The development of past marking in a bilingual child and the punctual-nonpunctual distinction

Abstract

This study examined a child's simultaneous acquisition of pastmarking in English and Spanish, and looked for evidence supporting Bickerton's punctual-nonpunctual hypothesis. It was found that punctual verbs were those that first exhibited past forms. However, early verbs were usually invariant in both form and function. The child was not marking a punctual-nonpunctual distinction in Spanish as he did not control corresponding past and nonpast forms. Although the English data in isolation would point to the child's marking a punctual-nonpunctual distinction, the same explanation is proposed for both languages: the past forms that emerged first were those most frequent in the input. The categories of punctual vs. nonpunctual were relevant insofar as the great majority of past events first commented on were punctual/resultative events.