Time in Child Inuktitut: A Developmental Study of an Eskimo-Aleut Language (Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] Book 24)

This book presents a study of the development of time reference in young children acquiring Inuktitut as a first language. The first such study of an Eskimo-Aleut language, its account of children's development of time reference in a system that is fundamentally different from those found in languages previously studied makes a unique contribution to the literature on the acquisition of tense and aspect. Drawing on longitudinal spontaneous speech data from eight Inuit children between 2 and 3-and-a-half years old, this study analyzes the temporal structures, their meanings and context of use in children's communicative interactions with siblings, peers and caretakers during the early stages of language development. The comprehensive study of previously unexplored temporal phenomena and its unprecedented findings makes this book an important resource for researchers, teachers and students of child language development, especially the development of time reference. In addition, the documentation of the Inuktitut temporal system, especially as used in conversational speech, will be of interest to researchers of time reference. «This book presents a study of the development of time reference in young children acquiring Inuktitut as a first language. The first such study of an Eskimo-Aleut language, its account of children's development of time reference in a system that is fundamentally different from those found in languages previously studied makes a unique contribution to the literature on the acquisition of tense and aspect. Drawing on longitudinal spontaneous speech data from eight Inuit children between 2 and 3-and-a-half years old, this study analyzes the temporal structures, their meanings and context of use in children's communicative interactions with siblings, peers and caretakers during the early stages of language development. The comprehensive study of previously unexplored temporal phenomena and its unprecedented findings makes this book an important resource for researchers, teachers and students of child language development, especially the development of time reference. In addition, the documentation of the Inuktitut temporal system, especially as used in conversational speech, will be of interest to researchers of time reference.» -- Site de l'éditeur Frontmatter Contents Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Inuktitut Chapter 3. Time reference in Inuktitut Chapter 4. The development of time reference in child language: A review of the literature Chapter 5. Methodology Chapter 6. Early verb development in Inuktitut Chapter 7. Zero-marked verbs in early Inuktitut Chapter 8. Aspectual suffixes in early Inuktitut Chapter 9. Future temporal remoteness in early Inuktitut Chapter 10. Past temporal remoteness in early Inuktitut Chapter 11. Temporal adverbials and temporal clause coordination in early Inuktitut Chapter 12. Summary and conclusions Backmatter Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts. This book presents a study of the development of time reference in young children acquiring Inuktitut as a first language. The first such study of an Eskimo-Aleut language, it makes a unique contribution to the tense-aspect acquisition literature with an