular contexts, the bare verb is thus the vocabulary
item that will be inserted.
The basic difference between Hoekstra and Hyams’ approach and the
Elsewhere Hypothesis is that the former does not allow variation in the
The Elsewhere Hypothesis 41
meaning of Dutch root infinitives, whereas the latter predicts variation. The
Elsewhere Hypothesis predicts that modal and nonmodal root infinitives
are allowed, and hence, are expected to occur. In addition, developmental
changes are compatible with the Elsewhere Hypothesis. Obedience to the
Elsewhere and Subset Principles require that a child is forced to insert the
most specific and appropriate vocabulary item that is available. In native
adult Dutch, we can assume that the full list of (9) and many more vocabu-
lary items - also specified modal vocabulary items - are available. It is,
however, unlikely that this holds for each developmental stage in Dutch
child language since it is part of language development that children ac-
quire different verb forms. If the acquisition of modal and nonmodal speci-
fied alternatives for underspecified suffix –en develops in an asymmetric
fashion and modal alternatives are available earlier (more frequent) than
nonmodal alternatives, or vice versa, we expect that this is reflected in the
meaning of root infinitives. If modal vocabulary items are, for instance,
acquired prior to nonmodal vocabulary items, verb forms ending on the
suffix -en will be left over for nonmodal contexts until specified nonmodal
vocabulary items are acquired; hence the prediction that there are relatively
many root infinitives with a present tense interpretation.
In sections 4, 5 and 6 we will study the meaning properties of root in-
finitives, with a special focus on the degree of variation in the meaning of
root infinitives and how this variation relates to other available verb forms.
A significant amount of variation in the meaning of root infinitives is in-
compatible with the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis (and
compatible with the Elsewhere Hypothesis), whereas a fixed meaning
would plead for the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis and
against the Elsewhere Hypothesis.
4. Root infinitives
4.1. Method
Transcriptions of spontaneous speech data of six monolingual Dutch-

speaking children have been analyzed in order to determine whether or not
root infinitives in Dutch child language are modal. All analyzed data are
available through the Child Language Data Exchange System or CHILDES
(MacWhinney 2000).14 The data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and
Peter are part of the Groningen Corpus. Laura’s data are part of the Van
42 Form and meaning
Kampen Corpus. The transcriptions in these corpora are based on audio-

tape recordings made at home, in an unstructured home setting. The chil-
dren’s age ranges are given in Table 1. This table shows furthermore the
total number of utterances produced by each child in the selected files.
Laura's sample contains files from an older age (above three) than the sam-
ples from the other children (under three). As Laura suffered from recur-
rent ear-infections, her development is delayed. Otherwise, Laura devel-
oped normally (Van Kampen 1997).
Table 1. Children’s age ranges and the total number of utterances in the selected
files that are used for analysis, data from all six children
Child Age range Total number of utterances
Abel 1;10.03 - 2;07.29 2890
Daan 1;08.21 - 2;09.10 4859
Josse 2;00.07 - 2;08.18 3340
Laura 1;09.04 - 3;04.06 4241
Matthijs 1;09.30 - 2;11.19 4624
Peter 1;07.18 - 2;03.21 2349
From the corpus of each child, a number of files have been selected to rep-
resent four developmental stages (Table 2). Each selected cluster of files
corresponds with a different frequency of finite verbs. The right-most col-
umn of Table 2 gives the average MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) of the
six children in a certain stage.
Table 2. ‘Stages’ in the development of finiteness: Frequency of finite sentences

per stage (as a percentage of the total number of sentences that contain a
verb), average MLU per stage
Stage Frequency of finite sentences Average MLU
I 0 1.125
II < 30% 1.387
III 50% 1.972
IV > 80% 2.607
The selected files per child are listed in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 contains
detailed information about the numbers of root infinitives and finite sen-
tences in the four stages and the average MLU per child per stage. Note
that children do not jump from 0% to 30% to 50% to 80% finite sentences.
Root infinitives 43
Rather, the increase of finite sentences is gradual, and the stages are snap-
shots taken from this gradual development.
These files were annotated with modal/temporal and aspectual interpre-
tations by two independent researchers on the basis of a coding scheme
(Appendix 3). In case of disagreement, an utterance was excluded from
further analyses. All available information from the transcripts was used in
order to assign interpretations. Utterances labeled ‘modal’ had to meet one
of the following criteria: Preceding or subsequent parental utterances sug-
gested a modal interpretation, or the context suggested a modal interpreta-
tion. Ambiguous utterances were not included in the analysis. For finite
sentences this happened only in a few cases, for the root infinitives this led
to exclusion of 317 root infinitives out of a total number of 1565.
The usual morphosyntactic criteria were applied to single out root in-
finitives, more specifically, we included those clauses in which the main
verb appeared in infinitival form, that is, with the suffix –en in sentence-
final position, and a finite verb was lacking. In line with other, recently
reported findings for Dutch and German child language, we found that
cases of incorrect use of the suffix –en in finite position were virtually
absent (Blom 2008; Blom and Polišenská 2005, Blom, Polišenská, and
Weerman 2007; Prévost 2003). Since plural subjects in Dutch select the
suffix –en, this implies that none of the six children investigated here used
verbs ending on –en followed by object, negation, adverb or particle in the
context of a singular subject (illustrated in (10)).
(10) Hij pakken een bal. unattested

he get a ball
In two-word utterances with plural subjects and without object, negation,

adverb or particle (that is indicative of the verb’s position), the underlying
structure can be finite or nonfinite; compare (11a) to the finite example in
(11b) and the nonfinite example in (11c):
(11) a. Wij pakken.

we get
b. Wij pakken een bal.
we get-fin a ball
c. Wij een bal pakken.
we a ball get-inf
44 Form and meaning
All such ambiguous utterances have been excluded. Because use of –en as
a finite substitute is unattested in child Dutch (and German), two-word
utterances with a verb ending on the suffix –en with singular subjects and
without object, negation, adverb or particle have been analyzed as root
infinitives. The rationale of this decision is based on analogy: If children
do not use the suffix –en as a finite substitute in sentences with object,
negation, adverb or particle, we do also not expect them to do this in sen-
tences without object, negation, adverb or particle. One-word utterances
were excluded, as were parasitic root infinitives that are used to give an
answer to a question (Wat doe je? Fietsen. ‘What are you doing? Cy-
cling.’).
4.2. Results
All six children use more modal root infinitives than nonmodal root infini-
tives, but nonmodal root infinitives are not excluded. On average, more
than one quarter of the interpretable root infinitives is modal, as shown in
Table 3:
Table 3. Number of interpretable root infinitives, number of modal root infinitives

and percentage of modal root infinitives, data from all six children
Child % modal root infinitives N modal root infinitives/N root
infinitives
Abel 76 91/120
Daan 73 115/157
Josse 73 150/206
Laura 64 200/314
Matthijs 78 199/254
Peter 80 157/197
Mean/Sum 73 912/1248
SD 6
Examples of modal and nonmodal root infinitives are given in (12) and
(13), respectively:
(12) a. Peter bal pakken. Peter 2;01.27

Peter ball get-inf
context: Peter wants to get the ball.
Root infinitives 45
b. Vrachtwagen emmer doen. Matthijs 2;04.24

truck basket do-inf
context: Matthijs wants the investigator to put the truck
in the basket.
c. Op kist zitten. Josse 2;08.04
on box sit-inf
context: Josse wants his mother to sit on the box.
(13) a. Ah mij bril vallen. Abel 2;05.27

ah my glasses fall-inf
context: His glasses are falling.
b. Poffie ginke [= koffie drinken]! Daan 2;01.21
coffee drink-inf
context: People on television are drinking coffee.
c. Boot svaje [= varen]. Laura 2;04.01
boat sail-inf
context: Refers to a picture with a sailing boat.
Nonmodal root infinitives refer nearly always to events that take place
simultaneously to speech time (in 95% of the cases they are ongoing and
denote present tense; the remaining 5% have a past reference).
The results show a modal preference, but they do not reflect a modal re-
striction. A chi-square test shows that the observed distribution differs
significantly from the expected distribution if there is a modal restriction
(χ2 = 28.17). Analyses of the spontaneous speech of six Dutch-speaking
children indicate that root infinitives are not restricted to a modal denota-
tion and that present tense denotating root infinitives are allowed. A sig-
nificant number of root infinitives could not be interpreted.
4.3. Discussion
Do these results differ from other observations reported in the literature?

Hoekstra and Hyams base their conclusions on data reported by Wijnen
(1997) who finds a range of 73.2% – 94.3% modal root infinitives in the
interpretable (i.e. either future, present or past) root infinitives in the data
of four Dutch boys, with a mean percentage of 86. A considerable amount
of data, ranging between 11.6% - 26.3%, could not be interpreted. Haege-
man’s (1995) case study of the Dutch child, Hein (2;4-3;1), shows that
46 Form and meaning
56% (50/89) of Hein’s root infinitives have a modal interpretation, 7%

(6/89) are nonmodal and the rest (i.e. 37%) is ambiguous.
German has, like Dutch, an infinitival –en suffix. Thus, for child Ger-
man it is expected that all root infinitives are modal, as in Dutch. Behrens
(1993) studied six German-acquiring children and reports that the temporal
reference in their root infinitives is free (e.g. past, present and future).
Behrens finds moreover overlap between the temporal reference assigned
to root infinitives and bare stem forms, which is unexpected if the infiniti-
val suffix denotes a particular meaning. She concludes that: “temporal
reference functions are not distributed across forms in a complementary
fashion” (p. 157). Lasser analyzed data from two German-speaking chil-
dren, Simone and Andreas, and found that respectively 73% (N = 130) and
69% (N = 108) of all interpretable root infinitives in these data were mo-
dal. The rest received nonmodal - present (predominant) or past (rare)
tense - interpretations. Finally, Ingram and Thompson (1996) classified
root infinitives in the spontaneous speech data of four German-speaking
children as ‘Missing modal’ and ‘Possible modal’. In the first category,
which is the most reliable one, the percentage of modal root infinitives
ranges from 20% to 70%, with a mean of 47%.
The German data are very similar to the Dutch data in that there is pos-
sibly a modal preference but certainly not a modal restriction; the number
of nonmodal root infinitives is considerable.
4.4. Conclusion
Returning to the hypothesis that the infinitival suffix denotes [-realis], we

conclude from the results discussed in this section that while in most stud-
ies the majority of root infinitives is modal, it is certainly not the case that
all root infinitives are modal. A proposal that links the presence of modal-
ity to the presence of infinitival morphology cannot explain this nontrivial
proportion of nonmodal root infinitives. By contrast, a model that assumes
that the infinitival suffix is not restricted, because it is underspecified (e.g.
the Elsewhere Hypothesis), can account for the observed variability.
Other verb constructions 47
5. Other verb constructions
The Elsewhere Principle predicts that specified vocabulary items will be

inserted at the expense of underspecified vocabulary items. During the
Optional Infinitive stage, children do not only use infinitives, which we
interpret here as underspecified forms, but they also use other verb forms.
The question arises how specific the denotation of these other verb forms
is. Is the observed variability in meaning prototypical for clauses contain-
ing an infinitival verb form? In other words, are infinitives true elsewhere
forms, and hence underspecified in comparison to other verb forms?
5.1. Past participles
The first relation discussed here is that between infinitives, and another
nonfinite form, past participles. Lasser (1997) observed that German root
infinitives do not denote completed events. The data of Abel, Daan, Josse,
Laura, Matthijs and Peter confirm this observation for Dutch child lan-
guage. The nonmodal root infinitives in Table 3 nearly always - in 95% of
the cases - refer to events that are simultaneous to speech time: They are
ongoing/denote present tense. Only 17 root infinitives denote an event that
took place prior to speech time and that could be completed at speech time
(which is the only criterion that can be used for past/completed interpreta-
tions). These 17 root infinitives are included in the nonmodal root infini-
tives and comprise 5% of the nonmodal root infinitives and 1% of all in-
terpretable root infinitives.
Some examples of nonmodal past root infinitives are given in the frag-
ments in (14) below and (15) on the next page:
(14) *MAT: Ieke spugen. Matthijs 1;11.24

Ieke throw-inf up
*MOT: Ging Ieke spugen ?
went Ieke throw-up
48 Form and meaning
(15) *MOT: Vond je dat leuk ? Laura 3;04.06

find you that nice
*LAU: Ja.
yes
*MOT: In grote zwembad
in big swimmingpool
*LAU: met mij emmertjes spelen.
with me baskets-dim play-inf
The Elsewhere Hypothesis accounts for the free interpretation of root in-
finitives, and their use in modal as well as ongoing contexts. As will be
explained below, this hypothesis also explains a limitation of the meaning
of root infinitives, namely the absence of root infinitives that denote com-
pleted events.
According to the Elsewhere Hypothesis, root infinitives are vulnerable
because their frequency is immediately reduced as an effect of the avail-
ability of specified verb forms. If children learn [+completed] forms early,
it is therefore expected that completed root infinitives do not occur. Jor-
dens (1990) reported that participles appear very early in Dutch child lan-
guage. In the same period that root infinitives are used, children also use
nonfinite clauses that contain a sentence-final participle (root participle)
instead of a sentence-final infinitive. Some examples of Dutch root partici-
ples are given in (16). Note that many of the early participles have an omit-
ted participial prefix (ge-). The participial suffix (-t or –(e)n) is expressed,
though. In the example in (16d) the participle can be identified because this
is indicated by the form of the stem (wees):
(16) a. Jij ook maakt. Abel 2;02.19

you also make-part
‘You have made it as well.’
b. Afvalt. Daan 2;04.14
off-fall-part
‘It has fallen off x.’
c. Ape poept. Josse 2;00.21
monkey defecate-part
‘The monkey has defecated.’
d. Die ook in bad wees. Laura 2;05
that also in bath be-part
‘That one has also been in bath.’
e. Boer daan. Matthijs 1;11.24

burp do-part
‘I have done a burp.’
f. Peter emmer daan. Peter 1;10.03
Peter basket do-part
‘Peter has done it in the basket.’
In the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter, participles
appear early as well. The first unambiguous examples appear in stage II.
When root participles are used, they have a very specific denotation (unlike
root infinitives): All 102 interpretable root infinitives in our data receive a
completed aspect denotation.15 The absence of completed root infinitives
thus appears to go hand-in-hand with the early availability of root partici-
ples. Because (past) participles are specified for completed aspect, com-
pleted root infinitives are nonexistent.
5.2. Finite verbs
Table 4 summarizes the results for root infinitives, sentences with finite
main verbs and sentences with periphrastic verbs (auxiliary + infinitive):
Table 4. Percentages modal root infinitives, modal sentences with a finite main
verb and modal sentences with periphrastic verbs, data from all six chil-
dren
% modal root % modal finite % modal periphras-
infinitives main verbs tic verbs
Abel 76 (91/120) 7 (9/119) 86 (68/79)
Daan 73 (115/157) 15 (43/289) 85 (92/108)
Josse 73 (150/206) 9 (12/137) 83 (90/108)
Laura 64 (200/314) 11 (17/157) 65 (102/156)
Matthijs 78 (199/254) 5 (5/95) 86 (128/149)
Peter 80 (157/197) 2 (7/424) 35 (32/91)
Mean/Sum 73 (912/1248) 8 (93/1221) 73 (512/691)
SD 6 5 20
50 Form and meaning
Sentences with modal finite main verbs often contain verbs like passen ‘fit’
or gaan ‘to go’. Although these verbs do not belong to the class of modal
verbs, inherently they may be modal as passen can express (im)possibility
and gaan may denote future events. Examples of sentences with modal
finite main verbs are in (17), and nonmodal finite main verbs are in (18):
(17) a. Past niet ijsbeer in niet. Matthijs 2;04.24

fit-fin not ice bear in not
‘The ice bear does not fit in here.’
b. Ik ga ook naar de dok.
Laura 3;04.06
I go-fin also to the doctor
‘I will go to the doctor too, isn’t it?’
c. Oh, valt bijna om. Abel 2;07.15
oh fall-fin almost down
‘Oh, it almost falls down.’
(18) a. Ik hoor paatje niet. Laura 2;04.15

I hear-fin horse-dim not
‘I do not hear the little horse.’
b. Daan ligt in de wieg. Daan 2;04.14
Daan lie-fin in the crib
‘Daan is lying in the crib.’
The periphrastic verbs are as frequently modal or nonmodal as the root

infinitives. However, the crucial difference with root infinitives in that in
the first case it is one and the same suffix/vocabulary item that appears in
modal and nonmodal contexts. In the case of periphrastic verbs there are
various different auxiliaries, most of which are restricted to either a modal
or a nonmodal denotation. Examples of sentences containing modal peri-
phrastic verbs, containing modal auxiliaries, are in (19), whereas (20) illus-
trates sentences with nonmodal periphrastic verbs:
(19) a. Ik moet daar zitten. Matthijs 2;10.22

I must-fin there sit-inf
‘I have to sit there.’
b. Mag ik grote blok bouwe? Abel 2;07.15
may-fin I big block build-inf
‘May I build the big block?’
(20) a. Hij gaat zo hoepla doen. Peter 2;03.21

he go-fin so hoopla do-inf
‘He is doing hoopla like this.’
b. Doet Paulien huisje maken. Daan 2;04.28
do-fin Paulien house-dim make-fin
‘Paulien is building a house.’
c. Sijn de soep ete. Laura 2;04.01
are-fin the soup eat-inf
‘They are eating the soup.’
The nonmodal auxiliaries in (20a-c) are interesting for they show that chil-
dren allow the auxiliaries gaan, doen and zijn in contexts in which they are
not allowed in standard Dutch.
The example in (20a) illustrates that Dutch children use the auxiliary
gaan ‘go’ for denoting actions that are taking place in the here and now. In
standard Dutch, the auxiliary gaan ‘go’ is used to denote inchoative aspect
(Het gaat regenen ‘It’s starting to rain.’) or when referring to a future event
(Het gaat morgen regenen ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow.’), but it is not used
to refer to an event that takes place at the moment of speaking (Haeseryn et
al. 1997: 966-1048).
The sentence in (20b) exemplifies ‘do-support’ in early child Dutch: In-
sertion of doen ‘do’ in present tense contexts. In adult Dutch, use of doen
as an auxiliary that selects an infinitival complement is described as be-
longing to ‘regional’ or ‘informal’ variants of Standard Dutch. The combi-
nation of doen ‘do’ and an infinitive is restricted to questions in these vari-
ants (Wat doe je zeggen? ‘What do you say?’) and habitual sentences (Ze
doen altijd kaarten ‘They always play cards.’) (Haeseryn et al. 1997: 966-
1048). Children exposed to standard Dutch allow this construction in regu-
lar declarative sentences to describe an ongoing action, however (Holle-
brandse and Roeper 1996; Jordens 1990; Van Kampen 1997; Zuckerman
2001).
The example in (20c), finally, also contains an auxiliary used by chil-
dren in a way that is different from standard Dutch. The verb zijn ‘be’ oc-
curs in standard Dutch as an auxiliary in progressive sentences. In these
sentences, however, zijn takes an obligatory prepositional infinitival com-
plement (zijn aan het + infinitive ‘be on the + infinitive’ e.g. Hij is aan het
dansen ‘He is dancing.’). The construction without the preposition aan and
the definite determiner het is informal and more frequently used in the
western part of the Netherlands, where it is generally used with a rather
52 Form and meaning
specific denotation, namely to express that someone left his usual location
to perform an activity elsewhere (Waar is hij? Hij is dansen ‘Where is he?
He is out dancing.’) (Haeseryn et al. 1997: 966-1048).
The use of auxiliaries in (20a) and (20c) by Dutch children, also re-
ferred to as use of ‘dummy auxiliaries’, has been found in both spontane-
ous speech data and experimental data. The utterances is (20a) and (20c)
are usually analyzed as a form of ‘do-support’ (illustrated in (20b)) (Holle-
brandse and Roeper 1996; Jordens 1990; Van Kampen 1997; Zuckerman
2001). Of all verb constructions, gaan + infinitive is the only denoting
both modal and nonmodal meanings.16 All other forms have a specific de-
notation.
In sum, the percentage of modal root infinitives in Dutch spontaneous
speech data ranges between 64% - 80% (M = 74%) modal root infinitives
in the interpretable data of six Dutch children, 20% - 36% nonmodal. 20%
of all root infinitives were ambiguous. This differs significantly from the
sentences with a finite main verb: These are hardly ever modal (M = 8%).
Nearly all periphrastic verbs have a specific denotation (either modal or
nonmodal). These results are consistent with the Elsewhere Hypothesis,
because they show that infinitives can have modal as well as nonmodal
denotations, whereas other verb forms have specific denotations. The only
exception is the periphrastic verb gaan + infinitive, which allows, like root
infinitives, both modal and nonmodal readings in early child Dutch. The
light verb gaan could be underspecified, like the Dutch infinitive. It is also
possible that there are two vocabulary items gaan with different specifica-
tions, like the nonfinite suffix –en and the finite suffix –en.
6. The modal shift
The Elsewhere Hypothesis predicts that the usage of root infinitives is

dependent on the acquisition and availability of other, specified, vocabu-
lary items. The Elsewhere Principle requires insertion of the most specific
vocabulary item and, hence, as soon as a more specified alternative for the
infinitive is acquired, the infinitival form will not be selected anymore.
This scenario predicts that the decreasing proportion of root infinitives,
as reported repeatedly in studies of different children (De Haan 1987;
Gillis 2003; Haegeman 1995; Van Ginneken 1917; Verhulst-Schlichting
1985; Wijnen and Bol 1993), is a function of an increasing specified verb
lexicon. Initially, infinitives are the only vocabulary items available to
The modal shift 53
denote events, and, hence, inserted across the board. The early availability
of infinitives could be related to input properties such as frequency and
saliency (Freudenthal, Pine, and Gobet 2006; Wijnen, Kempen, and Gillis
2000). Later on, when specified tensed and modal vocabulary items are
acquired, infinitives compete with specified vocabulary items and, as a
consequence of the Elsewhere Principle, loose increasingly.
This scenario predicts fluctuations in the meaning of root infinitives,
since it is not expected that children acquire specified past, present tense
and modal alternatives for root infinitives at the same time. Asymmetries in
the acquisition and availability of specified finite constructions - simple
finite verbs and periphrastic verbs denoting past tense, present tense and
various modal meanings – are expected to induce changes in the denotation
of root infinitives.
Recall that the data described in the previous sections represent four
developmental stages, delineated on the basis of the average percentage of
root infinitives: Stage I – nearly 100% root infinitives; stage II - 70% root
infinitives; stage III - 50% root infinitives; stage IV - 20% root infinitives
and less (section 4.1). A breakdown of the results discussed in section 4
reveals a developmental effect: In stages III and IV, root infinitives are
used significantly more often to denote modality than in stages I/II. In ear-
lier work, we referred to this development as the ‘modal shift’ (Blom 2002;
Blom and Wijnen 2000). Table 5 gives the observed difference:
Table 5. Modal root infinitives, average and standard deviations; a comparison

between stages I/II and III/IV, data from all six children
% modal in stages I/II % modal in stages III/IV
Abel 58 (14/24) 80 (77/96)
Daan 63 (31/49) 78 (84/108)
Josse 52 (44/84) 87 (106/122)
Laura 56 (33/59) 65 (167/255)
Matthijs 68 (82/120) 87 (117/134)
Peter 78 (96/123) 82 (61/74)
Mean/Sum 63 80
SD 9 8
A permutation test (Appendix 4) shows that the modal shift is statistically

significant. The ‘Jack knife technique’ (Appendix 5) indicates that omis-
sion of one particular child from the group of six does not lead to a differ-
54 Form and meaning
ent outcome. Table 6 gives the p-values that give an estimation of the
probability that our observations can be found by chance.
Table 6. Probabilities that the observed average difference between modal use in
stages I/II and modal use in stages III/IV is due to chance. The probabili-
ties are calculated over the entire group of six children and over 6 groups
of five children, with one specific child omitted at a time (Jack knife
method)
p-value
All children 0.004
Omitted child
Abel 0.007
Daan 0.014
Josse 0.018
Laura 0.003
Matthijs 0.005
Peter 0.01
The first value (p = 0.004) is the probability when the average from the
total sample of six children is taken; the rest are the values when one of the
children is left out from the statistical analysis. Given that the probability is
below the critical value of 0.05 in all cases, we may be confident that the
modal shift is a statistically reliable change over time that takes place be-
tween stages II and III.
6.1. Overall increase of modality?
It was found that Dutch children’s root infinitives become more strongly
associated with modal interpretations over time. According to the Else-
where Hypothesis, the modal shift is an effect of a relatively extensive
increase of finite main verbs in early child Dutch. One could think of an
alternative explanation, however. The simplest explanation would be that
the modal shift in root infinitives is a corollary of an across-the board in-
crease of the use of modality. This idea does not work, however, as shown
by the results in Table 7.
Table 7 gives the proportions of modal and ongoing interpretations of
all sentences in stages I to IV - finite as well as infinitive - that contain an
eventive main verb. We restrict our test to eventive verbs, because, in con-
trast to noneventive verbs, these occur both relatively frequently in finite
The modal shift 55
sentences and root infinitives. If the modal shift in root infinitives would
be the effect of an overall increase of modality, then we should see an in-
creasing percentage in the third colon. The overall percentage of modal
utterances drops, however:
Table 7. Frequencies and proportions of utterances (finite and nonfinite) contain-

ing eventive verbs that have modal denotations, and frequencies and pro-
portions of root infinitives containing eventive verbs that have modal de-
notations
Stage N eventive N modal (%) N eventive N eventive modal root
root infinitive infinitive
I 80 46 (57%) 75 43 (57%)
II 436 268 (62%) 383 256 (67%)
III 999 552 (55%) 518 402 (78%)
IV 2621 767 (29%) 271 210 (77%)
The proportion of sentences with a nonmodal interpretation remains stable

in the first three stages and it increases slightly after stage III. Conse-
quently, for these data, the modal shift in root infinitives cannot be as-
cribed to an across-the-board increase of modal denotations.
6.2. The elsewhere effect
In earlier work we proposed that the modal shift reflected children's dis-
covery of the infinitival suffix and hence the mapping of the morphosyn-
tactic feature [-realis] to the morphophonological form /–en/ (Blom 2002;
Blom and Wijnen 2000; Deen and Hyams 2002). It was argued that this
discovery was caused by the acquisition of finite forms: The contrast be-
tween finite and infinitival forms enabled morphological analysis (Pinker
1984). In the remainder of this section it will be shown that the Elsewhere
Hypothesis provides a better fitting model for the whole range of observa-
tions.
The Elsewhere Hypothesis predicts that in the early stages Dutch chil-
dren only have root infinitives at their disposal. By effect, root infinitives
appear in a wide range of contexts. If the child learns specified finite forms
and constructions, root infinitives become more and more infrequent (as an
effect of the Elsewhere Principle). An asymmetric growth of specified
finite vocabulary items and constructions, which happens if specified mo-
56 Form and meaning
dal forms are learned earlier than specified ongoing forms (or vice versa),
is expected to have impact on the interpretation of root infinitives. In this
view, the modal shift in root infinitives takes place because specified ongo-
ing alternatives for root infinitives are relatively frequent earlier than
specified modal alternatives.
The twelve figures below show for each of the six children the relative
frequencies of root infinitives, sentences with periphrastic verbs consisting
of finite auxiliary and lexical main verb (PV for “periphrastic verb”) and
sentences with finite lexical main verbs (SF for “simple finite”) that denote
respectively modal and ongoing events as a function of stage (stages are on
the x-axis); corresponding raw numbers can be found in Appendix 6. Be-
cause past events are infrequent, we excluded them from the analysis. Be-
cause of the infrequency of state-denoting root infinitives, state-denoting
simple finite verbs are no alternative for root infinitives. For this reason,
we have excluded states.
A comparison between the constructions that each individual child uses
to describe modal events on the one hand, and ongoing events, on the other
hand, leads to six similar results: For ongoing events, the children use ear-
lier specified finite constructions than for modal events.
= RI = SF = PV
(a) Abel; modal (b) Abel; ongoing
1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2
0,2
0
0
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4
Figure 1. Proportions of root infinitives (RI), Sentences with single finite main
verbs (SF), and sentences with periphrastic verbs consisting of a finite
auxiliary and a lexical main verb (PV), either denoting ongoing events or
modality, as a function of stage I – IV(1 to 4); individual data
The modal shift 57
(c) Daan; modal (d) Daan; ongoing

1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2 0,2
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
(e) Josse; modal (f) Josse; ongoing

1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2 0,2
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
(g) Laura; modal h) Laura; ongoing

1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2 0,2
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
(i) Matthijs; modal (j) Matthijs; ongoing

1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2 0,2
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Figure 1. Continued
58 Form and meaning
(k) Peter; modal (l) Peter; ongoing

1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2 0,2
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Figure 1. Continued
Consider, for instance, the two figures of Abel. For Abel, there are no
stage I data available. The modal events, stage II, show use of 100%
(14/14) root infinitives. Thus, Abel neither uses simple lexical verbs nor
periphrastic verbs to describe modal events in stage II. In the same stage,
he does use, however, simple lexical verbs (50%, 10/20) to describe ongo-
ing events. In stage III, the proportion of periphrastic verbs to describe
modal events goes up (19%, 15/79), but the proportion of root infinitives
still predominates (72%, 57/79). Ongoing events show in the same stage a
different picture: Only 18% (7/38) root infinitives and 82% simple lexical
verbs (31/38). It is not until stage IV that Abel uses a significant number of
specified alternatives for root infinitives to describe modal events, whereas
for ongoing events this is much earlier (between stages II and III). Not only
can the decreasing proportion of root infinitives be described by an in-
crease of specified alternatives, but we can also relate changes in the mean-
ing of root infinitives to asymmetries in increase of specified ongoing al-
ternatives for root infinitives, on the one hand, and specified modal
alternatives for root infinitives, on the other hand. The other ten figures
show that this asymmetry repeats itself in the developmental patterns of the
other five children (who, as expected, all display a modal shift in their root
infinitives).
If root infinitives are indeed gradually replaced by specified finite alter-
natives, as we propose, and if this “replacement” causes the modal shift,
then it is expected that in all six children root infinitives are first replaced
in the ongoing domain before being replaced in the modal domain. Figures
1a-l show the proportions of root infinitives, simple finite verbs, and peri-
phrastic verbs (auxiliary + infinitival main verb) in stages I-IV for each of
the children. The average patterns depicted in Figures 2a and 2b clearly
demonstrate that between stages II and III, the proportion of sentences with
The modal shift 59
a finite main verb, used to describe an event that is ongoing, increases at

the expense of root infinitives (Figure 2a).
= RI = SF = PV
(a) Ongoing events (b) Modal events

1 1
0,8 0,8
0,6 0,6
0,4 0,4
0,2 0,2
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Figure 2. Proportions of root infinitives (RI), sentences with a finite main verb
(SF), and with a periphrastic verb (PV) denoting ongoing and modal
events, in the four stages; data from all six children collapsed
This increase takes place before periphrastic constructions begin to be

used: These constructions increase in number between stages III and IV,
and, as indicated by Figure 2b, they are predominantly associated with
modality. In stage III, most (69%) utterances describing ongoing events
contain a finite verb (either a single main verb or a periphrastic verb). At
the same time, sentences with a modal interpretation contain finite predi-
cates in only 21% of the cases. Thus, in stage III, finite forms have re-
placed root infinitives for the description of ongoing events, while modal-
ity is still predominantly expressed by means of root infinitives. In stage
IV, periphrastic verbs outnumber root infinitives in sentences with a modal
interpretation. Thus, we see that root infinitives are replaced by finite con-
structions. The modal shift in root infinitives comes about particularly as
finite verbs with present tense denotation are acquired and used.
7. Summary
In this chapter, semantic aspects of the various verb forms produced by

Dutch-speaking children have been discussed. It was argued that the root
infinitives contain an underspecified form (the infinitive) which can be
60 Form and meaning
used in a wide range of contexts (Elsewhere Hypothesis) because of its

underspecified nature. The Elsewhere Hypothesis was supported by seman-
tic properties of root infinitives, by semantic contrasts between root infini-
tives and other verb forms, and by changes in the meaning of root infini-
tives. As an effect of development the children learn other verb forms such
as past participles, simple present tense verbs and periphrastic present
tense and modal verbs. Because the Elsewhere Principle requires insertion
of the most specific form (that is appropriate in a given context), root in-
finitives become less and less frequent. Developmental patterns in the fre-
quencies of present tense and modal verbs were compliant with this analy-
sis, because changes in the meaning of root infinitives could be related to
the different frequencies of respectively present tense and modal alterna-
tives for root infinitives in the relevant developmental stages.
Chapter 5
Differences across languages
1. Introduction
English-learning children tend to use bare verbs with third person singular
subjects for quite a long period of time (Philips 1995). Consider the exam-
ples in (1) from the CHILDES database:

b. That truck fall down. Nina 2;0.24
In some of the early studies on the first language acquisition of English, it

has been suggested that in utterances like in (1) children omit finite surface
inflection (Bloom 1990; Brown 1973). Harris and Wexler (1996) argued,
however, that the verb forms in (1) are genuine infinitives. One argument
that Harris and Wexler (1996) gave in support of this claim is that English
children do use (2a) while (2b) is unattested:
(2) a. She not go.

b. *She not goes. unattested
If the verb form in (2a) is nonfinite, it is predicted that it does not move as
there are no finiteness features to check. The fact that go follows negation
indicates that this prediction is borne out. English children distinguish un-
tensed verb forms syntactically from tensed verbs; they move the tensed
verb to check its features. As expected, (2b) does not appear.
Prévost (2003) pointed out that in the field of second language acquisi-
tion a similar discussion has taken place. According to the one type of hy-
pothesis, the ungrammatical bare verbs used by learners of English are
finite (Haznedar 2001; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Ionin and Wexler
2002; Lardiere 1998, 2001), whereas the counter hypothesis states that they
are nonfinite (Prévost and White 1999). Prévost’s claim is that the two
types of analyses are not mutually exclusive and that each analysis ac-
62 Differences across languages
counts for a different set of observations; English is, however, not the ap-
propriate language to show this. The problem of English is that finite verbs
and nonfinite verbs are placed in a nondistinct position. In English inflec-
tional features are weak, hence English finite verbs move covertly (at
Logical Form) (Ouhalla 1999; Pollock 1989). On the assumption that
learners have problems with the spelling out of inflectional morphology,
neither the place of the verb nor its form can thus tell us whether the verbs
in (1) are finite or nonfinite.
In this chapter we will argue that children learning a first language, like
children who learn a second language, produce two types of “errors” in the
morphosyntactic encoding of finiteness: In their root infinitives, they over-
use genuine infinitives in contexts that require finite verbs and they omit
finite surface inflection, resulting in frequent overuse of bare verb stems
(Philips 1995).
This claim has immediate repercussions for the meaning assigned to
Dutch and English root infinitives. The hypothesis according to which
cross-linguistic differences in meaning are a side-effect of the omission of
surface inflection will be introduced in section 2 (Missing Surface Inflec-
tion Hypothesis), and contrasted with the Early Morphosyntactic Conver-
gence Hypothesis, which seems the most promising account of cross-
linguistic difference in the meaning of root infinitives to date. In section 3
naturalistic empirical data on the cross-linguistic comparison of root infini-
tives will be discussed. We present the Modal Bias Hypothesis, which pre-
dicts that the analysis of naturalistic data in order to compare the meaning
of Dutch and English root infinitive introduces a methodological artifact. It
will be shown that this artifact emphasizes the differences in meaning be-
tween root infinitives in the two languages. Additional experimental data
on the cross-linguistic differences in meaning between Dutch and English
root infinitives will be discussed in section 4. Section 5 recapitulates the
findings so far. On the basis of Dutch data, section 6 proceeds with a dis-
cussion of the possible representations of bare verbs (that is, the forms that
remain after omission of surface inflection) within the framework of Dis-
tributed Morphology. The main conclusions and findings are summarized
in section 7.
The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis 63
2. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis
Contra Harris and Wexler (1996), we will show that monolingual English-
learning children omit finite surface inflection, and that their bare stems in
third person singular contexts are not restricted to root infinitives. In our
view, children learning English as their first language have, like second
language learners of English: “unconscious knowledge of functional pro-
jections and features including tense and agreement, but have problems
with realization of the correct surface morphology.” (Prévost and White
2000: 103). The basic idea of this hypothesis is summarized in (3):
(3) Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis

Learners use ungrammatical bare verbs in finite position as the ef-
fect of performance problems with the realization of correct sur-
face inflection.
We will discuss three pieces of support for the claim that English-learning
children in the Optional Infinitive stage omit finite surface inflection. At
the end of this section, we will discuss the implications of (3) for the mean-
ing assigned to English root infinitives.
A first piece of support for the occurrence of ungrammatical finite bare
verbs in child English comes from utterances as in (4):
(4) Robin don’t play with pens. Adam 28, 3;4
(4) shows that third person singular subjects occur with uninflected do in
negative sentences. Placement of do before negation indicates movement to
the higher part of the Inflection Phrase, and hence, that do is finite, albeit
uninflected (Guasti and Rizzi 2000).
Secondly, English root infinitives contain more often state-denoting
predicates than Dutch root infinitives: Less than 10% of the root infinitives
in Dutch child language is stative (Wijnen 1997), whereas 25% - 40% of
the root infinitives in English child language denotes a state (respectively
Deen 1997; Madsen and Gilkerson 1999). Given that not only the finite
sentences of Dutch children are predominantly stative (Wijnen 1997) but
also the finite sentences of English-acquiring children (Boland 2006), this
cross-linguistic difference in predicate selection in root infinitives is pre-
cisely what we expect if the ungrammatical bare verbs of English children
are, at least partially, finite.
A third relevant observation concerns the subjects of English root in-

finitives. In the data from eight normally-developing English children,
Loeb and Leonard (1991) found that case errors with third person singular
subjects are rare if the verb is overtly inflected. Case errors occur with
uninflected verbs. In (5), an example from Sarah is given (drawn from
Schütze 1997). She uses the uninflected verb with an accusative subject:
(5) Her go home. Sarah, file 40
Schütze (1997) argues convincingly that the underlying structure of sen-

tences as (5) is [+Tense, -Agreement]: Active Tense requires an overt sub-
ject – inactive Tense licenses PRO -, whereas inactive Agreement leads to
assignment of the default case, which is, in English, accusative (see also
Chapter 2, section 5.3).17 Additionally, Schütze (1997: 230) observes that:
“There are plenty of NOM subjects when inflection is absent (as noted also
by Pierce 1992)”. An example is given in (6):
(6) He bite me. Nina, file 13
Presence of a lexical subject that is assigned nominative case suggests that

the morpheme in which bite in (6) is inserted, is finite. Thus, subject use in
English root infinitives indicates that the set of root infinitives contains
finite structures in this language, since overt subjects in English root infini-
tives are assigned accusative as well as nominative case.
Based on the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child English, the
relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early child English
and subject use in English root infinitives, our conclusion is that the set of
English ‘root infinitives’ also includes finite utterances with omitted sur-
face inflection. The effect of this omission on the meaning of root infini-
tives follows straightforwardly. In a language like English, the omission of
finite surface inflection will result in a ‘fuzzy’ or ‘heterogeneous’ set of
root infinitives that includes genuine nonfinite clauses that (following the
Elsewhere Hypothesis) contain a semantically underspecified verb form
and, following the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, sentences with
tensed ungrammatical finite bare verbs. The inclusion of the tensed bare
verbs in English root infinitives predicts a relatively high proportion of
nonmodal root infinitives in this language.
In a language like Dutch there is no effect because ungrammatical finite
bare verbs and root infinitives will not be confused. In Dutch, grammatical
The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis 65
finite bare verbs do not have overt morphology and surface at the begin-
ning of the utterance, as illustrated in (7), whereas the infinitives in root
infinitive have the suffix –en and appear at the end a sentence, as illus-
trated in (8):
(7) a. Die heef snor. Daan 2;04.28

that has-Ø moustache
b. Audrey slaap nog een tijdje. Josse 2;07.20
Audrey sleep-Ø still for awhile
c. Dese hoor niet daar. Laura 3;03
that belong-Ø not there
d. Zit ook pitten in. Matthijs 2;10.21
sit-Ø also pits in
e. Hij zeg toettoet. Peter 2;03.07
he say-Ø toettoet
(8) a. Ik ook een hebben. Daan 2;09.10

I also one have-inf
b. Gerard even doen. Josse 2;04.11
Gerard just do-inf
c. Mama ook hier zitte. Laura 2;06.10
mama also here sit-inf
d. Druk vuilnis ophalen. Matthijs 2;11.03
busy garbage up pick-inf
e. Peter bovenop vallen. Peter 2;00.27
Peter on top fall-inf
In short, our claim is that the differences in meaning between Dutch and
English root infinitives can be analyzed as a side-effect of the Missing
Surface Inflection Hypothesis. This explanation contrasts with the Early
Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, according to which the infiniti-
val suffix encodes a modal meaning (Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams
2001, 2002). This, in turn, predicts that root infinitives in Dutch child lan-
guage are modal whereas they are not restricted to modal meanings in Eng-
lish (see, for a more extensive discussion of the Early Morphosyntactic
Convergence Hypothesis, Chapter 2, section 6.3). Like the Early Morpho-
syntactic Convergence Hypothesis we predict that English root infinitives
are more often nonmodal than Dutch root infinitives. Unlike the Early
Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, our prediction is that Dutch
root infinitives are not restricted to a modal meaning. We assume that in

both languages root infinitives contain underspecified elsewhere forms
(Chapter 4, section 3) and therefore denote modal as well as nonmodal
meanings.
In the following two sections, various types of empirical data will be as-
sessed in order to determine whether or not the prediction that English root
infinitives are more often nonmodal than Dutch root infinitives holds. If
there exists a difference, is this more in line with Early Morphosyntactic
Convergence Hypothesis or with the Missing Surface Inflection Hy-
pothesis?
3. Naturalistic data
Naturalistic Dutch (and German) data discussed in the previous chapter

indicate that there is quite some variation in the meaning of root infinitives.
In addition, many root infinitives could not be interpreted by the research-
ers because of a lack of information in available corpora. The general ten-
dency is, however, that the majority (more than 50%) of the root infinitives
is modal in these languages, but that nonmodal root infinitives are not ex-
cluded.
Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) report data based on analyses of English
spontaneous speech data based on studies conducted by Deen (1997) and
Madsen and Gilkerson (1999). Deen finds 22% (59/264) past tense root
infinitives, 65% (171/264) present tense root infinitives and 13% (34/264)
modal root infinitives in the data of Adam and Eve. The percentages of
Madsen and Gilkerson are respectively 31% (36/116), 60% (70/116) and
9% (10/116) for the data of Nina and Naomi. Harris and Wexler (1996)
interpreted the bare stems of English children in spontaneous speech data –
transcripts of ten children ranging in age from 1;6 to 4;1 - and compared
their temporal reference to forms ending with the suffix -s. They found a
clearly dominant present tense (‘ongoing’) use of the bare stems of 82%
(771/938), 14% (128/938) denoted past tense whereas only 4% (39/938)
was assigned a future/modal interpretation.
Table 1 provides an overview of the percentages of modal root infini-
tives in Dutch, German and English naturalistic data:
Naturalistic data 67
Table 1. Overview of percentages of modal root infinitives in Dutch, German and

English in various studies
Language Study % modal root infinitives
Dutch Haegeman (1995) 56%
Wijnen (1997) 86%
Blom (Chapter 4, this book) 73%
German Ingram and Thompson (1997) 47%
Lasser (1997) 71%
English Harris and Wexler (1996) 4%
Deen (1997) 13%
Madsen and Gilkerson (1999) 9%
Please bear in mind that the percentages in Table 1 are averages, and that
there are differences between the children in the studies that analyze data
from more children. In addition, there were many ambiguous utterances
and the criteria applied may differ across studies. Nevertheless, the over-
view gives an idea of the extent to which the meaning of Dutch, German
and English root infinitives differ in meaning.
3.1. The Modal Bias Hypothesis
The general impression of the observations in naturalistic speech is that

there is a huge difference in the meaning of root infinitives across lan-
guages. In this section it will be shown that this cross-language comparison
based on analyses of corpus data is methodologically flawed and that the
difference is smaller than the percentages in Table 1 suggest.
In English, root infinitives can only unequivocally be identified in third
person singular contexts. Therefore, root infinitives in the above studies on
English child language are restricted to clauses with third person singular
subjects. In the studies on Dutch root infinitives based on naturalistic data,
this is not the case. In contrast to English, Dutch makes a positional dis-
tinction between finite and nonfinite verbs. If morphology is ambiguous -
which happens if the clause contains a plural subject -, final placement of
the verb indicates that we are dealing with a root infinitive whereas place-
ment of the verb before object, particle or negation indicates that the clause
is finite. Thus, Dutch root infinitives contain various different subjects. In
this section, we will argue that it is this methodological difference between
Dutch and English root infinitive studies that leads to a higher proportion
of modal root infinitives in Dutch than in English.
Why is the asymmetry in subjects of English and Dutch root infinitives
relevant for the meaning assigned to root infinitives in the two languages?
In the previous chapter, we have pointed out that the class of modal root
infinitives contains root infinitives that express wishes or desires (voli-
tional root infinitives), root infinitives that announce something that is
going to happen (intentional root infinitive) or root infinitives to give com-
mands (deontic root infinitives). Crucially, these kinds of modality are tied
to speaker, here the child, and addressee in the discourse context. In other
words, young children’s modal root infinitives can be paraphrased as ‘I
want + infinitival main verb’, ‘I am going to + infinitival main verb’ and
‘you must + infinitival main verb’. This correlation between the types of
modality and subject use presumably has its roots in cognitive develop-
ment. Because young children lack a concept of the mind - they do not
have a Theory of Mind -, they neither talk about or understand their own
mental states or understand those of others (Carey 1985; Wellman 1990;
Wimmer and Perner 1983). According to Gopnik (1993), children between
two and three do not have a full grasp of intentions and desires and their
concept of these states is simple nonrepresentational and hence limited to
the child herself in the here-and-now. This idea is confirmed by the data in
Table 2, which show that nearly all instances of the modal verb willen ‘to
want’, which expresses a wish or desire, are with first person singular sub-
jects:
Table 2. Percentages of first person singular subjects (1SG) with the modal verb
Willen ‘want’
% 1SG subjects in willen-sentences N 1SG/N willen-sentences
Abel 84 49/58
Daan 97 31/32
Josse 100 33/33
Laura 97 83/86
Matthijs 68 9/13
Peter 100 5/6
Likewise, it is expected that the deontic utterances (‘you must’) correlate

with second person singular subjects. The correlation between person fea-
tures of the subject and modality as it would apply to root infinitives is
expressed by the Modal Bias Hypothesis in (9). The basic idea is that root
infinitives with first/second person subjects are biased towards a modal

interpretation:
(9) Modal Bias Hypothesis

Root infinitives in which speaker (first person singular) or ad-
dressee (second person singular) are the subject are more often
modal than root infinitives with third person singular subjects.
The implication of the Modal Bias Hypothesis is that exclusion of first and
second person subjects in English root infinitives wil lower the proportion
of modal root infinitives in this language. The prediction of (9) is that if the
subject of root infinitives is kept constant across languages, say to third
person singular subjects, the difference in meaning between Dutch and
English root infinitives becomes smaller than previously assumed.
3.2. A reanalysis of Dutch corpus data
One way to test the effect of exclusion of root infinitives with first/second
person subjects on the meaning of root infinitives is to compare within one
language the meaning of the set of root infinitives that includes all subjects
to the meaning of the set of root infinitives that only includes third person
singular subjects. Applying this method to the Dutch data, our expectation
is that the proportion of modal root infinitives in the data of Abel, Daan,
Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter is lower if root infinitives are restricted to
clauses with third person singular subjects than if they are unrestricted.
Table 3 below shows that this is indeed the case:
Table 3. % modal root infinitives with all kinds of subjects and % modal root
infinitives with third person singular (3SG) root infinitives only
All subjects 3SG subjects
Abel 76 (91/120) 44 (7/160)
Daan 73 (115/157) 48 (13/27)
Josse 73 (150/206) 69 (18/26)
Laura 64 (200/314) 34 (28/82)
Matthijs 78 (199/254) 45 (34/76)
Peter 80 (157/197) 72 (67/93)
Sum 74 (912/1248) 52 (167/320)
SD 6 15
After exclusion of first and second person root infinitives, the predomi-
nance of modal root infinitives in the overall data is not present anymore
(M = 52%). The proportion of modal root infinitives in the data from Abel,
Daan, Laura and Matthijs is below 0.5.
In Peter’s case, the absence of a clear effect in Table 3 may be related to
his use of proper names to either address himself (Peter) or his addressee
(often Mama, his mother), as exemplified in (10):
(10) a. Peter pakken. Peter 1;11.13

Peter get-inf
b. Mama doen. Peter 1;11.13
mama do-inf
Although formally these proper names are third person singular - in his
finite sentences, Peter uses third person singular inflection in sentences in
which he uses Peter to refer to himself -, the denotation of the proper
names Peter and mama is similar to the denotation of first and second per-
son singular pronouns i.e. respectively speaker and addressee. Thus, it is
expected that root infinitives containing the proper names Peter and mama
as subjects also correlate with modality. It is not the case that all children
use this strategy. Peter’s use of proper names is disproportional: 44 out of
93 cases, whereas the other children hardly ever do it. Therefore, in order
to make Peter’s data more comparable to those of the other five children,
we have to exclude his root infinitives with proper name subjects that de-
note speaker and addressee. Subtraction of root infinitives with Peter as a
subject leads to a drop of modal root infinitives from 72% to 62% (32/52)
in his data. The average percentage of the six children goes down to 50%
(ranging between 34% and 69%).
3.3. Implications of the Modal Bias Hypothesis
The modal bias in Dutch in itself does not endanger the Early Morphosyn-
tactic Convergence Hypothesis, assuming that the difference between the
two languages is still significant. The observations reveal another problem
for this hypothesis, though. Under a grammatical view, as exemplified by
the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, it is not expected that
context has an effect on the meaning assigned to root infinitives. If the
infinitival suffix is [-realis] then it is expected that Dutch root infinitives
are modal irrespective of context. It is certainly not expected that Dutch

root infinitives used in first and second person singular contexts are sig-
nificantly more often modal than Dutch root infinitives used in third person
singular contexts. We found that exclusion of root infinitives with a subject
that denotes speaker or addressee leads to a significantly fewer modal root
infinitives. Therefore our conclusion is that the predominance of modal
root infinitives in early child Dutch is related to the contexts in which chil-
dren use root infinitives rather than to presence of an infinitival morpheme.
3.4. Conclusion
Naturalistic data on the meaning of root infinitives in child Dutch and Eng-
lish show that in both languages root infinitives can denote nonmodal
meaning and modal meanings. A comparison of the results of previous
studies suggests that there is a remarkable difference in the denotation in
root infinitives: English root infinitives are infrequently modal, whereas
root infinitives in Dutch (and German) child language are very often mo-
dal. The outcome of the reanalysis performed in this section provides sup-
port for the Modal Bias Hypothesis and leads to a reassessment of this
cross-linguistic difference. The implication of restricting the Dutch root
infinitives to third person singular root infinitives (as in English) is that the
strikingly low percentage of modal root infinitives in the English naturalis-
tic data (illustrated by the overview in Table 1) is the effect of exclusion of
first and second person singular root infinitives rather than the effect of
properties of English. The observation that the type of subject correlates
with the modal meaning assigned to root infinitives provides an additional
empirical argument against the hypothesis that the modality in Dutch root
infinitives is encoded in the infinitival suffix: If the modal meaning were
encoded in the infinitival suffix, it is expected that a root infinitive is mo-
dal, regardless of whether the subject is first, second or third person.
4. Experimental data
In this section, experimental data on the interpretation of root infinitives in

Dutch and English child language will be discussed. It will be shown that
data obtained in a controlled experimental setting confirm that in both lan-
guages root infinitives can denote modal and nonmodal meanings, but that
English root infinitives denote more often ongoing actions than Dutch root
infinitives do. Before we turn to the data, we will first briefly summarize
the advantages of undertaking an experiment in order to investigate the
meaning of root infinitives across languages.
4.1. Why an experiment?
For a number of reasons controlled experimental data are more suitable for
our purpose than spontaneous speech data as provided by the transcripts in
the CHILDES database. In particular cross-linguistic comparisons may
profit from more controlled data collection.
Results that are based on interpretations of corpus data suffer, first of
all, from a high number of excluded utterances. A simple example will
illustrate this problem. Assume that a child says bal gooien (‘ball throw’).
As long as the interpreter does not know anything about the state or posi-
tion of the ball, this utterance can be modal as well as nonmodal: The ball
could be going to be thrown, could have to be thrown, or could have been
thrown (when the child tells a story). In order to avoid any biases in the
data, the only way to deal with such cases is to exclude them. In an ex-
periment, however, the contexts can be constrained in such a way that the
meaning of the child’s utterances can be determined much more easily.
Secondly, in available cross-linguistic comparisons based on existing
studies of spontaneous speech comparability is not guaranteed, because for
each language, researchers have used their own criteria and definitions. If
the same experimental design and data-analysis model is applied across
languages, highly comparable data can be collected, however.
Finally, the activity performed during the recorded sessions can have an
effect on the number of modal utterances. This, in turn, can result in varia-
tion in the proportion of modal utterances over sessions and over children.
For example, a play situation elicits much modality as the child expresses
wishes and gives commands to the adult while playing. When adult and
child read a booklet or look at pictures, there is less modality. Presumably,
the distribution of situations over transcripts differs when different files are
studied. As a consequence, the number of modal utterances may be differ-
ent per file, and also per language. Through a controlled experiment, this
kind of variability can be avoided.
Experimental data 73
4.2. Picture selection
Schönenberger et al. (1995) report data from a sentence-picture-matching

task carried out with Dutch and English-speaking children. Despite the fact
that the design of the experiment causes a nonmodal bias – to be discussed
later on - and that the number of English children that is tested is quite low
(n = 5), the results of this study are interesting for the purpose of this chap-
ter.
The aim of the Schönenberger et al. study was to investigate the inter-
pretation that children assign to root infinitives (modal versus ongoing). In
the task, the child functions as an intermediary between puppet Kermit the
Frog and the experimenter. The experimenter tells a story involving two
pictures: One depicting an ongoing event, the other depicting a modal
event. A puppet (Kermit the Frog) is listening to the story as well. After the
story has finished, the experimenter asks Kermit which picture he likes
best. However, Kermit cannot point. Therefore, he has to explain with a
descriptive sentence. The experimenter does not understand Kermit and so
the child, who can understand him, has to make Kermit’s choice clear to
the experimenter by pointing at the picture that fits Kermit’s description. In
the experiment, Kermit uses three kinds of sentences: Either with a finite
main verb, a modal auxiliary or a root infinitive. In the English version, the
present progressive is used instead of a simple finite main verb as this
sounds much more natural. In this way, this experiment elicited the inter-
pretation (i.e. modal or ongoing) of three kinds of constructions.
Table 4 below contains the percentages of selection of the picture that
depicted the ongoing event for three different sentences:
Table 4. Percentages of selections of pictures that depicted ongoing events for

respectively finite verbs, root infinitives and modal verbs (Schönenberger
et al. 1995)
Language Finite verb Root infinitive Modal verb
Dutch 91 62 43
English 95 95 40
The results in the final colon indicate that children tend to focus on the
event that is expressed and ignore the presence of a modal marker: Even
for the stimulus sentence with a modal verb (e.g. Koekiemonster wil de
koekjes hebben/Cookie Monster wants to have the cookies), both Dutch
and English-speaking children point to the picture that shows the ongoing
event (thus, to the picture in which Cookie Monster has cookies) in ap-
proximately 40% of the cases.
Despite this bias for the ongoing, the results in Table 4 do show a cross-
linguistic effect that is on par with the naturalistic data. Finite verbs and
modal verbs are interpreted similarly in Dutch and English: Finite main
verbs are nearly always ongoing, while for modal verbs the modal picture
is chosen approximately 60% of the time. Root infinitives yield a different
interpretation in the two languages, though. English children tend to point
more often to the ongoing picture if the stimulus sentence is a root infini-
tive than Dutch children do: English children do so in 95% of the cases,
whereas Dutch children select the ongoing picture in 62% of the cases.
Taking into account the bias for the ongoing we conclude that the real per-
centages for both languages are lower that 95% and 62%. This bias is not
expected to influence the size of the cross-linguistic difference. Hence, it
may be realistic to expect a cross-linguistic difference of about 30%.
4.3. Elicited production
In Blom (2007), an elicitation technique was described that makes it possi-

ble to retrieve information about the meaning of root infinitives on the
basis of speech production data. In this section, the focus will be on the
results of this experiment (see Blom (2007) for details on the experimental
design of the elicitation task).
Children that participated in the experiment were confronted with two
conditions: A modal and a nonmodal condition. In the modal condition
children were ‘shown’ a character’s desire, wish or need to act. The act
itself was not depicted. In the nonmodal ongoing condition, the act itself
was shown. We made use of human and animal characters, and designed
animated movies instead of pictures. Examples of items can be found in
Appendix 7. Each movie was shown to the child three times. At the first
viewing the child could just sit and watch while the experimenter was tell-
ing the story. At the second viewing the experimenter asked the child ques-
tions about the movie. At the third viewing, the child herself had to tell the
story. Human characters in the movies were given common names such as
Peter or Lisa. All characters were third person singular. The same experi-
ment has been conducted on Dutch and English-speaking toddlers. Selected
subjects used at least one root infinitive in the pre-test, and were able to
Experimental data 75
understand both conditions. Table 5 provides some more information on

the selected subjects:
Table 5. Number of children that participated in the production experiment, age

range, mean age, MLU range, mean MLU
Dutch English
Number 26 29
Age range 1;11-3;10 1;11-3;6
Mean age 2;10 2;7
MLU range 1.57-4.9 2-5.62
Mean MLU 2.63 3.44
The children’s task was to encode auditory and visually presented stimuli
into linguistic structures. The introduction and story telling by the experi-
menter influenced children, but children were not further forced to use
certain words or structures in any way. As an effect, children produced
various different words to describe a depicted activity. Utterances about
swimming, taking a bath, becoming clean and splashing were, for instance,
acceptable descriptions for a washing-movie. Although the movies were
simple, some movies contained more than one action, especially those in
the modal condition: In the modal running-movie a car moved and in the
modal drinking-movie a girl walked to her mother. Utterances that de-
scribed side-activities were included, provided that the criteria for being
modal or nonmodal could be applied. Not only did children use different
words, they also used different verb forms. Dutch children used infinitives,
finite lexical verbs sentences, finite periphrastic verbs and prepositional
infinitival complements. The English children used bare verbs, finite peri-
phrastic verbs and bare participles. Appendix 8 contains the distributions
of different structures over the two conditions in both languages.
To single out root infinitives, we used standard criteria. Included were
those clauses in which the main verb appeared in infinitival form, that is,
with the suffix –en in sentence-final position, and a finite verb was lacking.
Ambiguous two-word utterances were excluded, as were other utterances
that did not contain sufficient information on the form of the verb (finite or
nonfinite) (see for a more detailed discussion of these criteria Chapter 4,
section 4.1). One-word utterances and parasitic root infinitives (used to
give an answer to a question) were excluded.
In Table 6 the results from all children (that used at least one root in-
finitive, n (Dutch) = 26 and n (English) = 29) are given, as well as the re-
sults from a productive subset, i.e. children that used at least five root in-
finitives and five finite sentences (n (Dutch) = 9 and n (English) = 12). The
rationale for these two analyses is the following. If a child used only one
root infinitive and this root infinitive was (accidentally) used in the modal
condition, 100% of her root infinitives were classified as modal. Many of
such subjects may influence the results. Therefore, a post hoc selection of
productive subjects has been performed: The sample of subjects is smaller,
but the data are more reliable. Table 6 gives the distribution of modal con-
texts over the total number of interpretable root infinitives:
Table 6. Percentage of modal root infinitives, and standard deviations, in the pro-
duction experiments; data from all children and data from productive
children
All children Productive children
Modal SD Modal SD
Dutch 68% (101/149) 29 61% (53/87) 22
English 44% (71/162) 31 36% (32/90) 17
In line with all observations so far, it turns out that Dutch root infinitives
are not restricted to modal contexts. The same holds for English root infini-
tives. Productivity of subjects does not influence this outcome.
Is there a difference between the meaning of root infinitives in the two
languages? In order to test if the observed distribution differs significantly
from a chance distribution we used a permutation test (Appendix 4). Start-
ing with the sample of all children, we find that if for the Dutch children a
chance distribution is simulated and observations are shuffled per subject,
it turns out to be unlikely that the observed distribution and the chance
distribution are drawn from a single distribution (p = 0.013). Thus, Dutch
children show a preference for using root infinitives to denote modal
events. If we make a similar calculation for English root infinitives, it turns
out that there is no preference (p = 0.62). If the Dutch and English results
are compared and the probability is estimated that there is no difference, a
p-value of 0.024 is obtained, which is below the criterion value of 0.05: In
this dataset, root infinitives in child Dutch are more often modal than root
infinitives in child English. But productivity of the subjects does influence
this conclusion. The smaller sample of productive children shows neither a
modal preference in Dutch root infinitives, nor an ongoing preference in
the English root infinitives. The difference between the two languages
remains statistically significant (p = 0.006).
Recapitulation 77
5. Recapitulation
At the beginning of this chapter we described two accounts that explain the
cross-linguistic difference in meaning of root infinitives. The observation
that English root infinitives receive more often a present tense denotation
than Dutch root infinitives has been analyzed in previous literature as an
effect of Early Morphosyntactic Convergence. The prediction of this claim
is that the Dutch infinitival suffix encodes a modal meaning, whereas the
English bare infinitival verb does not encode a specific meaning. Very
early, children are sensitive to this cross-linguistic difference, which is
noticeable in the contexts in which root infinitives in the two languages are
being used. We proposed, in contrast, that children’s tendency to omit sur-
face inflection (Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis) induces interpreta-
tive differences between Dutch and English root infinitives. The corollary
of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis is that the set of English root
infinitives contains sentences that are finite and sentences that are nonfi-
nite, whereas Dutch root infinitives are strictly nonfinite.
Spontaneous speech data (reanalyzed on the basis of the Modal Bias
Hypothesis), data collected in a comprehension experiment and data col-
lected in a production experiment confirm that root infinitives in Dutch and
English child language can denote modal as well as nonmodal meanings.
The English root infinitives are assigned more often a present tense denota-
tion than Dutch root infinitives. This difference is smaller than previously
assumed; our findings indicate a difference of about 30%. Both types of
accounts can, in principle, account for this cross-linguistic difference. A
number of other observations plead for the Missing Surface Inflection Hy-
pothesis, though. We will summarize these observations here one by one.
First of all, the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child English, the
relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early child English
and subject use in English root infinitives confirms that English children
do omit the third person singular –s. The implication is that root infinitives
in English child language are partially finite. Secondly, one observation
that could not be accommodated by the Early Morphosyntactic Conver-
gence Hypothesis was that nonmodal root infinitives are allowed in Dutch
child language (see Chapter 4 for extensive discussion). The experimental
data described in this chapter confirm that Dutch root infinitives are not
restricted to modal meanings. The assumption that root infinitives, in
Dutch as well as in English child language, contain underspecified forms
can explain this observation, though. A third problem for the Early Mor-
phosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis is that the root infinitives with third

person singular subjects are less often modal than root infinitives with first
or second person singular subjects. This contextual effect is completely
unexpected if infinitival morphology were the source of the modality of
root infinitives.
6. Incorrect bare verbs
We have shown that English children omit finite surface inflection and use
bare verb stems in third person singular contexts. In addition, some exam-
ples of ungrammatical finite bare verbs in Dutch child language have been
given. From the literature we know moreover that in various other lan-
guages children tend to use bare verbs in contexts that require inflected
verbs (Bittner, Dressler, and Kilani-Schoch 2003). So far, we have been
vague with respect to the precise representation of ungrammatical bare
verbs. In this section, we will discuss two types of analyses of bare verbs
that are both in accordance with the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis:
Children’s ungrammatical finite bare verbs may be the result of inserting
morphosyntactically underspecified elsewhere forms, or, analogous to the
Modal Drop Hypothesis (Chapter 2, section 3.3) they could be the result of
phonological drop. The two analyses are not mutually exclusive.
As a starting point we will take the utterances of Josse in (11). The
equivalent in standard Dutch would contain the verb slaapt instead of
slaap.
(11) Audrey slaap nog een tijdje. Josse 2;07.20

Audrey sleep-Ø still for awhile
Suppose that Josse has all vocabulary items in (12) available.
(12) /t/ ↔ [-past, -sp]

/ø/ ↔ [-past]
/en/ ↔ []
One possibility is that he substitutes the underspecified (in comparison to

the suffix –t) zero suffix in (12). In this case, the representation of his un-
grammatical finite bare verb in (11) would be (13):
Incorrect bare verbs 79
(13) /ø/ ↔ [-past]
Selection of (13) can be interpreted as application of a morphosyntactic

default rule, because an underspecified verb form (namely underspecified
for φ-features) is inserted. This would be compliant with proposals accord-
ing to which children do not use incorrect inflection, but make use of de-
fault rules (a.o. Clahsen 1991; Clahsen and Penke 1992). It is also in line
with Prévost’s (2003) analysis of the ungrammatical finite bare verbs of a
child that learns German as a second language. As the relation between
phonological form and morphosyntactic features is arbitrary, it is not ex-
pected that the bare stem is a finite default across languages. In addition, it
is expected that use of the bare verb by children is, within a language, in-
sensitive for the phonological properties.
Another possibility, inspired by the (Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis
(Boser et al. 1992; Ferdinand 1996), may be that ungrammatical finite bare
verbs are phonological defaults. Such an analysis has been proposed for
bare verbs in sentence-final position in Dutch (Taelman 2004; Taelman,
Martens, and Gillis 2005). In (11), Josse may have selected the correct
vocabulary item ending on the suffix –t but dropped, during spell-out, the
final /t/. The representation underlying (11) would be as in (14), which
represents phonological drop with the strike-through:
(14) /t/ ↔ [- past, -sp]
From studies on phonological development, it is known that young Dutch-

speaking children truncate forms and reduce coda clusters (Fikkert 1994;
Taelman 2004; Taelman, Martens, and Gillis 2005); (11) would exemplify
coda cluster reduction, whereas finite bare verbs in plural contexts would
exemplify truncation, i.e. drop of the final syllable /en/. If children overuse
bare verbs because they want to reduce the coda cluster, it may be expected
that the distribution of incorrect finite bare verbs within a language is de-
termined by phonological principles.18 It is also predicted that the bare stem
functions as a default across languages.
Ungrammatical finite bare verbs may thus either be underspecified or
they may be fully specified forms. Closely related to the question what
ungrammatical bare verbs are, is the question why children insert these
bare verbs. It may be that the underspecified vocabulary item in (13) is
acquired prior to more specified vocabulary items in (12). In this case, it is
simply the temporary absence of more specified vocabulary items that
leads to selection of the finite bare verb. A second possibility would be that
a child has the full list in (12) at its disposal, but that the interference of
nonlinguistic factors (e.g. the interaction between processing demands and
available processing capacity) explains use of the bare verb. Spelling out
the bare verb instead of an inflected verb form reduces the phonological
substance and hence the processing costs, and may for that reason be pre-
ferred by small children (Bloom 1991; Leonard 1998). It may also be that
the bare verb is easier to access (because it has, for instance, a higher in-
formation load) than the other forms in the paradigm.19 The basic idea
would be that if the processing load exceeds a certain threshold, a default
form will be inserted.
Our data contain a number of observations that are relevant with respect
to the representation of incorrect bare verbs. One observation is that Josse
and the other five children do not only incorrectly use finite bare stems, but
they also incorrectly use finite verbs ending on –t in first person singular
contexts (see, for other observations confirming the co-occurrence of in-
correct bare verbs and incorrect –t suffixation in child Dutch: Blom and
Polišenská 2005). (15) illustrates incorrect use of the suffix –t:
(15) a. Ik gaat muziek maken. Josse 2;08

I go-fin music make
b. Als ik zwemt. Josse 2;11
if I swim-fin
c Ik valt niet om. Josse 3;00
I fall-fin not part
The example illustrates that there is variation within a language, and even
within children. On the hypothesis that the ungrammatical finite bare verbs
are underspecified default forms, this kind of variation is unexpected. It
may compatible with the hypothesis that incorrect bare verbs result from
phonological drop, however, as explained above. Consider now (16):
(16) Die heef snor. Daan 2;04

that has-Ø moustache
Table 7 gives the paradigm for the Dutch verb hebben ‘have’:
Incorrect bare verbs 81
Table 7. Dutch present tense indicative paradigm of hebben ‘to have’

Person-Number Example
1-SG Ik heb ‘I have’
2-SG Jij hebt ‘You have’
3-SG Hij heeft ‘He has’
1/2/3-PL Wij/jullie/zij hebben ‘We/you/they have’
The present tense paradigm of hebben ‘have’ is regular, except for the third
person singular form, which shows stem alternation (heef). It can be as-
sumed that in the target system, in third person singular contexts the regu-
lar verb form hebt is blocked by the Elsewhere Principle: Heeft being the
more specific (namely, word-specific, see (17)) blocks less specific hebt in
this context.
(17) /heeft/ ↔ [-past, -sp]
Returning to (16), we may conclude that Daan did not insert a less speci-
fied form (hebt) or the least specified form (heb). Instead, he has selected
the fully specified form (heeft) and dropped the final /t/.20
Although there may be support for phonological drop, phonological
drop is unlikely to be able to account for all ungrammatical finite bare
verbs. Reduction of onset clusters is a frequent and persistent phenomenon
in child language, but reduction of coda clusters seems less frequent and
persistent (Kirk and Demuth 2003; Levelt, Schiller, and Levelt 2000).
However, if the majority of finite bare verbs in Dutch results from trunca-
tion of the final syllable /en/ - and hence drop of the plural suffix –en -, it is
predicted that most finite bare verbs appear with plural subjects. We doubt
if this is the case, but future research should point out whether or not this
intuition is justified.
7. Summary
In this chapter we discussed naturalistic and experimental data on Dutch,

German and English child language showing that root infinitives in all
these languages denote modal as well as nonmodal meanings, but that
Dutch and German root infinitives are more often modal than English root
infinitives. We have shown that previous cross-linguistic comparisons of

naturalistic data are subject to a modal bias, and the actual cross-linguistic
difference is smaller than has been claimed before (Modal Bias Hypothe-
sis). In our view, the observed difference is a corollary of children‘s ten-
dency to omit surface inflection, while their underlying syntactic represen-
tation is intact (Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis). Dutch and English
root infinitives differ in meaning, because only in English, and not in
Dutch, ungrammatical finite bare verbs, that are the result of omission of
finite surface inflection, are included in the set of root infinitives. The
claim that English children omit inflection was supported by three pieces
of independent evidence, namely the occurrence of uninflected finite do in
child English, the relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in
early child English and subject use in English root infinitives. At the end of
this chapter, we briefly evaluated two hypotheses on the representation of
incorrect bare verbs. According to one view, bare verbs are phonological
defaults. According to the other view, bare verbs are morphosyntactic de-
faults. At this point, both analyses fail to account for all observations, and
we leave it as an issue for future research.
Chapter 6
Developmental patterns
1. Introduction
Literature on the Optional Infinitive stage reports two contradictory claims:
(1) There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in root

infinitives and finite verbs used in co-occurring finite sentences.
The predicates of root infinitives belong to a different class than
the predicates of co-occurring finite sentences (based on De Haan
1987; Ferdinand 1996; Jordens 1990; Wijnen 1997, 2000).
(2) The same lexemes appear as infinitival and finite verb in respec-
tively root infinitives and co-occurring finite sentences (based on
Poeppel and Wexler 1992).
We will show in section 2 that the observations in (1) and (2) hold for two
subsequent developmental stages (Growing Overlap Hypothesis). The
observation that in an early stage Dutch children do not generalize over
finite verbs and infinitives, whereas in later stages they do is the central
observation of this chapter. In section 3 we will examine whether distribu-
tional properties of the input cause the initial absence of overlap. In sec-
tion 4, the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis will be introduced and as-
sessed. According to this hypothesis, inflectional morphology is an
important cue for the acquisition of an adult category of verbs. The wider
implications of the acquisition of finite verb inflection for the acquisition
of syntax, in particular verb movement and subject licensing, will be dis-
cussed in sections 5 and 6. Section 7 summarizes the findings and conclu-
sions of this chapter.
84 Developmental patterns
2. Growing Overlap Hypothesis
According to recent literature on the development of grammar, young chil-

dren begin learning in an input-driven and item-based fashion. In this view,
verb constructions are initially learned case-by-case (‘verb islands’) with-
out reference to a general verb class (Tomasello 2000). Over time item-
based units become more abstract (Borensztajn, Zuidema, and Bod in
press). With respect to the acquisition of Dutch finiteness, De Haan (1987)
proposed that Dutch children initially lack a generalized category of verbs
and use instead to two subcategories, AUX(iliary) and V(erb), which they
merge later on into a more abstract category of verbs. De Haan thus claims
that finiteness/nonfiniteness is initially word-specific, and children start
out with different lexicons for finite verbs and infinitives. The aim of this
section is to test whether or not Dutch child data from different develop-
mental phases provide evidence for this type of development. We have
formulated this in the “Growing Overlap Hypothesis”:
(3) Growing Overlap Hypothesis

At the onset of grammatical development, Dutch children lack a
generalized class of verbs; a generalized class of verbs emerges as
the children grow older.
We apply the Growing Overlap Hypothesis to finite utterances and root

infinitives that Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter use during the
Optional Infinitive stage. The prediction of (3) is that in the early stages,
the children use in their finite utterances different verb lexemes than in
their root infinitives. Our expectation is that overlap between finite and
infinitival lexemes is a property of later developmental stages.
Table 1 on the next page gives the numbers of overlapping verb lex-
emes in root infinitives and sentences with a finite main verb in the four
subsequent developmental stages in the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura,
Matthijs and Peter (see for more details on the analyzed data: Chapter 4,
section 4.1). It shows that in stages I/II there is hardly any lexical overlap.
The finite verbs used are drawn from a small set, and are mostly modals,
aspectual verbs and copulae (see Appendix 9), in agreement with previous
observations (De Haan 1987; Jordens 1990; Schlichting 1996; Van
Kampen 1997; Wijnen 2000).
Growing Overlap Hypothesis 85
Table 1. Lexical overlap between the verbal predicates in root infinitives and
sentences with a finite main verb (types)
Child Stage I/II Stage III Stage IV
N overlap N overlap N overlap
(Ninf/Nfin) (Ninf/Nfin) (Ninf/Nfin)
Abel 0 (13/2) 3 (34/15) 10 (46/24)
Daan 2 (24/9) 6 (36/21) 13 (53/35)
Josse 0 (20/5) 1 (38/11) 8 (53/21)
Laura 2 (14/8) 6 (45/17) 8 (55/24)
Matthijs 0 (36/2) 7 (63/14) 16 (73/35)
Peter 1 (21/3) 9 (31/18) 18 (33/33)
As indicated in Table 1, the initial absence of overlap is followed by a

steady increase from an average of 4.3 overlapping items in stage III to an
average 12.2 in stage IV.
One could object that the absence of overlap results from statistical
properties of the corpora: Since finite verbs occur very infrequently, the a
priori probability of overlap is reduced (Blom and Wijnen submitted). In
order to test whether or not initial absence of overlap is the effect of corpus
statistics, we calculated the expected verb overlap on the basis of the dis-
tributions of finite sentences and root infinitives in each of the four stages.
The assumption is that the proportion of finite sentences in a set of relevant
utterances, pF, is an estimator of the probability that a verb from the
child’s verb vocabulary V will (on any occasion) be realized as a finite
form (m.m. for the proportion of nonfinite sentences, which equals 1 - pF).
The estimated size of the verb vocabulary is taken to be the number of
observed verb types (lexemes), i.e. the number of finite verb types added to
the number of nonfinite verb types, minus the number of verbs that appear
both as finite and nonfinite forms. Assuming that finite and nonfinite reali-
zation of a verb are independent events, the probability that a verb will
occur both in finite and nonfinite forms is pF * (1 - pF). The predicted
overlap is obtained when we multiply this probability with the set size of
the observed vocabulary n(V). In summary, the estimated overlap equals
pF * (1 - pF) * n(V). The hypothesis that verb stems can be freely linked to
finite and nonfinite inflections will have to be rejected if predicted overlap
and observed overlap are significantly different.
Table 2. Predicted overlap between finite and nonfinite verb sets on the basis of
proportions of finite sentences and (pF) and root infinitives (1- pF) and
observed verb lexicon size (n(V)), and actually observed overlap num-
bers (totals for the six children)
1-pF pF N(V) Predicted Observed
overlap overlap
Stage
I/II 0.83 0.17 152 21.7 5
III 0.41 0.59 311 75.2 32
IV 0.1 0.9 424 38.9 73
Table 2 gives the totals for the six children per stage. Binomial tests indi-
cate that in stage I/II, given the estimated probability of overlap, the prob-
ability of observing a cumulative overlap of five or fewer items is less than
0.0001. For stage III, the probability of the observed overlap or a smaller
number is also less than 0.0001. Crucially, only in stage IV, observed over-
lap is within the expected range (the probability of the observed overlap or
a smaller number is 0.99). Thus, overlap is significantly smaller than pre-
dicted in stages I/II and III, but not in stage IV.
In this section, we evaluated the Growing Overlap Hypothesis, accord-
ing to which Dutch children initially lack a generalized category of verbs.
Lexical overlap data of six Dutch-learning children confirmed this hy-
pothesis because lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitival verbs
(used in root infinitives) was initially absent and appeared in later stages.
Only in stage IV, the final stage analyzed here, the observed number of
overlapping verbs exceeded the predicted number; hence, we conclude that
only at this point, the generalization in (2) is adequate. In the previous
stages, generalization in (1) gives an appropriate description of the obser-
vations.
3. Cause of no overlap
De Haan (1987) suggested that young children lack a generalized class of

verbs because initially they base themselves on semantic primitives (Se-
mantic bootstrapping; see Pinker 1984, 1989). According to this view, the
early categories are semantic in nature, instead of syntactic. More recent
accounts emphasize the role of input distributions with respect to early
nongeneralized categories (Mintz 2003). The aim of this section is to in-
Cause of no overlap 87
vestigate to what extent the input of Dutch children may lead them to two
distinct verb-like categories.
To this end, we analyzed all utterances that are directed to Abel, Daan,
Josse, Laura, Matthijs or Peter (child-directed speech). The usual criteria
have been applied to determine finiteness of a verb, viz. morphology and
position in the sentence. Since maximally 10% of all sentences with verbs
in the input are root infinitives, infinitives contained in complex verb
phrases headed by finite auxiliaries are included as well.21 Assuming that
Wijnen’s (1997) distinction between state-denoting predicates and event-
denoting predicates adequately describes predicate selection in finite
clauses and root infinitives in early child Dutch, we classified predicate
selection in the input along the same lines, hereby using the following
definitions of events and states.
Events comprise activities, accomplishments and achievements
(Vendler 1967).22 The feature that unifies these three classes is dynamicity.
By contrast, state-denoting predicates are not dynamic. Comrie (1976: 48)
suggested that events, but not states, require an input of energy for the
maintenance of the eventuality. Pustejovsky (1991: 56) described a state as
“a single event, which is evaluated relative to no other event”. Summariz-
ing various claims in the literature, Wanner (1999) gives the following list
of stative verbal predicates: Perception verbs (taste, feel, smell), position
verbs (sit, lie, stand), verbs of existence (be, seem, exist), psych verbs
(fear, like) and verbs of possession (have, possess, own). In Dutch, modal
verbs appear as main verbs. The criteria for stativity, given below, apply to
these modal main verbs as well (Wijnen 1997).
Several tests distinguish between states and events. The following con-
texts only allow eventive verbs: Imperatives, sentences with the adverbs
deliberately and carefully, and complements of verbs such as force or per-
suade (Lakoff 1966). Another test that is often applied to distinguish states
from events is the present progressive test: States are incompatible with
present progressive. Note however that states that can switch their dy-
namicity value shift in the progressive test from state to event (Dowty
1979; Quirk et al. 1985). Quirk et al (1985: 201 ff.) write:
“The definition of stative verbs is not so much that they are incompatible
with progressive, as that when they are combined with the progressive, some
change of interpretation other than the addition of ‘temporary’ meaning of
the progressive aspect is required. This change of interpretation can usually
be classified as a transfer, or reclassification of the verb as dynamic, e.g. as
having a meaning of process or agentivity.”
Applying the above criteria/tests gives us the results in Table 3:
Table 3. Percentages of state-denoting verbs in Dutch child-directed speech

Finite verb in simple finite clause 89% (7922/8915)
Infinitival verb in finite sentences/root infinitives 3% (89/3500)
In the input there are hardly any infinitival states; infinitives are almost
always event-denoting predicates. Finite verbs, by contrast, denote most
often states: Predominantly auxiliaries, modals and copulae (N = 5920), and
the rest (N = 2002) are verbs of position (liggen ‘lie’, zitten ‘sit’, zijn ‘be’),
possession (hebben ‘have’), and mental states (denken ‘think’, vinden
‘find/think’, weten ‘know’, bedoelen ‘mean’, etc.). 23
In sum: An analysis of input distributions in Dutch child directed
speech shows that finite verbs in the input denote most frequently states,
whereas infinitival verbs are overwhelmingly eventive. Thus, in the input
of Dutch children relatively few verbs appear in finite as well as infinitival
form. Given this property of the input of Dutch children, it is unlikely that
Dutch children are able to establish a generalized category of verbs from
early on.
4. Morphological Cueing Hypothesis
In the previous section it was shown that Dutch input distributions are ex-
pected to lead Dutch children to a separate class of finite and infinitival
verbs. One category includes finite state-denoting lexemes, whereas the
other contains infinitival event-denoting lexemes. In terms of Distributed
Morphology (Chapter 3), the ‘finite verb lexicon’ would be accounted for
by (4) while (5) would represent the ‘infinitival verb lexicon’:
(4) /wil/ → [-past]

/gaat/ → [-past]
/is/ → [-past]
Etc...
(5) /lopen/ → []
/doen/ → []
/pakken/ → []
etc…
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis 89
Because in the target language all phonological strings in (4) and (5) (i.e.,
the information on the left-hand side) appear in finite and in infinitival
form, it is expected that the children merge the two categories at a certain
point in their development. In section 2 we have shown that in our set of
data this point is between stages III and IV. In this section, we address the
question as to how children merge the two categories.
It has been suggested that overlap between distributional cues enables
children to develop from the initial item-based phase to a phase in which
their utterances can be characterized by a higher level of abstraction: Those
items that share distributional properties are clustered together (Mintz
2003). Grammatical morphemes are one type of distributional cue that may
help children to group items into categories and merge various smaller
categories into one large category (Maratsos and Chalkley 1980; De Haan
1987). Because every verb stem can be inflected, finite inflectional mor-
phology may provide children with a clue to acquire a category of verbs
that is consistent with the category in the target language. This idea is for-
mulated in the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis:
(6) Morphological Cueing Hypothesis

Finite inflectional morphology enables children to acquire a gener-
alized category of verbs.24
One implication of (6) is that children analyze the whole words listed in (4)
and (5) into verb stem + inflectional suffix. Once children have this ability,
they are able to recognize the items that can appear with finite inflectional
morphology, store them together and add new verbs to the generalized
category of verbs. Some examples of verb stems are given in (7):
(7) /wil/, /ga/, /doe/, /pak/
The set of Dutch finite inflectional suffixes is given in (8), the infinitival
suffix in (9):
(8) /t/ → [-past, -sp]

/en/ → [-past, +plur]
/ø/ → [-past]
(9) /en/ → []
Recall that lexical overlap data indicate that between stages III and IV a
generalized category of verbs emerges. The Morphological Cueing Hy-
pothesis predicts that around the same time, Dutch children start to make
productive use of the generalized paradigm represented by the vocabulary
items in (8) and (9) by attaching (8) and (9) to the stems in (7).
Note that in the beginning of the acquisition of finite inflection children
may only have a subset of the vocabulary items in (8) at their disposal or
may have specified the finite vocabulary items only for [-past], and not for
person and/or number features. Data on the paradigmatic variation (i.e., the
combination of a particular verb stem with different finite inflectional end-
ings) indicate that in stage I/II, paradigmatic variation is indeed absent and
that children only seem to use one finite form with each verb stem. The
earliest finite forms typically appear with irregular verbs that have an im-
poverished inflectional paradigm or they appear with first person singular
subjects (which select bare verb stems): Kan ‘can’, moet ‘must’, mag
‘may’, zit ‘sit’. The result is that the collapsed data of the six children give
us a total of 116 finite verbs (tokens) in stage I/II, and only 8 of these have
an overt suffix (7%).
As shown in Table 4, all children begin to display some paradigmatic
variation from stage III onwards. They begin to use different inflectional
suffixes with the same verbal stem as they start to vary number and distin-
guish between first and second/third person.
Table 4. Number of verb types that appear with more than one different finite
suffix in stages III and IV
Child Stage III Stage IV
Abel 4 6
Daan 4 6
Josse 2 5
Laura 3 5
Matthijs 1 6
Peter 3 5
In order to test whether or not the occurrence of lexical overlap co-occurs

with the acquisition of finite inflection, we will look in more detail at the
development of finite verb inflection. Section 4.1 deals with the error pat-
terns in the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter. The ra-
tionale underlying this investigation is that errors reveal that children are
discovering inflection rules. In section 4.2 we discuss changes in the lexi-
cal variation, i.e. type frequency, of finite verbs. It is expected that the
acquisition of finite inflectional morphology will result in higher type fre-
quencies.
4.1. Increasing number of errors
The process of detecting the ordered list of vocabulary items in (8) and (9)
can be divided into two subprocesses: Segmentation and mapping (Bittner,
Dressler, and Kilani-Schoch 2003; Peters 1982; Pinker 1984). Different
errors are indicative of these processes, and hence, tell us whether or not
children are acquiring finite inflectional morphology. One of the children’s
tasks is to map arbitrary pairs of phonological forms and grammatical fea-
tures. Given incremental learning metrics compatible with Distributed
Morphology (Adger 2005; Blom and Don 2006; Blom and Wijnen submit-
ted), it is expected that this task involves trial-and-error and leads to map-
ping errors, such as the ones in (10)-(13):
(10) En jullie heeft ook een mes. Abel 3;01.07

and you-pl have also a knife
‘And you have a knife too.’
(11) Als ik zwemt. Abel 3;01.07

when I swim-fin
‘when I’m swimming.’
(12) Tjoeketjoeketjoeke zeg de trein. Josse 2;11.09

choochoo say-Ø the train
‘The train goes choochoo.’
(13) Moeder geit gaan boodschapjes doen. Daan 3;02.25

mother goat go shoppings do
‘Mother goat is going to do shopping.’
Another type of error is indicative of learning the right segments i.e. the
analysis of large chunks extracted from the input. With respect to verbal
inflection, unanalyzed chunks are units that are not segmented into V-stem
and inflectional affix. As soon as children start to segment verbal chunks,
specific errors are expected. A prototypical segmentation error is the selec-
tion of a wrong stem in the case of stem-vowel-changes. The inflectional

suffix is in these cases correct and agrees with the subject (unlike the ex-
amples just given). Examples of segmentation errors are given in (14-16).
(14) Deze benne ook nodig. Abel 2;04.23

these-pl are also necessary
‘These are necessary too.’
(15) Langs maggen komen. Josse 2;07.20

by may come
‘(Be) allowed to come by.’
(16) Die heef ik nodig. Matthijs 2;09.15

that have-Ø I needed
‘I need that one.’
In (14), Abel uses the first person singular form ben as the stem, and at-
taches regular plural morphology (i.e. schwa, as in normal colloquial us-
age). The correct plural target form here is, however, the irregular zijn and
not benne(n). Analogously, in (15), Josse has taken the singular form mag
as a basis for the stem. The target plural is mogen. In (16), Matthijs incor-
rectly selects the nonexistent form heef as the stem, based on the sec-
ond/third singular form heeft, and attaches a zero-suffix (which is in itself
correct). The target form could have been heb.
Recall that lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives starts to
occur around stage III, and increases significantly between stages III and
IV. Given this observation it is likely that finite inflection becomes produc-
tive around stage III, and hence that errors start around this stage (and oc-
cur certainly not prior to this stage). In exploring the occurrence and extent
of errors, a subset of the data is analyzed, taken from four out of the six
subjects of this study: Abel, Daan, Josse and Matthijs. The verb errors
produced by these four children have been analyzed in a previous study by
De Haan (1996). We rely on this study, since De Haan analyzed the com-
plete corpora of these four children, which gives her data greater density
and precision than the selection used here. Her data cover moreover a lar-
ger age range as well.
Table 5 gives the onset of the two-word stage for the four children, lists
the age at which the earliest agreement error was observed for each child,
and relates the occurrence of errors to the stages in our study. The first
agreement errors were observed 4 to 7 months after the onset of the two-
word stage. The number of errors increases as a function of age. To give an
impression of the increase: In the last files that are available (approxi-
mately age 3;5), third person number agreement was incorrect in 25% of
the third person subject contexts (on average): Children used either third
person singular subjects with plural inflection (-en) or third person plural
subjects with singular inflection (-ø or –t) in 25% of the third person con-
texts.
Table 5. Onset of the two-word stage, occurrence of first agreement errors and
stages in this study
Onset-2 word stage 1st Agreement error Onset error stage
Abel 1;10.30 2;03.02 End stage III
Daan 1;08.21 2;04.01 Begin stage III
Josse 2;00.07 2;03.28 Begin stage III
Matthijs 1;09.30 2;05.01 End stage III
For Daan as well as Josse, one very early error is found (around 2;1). Both
are bare stems used in contexts where a suffix –t is obligatory. We assume
that these are outliers resulting from phonological processes (Beers 1995).
Daan’s data provide independent support for this diagnosis. At the age of
2;01.21, Daan utters haw lig koekie ‘here lie cookie’ and uses lig instead of
third person singular ligt. Of immediate relevance is that Daan at the same
age omits /t/ in morphosyntactically different but phonologically compara-
ble contexts, viz. se ach [= is acht] ‘is eight’ and chiechui:ch [= vliegtuig]
‘plane’. The ages given in Table 5 are taken as the onset not only because
they seem to be the first real agreement errors but also since they mark the
begin of an error-phase: After this age, the number of errors increases.
4.2. Increasing type frequency
High type frequency can be viewed as an indicator of the productivity of

morphological rules (Bybee 1985, 1995; Clark 1993). In other words, given
the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis, we expect that the development
from (unproductive) rules as in (4) and (5) to the set of productive rules in
(8-9) is signaled by an increasing type frequency of finite verbs.
Table 6. Accumulation of finite verb (i.e. verbal root ending on -ø, -t or –en in
first or second sentence position) types in stages I/II, III and IV
Stage I/II Stage III Stage IV
N types finite V N types finite V N types finite V
Abel 2 15 24
Daan 9 21 35
Josse 5 11 21
Laura 8 17 23
Matthijs 2 14 35
Peter 3 18 33
Table 6 gives the accumulation of (correctly used) verb types in first or

second position that end on the finite suffixes -ø, -t or –en in the children’s
production data. The type frequencies of finite verbs grow steadily from
stage I to IV. In stages I/II there is hardly any variation: 2-9 different verbs
(types) with finite inflections, whereas stage IV shows a considerable in-
crease in this respect (range from 21-33 types).
4.3. Conclusion
In this section, the developmental patterning of finite verbs has been inves-
tigated. In particular, we looked at the error patterns and the type frequen-
cies of finite verbs in order to test whether or not the occurrence of lexical
overlap between finite verbs and infinitives in stage III co-occurs with the
acquisition of finite inflection, as was predicted by the Morphological Cue-
ing Hypothesis. In brief, the idea is that lexical overlap signals the acquisi-
tion of a generalized class of verbs. This acquisition is triggered by the
learning of finite inflection. We assume that the learning of finite inflection
is reflected in the emergence of errors with finite verbs and an increase of
the type frequency of finite verbs. It turned out that all four children started
to make systematic errors around stage III, either at the beginning of stage
III or at the end of this stage. In stages I/II the type frequency of finite
verbs is low. From stage III onwards the type frequency of finite verbs
shows an increase. We therefore conclude that both findings are consistent
with the claim that inflectional morphology provides a clue for a general-
ized class of verbs and thus support the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis.
Note that the observations of this section also corroborate our analysis
of the modal shift in Chapter 4, section 6. Reversely, the finding that root
infinitive undergo a modal shift can be interpreted as support for the Mor-
phological Cueing Hypothesis. It was argued that the modal shift in root
infinitives (which takes place around stage III) can be successfully ana-
lyzed as an effect of the Elsewhere Hypothesis, that is, the proportion of
specified finite verbs increases at the expense of underspecified infinitives.
A study of the semantic properties of root infinitives has shown that this
development is asymmetric: Specified finite (i.e. present tense) alternatives
for root infinitives are earlier more frequent than specified modal alterna-
tives. The result is that later in the Optional Infinitive stage, root infinitives
are clearly less frequently used to denote ongoing events than to denote
modal events. One of the factors that contribute to the modal shift is the
increase of sentences with simple finite verbs. In this section, it has been
shown that this increase is related to the learning of the rules for finite
verbal inflection, especially the data in Table 6 reveal an accumulation of
finite verbs types between stages I-IV.
5. Verb Second
The fact that finite inflection generalizes over the state-denoting lexeme
hebben ‘to have’ in (17a) and the event-denoting lexeme gooien ‘to throw’
in (17b) is the basis of the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. As (17) and
(18) illustrate, both eventive and stative verbs agree with the subject:
(17) a. Jan heeft een bal.

Jan has a ball
b. Jan gooit een bal.
Jan throws a ball
(18) a. Jan en Piet hebben een bal.

Jan and Piet have a ball
b. Jan en Piet gooien een bal.
Jan and Piet throw a ball
The assumption underlying this hypothesis is that children use distribu-

tional information in order to acquire the grammar of the target language,
and, in this particular case, in order to acquire a category of verbs that is
consistent with the adult grammar. Our analysis may therefore be inter-
preted as a form of distributional bootstrapping.25
The result of this acquisition is that children become more flexible. This
flexibility, signaled by lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives,
applies to two levels of grammar. On the level of morphology, it shows that
children are able to use the same verb stem with finite morphology. They
can now use the eventive verb stem loop ‘walk’ with the present tense third
person singular suffix –t (loopt) and with the infinitival suffix –en (lopen).
Prior to this acquisition they could probably only use it in infinitival form.
Also, a stative verb stem like pas ‘fit’ would probably have only appeared
in finite form (past), whereas now it can also appear in infinitival form
(passen). In terms of syntax, lexical overlap shows that children can use
the same verb stem in second position of the sentence and in sentence-final
position, hence can apply Verb Second (De Haan 1987; Poeppel and Wex-
ler 1993).
6. Null subjects
The aim of this section is to show that the acquisition of finite verb inflec-
tion has further syntactic consequences and ties in with the acquisition of
target-like patterns of subject licensing.
It has been observed that in the Optional Infinitive stage, root infinitives
predominantly have empty subjects (i.e. subjects that are not phonetically
realized), whereas finite sentences have pronounced, or lexical, subjects:
(19) In root infinitives, children drop subjects significantly more fre-

quently than in co-occurring finite sentences (based on Haegeman
1994, 1995; Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Krämer 1993; Rizzi 1994;
Sano and Hyams 1994; Schütze 1997, amongst others).
The generalization in (19) is in accordance with the properties of the target

grammar, in which infinitival clauses do not license overt subjects (ignor-
ing Exceptional Case Marking contexts) or, on an alternative analysis, in-
finitives license the empty category PRO in subject position (Schütze
1997). With respect to finite sentences, rich agreement inflection licenses
the empty category ‘pro’ in subject position whereas poor agreement in-
flection requires an overt subject (Huang 1984; Koeneman 2000; Speas
2004). Hence, in particular in languages with poor agreement inflection,
such as Dutch, overt subjects are expected to occur significantly more of-
Null subjects 97
ten in finite sentences than in infinitival clauses (Chapter 2, sections 5.3

and 5.4).
Application of this syntactic knowledge is in crucial ways dependent on
the morphosyntactic information contained in the vocabulary items in (8)
and (9). First of all, the difference between finite and nonfinite verbs is
relevant because nonfinite verbs cannot license overt subjects (and do li-
cense null subjects). Secondly, given the common assumption that rich
agreement paradigms provide a means to identify the reference of the sub-
ject and license the occurrence of the empty pronoun ‘pro’ in subject posi-
tion, the information contained in vocabulary items is relevant for deciding
whether or not the subject can remain empty.
If children acquire (8) and (9) during the Optional Infinitive stage, it is
expected that patterns of subject use change during the Optional Infinitive
stage. It is, more specifically, expected that Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Mat-
thijs and Peter acquire the non pro-drop status of Dutch during the Op-
tional Infinitive stage. Hence, we may expect a decrease of empty subjects
in their finite sentences. It is moreover expected that the connection be-
tween empty subjects and root infinitives is established during the Optional
Infinitive stage as the result of learning the difference between finite and
nonfinite sentences.
Blom and Van Geert (2004) described the development of subject use in
the finite sentences and root infinitives in Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Mat-
thijs and Peter’s data in stages I-IV. The development they describe is re-
peated in Figure 1 below. The open bullets (---|---) represent the results
for finite sentences at a certain stage – this includes simple finite and peri-
phrastic finite predicates – whereas the black squares (------) show the
results for root infinitives at this stage; 1-4 stand for the stages I-IV.
(a) Abel (b) Daan
100 100
80 80
60 60
%
40 40
20 20
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Figure 1. Percentages of null subjects in root infinitives and finite sentences in the
longitudinal data of six Dutch-speaking children
(c) Josse (d) Laura
100 100
80 80
60 60
%
%
40 40
20 20
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
(e) Matthijs (f) Peter
100 100
80 80
60 60
%
%
40 40
20 20
0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Figure 1. Continued
The coding of subjects in the analyzed files is given in Appendix 10. The
raw data are in Appendix 11.
At first glance, the development of subject drop in finite sentences and
root infinitives appears to differ. In finite sentences, subject drop shows a
decrease. This pattern is most clear in the graphs representing the behavior
of Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter. In Abel’s and Daan’s data the first
measure point deviates but the rest of the development shows a similar
decrease of subject drop. The most important observation is that initially,
subjects can be freely dropped in finite sentences. The acquisition of the
knowledge that Dutch is a non pro-drop language is reflected in the devel-
opment that takes place between the initial stages and the final stage,
which shows that null subjects in finite sentences seldom occur. In root
infinitives, the development of null subjects shows a similar initial de-
crease. From stage III onwards the use of null subjects in root infinitives
shows an increase. In the final stage, the child data show adult patterning:
Finite sentences contain overt subjects whereas root infinitives contain null
subjects.
Null subjects 99
So, during the first phase of the Optional Infinitive stage the proportions
of dropped subjects in root infinitives and finite sentences decrease in par-
allel. In the subsequent phase, subject drop in finite clauses continues to
decrease, but at the same time it increases in root infinitives. Averaging
over the six children, it turns out that during the Optional Infinitive stage
the proportion of dropped subjects in finite sentences shows an ongoing
decrease from an initial proportion of 91.7% at the onset of the Optional
Infinitive stage to a final proportion of 22.8% at the end of the Optional
Infinitive stage. The proportion of dropped subjects in root infinitives was
initially 100%, then drops to 67.5%, but goes up again to 83.7% at the end
of the Optional Infinitive stage. Only at the end of the Optional Infinitive
stage, there is a clear distinction between finite and nonfinite clauses, simi-
lar to what we see in adult Dutch: Subjects are normally absent in root
infinitives and normally present in finite sentences (at the end of the Op-
tional Infinitive stage, 83.7% of the root infinitives contains a null subject
and 77.2% of finite sentences contains an overt subject). Thus, what the
Figures 1a-f show is a U-shaped developmental pattern for the use of null
subjects in root infinitives (see also Gillis (2003) for a replication).
The ongoing decrease of null subject in finite sentences is obvious from
Figures 1a-f. The crucial question is whether or not the U-shaped develop-
ment of the proportion of null subjects in root infinitives, indicating re-
analysis, is statistically reliable. Along the lines of the statistical procedure
specified in Appendix 4, the test statistic (the difference between the aver-
age proportion of subject drop in stage III and stages II/IV) has been calcu-
lated seven times: Once for the group of six children, and six times for a
group of five children, leaving out one specific child at a time (Jack knife
technique). If one child indeed determines the p-value over the group, the
p-value should increase dramatically if the child is left out of the calcula-
tions. Table 7, on the next page, shows the seven p-values obtained in this
way.
The conclusion is clear: The probability that the observed difference in
proportion of subject drop between stage III and stages II and IV is due to
chance is very small (p = 0.0015). That is, the difference is statistically
highly significant. In addition, the probability is not disproportionately
affected by a single child with an extreme difference. That is, we may be
confident that the result is characteristic of the sample as a whole and thus,
that the p-value applies to the population from which the sample has been
drawn.
Table 7. Probabilities that the observed average difference over the six children
between subject drop in stage III and subject drop in stages I/IV is due to
chance. The probabilities are calculated over the entire group of six chil-
dren and over 6 groups of five children, with one specific child omitted at
a time
p-value
All six children 0.0015
Omitted child
Abel 0.0016
Daan 0.013
Josse 0.005
Laura 0.0021
Matthijs 0.0031
Peter 0.0014
According to the figures, three of the six children (Abel, Daan and
Laura) seem to show a very early asymmetry between the frequency of
empty subjects in finite sentences and root infinitives, which – if it were
statistically significant - would be inconsistent with the analysis given
here. It could indicate that children make the grammatical distinction be-
tween root infinitives and finite clauses from early on. However, apart
from the fact that this is incongruent with the developmental data from
both root infinitives and finite clauses, there are indications that this early
distinction has a different cause. This is illustrated by the examples in (20):
(20) a. Dies dieis gogel. Abel 1;11.26

that-is that-is bird
‘That is a bird.’
b. Weejdikook. Daan 2;00.22
want-I-also
‘I also want to have that.’
The child utterances in (20) exemplify that some children, in the early
stages, tend to treat subject and finite verb as one unanalyzed unit. Due to
Verb Second, subject and finite verb are in Dutch adjacent, and hence, can
be difficult to segment based on information in the input stream: It may be
very unclear where the subject ends and the verb begins, or, in the case of
subject-verb inversion (as in (20b)), where the verb ends and the subject
begins. Obviously, this segmentation problem does not apply to root infini-
Null subjects 101
tives because subject and infinitive are usually not adjacent. It is expected
that this difference between the position of finite verbs and infinitives will
lead to relatively many overt subjects in finite sentences, especially in the
early developmental stages when children are still figuring out the seg-
ments on a syntactic level, rather than on morphological level.
In this section, and the previous one, we focused on the syntactic con-
sequences of the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. One consequence is
the acquisition of Verb Second. Another effect is that the acquisition of
finite inflectional morphology enables Dutch children to determine that
Dutch is a non pro-drop language. It leads to the systematic distinction
between finite sentences (which require overt subjects in Dutch) and infini-
tival clauses (which contain empty subjects). The developmental patterns
found in the data of the six Dutch children confirmed the correlation be-
tween developmental patterns in the use of finite verbal morphology and
the expected emergence of a systematic difference between the use of null
subjects in finite sentences and root infinitives.
7. Summary
In this chapter we discussed the outcome of longitudinal analyses of Dutch

child data that have been collected during the Optional Infinitive stage. A
general observation is that the Optional Infinitive stage is anything but a
stable stage. It was found that at the onset of the Optional Infinitive stage
there is no lexical overlap between the verbs used in finite sentences and
root infinitives and that during the Optional Infinitive stage lexical overlap
grows. Through the longitudinal approach (Growing Overlap Hypothesis),
we could thus accommodate two apparently contrasting empirical observa-
tions (e.g. no overlap (De Haan 1987) versus overlap (Poeppel and Wexler
1993)). Analyses of input data corroborated the claim that properties of the
input cause the no overlap stage. Fine-grained analyses of child data indi-
cated furthermore a correlation between the acquisition of finite verb in-
flection and lexical overlap, as was predicted by the Morphological Cueing
Hypothesis. In the final section, it was shown that finite verb inflection
does not only influence the acquisition of Verb Second, but also has an
effect on the use of null subjects. Only after Dutch children have acquired
finite verb inflection, do they exhibit adult patterns of subject use, that is,
systematically use overt subjects in their finite sentences and empty sub-
jects in root infinitives.
Chapter 7
Discussion
1. Introduction
According to the theoretical framework in Chapter 3, properties of chil-

dren’s linguistic output during the Optional Infinitive stage are the result of
lexical learning, which is independent from syntactic development, but
interacts with syntax at spell-out. We are not the first to suggest that lexical
learning and syntactic development are interrelated (see e.g. Bates, Bre-
therton, and Snyder 1988; Marchman and Bates 1994). In the generative
framework, Clahsen (1988) was one of the first to argue that full productiv-
ity of verbal agreement morphology is a crucial factor in the transition
from a root infinitive type grammar to adult competence, and that attaining
productivity depends on lexical learning. We subscribe to this tradition and
analyzed form-meaning relations (Chapter 4), cross-linguistic differences
in the meaning of root infinitives (Chapter 5) and developmental changes
(Chapter 6) in the Optional Infinitive stage as phenomena at the lexicon-
syntax interface. The aim of this final chapter is to discuss the direct impli-
cations of our findings and analyses, and point out how our account can be
applied to other learner groups, other languages and data from modalities
other than speech production.
2. Summary
Two-year old Dutch children start using various finite and nonfinite verb
forms. In Chapter 4 we discussed how, e.g. in which contexts, Dutch chil-
dren use these different early verb forms. It was argued that the root infini-
tives contain an underspecified elsewhere form (the infinitive) that lacks
specification in the temporal and modal domain and therefore has a free
temporal and modal denotation. Hence, the infinitive can be used in a wide
range of contexts (Elsewhere Hypothesis). Later in their development the
children learn other, more specific, verb forms such as past participles,
Summary 103
simple present tense verbs and periphrastic present tense and modal verbs.
Because the Elsewhere Principle requests insertion of the most specific
form (that is appropriate in a given context), root infinitives become less
and less frequent as an effect of the acquisition of specified verb forms.
Changes in the frequencies of present tense and modal verbs provided sup-
port for the Elsewhere Hypothesis: Changes in the meaning of root infini-
tives (referred to as the modal shift) could be related to the different fre-
quencies of respectively specified present tense and modal alternatives for
root infinitives.
The free temporal and modal reference of root infinitives in languages
other than Dutch (e.g. German, English) suggests that the Elsewhere Hy-
pothesis has a wider application. If root infinitives contain an underspeci-
fied verb form by definition, cross-linguistic differences in the meaning of
root infinitives may seem unexpected. In Chapter 5 we argued that the dif-
ferences in meaning between Dutch (and German) root infinitives, on the
one hand, and English root infinitives, on the other, find a natural explana-
tion in our framework, however. First of all, we have shown that previous
cross-linguistic comparisons of naturalistic data are subject to a modal bias
and that the actual cross-linguistic difference is smaller than previously
assumed (Modal Bias Hypothesis). The remaining difference could be ana-
lyzed as a corollary of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, because
only in English, and not in Dutch/German, are finite verbs with missing
surface inflection included in the set of root infinitives. The claim that
English children omit inflection was supported by three pieces of inde-
pendent evidence, namely the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child
English, the relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early
child English and subject use in English root infinitives. Speculating on the
representation of the bare verbs in child language, we evaluated two analy-
ses according to which bare verbs are the result of phonological drop or are
morphosyntactically underspecified forms. At this point, neither analysis
can fully account for all observations.
In Chapter 6 we accommodated two apparently contrasting empirical
observations with the Growing Overlap Hypothesis. According to this hy-
pothesis, a period of no overlap between the verb types in root infinitives
and finite sentences (De Haan 1987) is followed by a period in which chil-
dren use the same verb types in root infinitives and finite sentences (Poep-
pel and Wexler 1993). Analyses of input data corroborated the claim that
properties of the input induce the initial absence of overlap, which leads to
the lack of a generalized syntactic analysis of Dutch verb placement rules
104 Discussion
in early development. The occurrence of overlap, and hence the emergence

of a generalized syntactic structure, co-occurred with an increase of the
type frequency of finite verbs and a growing number of errors with finite
verbs. These two observations supported the Morphological Cueing Hy-
pothesis. The effect of learning finite verb inflection on the children’s syn-
tactic performance is twofold: They acquire Verb Second and start to treat
subjects in accordance with the target grammar.
To the question that led us through this study (Why do young children
omit finite verbs, and use root infinitives instead?), our answer is essen-
tially that (Dutch) children learn infinitives before they learn finite verbs.
Children’s use of root infinitives can be explained from the absence of
productive grammatical rules to form finite sentences. This asymmetry in
the acquisition of finite verbs and infinitives is an effect of lexical learning,
which, in turn, is related to properties of the input.
Our analysis is compatible with several properties of root infinitives and
finite sentences and changes in the properties of these two types of sen-
tences during the Optional Infinitive stage. The properties in case are: The
meaning of root infinitives, type and token frequencies of finite verbs and
root infinitives, lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitival verbs
used in root infinitives, errors with finite verbs and the frequency of null
subjects in finite sentences and root infinitives. The relevance of the input
was supported by data from Dutch child-directed speech.
Please note that we do not rule out that other factors contribute to the
omission of finite verbs as well. Young children may lack insight into the
pragmatics of finiteness or, from a psycholinguistic perspective, they might
use root infinitives as a fall back strategy in case they run out of processing
capacity.
3. Implications
Our study has empirical, theoretical and methodological implications. In

this section, we will discuss these implications one by one, starting with
the empirical implications. As a starting point, we take the following six
generalizations, described at full length in Chapter 2:
Implications 105
(1) There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in root

infinitives and finite verbs used in co-occurring finite sentences.
The predicates of root infinitives belong to a different class than
the predicates of co-occurring finite sentences (based on De Haan
1987; Jordens 1990; Ferdinand 1996; Wijnen 1997, 2000).
(2) The same lexemes appear as infinitival and finite verb in respec-
tively root infinitives and co-occurring finite sentences (based on
Poeppel and Wexler 1993).
(3) In root infinitives, children drop subjects significantly more fre-

quently than in co-occurring finite sentences (based on Haegeman
1994, 1995; Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Krämer 1993; Rizzi 1994;
Sano and Hyams 1994; Schütze 1997, amongst others).

finite sentences are nonmodal (based on Hoekstra and Hyams
1998; Ferdinand 1996; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Van Ginneken
1917; Wijnen 1997).

German, French) are modal, whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives
(English) are not restricted to modal meanings (based on Hoekstra
and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002).

German, French) are restricted to event-denoting predicates,
whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives (English) contain also state-
denoting predicates (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams
2001, 2002).
In the literature on root infinitives there is a controversy between studies

that report no (or minimal) overlap between the verb types used in finite
sentences and root infinitives and studies that argue that finiteness is op-
tional (meaning that the same verb is used by children with finite and in-
finitival suffixes), as shown by (1) versus (2). Our longitudinal analyses of
Dutch child data resolved this controversy, indicating a significant growth
of lexical overlap. We concluded that in Dutch child language observations
106 Discussion
in both (1) and (2) hold, and that they describe two subsequent develop-
mental stages (Growing Overlap Hypothesis).
Longitudinal analyses also shed a new light on (3), because it turned out
that (3) applied to Dutch child data from later developmental stages. In the
early developmental stages, the difference between subject use in finite
sentences and root infinitives was not so pronounced. Focusing on root
infinitives, we concluded that subject use in Dutch root infinitives appears
to undergo a development that resembles a U-shaped developmental curve.
We argued that this development can be understood as an effect of learning
inflectional morphology, and hence can be viewed as a development in the
lexicon.
Dutch root infinitives in both naturalistic and experimental data more
often denote modal meanings than co-occurring sentences with finite main
verbs (see (4)), but root infinitives in Dutch child language are by no
means restricted to a modal meaning. Our (experimental) findings confirm
(5): Root infinitives in early child English are indeed more often nonmodal
than Dutch root infinitives. This cross-linguistic difference turned out to be
smaller than previously assumed on the basis of comparisons of spontane-
ous speech data. Analyses of spontaneous speech data showed furthermore
that root infinitives in Dutch child language are hardly ever stative, in con-
trast to the early finite verbs. Over time, Dutch children start using more
eventive finite verbs, but at the end of the Optional Infinitive stage state-
denoting finite verbs still outnumber state-denoting infinitives, and the
distributions of eventive and stative predicates are still asymmetric. The
same asymmetry is found in the language children hear (unlike the asym-
metric distributions of eventive and stative predicates early in the Optional
Infinitive stage, which are different from the input distributions).
The most important theoretical implication of our study is that it em-
phasizes that a theory of root infinitives should be able to account for all
kinds of variation. In a number of cases, previous explanations turned out
to be too rigid. Below we will discuss two relevant examples in case.
According to the Optional Infinitive Hypothesis (Poeppel and Wexler
1993; Wexler 1994, 1998), children of about 18 months already have the
basic knowledge of verb inflection and know about Verb Second. Given
that the six children investigated here are older than 18 months, any devel-
opments in the domain of verb inflection and verb placement are unex-
pected. In the data of these six children we did find, however, a transition
from a phase in which children do not have a generalized analysis for finite
sentences and root infinitives to a phase in which they generalize over fi-
Implications 107
nite sentences and root infinitives. The Optional Infinitive Hypothesis

could not accommodate this kind of variation in longitudinal data.
A second example that illustrates the weaknesses of previous explana-
tions with respect to variability concerns the meaning of root infinitives.
We singled out the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis
(Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002) as the most successful
explanation for properties of the meaning of root infinitives. Because the
Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis related the modal mean-
ing assigned to Dutch root infinitives to the presence of an infinitival suffix
in this language, it was predicted that all root infinitives in early child
Dutch are modal. This prediction was not born out by the data, however:
Dutch root infinitives occurred in both modal and nonmodal contexts. We
found moreover a change in meaning of Dutch root infinitives and ob-
served that the meaning of Dutch child root infinitives was related to the
type of subject. The possibility to use nonmodal root infinitives and the
influence of subject use on the number of modal root infinitives rendered
the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis untenable.
How did we account for variation in the data? We analyzed infinitives
as underspecified vocabulary items that are acquired early but that also
‘disappear’ as an effect of newly acquired more specified verb forms. The
underspecified nature of infinitives allows their insertion in various differ-
ent positions, and their use in various contexts. The implication is that root
infinitives appear in modal as well as in nonmodal contexts. The properties
of root infinitives not only explain the overall decrease of root infinitives,
but also that the decrease takes place in a certain fashion and that nonmo-
dal root infinitives become infrequent earlier than modal root infinitives.
The inclusion of lexical development in our analysis provided a ground for
the embedding of input effects. According to De Haan (1987), Dutch chil-
dren start out with two verb-like categories: One with finite verbs (‘AUX’,
which contains state-denoting verbs) and the other with infinitives (‘V’,
which contains event-denoting verbs). He assumes that this is caused by
children’s application of a semantic bootstrapping procedure (Pinker 1984,
1989). In our view, the stativity of early finite verbs and the eventivity of
early infinitives is not a specific property of Dutch child language. Instead,
it is a direct reflection of the language Dutch children are exposed to. This
hypothesis was supported by data from Dutch child-directed speech.
In our view, the acquisition of the rules to generate and use finite verbs
can explain various changes. Two of these changes are the modal shift in
the meaning assigned to root infinitives and the U-shaped development of
108 Discussion
the frequency of null subjects in root infinitives. Interestingly, the Agree-

ment and Tense Omission Model, or ATOM (Schütze and Wexler 1996;
Schütze 1997; see Chapter 2, section 5.3) might have the potential to ex-
plain both developments. The developmental implications of this scenario
are counter-intuitive, however, as we will argue below.
According to the ATOM, root infinitives are the result of syntactic un-
derspecification, more specifically the syntactic underspecification of
Agreement and/or Tense. Underspecification of one of the two functional
categories suffices for the infinitive to appear. Thus, the syntactic represen-
tation of root infinitives is in this model [+Agreement, -Tense], [-Tense,
+Agreement] or [-Tense, -Agreement]. A positive value corresponds to the
presence of this position in syntax and a negative value to its absence. If
both Tense and Agreement are present in syntax, a finite verb is inserted.
Schütze (1997: 232) says that [+Tense] root infinitives have a present
tense denotation. These root infinitives are bound by Tense to speech time,
which is the default time. This will happen as long as the children cannot
distinguish between the present and the past. Unlike the tensed root infini-
tives, [-Tense] root infinitives are not anchored to a specific point in time;
hence we expect them to be modal. The ATOM could thus account for
modal shift in root infinitives as the effect of an increase of [-Tense] root
infinitives, implying that root infinitives become from specified to under-
specified.
The second change over time concerns subject use. Theoretically speak-
ing, the ATOM is also capable of explaining this development. According
to the ATOM, the difference between root infinitives in which either Tense
or Agreement is underspecified is noticeable in properties of the subject of
root infinitives. In root infinitives that are underspecified for Agreement,
the overt subject receives default Case, as Agreement is responsible for
Case. Root infinitives that are [+Tense] provide a licit environment for a
null subject (the empty category PRO), as Tense is claimed to be responsi-
ble for subject licensing. It follows that specification of Tense leads to the
use of root infinitives with overt subjects (and default Case). By implica-
tion, the increase of null subjects in root infinitives would mean in this
model that Tense becomes underspecified.
The representations for root infinitives allowed by the ATOM can thus
describe different developmental stages in the meaning assigned to root
infinitives and in the frequency of root infinitives with null subjects. De-
velopmentally, the subsequent representations would imply a development
from a [+Tense] grammar to a [-Tense] grammar, which would be a reverse
Implications 109
development. This consequence is in contradiction with a basic assumption

of the ATOM, which is that the underspecified stage is the initial stage. We
therefore conclude that the ATOM is inconsistent with the developmental
observations in Dutch child language.
The last implications of our study involve methodology. We empha-
sized that longitudinal analyses are very valuable. Longitudinal analyses
revealed the modal shift in root infinitives, the growth of lexical overlap
between early finite verbs and infinitives, the changing patterns of subject
use, an increasing amount of errors and an increase of the type frequency
of finite verbs. These developments show that a study based on data col-
lected at one timepoint are hardly representative for the Optional Infinitive
stage and that collapsing data from different timepoints probably obscures
interesting developmental patterns.
In this study we have taken snapshots of the developmental sequence
based on proportions of finite utterances. The advantage of this approach
was that in this way we were able to analyze data from more children and
determine the extent to which the findings were child-specific or not. The
disadvantage was that our data are not conclusive as to the question
whether or not the developments found are gradual or take place in a step-
wise fashion. In order to answer this question, the periods in between data
collection need to be very short. Unfortunately, many of the available
CHILDES corpora do not meet this requirement, but the recently devel-
oped dense databases are excellent for this purpose (Behrens 2008), albeit
that the overall period of data collection of these databases is relatively
small.
A second methodological issue that we touched upon is the issue of
cross-linguistic comparisons. Previous research on root infinitives com-
pared the proportion of modal and nonmodal root infinitives in Dutch and
English child language without controlling for the fact that the Dutch root
infinitives include utterances with all kinds of subjects whereas the English
root infinitives are restricted to third person singular subjects. We have
shown that person features of the subject correlate with modality, which
supported our hypothesis that a part of the difference in the meaning of
Dutch and English root infinitives stems from the exclusion of root infini-
tives with first and second person singular subjects in English. This exam-
ple shows once more how important it is to carefully consider all variables
in a study that compares two languages in order to avoid any confounding
effects.
110 Discussion
The third methodological implication of our study is the importance of

comparing child production data to adult production data. Previous studies
related the eventivity of root infinitives to children’s cognitive immaturity.
Briefly, the reasoning was as follows. Deontic modality is incompatible
with state-denoting predicates whereas epistemic modality is not. Root
infinitives are inherently modal, either because they contain a silent modal
auxiliary or because the infinitive is modal. Since children in the Optional
Infinitive stage cannot yet use epistemic modality (but do use deontic mo-
dality), their root infinitives are restricted to event-denoting predicates
(Chapter 2, sections 3.3 and 6.2; Chapter 4, section 2). We found that
Dutch children’s infinitives are indeed predominantly eventive. However,
it turned out that the same holds for the language Dutch children are ex-
posed to, which is spoken by (cognitively mature) adults. Based on the
comparison of child and adult production data, one may thus conclude that
the eventivity of root infinitives is an input effect. The presence of an even-
tivity effect in the language of adult speakers also suggests that cognitive
immaturity is not the relevant factor, and that we should strive to find an-
other factor that influences the frequency of stative infinitives in both child
and adult language.
The fourth methodological point is that one should be careful with mak-
ing generalizations on child language based on the data of one child only.
In order to illustrate this we return to the controversy between De Haan
(1987) and Poeppel and Wexler (1993). The first study described data from
the Dutch boy Tim in support of the No Overlap Hypothesis. In the second
study this hypothesis was rejected, and the Optional Infinitive Hypothesis
was confirmed, on the basis of data from the German boy Andreas. Assum-
ing, like Poeppel and Wexler (1993), that Dutch and German child lan-
guage are structurally very similar and can therefore be compared, we ar-
gued that developmental data obtained from six Dutch-speaking children
show that Tim and Andreas represent two subsequent developmental
stages. The implication is that Andreas is fairly advanced, notwithstanding
his young age. Other observations consistent with this conclusion are An-
dreas’ frequent use of finite sentences (in the file that Poeppel and Wexler
(1993) studied Andreas used 231 finite sentences and 51 root infinitives),
the observation that Andreas uses many different finite predicates, and his
infrequent use of null subjects in finite sentences (180 out of 197 finite
sentences contains a null subject). Our expectation therefore is that if
Poeppel and Wexler would have analyzed data from other children, and
Implications 111
would have analyzed data from Andreas from an earlier age, their conclu-
sions might have been different.
Although the six children in our sample underwent the same develop-
mental changes, they also showed quite some variation. Related to the pre-
vious implication, is the fifth and final methodological point. Our study
shows once more that age is an unreliable matching criterium in studies
that focus on early language development. Singling out the two extremes in
our sample, we conclude that the same development differs from child to
child: The development from a ‘root infinitive grammar’ to a ‘finite gram-
mar’ takes Peter 8 months (1;07.18 – 2;03.21) whereas it takes Laura 19
months (1;09.04 – 3;04.06). The other four children are inbetween these
two extremes. One should thus either use matching criteria other than age
(e.g. MLU) or select a large sample of children.
4. Second language learners
Our research focused on speech production data of monolingual normally-

developing Dutch-speaking and English-speaking toddlers. In the previous
section we summarized the impact of this study within this field of re-
search. In this section and the two following ones it will be shown that our
analysis of these data has a wider application; hence that the impact of this
study goes beyond the speech production of monolingual children learning
West Germanic languages. In this section, we will show that our analysis
can be used to describe patterns in the data of other groups of learners,
more specifically second language learners of Dutch.
The comparison between monolingual children (L1), children that learn
a second language (child L2) and adults that learn a second language (adult
L2) is relevant for answering key questions in the field of language acquisi-
tion (Unsworth and Blom forthcoming). One particularly relevant topic is
the effect of maturation of the brain, and differences between learning
grammar at an early and at a later age (a.o. Lenneberg 1967; Penfield and
Roberts 1959; see for overviews: Birdsong 1999; Hyltenstam and Abra-
hamsson 2003). In this section we will discuss our L1 results on the acqui-
sition of finiteness in Dutch in the light of maturational effects. The under-
lying assumption will be that maturational effects surface in the differences
between error-profiles of child and adult learners. Supposing that children
acquire morphosyntax by using “learning capacities specific to language”
whereas adults make use of “acquisition strategies which may be derived
112 Discussion
from principles of information processing and general problem solving

strategies” (Clahsen and Muysken 1986: 111; see also Bley-Vroman 1989),
we expect differences in the types of errors of children and adults that learn
the rules of Dutch finiteness.
On the basis of data collected in a sentence completion task, we found
that Turkish and Moroccan immigrants who started to learn Dutch after
puberty produced a type of error that is unattested in early child Dutch:
The adults showed a tendency to use verb forms ending with the suffix –en
in finite position with singular subjects. The example in (7) illustrates this
type of error (the response is from a Turkish subject):
(7) De man tekenen zon.

the man draw sun
In a first experiment, it was found that the L2 children (n = 31, age range at
time of testing = 5-8 years) hardly ever used the infinitival form in finite
position. The Turkish children did this in 0% of the responses (total num-
ber of responses = 134), whereas the Moroccan children did this in only
2% of their responses (total number of responses = 272). The Turkish and
Moroccan L2 adults (n = 18) did this in 19% (total number of responses
113) and 28% (total number of responses 275) (Blom, Polišenská, and
Weerman 2007). The difference in incorrect use of –en in finite position
between children and adults remained after the two groups were matched
on proficiency. The findings were replicated in a second experiment with
more subjects, namely Turkish children (n = 23, age range at time of test-
ing = 4.8 – 8.0 years), Moroccan children (n = 37, age range at time of
testing = 4.2 – 8.4 years), Turkish adults (n = 16) and Moroccan adults (n =
20) (Blom 2008). Table 1 on the next page gives the percentages of –en
errors in first person singular condition (target response = bare verb), sec-
ond person singular condition (target response = suffix -t) and third person
singular condition (target response = suffix -t).
It turns out that the error patterns in L2 Dutch resemble findings of
child and adult L2 acquisition of German based on analyses of spontaneous
speech (Meisel 1991, 1997; Prévost 2003; Prévost and White 2000).
Second language learners 113
Table 1. Incorrect use of the suffix –en in first person singular, second person
singular and third person singular conditions (Blom 2008)
Group -en in 1SG -en in 2SG -en in 3SG
Condition Condition Condition
Turkish children 0% (0/40) 0% (0/34) 0% (0/113)
Moroccan children 2% (1/59) 2% (1/51) 2% (4/176)
Turkish adults 12% (6/48) 21% (9/43) 22% (19/85)
Moroccan adults 14% (10/74) 18% (13/73) 26% (41/158)
Below two examples of typical errors are given that are produced by adult
learners of German (Prévost and White 2000: 122). In this context, the
finite verb should end on the suffix –t, but the adult learners use a schwa-
suffix (which was analyzed as being infinitival):
(8) a. Er kaufe ein Blume. (Ana, month 4)

he buy a flower
b. Michael spiele hier. (Zita, month 10)
Michael play here
According to Prévost and White (2000), (8) represents underspecification

of the inflectional suffix –e(n) and, following the framework of Distributed
Morphology (Chapter 3), they argue that this provides adult learners with
the possibility to insert this suffix not only in nonfinite (final) position but
also in a fully specified finite position. On this view, utterances as in (7) or
(8) are not indicative of syntactic problems but show that adult learners
have other inflectional defaults than children. Prévost and White and, in
later work, Prévost (2003) leave the cause of this morphological difference
between children and adults unexplained.26
The above analysis implies an asymmetry between morphology and
syntax: In the domain of syntax, children and adults have the same knowl-
edge whereas in the domain of morphology there are differences. This
asymmetry is not applicable to our L2 data (Blom, Polišenská, and Weer-
man 2007; Blom in press). In our data, the adult learners had poor knowl-
edge of the Dutch verb placement rules (in contrast to the L2 children) and
showed across the board use of subject-verb-object orders, regardless of
their first language and the Dutch sentence type they had to complete.
Thus, whereas nearly all adults performed very well with respect to the
completion of standard main clauses (target order = subject-verb-object),
they showed poor performance in the embedded clause condition (target
114 Discussion
order = subject-object-verb) and main clause condition with inversion (tar-

get order = verb-subject-object). These findings indicate that the late learn-
ers we tested did neither know the underlying head-final order of Dutch
nor Verb Second (Blom and De Korte submitted). Their erroneous use of
the suffix –en does certainly not go hand in hand with impeccable syntactic
performance, as was suggested by others (Prévost and White 2000).
The Dutch adult data resemble data on the L2 acquisition of German
word order. Like Dutch, German requires - due to Verb Second - subject-
verb inversion in questions. Felix (1982) demonstrated that in the early
stages of development, subject-verb inversion is absent. Meisel, Clahsen
and Pienemann (1983) showed that this applies to later developmental
stages as well. They found that in the production data of 45 Italian, Spanish
and Portuguese late learners of German, the structure of questions varies
inter-individually, and even those learners who have been in contact with
German for more than ten years do not necessarily use inversion in ques-
tions in their spontaneous speech samples (Meisel, Clahsen, and Piene-
mann 1983: 146):
(9) a. Warum du muss schule so so?

why you must school like this
b. Warum du hier arbeit?
why you here work
The data show that adults from various L1 backgrounds who learned
Dutch and German as a second language overuse the subject-verb-object
order in embedded clauses and in main clauses with subject-verb inversion.
They also overuse the suffix –en in finite position. Given these two obser-
vations, our conclusion is that the morphological as well as syntactic en-
coding of finiteness are influenced by a learner’s age. Is there a correlation
or a causal relation between these two observations? In Chapter 6 we
pointed out that in the first language acquisition of Dutch newly acquired
information in the domain of inflection (finite paradigm) feeds syntactic
development (Verb Second, relation between verb and subject). Further
analysis of individual patterns in adult L2 Dutch provides additional sup-
port for this causal relation. Although the majority of the adults described
above obviously do not know the Dutch verb placement rules, there are
three individuals in the group of adult participants who do seem to be
aware of the Dutch verb placement rules. Their accuracy on the verb
placement task ranges between 67% and 100% correct, and they show high
Second language learners 115
accuracy in all three verb placement conditions. These three individuals are
quite accurate with respect to finite verbal inflection, and score between
67% and 89% correct on subject-verb agreement. Moreover, none of these
three participants overuses the suffix –en in finite position.
The data obtained from these individuals indicate that accuracy in syn-
tax and inflection seem to correlate. Furthermore, verb inflection and verb
placement do not only correlate in terms of quantity, but adult learners that
do know that Dutch is a head-final language with Verb Second do not
overuse the suffix –en in finite position.
We note that if one wants to interpret these data more precisely, a
methodological difficulty occurs. It is impossible to determine whether or
not incorrect –en is inserted by the adults in finite or nonfinite position.
Most of the adult word order patterns are compatible with an SVO gram-
mar - and hence inconsistent with the target grammar – but are not com-
patible with an SOV grammar with Verb Second - which would be consis-
tent with the target grammar - (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; Meisel,
Clahsen, and Pienemann 1983; but see DuPlessis et al. 1987; Tomaselli
and Schwartz 2000 for a different analysis). The implication is that the
adult L2 errors are compatible with various interpretations, as will be
shown below.
Consider first the representation of the Dutch paradigm, the adult
learner’s target paradigm, as it was given in Chapter 3:
(10) /t/ ↔ [-past, -sp]

/ø/ ↔ [-past]
/en/ ↔ []
Focusing on the representation of the suffix –en in the grammar of the

adult L2 participants, one possibility may be that the fact that finite and
infinitival –en are homophones in Dutch leads the adult learners to assume
only one suffix –en, represented in (11). This suffix can be inserted in fi-
nite and nonfinite position.
(11) /en/ ↔ []
Another possibility is that adult learners have underspecified finite –en for
number, as in (12). This suffix can only be inserted in finite position.
116 Discussion
(12) /en/ ↔ [-past]
On the assumption that adults have an SVO grammar, we cannot use posi-
tional information in order to decide whether or not the suffix –en that the
adult L2 learners use is finite and is adequately described by (12) or is
nonfinite and matches the description in (11), because both forms in (11)
and (12) would be inserted in second position. Unfortunately, the responses
collected in the sentence completion task do not provide other potential
clues that are decisive with respect to finiteness of the verb.
In this section we have discussed data from other groups of learners, in
particular those of L2 learners of Dutch. We have summarized the results
of a sentence completion task (which are reported elsewhere in detail),
showing that L2 adults make different types of errors in the morphosyntac-
tic encoding of finiteness than L1 and L2 children make. The results indi-
cate that nearly all adult learners show deficits in the domain of syntax, and
lack knowledge of Verb Second, and that, in the domain of morphology,
they have either a total lack of a fully specified finite suffix –en or have
underspecified this suffix for person features. The results are consistent
with the claim that maturation affects the acquisition of morphosyntax.
5. Null subject languages
In this book we provide a detailed description of the characteristics of the

Optional Infinitive stage in Dutch child language. Some of our claims were
explicitly extended to other West Germanic child languages such as Ger-
man and English child language. Evidence from Romance languages sug-
gests that not all children go through the Optional Infinitive stage, how-
ever. In the literature the absence of an Optional Infinitive stage has been
related to the null-subject status of a language. This is expressed in gener-
alization (32) in Chapter 2, repeated here as (13):
(13) Null-subject languages do not have an Optional Infinitive stage,

whereas non null-subject languages do have an Optional Infinitive
stage (based on Bar-Shalom and Snyder 1998; Guasti 1993/94,
2002; Rhee and Wexler 1995; Torrens 1995; Wexler 1994, 1998).
Further investigation showed that in null-subject languages children seem

to pass through an Optional Infinitive analogue, producing high numbers
Null subject languages 117
of bare participles (Greek; Varlokosta et al. 1996, 1998; but see Hyams
2003 and Rus and Chandra 2005) or imperatives (Italian; Salustri and
Hyams 2003). Recall furthermore that there are languages in which the
optional “infinitive” is a bare verb form such as English (Harris and Wex-
ler 1996) or Inuktitut (Crago and Allen 2001).
These observations indicate that each child language has an elsewhere
form, and that children start of with an underspecified verb form regardless
of the target language. This elsewhere form can be an infinitive, an impera-
tive, a bare participle, a bare verb form or any other verb form. It is likely
that the choice of the elsewhere form follows from properties of the input
that make one verb form more salient than other verb forms. For example,
Wijnen, Kempen and Gillis (2001) argued that the early emergence of the
infinitival verb form in Dutch child language is the combined effect of the
following input properties: (Token) frequency, information load and se-
mantic transparency. Recent modeling studies that make use of an artificial
learner have indicated that the position of the verb may play a crucial role
in whether or not a language goes through an Optional Infinitive stage, or
an analogue default stage (Freudenthal et al. 2007; Freudenthal, Pine, and
Gobet 2006).
These recent ideas are perfectly well compatible with the analysis given
here. We analyzed the overuse of infinitives in Dutch as an effect of the
unavailability of other verb forms: If other verb forms are acquired, root
infinitives disappear. The asymmetry in the emergence of different verb
forms is presumably an effect of the salience of the different forms in the
input. Our expectation would therefore be that the elsewhere forms in child
language are salient whereas the more specified forms are relatively non-
salient. Because salience is an umbrella term that is used for phonological,
conceptual, syntactic and distributional properties (Polišenská forthcom-
ing), and because these ‘determinants of saliency’ may interact in various,
sometimes unexpected, ways, we cannot derive any straightforward predic-
tions on root infinitive analogues in different languages at this point.
6. Receptive grammar
Our research focused on early production data. It is a very interesting ques-

tion to what extent the analyses given here are relevant for the receptive
grammar. In our view, infinitives in Dutch are elsewhere or default forms
that are used by children in case other more specified verb forms are un-
118 Discussion
available. This proposal is compatible with our data which show that
throughout the Optional Infinitive stage specified verb forms are acquired.
This development goes hand-in-hand with a decreasing proportion of root
infinitives. If children overuse infinitives because they have not yet ac-
quired the specified finite alternatives, we expect the same for recep-
tion/perception and production data. The receptive grammar is expected to
allow (or even prefer) infinitival verb forms, because there is no specified
finite form available that could induce the blocking mechanism. As soon as
specified forms are available, it is expected that the root infinitives are
disprefered.
Another viewpoint is assumed in a number of studies on the Missing
Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Ionin and Wexler 2001; Lardiere 1998,
2001; Prévost and White 2000). In these studies, it is hypothesized that the
overuse of elsewhere forms, such as the infinitive, is related to production
in communicatively demanding contexts. The specified finite forms are in
principle available but it is less costly to insert the underspecified infinitive
than to insert more specified finite vocabulary items. In this case we would
expect an asymmetry between language reception and language produc-
tion: A child that produces root infinitives can disprefer root infinitives in
perception.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. In principle they
could represent two subsequent developmental stages. In the initial stage,
specified verb forms are not yet learned by the child, whereas in the fol-
lowing stage the specified verb forms are learned but not always inserted
because they are more costly than the unspecified infinitive. This second
stage could be an accurate description of the final stage. It has been argued
that in adult Dutch root infinitives are typically used in contexts that re-
quire little processing costs, e.g. headlines (Baauw, Avrutin, and De Lange
submitted).
What do we know about the receptive grammar? There are no percep-
tion data available for Dutch children between (approximately) ages two
and three, that is, the age group of our production data. There is, however,
an early perception study on younger monolingual Dutch children aged 18-
19 months (n = 29). Polišenská (forthcoming) conducted a Headturn Pref-
erence experiment in which monolingual Dutch-acquiring infants heard
grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. The ungrammatical sentences
comprised errors with third person contexts, more specifically, use of the
plural form in singular contexts, as illustrated in (14b), and use of the sin-
Receptive grammar 119
gular form in plural contexts, as illustrated in (15b). The grammatical

equivalents are given in (14a) and (15a):
(14) a. Het regent vandaag.

it rain-sg today
b. *Het regenen vandaag.
it rain-pl today
(15) a. De kleuters rennen in het park.

the children run-pl in the park
b. *De kleuters rent in het park.
the children run-sg in the park
Polišenská found that the children’s listening times did not discriminate
between (15a) and (15b), but that there was a statistically reliable differ-
ence between (14a) and (14b). The perception data show that the suffix –t
is allowed in plural contexts, but that the suffix –en is not allowed in singu-
lar contexts. According to Polišenská, this observation is in line with Dutch
production data, because in production incorrect use of the suffix –en in
singular contexts (as in (14b)) is unattested.
Our framework can account for the early perception data, and for
Polišenská’s conclusion, in the following way. Suppose that Dutch infants
(who are 18-19 months and thus in a developmental stage prior to the Op-
tional Infinitive stage) have acquired a subset of the target paradigm and
make the following paradigmatic distinctions:
(16) /t/ ↔ [-past]

/en/ ↔ [+plur]
/en/ ↔ []
The list of vocabulary items in (16) shows that Dutch infants have speci-
fied /t/ for finiteness, namely as [-past]. Because this specified form is
available, insertion of underspecified /en/ in finite position will be banned
by the Elsewhere Principle. As long as /t/ is underspecified for number,
this suffix is allowed in plural contexts. Both /t/ and specified /en/ match
the finite plural context and are preferred to underspecified /en/. Because
the one is not more specific than the other, it may be expected that there is
no differentiation between the two vocabulary items in plural contexts. In
120 Discussion
singular contexts, there is one candidate that counts as most appropriate,

namely /t/, which may explain the early differentiation in singular contexts.
In this section we discussed data from early perception experiments that
were obtained from children who were not yet in the Optional Infinitive
stage. The early perception data are compatible with data from speech pro-
duction reported here. The data from the two modalities (reception and
production) thus represent two subsequent developmental stages in the
acquisition of finiteness in Dutch.
7. Concluding remarks
In this book we investigate the acquisition of finiteness and related mor-

phosyntactic properties. An important characteristic of our analysis is that
syntax and morphology are viewed as separate components that are ac-
quired partially independent form each other, but that also influence each
other. We argue that quantitative and qualitative properties of the verb
lexicon, and hence the children’s input data, are crucial for the productive
use the morphosyntactic marking of finiteness. The analysis given in this
book was developed for speech production data of Dutch monolingual
children, but we have shown that it applies to other West Germanic lan-
guages such as German and English as well. Our study has various empiri-
cal, theoretical and methodological implications. Finally, we note that the
analyses and results of this study clearly extend beyond the scope of this
book and are compatible with data from other groups of learners (specifi-
cally second language learners), other languages (including null-subject
languages), and are consistent with what we know of the receptive gram-
mar of young Dutch-speaking infants.
Appendix 121
Appendix
Appendix 1: Selected CHILDES files
Table 1. Selected files (age of recording in years; months.days) in four develop-

mental stages (I-IV)
Child I II III IV
Abel n.a. 1;10.30 2;01.02 2;05.17
1;11.12 2;01.16 2;07.15
1;11.26 2;02.19 2;07.29
2;03.02
Daan 1;08.21 2;00.22 2;04.14 2;08.13
1;09.09 2;00.19 2;04.28 2;08.27
1;10.16 2;01.21 2;05.11 2;09.10
Josse n.a. 2;00.07 2;03.28 2;07.20
2;00.21 2;04.11 2;08.04
2;08.18
Laura 1;09.04 2;00.05 2;04.01 3;02.09
1;09.18 2;00.19 2;04.15 3;03.00
2;01.02 2;05.00 3;03.02
2;05.17 3;04.06
2;06.10
Matthijs 1:09.30 1;11.10 2;04.24 2;10.22
1;10.13 1;11.24 2;05.01 2;11.03
2;00.09 2;11.19
Peter 1;07.18 1;09.20 2;00.28 2;03.07
1;10.03 2;01.26 2;03.21
122 Appendix
Appendix 2: Properties of selected files
Table 2. Frequencies root infinitives (RI), finite sentences (FIN), and mean length
of utterance (MLU) in four developmental stages (I-IV)
Abel Stage RI (N) FIN (N) MLU
I n.a n.a. n.a.
II 33 10 1.31 (1041/795)
III 84 198 1.87 (3027/1622)
IV 42 275 2.19 (2779/1268)
Daan Stage RI (N) FIN (N) MLU (N/N)
I 5 2 1.10 (423/382)
II 54 49 1.41 (1880/1331)
III 66 246 2.07 (2788/1348)
IV 71 621 2.73 (4907/1796)
Josse Stage RI (N) FIN (N) MLU (N/N)
I n.a n.a. n.a.
II 99 11 1.32 (1257/955)
III 76 98 1.98 (1831/926)
IV 64 439 2.32 (3386/1459)
Laura Stage RI (N) FIN (N) MLU (N/N)
I 18 2 1.33 (420/315)
II 56 26 1.42 (992/697)
III 276 348 1.87 (4010/2139)
IV 65 372 2.84 (3101/1090)
Matthijs Stage RI (N) FIN (N) MLU (N/N)
I 40 8 1.07 (1021/955)
II 127 6 1.45 (1594/1098)
III 112 85 1.83 (1841/1006)
IV 51 524 2.55 (1998/1565)
Peter Stage RI (N) FIN (N) MLU (N/N)
I 26 0 1.00 (46/46)
II 114 5 1.41 (1099/782)
III 57 95 2.21 (965/436)
IV 29 627 3.01 (3271/1085)
Appendix 123
Appendix 3: Coding modality
In (1), (2) and (3) some examples of interpretations/codes are given. Each $
introduces a new field with different types of codes. In field 1, the modal
value is given (modal = M, nonmodal = N). If the utterance was modal, and
the kind of modality could be determined, the M is followed by DY for
dynamic modality, and by DE for deontic modality. If the modal value
could not be determined, this field contained an O. Field 2 gives a specifi-
cation of field 1. If the utterance was modal, the kind of modality was
specified: The coding ‘nes’ for necessity and ‘pos’ for possibility. After the
colon, additional information was given as to whether the utterance was
desiderative and expressed a wish (‘des’), was regulating and expressed a
command (‘reg’) or expressed a capacity (‘cap’). If the utterance was non-
modal, the completedness (‘c’), ongoingness (‘o’) or prospectiveness (‘p’)
of the event expressed in the utterance was determined. If this value was
unclear, the utterance was assigned a ‘u’ in this field. Field 3 gives infor-
mation about the verb form (this was a while range of codes for root infini-
tives, simple finite verb, periphrastic verbs, modal verbs, copula, etc.).
(1) *PET: Peter woef hebben

Peter dog have
%mod: $MDY $nes:des $RI
%par: on the verge of crying
*MOT: o
*MOT: wil je even je +...
want you part you
*MOT: wil je even je woef hebben ?
want you part your dog have
‘Do you want to have your dog?’
%act: <aft> kisses PET . Peter 2;00.28
(2) *LAU: die s pakke (= plakken), hoor

that glue interjection
%mod: $N $o $RI
*LAU: die
that
*LAU: pakke [= plakken]
glue
%mod: $N $o $RI
124 Appendix
*MOT: is dat plakken ["] ?

is that glueing?
*MOT: ben je daarmee aan het plakken?
are you therewith on the glue
‘Are you glueing with that?’ Laura 2;05.17
(3) *MAT: mama !

*MOT: wat is er ?
what is there
‘What's wrong?’
*MAT: Ieke spugen !
Ieke throw up
%mod: $N $c $RI
*MOT: ging Ieke spugen ?
went Ieke throw up
‘Did Ieke throw up?’
*MAT: ja .
Yes
*MOT: oh, getsie
oh yuk Matthijs 1;11.24
Appendix 125
Appendix 4: Permutation test
A notorious problem with young children’s linguistic data is that it is diffi-

cult to apply statistics: The data are often sparse, and it cannot be deter-
mined whether they are normally distributed. To test if the developmental
differences and differences between groups as they visually present them-
selves are statistically significant, we applied a permutation test (Good
1999). This procedure does not make any assumptions on the distribution
of the data. We will illustrate the permutation test both for comparisons
between stages and between groups, starting with the first type of compari-
son.
The aim is to estimate to what extent the observed differences between
the stages are due to chance. In order to do this, the first step is of course to
spell out the null hypothesis (“there is no difference between the stages”).
More specifically, in the case of the modal shift, the null hypothesis is that
there is no difference between stage II and stages III and IV; the results
from stage II, on the one hand, and stages III and IV, on the other hand, are
drawn from one single distribution. In the case of subject drop, the null
hypothesis states that there is no difference between stage III, on the one
hand, and stages II and IV, on the other.
Then, the null hypothesis will be simulated by randomly shuffling the
observations per child over the different stages; recall that there is no dif-
ference between the stages, hence this random distribution is the distribu-
tion given the null hypothesis. We can now calculate the expected differ-
ence if all stages were similar. For the modal shift, the relevant difference
is between the proportion of modal root infinitives in stage II and the pro-
portion of modal root infinitives in stages III/IV. For subject drop, the rele-
vant difference is that between the proportion of subject drop in stage II/IV
and the proportion of subject drop in stage III. As we are interested in dif-
ferences between stages and not in differences between children, we will
calculate the average difference of the six children in both cases.
The above procedure gives us the average simulated difference between
the stages given the null hypothesis. In addition, the average observed dif-
ference is calculated. This means that for each child the difference between
the proportion of modal use in stage II and stages III/IV is calculated. The
same procedure is applied to the proportions of subject drop in stages II/IV
and stage III. As before, the average difference over the sample of six chil-
dren will be estimated. We now have two values: A simulated average
difference that is expected given the null hypothesis and an observed aver-
126 Appendix
age difference. Since the number of all possible permutations and combina-
tions for the six children is very big, we approximate the distribution of the
differences based on chance by randomly shuffling the observed propor-
tions 1000 times (or 5000, or more), which provides 1000 values (or 5000,
or more) for the test statistic based on chance (Monte Carlo simulation).
By counting the number of chance differences that are equal to or bigger
than the observed difference, a very close approximation of the probability
is obtained that the observed values are based on chance. This probability
is the p-value. The p-value can be interpreted as follows. If the value is
very small (say lower than a criterion value of 0.05), we consider it very
unlikely that the stages are in fact one undifferentiated stage as far as
meaning or subject drop is concerned. The null hypothesis is not con-
firmed; the alternative hypothesis provides a model that fits the observa-
tions better. The conclusion is that the changes over time are statistically
significant patterns that have to be explained. If the p-value is very big (e.g.
p > 0.95), chance will lead to a difference that is bigger than the observed
difference in most of the cases. Thus, the difference is much smaller than
would be expected on the basis of chance alone. This case is the opposite
of the first (i.e. the small p-values).
What about group differences? Imagine that we want to know whether
Japanese children like round shapes more than English children do. In or-
der to test whether or not there is a difference between children from the
two groups, a simple experimental setting is designed and 12 Japanese and
12 English children are tested. The experiment contained 10 test items:
Each item consisted of two forms, a round form and a square form, and
each child had to choose between the two forms. In Table 3 on the next
page the results are given as the proportion of round preferences (number
of test items divided by number of round forms that were chosen).
The null hypothesis states that there is no difference between Japanese
and English children. Another way of putting this is to say that the relation
between a particular preference and being Japanese or English is com-
pletely accidental. That is, any combination between a particular prefer-
ence and a nationality (Japanese or English) is just as good as any other.
Any such combination will result in a particular average preference for the
Japanese and an average preference for the English children. These aver-
ages will of course differ, but each of these differences will be accidental.
Appendix 127
Table 3. Results of an imaginary experiment on the preference for round or square

shapes with Japanese and English children, mean and standard deviation
Subject Proportion preferences for Proportion preferences for
round shapes in Japanese round shapes in English
1 0.6 0.2
2 1 0.1
3 0.5 0.6
4 1 0.4
5 0.7 0.3
6 0.9 0.4
7 0.6 0.5
8 0.5 0.5
9 0.8 1
10 0.3 0.3
11 0.6 0.1
12 0.5 0
M 0.67 0.37
SD 0.22 0.27
For differences to be meaningful and to reflect a real distinction between

Japanese and English children, it should be bigger than the differences that
result from the arbitrary combinations of preferences with nationality la-
bels. In practice, the difference is said to be meaningful if it is bigger than
the great majority of such accidental differences (usually set to at least
95%).
We will go briefly over the statistical procedure once more. First, the
preferences are combined into one group. Secondly, we randomly shuffle
the position of the preferences, like randomly shuffling a deck of cards.
Third, we assign the first half of the randomly shuffled preferences to the
Japanese, the second half to the English group. Fourth, the preferences of
the Japanese and the English group are calculated and the difference be-
tween these preferences is determined (Japanese difference minus English
preference). Fifth, the procedure is repeated many times (1000 or 5000).
Sixth, we count the number of times that this difference is bigger than or as
big as the difference that we observed in our experiment and divide this by
the number of repetitions (1000 or 5000). This results in the p-value, the
estimation of the probability that the observed difference is due to chance.
This procedure results in p = 0.004, which is clearly below 0.05. We can
conclude that the English and Japanese children come from different
groups as far as the preference for round shapes is concerned. The Japa-
128 Appendix
nese children show a greater preference for round shapes than English
children do.
Besides the difference between Japanese and English children, the data
in Table 3 can also be used to test whether the Japanese children (or Eng-
lish children) show a preference for round shapes (or for square forms).
The null hypothesis can be simulated by randomly distributing the propor-
tions of round and square shapes in Table 4 for each child: We observed
that child 1 had a proportion of 0.6 preference for round shapes. However,
given the null hypothesis, the chance that the preference for square shapes
is also 0.6, is large; there is no preference for either the one or the other.
In order to simulate the random distribution that is expected under the
null hypothesis, the results in Table 4 are shuffled for each child.
Table 4. Results of imaginary experiment, proportions of preferences for round

and square shapes of Japanese children
Subject Proportions of preferences for Proportions of preferences for
round shapes square shapes
1 0.6 0.4
2 1 0
3 0.5 0.5
4 1 0
5 0.7 0.3
6 0.9 0.1
7 0.6 0.4
8 0.5 0.5
9 0.8 0.2
10 0.3 0.7
11 0.6 0.4
12 0.5 0.5
Sum 8 4
The sum of the proportion of preferences for round shapes of all children is
calculated; the same procedure is applied to preferences for square shapes
and then the difference between these two sums is calculated. This value is
calculated 1000 times. When the observed difference is compared to the
chance distribution, the probability that our observed difference is found
by chance is 0.017. This is below the 0.05, hence the difference is statisti-
cally significant: The Japanese children choose more often round forms
than square forms. If we follow the same procedure for English, an extreme
p-value of 0.96 is obtained. Based on this, we can conclude that the Eng-
Appendix 129
lish children do not show a preference for either round or square forms.
However, the difference is much smaller than should be expected on the
basis of chance alone. How to interpret this unexpected high p-value? We
have now tested for a preference of round as compared to square. However,
if we had tested for the reverse, that is, for a preference for square shapes
as compared to round shapes, the outcome for English would have been 1 -
0.96 = 0.04 (and for Japanese 1 - 0.017 = 0.983). The conclusion of this
test would be that the English children show a preference for square forms,
whereas the Japanese children show no preference. The general rule with
regard to the extreme values of p is that if p < 0.05 the null hypothesis is
confirmed. If p > 0.95 there is support for the hypothesis that states the
opposite.
130 Appendix
Appendix 5: Jack knife method
To what extent can the collapsed results of a group of six children be gen-
eralized? The Jack knife method can be used to determine if the obtained
p-value for the total sample of children is influenced by the deviating re-
sults of one particular child. A simple example will illustrate the technique.
Imagine a study in which cultural differences between children's prefer-
ences for certain shapes are examined. Assume that Japanese children pre-
fer round forms; we want to know whether or not this preference for round
forms within Japanese children develops over time. Four children are
tested at the age of 1, 2 and 3 years old to find out if a change occurs and if
the preference for round shapes is stronger at an older age than at a
younger age.
The results in Table 5 suggest a change in preference between the age
of two and three. In order to test if this difference is statistically signifi-
cant, the results from the ages 1/2 are compared to the results from age 3.
Table 5. Imaginary results of longitudinal study of preferences for round shapes of

four Japanese children at the ages of 1, 2 and 3
Age Child A Child B Child C Child D Average
1 0.3 0.6 0.1 0.4 0.35
2 0.2 0.1 0.3 0 0.15
3 0.7 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.78
The null hypothesis states that there is no significant difference between

the average preference for round shapes of the four children at the ages 1/2
and the average preference of these four children at the age of 3. With the
help of a simulation of the null hypothesis, a p-value of 0.047 is obtained
that the observed difference between average preferences for round shapes
at the ages 1/2 is drawn from the same distribution as the average prefer-
ence at the age of 3. Though the difference is not highly significant, it is
just below the significance level of p = 0.05. Hence, it can be concluded
that there is a change over time.
It may be that this value is due to one individual participant, however.
This may happen especially since so few children are followed and the
results are sparse. To test this, the probability is recalculated four times,
each time the results of one particular child are omitted: First Child A is
left out and only Child B, C and D are included, then Child B is left out
Appendix 131
and only child A, C and D are included, etcetera. The results are given
below:
Table 6. Probabilities that the observed average difference between preferences

for round shapes at the ages of 1/2 and at the age of 3 is due to chance.
The probabilities are calculated over the entire group of four children and
over 4 groups of three children, with one specific child omitted at a time
p-value
All children 0.047
Omitted child
Child A 0.041
Child B 0.045
Child C 0.061
Child D 0.037
In most cases, p is still fairly low, i.e. below the criterion value (of 0.05). In
one case, i.e. when child C is omitted, the p value is slightly above 0.05. As
this is only slightly above the critical value, it is not the case that the data
from one particular child influence the obtained p value for the total sam-
ple of four children disproportionally. It seems that we can generalize over
the children and conclude that the preference for round shapes of Japanese
children develops over time. This development occurs when the children
are between two and three years old.
132 Appendix
Appendix 6: Verb constructions per stage
Table 7. Numbers of root infinitives, sentences with simple finite (main) verbs,
and finite sentences with periphrastic verbs used to describe ongoing and
modal events. Individual data (corresponding to Figures 1a-l, Chapter 4)
Abel Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb
Modal Ongoing Modal Ongoing Modal Ongoing
I n.a. n.a n.a n.a. n.a. n.a.
II 14 10 0 10 0 0
III 57 7 7 31 15 0
IV 20 12 9 82 53 11
Daan Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb
I 0 4 0 0 0 0
II 31 14 1 23 1 0
III 40 7 12 76 17 6
IV 44 17 24 153 74 10
Josse Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb
I n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.
II 44 40 5 2 0 0
III 55 11 0 17 3 1
IV 51 5 9 108 87 17
Laura Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb
I 2 13 0 2 0 0
II 31 13 0 8 4 1
III 129 72 3 33 30 25
IV 38 16 13 101 68 28
Matthijs Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb
I 16 15 3 0 0 0
II 66 23 0 0 0 0
III 77 9 12 9 11 5
IV 40 8 10 116 117 16
Peter Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb
I 26 0 0 0 0 0
II 70 27 0 1 0 0
III 44 10 3 57 9 6
IV 17 12 7 361 23 53
Appendix 133
Appendix 7: Experimental material
This appendix contains a screenshot of the ongoing and modal condition of

the action of washing, and four experimental stories.
Ongoing Washing Modal Washing
Dutch: Dit is het filmpje over een Dutch: Dit is een filmpje over een klein
vies varkentje. Het vieze varkentje vies hondje dat heel erg veel honger
staat naast het bad. Kijk! Het heeft. Hij wil graag naar binnen gaan
varkentje springt in bad. Wat doet om te eten. Maar, het hondje mag niet
hij? Hij wast en wast en wast naar binnen, want hij is veel te vies.
zichzelf totdat hij helemaal Eerst moet het hondje zich wassen. Kijk
schoon is en alle modder weg is. eens hoe vies hij is! Wat is daar, voor het
Het varkentje wast zich in bad. huis? Een badje. Het hondje moet zich in
bad wassen.
English: This is the movie of the English: This is the movie of the dirty
dirty pig. The little piggy is little dog that is very very hungry. He
standing next to the bath tub. See! wants to go into the house to eat. But the
The piggy jumps into the bath tub. doggy is much too dirty to go into the
What does he do? He is washing house. First, the doggy has to wash
and washing and washing. He himself. Look how dirty he is! What’s
washes himself until he is that, in front of the house? It is a bath.
completely clean, and all mud is The doggy has to wash himself in the
gone. The piggy washes himself in bath tub.
the bath tub.
134 Appendix
Ongoing Running Modal Running

Dutch: Hier is een meisje. Het Dutch: Dit is de film over het jongetje
meisje heet Lisa. Lisa is aan het dat weg moet rennen. Kijk eens, dit is
rennen. Zij rent naar huis omdat Jan. Kijk eens hoe Jan op straat aan het
het regent. Kijk eens hoe ze rent. spelen is. Hij gooit de bal hoog in de
Ze rent heel hard. lucht, en dan vangt hij hem weer op. Zie
je? Maar Jan is erg dom, want het is
gevaarlijk om op straat te spelen. Oh jee!
Wat gebeurt er! Daar komt een auto. En
nu? Jan moet hard weg rennen.
English: Here is a little girl. She English: This is the movie of the little boy
is called Lisa. Lisa is running. who has to run away. Look, this is John.
She is running home because it is Look how John is playing on the street.
raining. Look how Lisa runs. She He throws the ball high up in the air.
is running very fast. And then he catches it again. You see?
But John is very silly. It is dangerous on
the street. Oh oh! See what happens! A
car is coming! And now? He has to run
away very fast.
Ongoing Drinking Modal Drinking
Dutch: Dit is Peter. Peter zit aan Dutch: Dit is het verhaal over het kleine
tafel. Hij heeft voor zich een groot meisje Julia dat erge dorst heeft. Julia
glas limonade. Zie je hoe hij zijn wil erg graag wat drinken maar haar
glas pakt? Peter drinkt de glas is helemaal leeg. Zie je het glas in
limonade. Hij drinkt en drinkt tot haar hand? Zie je dat haar glas leeg is?
zijn glas helemaal leeg is. Julia gaat naar haar moeder en houdt
haar lege glas omhoog: Ze wil drinken.
English: Here is Peter. Peter is English: This is the story about a little
sitting at the table. He has a big girl Julia who is very thirsty. Julia really
glass of lemonade. See how he wants to drink, but her glass is empty.
picks up his glass. Peter is Do you see how she is holding the glass?
drinking the lemonade. He drinks, Do you see that her glass is empty? Now
drinks, drinks until his glass is Julia goes to her mother and holds up
empty. her empty glass: She wants to drink.
Ongoing Calling Modal Calling
Dutch: Billie heeft een telefoon en Dutch: Dit is het verhaal over Sophie die
hij is zijn vriend aan het bellen. haar oma wil bellen. Sophie’s oma is
Hij praat en praat en praat maar vandaag jarig. Kijk, daar is Sophie. Ze
door. Zie je hoe Billie zijn vriend zit op de vloer. En daar is de telefoon.
belt? Sophie probeert de telefoon te pakken.
Ze wil haar oma bellen.
Appendix 135
English: Billy has a telephone and English: This is the story of Sophie who
he is calling his friend. He talks wants to call her grandmother. Sophie’s
and talks and talks for a long granny has her birthday today. Look,
time. Do you see how Billy calls there is Sophie. She is sitting on the
his friend? floor. There is the telephone. Sophie tries
to reach the phone. She wants to call her
granny.
136 Appendix
Appendix 8: Verb constructions (experimental data)
Table 8. Verb constructions per condition; Dutch-speaking children (n = 26)

Form; examples (4) Total (n) Modal condition Ongoing condition
(n = 298) (n = 562)
N % N %
Root infinitive 149 101 34 48 9
Simple finite verb 487 42 14 445 79
Periphrastic verb 216 155 52 61 11
Prepositional infinitival 8 0 0 8 1
complement (PIC)
Table 9. Verb constructions per condition; English-speaking children (n = 29)

Form; examples (5) Total (n) Modal condition Ongoing condition
(n = 243) (n = 440)
N % N %
Root infinitive 162 71 29 91 21
Simple finite verb 79 14 6 65 15
Periphrastic verb 153 134 55 19 4
Finite participle 201 13 5 188 43
Root participle 87 11 5 76 17
(4) a. Het meisje rennen. root infinitive

the girl run-inf
b. Het meisje rent. simple finite verb
the girl run-fin
‘The girl is running’
c. Het meisje moet/wil/gaat rennen. periphrastic verb
the girl must/wants to/goes run-inf
d. Het meisje is aan het rennen. PIC
the girl is on the run-inf
(5) a. The girl run. root infinitive

b. The girl runs. simple finite verb
c. The girl has to/wants to/is going to run. periphrastic verb
d. The girl is running. finite participle
e. The girl running. root participle
Appendix 137
Appendix 9: Finite verb types in stage I/II
States
Modal: Kan ‘can’, mag ‘may’, moet ‘must’, wil ‘wants’

Prospective: Gaat ‘go’, komt ‘comes’
Position: Lig ‘lie’, zit ‘sit’
Perception: Hoor ‘hear’, zie ‘see’
Copula: Is ‘is’
Other: Heet ‘is called’, past ‘fit’
Events
- Eet ‘eat’, springt ‘jump’, zingt ‘sings’

138 Appendix
Appendix 10: Coding subjects
In appendix 3 we described the coding system for modality. Each root in-
finitive was in addition provided with a code for person of the subject
(F(irst), S(econd) or T(hird)), number of the subject (S(ingular) or P(lural))
and overtness of the subject (O(overt) or N(ull)). In (6) and (7) some ex-
amples are given with a first person singular overt subject and a null sub-
ject respectively:
(6) *ABE: ik een hand tekenen

I a hand draw
‘I am drawing a hand’
%mod: $FSO $N $o $RI Abel 2;07.15
(7) *LAU: oto niet neezette

car not downput
‘don’t put the car down’
%mod: $FSN $N $o $RI Laura 2;06.10
Appendix 139
Appendix 11: Null subjects
Table 10. Null subjects (NS) in root infinitives (RI), raw numbers
Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
RI NS RI NS RI NS RI NS RI NS RI NS
I - - 5 5 - - 18 18 40 40 26 26
II 33 31 54 50 99 94 56 36 127 113 114 69
III 84 73 52 37 76 56 276 201 112 85 57 22
IV 42 35 71 58 64 55 65 55 51 46 29 22
Table 11. Empty subjects in finite sentences (FIN), raw numbers

Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
FIN NS FIN NS FIN NS FIN NS FIN NS FIN NS
I - - 2 0 - - 4 3 9 9 0 0
II 10 0 47 14 11 10 27 8 5 5 3 3
III 197 97 247 50 98 62 349 103 99 50 97 17
IV 285 85 599 92 445 152 373 87 568 139 630 41
Notes
1 A syntactic difference is that Tense is located at a high position in the syntactic

structure, typically at the level of the Complementizer Phrase. Tense takes
scope over the entire proposition expressed in a sentence, that is, subject as well
as predicate. Aspect is related to the level of the Verb Phrase.
2 This analysis holds for main clauses. In embedded clauses, the Complementizer
position is filled, which blocks movement. The result is that the verb stays in its
final base position.
3 In such accounts the idea of invariable V-to-C movement has been abandoned,
for instance (Koeneman 2000). The traditional minimalist analysis of Dutch
verb placement can be found in Zwart (1997).
4 A problem of the empirical criticism is that both the absence of topicalization
facts and WH words in root infinitives can be analyzed as effects of develop-
ment: Topicalization as well as WH words may surface in root infinitives and
not in finite sentences, because root infinitives are acquired before finite sen-
tences come in. Empirical testing of the (Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis
would require the analysis of longitudinal data so more can be said about the
patterns that emerge over time.
5 Wexler assumed that optionality only occurs if two derivations are equally
costly. Therefore, in finite sentences, as well as root infinitives, the verb must
move.
6 In the original PRO theorem, PRO is a pronominal anaphor (Chomsky 1981).
Alternative accounts have been proposed. It is argued that PRO is a pure ana-
phor, a pure pronoun or sometimes anaphor/sometimes pronoun. We will not go
into the details of this discussion here.
7 One could also hypothesise that the child has different grammars: One with CP
= root, one with TP = root and one with CP = root. The difference between this
idea and Rizzi's formulation is purely conceptual. Formally, there is no differ-
ence between a single grammar that contains the unspecified rule or three co-
existing grammars with specified rules.
8 Weissenborn (1994: 216) formulated the Local Well-Formedness Constraint,
which requires that the representation of any utterance of the child is locally
wellformed with respect to a representation of the adult grammar. According to
this view, it is not necessarily top nodes that can be dropped.
9 Comrie (1976: 48) suggests that events, but not states, require an input of en-
ergy for the maintenance of the eventuality. Pustejovsky (1991: 56) describes a
state as “a single event, which is evaluated relative to no other event”.
Notes 141
10 Most individual-level predicates are stative and most stage-level predicates are
eventive, but there are stage-level stative predicates. Dowty (1979) gives the
following examples:
(i) a. New Orleans lies at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
b. ?? New Orleans is lying at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
(ii) a. My socks are lying under the bed.
b. ?? My socks lie under the bed.
11 Gavruseva assumes the proposal on tense chains in Gueron and Hoekstra

(1994). The syntactic licensing condition on tense chains is added by Gavruseva
(2001).
12 Wijnen (1997) (see also: Schönenberger et al. 1995; Schütze 1997) proposes
that the modality of root infinitives is the direct effect of absence of Tense. The
modal interpretation is the unanchored reading that follows if tense cannot be
grammatically bound.
13 See, for a rather similar formalization of the Dutch indicative paradigm, Wex-
ler, Schaeffer and Bol (2004).
14 Or consult the following internet address: <http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/>
15 Note that though the overall number is low, this number must be seen in relation
to the number of times that children talk about completed events in general.
16 Does the observation that gaan + infinitive denotes both modal and nonmodal
meanings imply that this verb construction is morphosyntactically similar to a
root infinitive? Not necessarily. Unlike the infinitive, the auxiliary may function
as a marker of subject-verb agreement, and thus be marked for φ-features. The
prediction would then be that clauses containing gaan + infinitive do contain
overt subjects. To our knowledge, this has not been investigated yet.
17 We prefer to use the notion ‘activation’ here instead of ‘underspecification’,
restricting the use of the latter notion to underspecification in the lexicon.
18 Pater and Barlow (2003) argue with respect to onset cluster reduction for “so-
nority-based onset selection” in which the least sonorous segment of the target
cluster is preserved. If the same would apply to coda cluster reduction, it would
be expected that drop of the suffix –t does not happen if the verb stem ends on a
vowel, glide, liquid, nasal or fricative because these are all more sonorous than
the /t/, which is a stop (Blevins 1995). Influence of the sonority scale on cluster
reduction is still an issue of ongoing debate, however (Van der Pas 2004).
19 Recent psycholinguistic work has shown that the information load of lexical
items - calculated on the basis of the amount of information derived from the
average frequency per syntactic function/meaning for a given form within a
given paradigm -, forms a good predictor for lexical access (Moscoso del Prado
Martín, Kostic, and Baayen 2004). If information load explains children’s selec-
142 Notes
tion of finite bare verbs in contexts that require a morphological finiteness

marker, it is expected that quantitative analysis of spoken Dutch will show that
bare verbs have a higher information load than verbs ending with the suffixes –t
or -en. It is beyond the scope of this book to investigate which analysis of un-
grammatical finite bare verbs is most supported by the data.
20 If the sonority scale influences phonological drop we would expect heet instead
of heef, because in the cluster /ft/ the /t/ is less sonorous than the /f/; hence the
/t/ would be preserved (see ft. 17).
21 Inclusion of complex verb phases headed by a finite verb in the child analysis
does not make a difference: 130 infinitival states/2375 = 5%.
22 Vendler 1967 (106) gave the following definitions:
“For activities: A was running at time t means that time instant t is on a time
stretch in which A was running.
For accomplishments: A was drawing a circle at t means that t is on the time
stretch in which A drew that circle.
For achievements: A won a race between t1 and t2 means the time instant at
which A won the race is between t1 and t2.
For states: A loved somebody from t1 to t2 means that at any instant between
t1 and t2 A loved person”
23 We distinguished between the copula be (‘he is mad’) and the verb of location
be (‘he is at home’).
24 Note that it does not have to be finite inflectional morphology but that other
types of verb inflection may be important as well. In English, progressive in-
flection may be crucial, for example.
25 This premise is not restricted to (inflectional) morphology and lexemes only but
can also be applied to larger units such as words in a sentence. The larger units
are in the literature referred to as ‘constructions’ that are listed together in a
‘constructicon’ (Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2006).
26 One relevant proposal may be the Less-is-More Hypothesis, according to which
children are exceptionally good at learning morphology because of their rela-
tively small working memory (Elman 1993; Goldowsky and Newport 1992).
The corollary of this hypothesis is that late learners, who are not forced to per-
ceive, remember and use only small pieces in the input, are worse at learning
morphology than children are.
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Index
(Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis, desire. See dynamic modality

12–14, 79, 110 Distributed Morphology, 88, 91, 113
addressee, 68, 70 do-support, 51, 52
Agreement and Tense Omission dynamic modality, 14, 26–27, 68
Model, 20–22, 64, 108–9 dynamicity, 12, 15, 24, 87
aspectual verbs, 84
auxiliary Early Morphosyntactic Convergence
deontic modal, 24 Hypothesis, 38–41, 65, 107, 110
dummy, 51, 52 elicited production task, 74
modal, 12–14, 15, 73, 88 elsewhere form. See default,
silent, 12–14 morphosyntactic
Elsewhere Principle, 30–31, 40, 52,
bare verb, 26, 39, 46, 61–66, 78–81, 81, 103, 119
103 embedded clause, 113
beliefs. See epistemic modality empty subjects. See subjects
bootstrapping English, 8, 19, 21, 26, 39, 66, 61–67,
distributional, 89, 95 71–76, 103
semantic, 16, 86 epistemic modality, 12, 26–27
boulemaic modality. See dynamic errors
modality case, 21
mapping, 91
circumstantial modality. See deontic segmentation, 91, 100
modality subject-verb agreement, 43, 80,
cluster reduction, 79, 81 92, 118
cognitive development, 36–37, 68, Extended Projection Principle, 21
110
commands. See deontic modality French, 13, 18, 24, 26
completed aspect, 47–49 Full Grammatical Competence
copula, 84, 88 Hypothesis, 18–23
corpus statistics, 85 future tense, 12, 50, 51
Danish, 26 German, 11, 13, 16, 19, 26, 43, 46,

default form 66, 103
morphosyntactic, 30, 40, 47, 79, Greek, 117
102, 107
phonological, 79 habituality, 51
deictic binding, 20, 25 Head Turn Paradigm, 118
deontic modality, 12, 26–27, 68 Hebrew, 19
Index 161
imperative, 87, 117 Polish, 20, 26

inchoative aspect, 12, 51 position verbs, 87
input pragmatic development, 20
frequency, 53, 86–88, 103, 106, predicate
107, 117 event-denoting, 12, 24, 25, 27,
saliency, 53, 117 39, 87
intention. See dynamic modality individual-level, 24, 25
irrealis, 27, 38 stage-level, 24, 25
Italian, 19, 117 state-denoting, 12, 24, 39, 87
prepositional infinitival complement,
Jack knife technique, 53, 99 51
present tense, 24, 25, 38, 45, 47, 51,
maturation, 9–10, 36, 110 74, 106
methodology, 72, 109–11 pro, 96
modal shift, 53, 52–59, 95, 103 PRO, 20, 96, 108
modality, 26–27, 45, 50, 66–71, 74, processing, 80, 118
84, 106 progressive aspect, 14, 51, 73, 87
psych verbs, 87
No Overlap Hypothesis, 15–16, 23,
83, 107 Reduced Grammatical Competence
Norwegian, 26 Hypothesis, 9
null constant, 23 requirement. See deontic modality
null subject languages, 19, 117 root modality. See deontic modality
null subjects. See subjects root participle. See participle, bare
Root Principle, 22
obligation. See deontic modality Russian, 20, 26
ongoing. See present tense
Optional Infinitive Hypothesis, 16– second language acquisition, 61,
17, 83, 106 111–16
overt subjects. See subjects Separation Hypothesis, 29
Spanish, 19
paradigm speaker, 68, 70
generalized, 90 subject, 13, 20–22, 23, 68, 101
word-specific, 89 subject-verb agreement, 17, 19, 90,
paradigmatic variation, 90 102
participle subject-verb inversion, 6, 11, 100,
bare, 48, 117 114
past, 47 Subset Principle, 30–31, 40
past tense, 45, 47 Swedish, 13, 26
perception verbs, 87
permission. See deontic modality telicity, 25
permutation test, 53, 76 Theory of Mind, 36, 68
picture-matching task, 73 topicalization, 6, 13, 17
162 Index
truncation U-shaped curve, 99, 106, 107

phonological, 79, 81
syntactic, 22–23 verbs of existence, 87
verbs of possession, 87
underspecification vocabulary items, 30
lexical, 30, 39, 40, 47, 52, 79, volition. See dynamic modality
102, 107
syntactic, 12, 18–23, 24–26 wish. See dynamic modality

(Blom, Elma) The Acquisition of Finiteness

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The Acquisition of Finiteness

The series Studies in Generative Grammar was formerly published by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blom, Wilhelmina Bernardina Theodora, 1972⫺

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

(1) Jij de walvis maken. Daan 2;04.28

(2) Pas tomber la poupée. Nathalie 2;2.2

(3) Papa peèku topit.' Zhenya 1;9

(4) Tapuax lishtot. Lior 1;8.08

The same characteristic that is shared by many different child languages

(5) Jij moet de walvis maken.

(6) Jij maakt de walvis.

(7) Oeh hij krijsen.

a narrative context, as in (7). Adults obey these discourse rules, whereas

From these children were longitudinal spontaneous speech data as well as

As will be illustrated in this chapter, root infinitives are certainly among

(1) Ooit zal zij de berg beklimmen.

(2) Zij zal ooit de berg beklimmen.

(3) De berg zal zij ooit beklimmen.

(4) De berg beklimt zij nooit.

According to the standard analysis, the bare verbal stem is base-generated

More recent proposals are embedded in the minimalist program as pro-

ment takes place in overt or covert syntax, depending on feature strength.

(6) One day she will climb the mountain.

(7) She will climb the mountain one day.

(8) Jij de walvis maken. Daan 2;04.28

3. Three early accounts

According to the Small Clause Hypothesis, functional categories are absent

3.1. Small Clause Hypothesis

According to the Small Clause Hypothesis (also: Reduced Grammatical

(9) a. Bear in chair.

dergoes a sudden transition from a nonfinite to finite stage. De Haan

(10) a. Gaat niet.

(11) a. Ik een keertje doen.

(12) a. Ich hab ein dossen Ball.

(13) a. Thorsten Caesar haben.

There is no sudden transition from nonfinite to finite stage; instead there is

3.2. Lexical Learning Hypothesis

In order to explain developmental stages, Clahsen proposes that children

3.3. Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis

(14) Jij moet de walvis maken.

(15) Jan moet het antwoord weten.

(16) Jan moet Frans leren.

(17) James wil gelukkig zijn.

(18) *James is gelukkig aan het zijn.

The modal sentence in (17) expresses volition (or dynamic modality),

4. No overlap versus optional infinitives

Although none of three hypotheses discussed in the previous section pro-

4.1. No Overlap Hypothesis

(19) a. Gaat niet.

(20) a. Ik een keertje doen.

4.2. Optional Infinitive Hypothesis

(21) There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in

5. Underspecification and full competence

5.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis

(23) a. Marche pas.

(24) a. Pas casser.

Root infinitives do not occur anymore as the acquisition of forms to mark

5.2. Underspecification of Number Hypothesis

5.3. Agreement and Tense Omission Model

(25) a. There is a man in the garden.

(26) It would be wrong [ NULL SUBJECT to leave now ].

(27) a. Him fall down. Nina 2;3.14