Mova0.5 pre-release⌕
☰
home / docs / papers / English / What do children do with do? Superfluous do in child English

What do children do with do? Superfluous do in child English

What it is about

Children sometimes add do to positive assertions, as in I do play or I do painting. The paper proposes that this superfluous do has two uses in child English. Auxiliary do marks Tense one-to-one with its form. Light-verb do overtly spells out the concept of action, which adults leave silent. Corpus studies on CHILDES compare child speech with child-directed speech. After agentive predicates children use do more often: agentive verbs make up 36.5% of the verbs after do in child data, against 20.7% in adult data, and statives 53.4% against 67.3%. Superfluous do is unstressed and non-emphatic. A second study finds light-verb do with gerunds more often in child speech. The analysis is mainly qualitative, supported by these counts.

Ideas

For Mova

The relevant chapters are 13. Verbs (auxiliaries) and 19. The lexicon: vocabulary, multiword expressions and register (verb classes). The code is en/src/dict.rs (the lexicon of agentive and stative verbs). The measures: the agentive and stative shares after do in the pupil dialogues, with the emphatic-do control. The aim is to find which pupil sentences show the pattern, not to grade the children.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.16995/glossa.10651

@article{martin2025what,
  title = {{What do children do with do? Superfluous do in child English}},
  author = {Martin, Fabienne and Ilic, Ivona and Schoenmakers, Gert-Jan and Alexiadou, Artemis},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.16995/glossa.10651},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.10651}
}

References

159 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. Aksu-Koç, Ayhan & Slobin, Dan. 1985. The acquisition of Turkish. In Slobin, Dan (ed.), The cross-linguistic studies of language acquisition, vol. 1: The data, 839–876. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. find
  2. Alexiadou, Artemis & Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Schäfer, Florian. 2015. External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571949.001.0001 ↗
  3. Alexiadou, Artemis & Rizou, Vasiliki. 2023. The use of periphrasis for the expression of aspect by Greek heritage speakers: A case study of register variation narrowing. Register Studies 5(1). 82–110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/rs.20022.ale ↗
  4. Alexiadou, Artemis & Schäfer, Florian. 2006. Instrument subjects are agents or causers. In Baumer, Donald & Montero, David & Scanlon, Michael (eds.), West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 25, 40–48. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. find
  5. Alhama, Raquel G. & Foushee, Ruthe & Byrne, Daniel & Ettinger, Allyson & Goldin-Meadow, Susan & Alishahi, Afra. 2023. Linguistic productivity: the case of determiners in English. In Park, Jong C. & Arase, Yuki & Hu, Baotian & Lu, Wei & Wijaya, Derry & Purwarianti, Ayu & Krisnadhi, Adila Alfa (eds.), Proceedings of the 13th international joint conference on natural language processing and the 3rd conference of the Asia-Pacific chapter of the association for computational linguistics (volume 1: Long papers), 330–343. Nusa Dua, Bali: Association for Computational Linguistics. aclanthology. org/2023.ijcnlp-main.21/. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.ijcnlp-main.21 ↗
  6. Andersen, Roger W. & Shirai, Yasuhiro. 1994. Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16(2). 133–156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100012845 ↗
  7. Antoniou, Kyriakos & Katsos, Napoleon. 2017. The effect of childhood multilingualism and bilectalism on implicature understanding. Applied Psycholinguistics 38(4). 787–833. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271641600045X ↗
  8. Arnon, Inbal. 2009. Starting big – The role of multi-word phrases in language learning and use. Palo Alto: Stanford dissertation. find
  9. Baillargeon, Renée & Carey, Susan. 2012. Core cognition and beyond: The acquisition of physical and numerical knowledge. In Pauen, Sabina (ed.), Early childhood development and later outcome, 33–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  10. Barner, David. 2001. Light verbs and the flexible use of words as noun and verb in early language learning. McGill University MSc Thesis, Montreal. find
  11. Bates, Elizabeth & Bretherton, Inge & Snyder, Lynn Sebestyen. 1991. From first words to grammar: Individual differences and dissociable mechanisms, vol. 20. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. find
  12. Benz, Anton. 2006. Partial blocking and associative learning. Linguistics and Philosophy 29(5). 587–615. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-006-9005-3 ↗
  13. Bernstein, Nan. 1984. Patterns of vowel modification in motherese. Journal of Child Language 11(3). 557–578. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S030500090000595X ↗
  14. Bezinska, Yanka & Chevrot, Jean-Pierre & Novakova, Iva. 2008. Le prédicat complexe faire+ Vinf dans le langage enfantin entre 4 et 6 ans. In Durand, Jacques & Habert, Benoit & Laks, Bernard (eds.), Congrès mondial de linguistique française, 1707–1721. EDP Sciences. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/cmlf08224 ↗
  15. Bliss, Lynn. 1988. The development of modals. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 9(3). 253–261. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0193-3973(88)90028-7 ↗
  16. Blom, Elma. 2003. From root infinitive to finite sentence. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht dissertation. find
  17. Blom, Elma & van de Craats, Ineke & Verhagen, Josje. 2013. Dummy auxiliaries in first and second language acquisition. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513476 ↗
  18. Bloom, Lois. 1970. Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. find
  19. Bohannon III, John Neil & Marquis, Angela Lynn. 1977. Children’s control of adult speech. Child Development 48(3). 1002–1008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1977.tb01259.x ↗
  20. Bohnacker, Ute. 2013. Reflections on dummy DO in child language and syntactic theory. In Blom, Elma & van de Craats, Ineke & Verhagen, Josje (eds.), Dummy auxiliaries in first and second language acquisition, vol. 49, 171. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9781614513476.171 ↗
  21. Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. That’s that, vol. 155 (Janua Linguarum. Series Minor). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton. find
  22. Bott, Oliver & Solstad, Torgrim. 2014. From verbs to discourse: A novel account of implicit causality. In Hemforth, Barbara & Mertins, Barbara & Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine (eds.), Psycholinguistic approaches to meaning and understanding across languages, 213–251. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05675-3_9 ↗
  23. Bouchard, Denis. 1995. The semantics of syntax. Chicago: Chicago University Press. find
  24. Bowerman, Melissa. 1982. Starting to talk worse: Clues to language acquisition from children’s late speech errors. In Strauss, Sidney (ed.), U shaped behavioral growth, 101–145. Academia Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-673020-3.50012-4 ↗
  25. Bowerman, Melissa. 2018. Ten lectures on language, cognition, and language acquisition. Leiden, The Netherlands: BRILL. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004362826 ↗
  26. Braunwald, Susan. 1971. Mother-child communication: the function of maternal-language input. Word 27(1–3). 28–50. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1971.11435613 ↗
  27. Brown, Roger. 1974. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674732469 ↗
  28. Cazden, C. 1968. The acquisition of noun and verb inflections. Child Development 39(2). 433–448. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1968.tb04436.x ↗
  29. Cinque, Guglielmo. 2013. Cognition, universal grammar, and typological generalizations. Lingua 130. 50–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.10.007 ↗
  30. Cinque, Guglielmo & Rizzi, Luigi. 2009. The cartography of syntactic structures. In Heine, Bernad & Narrog, Heiko (eds.), Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 51–65. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199544004.013.0003 ↗
  31. Clark, Eve. 1978. Awareness of language: Some evidence from what children say and do. In Sinclair, Anne & Jarvella, Robert & Levelt, Willem (eds.), The child’s conception of language, 17–43. Berlin: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67155-5_2 ↗
  32. Clark, Eve. 1985. The acquisition of Romance, with special reference to French. In Slobin, Dan (ed.), The cross-linguistic studies of language acquisition. vol. 1: The data, 687–782. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. find
  33. Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  34. Copley, Bridget & Harley, Heidi. 2015. A force-theoretic framework for event structure. Linguistics and Philosophy 38(2). 103–158. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-015-9168-x ↗
  35. Cruse, D. 1973. Some thoughts on agentivity. Journal of Linguistics 47(1). DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0022226700003509 ↗
  36. Delancey, Scott. 1985. On active typology and the nature of agentivity. In Plank, Frans (ed.), Relational typology, 47–60. Berlin, New York & Amsterdam: Mouton. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1515/9783110848731.47 ↗
  37. Demetras, Martha Jo-Ann. 1986. Working parents’ conversational responses to their two-year-old sons (linguistic input, language acquisition). Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona. find
  38. Demirdache, Hamida. 1997. ‘Out of control’ in Salish and event (de)composition. Manuscript, University of British Columbia. find
  39. Denison, David. 1985. The origins of periphrastic do: Ellegård and Visser reconsidered. In Eaton, Roger & Leek, Frederike & Koopman, Willem & Fischer, Olga (eds.), 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. 45–60. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.41.07den ↗
  40. Dickinson, David & Tabors, Patton. 2001. Beginning literacy with language: Young children learning at home and school. Baltimore: Paul Brookes Publishing. find
  41. Dowty, David R. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9473-7 ↗
  42. Ecay, Aaron. 2015. A multi-step analysis of the evolution of English do-support. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania dissertation. find
  43. Embick, David & Noyer, Rolf. 2001. Movement operations after syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 32(4). 555–595. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/002438901753373005 ↗
  44. Engelberg, Stefan. 2005. Stativity, supervenience, and sentential subjects. In Maienborn, Claudia & Wöllstein, Angelika (eds.), Event arguments: Foundations and applications, 45–68. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110913798.45 ↗
  45. Fauconnier, Stefanie. 2012. Construtional effects of involuntary and inanimate agents: A cross-linguistic study. Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven dissertation. find
  46. Feldman, Andrea. 1998. Constructing grammar: Fillers, formulas, and function. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado at Boulder. find
  47. Fletcher, Paul & Garman, Michael. 1988. Normal language development and language impairment: Syntax and beyond. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 2(2). 97–114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3109/02699208808985246 ↗
  48. Fodor, Jerry. 1970. Three reasons for not deriving kill from cause to die. Linguistic Inquiry 1(4). 429–438. find
  49. Folli, Raffaella & Harley, Heidi. 2005. Flavors of v. In Aspectual inquiries, vol. 62 (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory), 95–120. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3033-9_5 ↗
  50. Folli, Raffaella & Harley, Heidi. 2008. Teleology and animacy in external arguments. Lingua 118(2). 190–202. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.02.004 ↗
  51. Forrester, Michael. 2002. Appropriating cultural conceptions of childhood: Participation in conversation. Childhood 9(3). 255–278. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568202009003043 ↗
  52. Frei, Henri. 1929. La grammaire des fautes. Paris: P. Geuthner. find
  53. Gardenfors, Peter. 2014. The geometry of meaning: Semantics based on conceptual spaces. Cambridge, MA: MIT press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9629.001.0001 ↗
  54. Garvey, Catherine. 1979. An approach to the study of children’s role play. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 1(4). 69–73. find
  55. Gathercole, Virginia. 1986. The acquisition of the present perfect: Explaining differences in the speech of Scottish and American children. Journal of Child Language 13(3). 537–560. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900006875 ↗
  56. Gelman, Susan & Coley, John & Rosengren, Karl & Hartman, Erin & Pappas, Athina & Keil, Frank. 1998. Beyond labeling: The role of maternal input in the acquisition of richly structured categories. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 63(1). 1–148. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1166211 ↗
  57. Gelman, Susan A. & Taylor, Marianne G. & Nguyen, Simone P. 2004. Mother-child conversations about gender: Understanding the acquisition of essentialist beliefs. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 69(1). 1–142. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0037-976X.2004. 00276.x Gleason, Jean Berko. 1980. The acquisition of social speech routines and politeness formulas. In Giles, Robinson (ed.), Language: Social psychological perspectives, 21–27. Oxford: Pergamon. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-024696-3.50009-0 ↗
  58. Golden, John. 2016. Redundancy: When law repeats itself. Texas Law Review 94(4). 629–711. find
  59. Guasti, Maria Teresa & Alexiadou, Artemis & Sauerland, Uli. 2023. Undercompression errors as evidence for conceptual primitives. Frontiers in Psychology 14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2023.1104930 ↗
  60. Guasti, Maria Teresa & Chierchia, Gennaro & Crain, Stephen & Foppolo, Francesca & Gualmini, Andrea & Meroni, Luisa. 2005. Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures. Language and Cognitive Processes 20(5). 667–696. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01690960444000250 ↗
  61. Haggerty, Laura CG. 1929. What a two-and-one-half-year-old child said in one day. The Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology 37(1). 75–101. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/ 08856559.1930.10532224 ↗
  62. Hall, Nagy, William & Nottenburg. 1981. Situational variation in the use of internal state words. Technical report no. 212. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois. find
  63. Harley, Heidi. 1995. Subjects, events, and licensing. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation. find
  64. Haspelmath, Martin. 2014. Why is grammaticalization irreversible? Linguistics 37(6). 1043–1068. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.37.6.1043 ↗
  65. Haspelmath, Martin & Calude, Andreea & Spagnol, Michael & Narrog, Heiko & Bamyaci, Elif. 2014. Coding causal–noncausal verb alternations: A form–frequency correspondence explanation. Journal of Linguistics 50(3). 587–625. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226714000255 ↗
  66. Hein, Johannes & Driemel, Imke & Martin, Fabienne & Nie, Yining & Alexiadou, Artemis. 2023. Errors of multiple exponence in child language. In Lu, Jiayi & Petersen, Erika & Zaitsu, Anissa & Harizanov, Boris (eds.), Proceedings of the 40th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. find
  67. Hein, Johannes & Driemel, Imke & Martin, Fabienne & Nie, Yining & Alexiadou, Artemis. 2024. Errors of multiple exponence in child English: A study of past tense formation. Morphology 35. 143–183. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-024-09434-x ↗
  68. Higginson, Roy Patrick. 1985. Fixing: Assimilation in language acquisition. Washington: Washington State University dissertation. find
  69. Hoekstra, Teun & Hyams, Nina. 1998. Aspects of root infinitives. Lingua 106(1–4). 81–112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(98)00030-8 ↗
  70. Hollebrandse, Bart & Roeper, Thomas. 1996. The concept of DO-insertion and the theory of INFL in acquisition. In Koster, Charlotte & Wijnen, Frank (eds.), Proceedings of the Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition, 261–272. find
  71. Hollebrandse, Bart & van Koert, Margreet & van Hout, Angeliek. 2013. Semantic dummy verbs in child Dutch. In Blom, Elma & van de Craats, Ineke & Verhagen, Josje (eds.), Dummy auxiliaries in first and second language acquisition, 75–100. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1515/9781614513476.75 ↗
  72. Howe, Christine. 1981. Acquiring language in a conversational context. New York: Academic Press. find
  73. Igartua, I. 2015. From cumulative to separative exponence in inflection: Reversing the morphological cycle. Language 91(3). 676–722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2015.0032 ↗
  74. JASP Team. 2025. JASP (Version 0.19.3) [Computer software]. https://jasp-stats.org/. ↗
  75. Joo, Sehrang & Yousif, Sami & Martin, Fabienne & Keil, Frank & Knobe, Joshua. 2025. No privileged link between intentionality and causation: Generalizable effects of agency in language. Cognition. find
  76. Jordens, Peter. 2013. Dummies and auxiliaries in the acquisition of L1 and L2 Dutch. In Blom, Elma & van de Craats, Ineke & Verhagen, Josje (eds.), Dummy auxiliaries in first and second language acquisition, 341–368. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9781614513476.341 ↗
  77. Kambanaros, Maria & Grohmann, Kleanthes K. 2015. More general all-purpose verbs in children with specific language impairment? Evidence from Greek for not fully lexical verbs in language development. Applied Psycholinguistics 36(5). 1029–1057. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0142716414000034 ↗
  78. Karmiloff-Smith, Annette. 1981. A functional approach to child language: A study of determiners and reference. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. find
  79. Kelly, Linda & Quingley, Jean & Nixon, Elizabeth. 2020. Father-child shared book-reading in light-and heavy-text conditions. DOI: https://doi.org/doi:10.21415/0CHV-HZ36 ↗
  80. Kilgarriff, Adam & Baisa, Vít & Bušta, Jan & Jakubíček, Miloš & Kovář, Vojtěch & Michelfeit, Jan & Rychlỳ, Pavel & Suchomel, Vít. 2014. The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography 1(1). 7–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40607-014-0009-9 ↗
  81. Kittilä, Seppo. 2009. Causative morphemes as non-valency increasing devices. Folia Linguistica 43(1). 67–94. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/FLIN.2009.002 ↗
  82. Klein, Michael. 2022. What does do do? An investigation into the function of the English “dummy auxiliary”’. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University dissertation. find
  83. Klemola, Juhani. 1998. Semantics of DO in South-Western dialects of English. In Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid & van der Wal, Marijke & van Leuvensteijn, Arjan (eds.), Do in english, dutch and german: History and present-day variation. munster, 25–52. Stichting Neerlandistiek VU Amsterdam and Nodus Publikationen Münster. find
  84. Knipschild, Bettina. 2007. Verb placement, DO-insertion and object shift: A case study of a bilingual German/English child. Essex: University of Essex dissertation. find
  85. Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. 2009. Anticausativization. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 27(1). 77–138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-008-9058-9 ↗
  86. Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt. 1988. Immigrant children’s Swedish — a new variety? Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development 9(1–2). 129–140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.1988. 9994324 ↗
  87. Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Rooryck, Johan (ed.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. New York & Berlin: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-94-015-8617-7_5 ↗
  88. Kroch, Anthony S & Myhill, John & Pintzuk, Susan. 1982. Understanding do. In Tuite, Kevin & Schneider, Robinson & Chametzky, Robert (eds.), Papers from the Eighteenth Regional Meeting of Chicago Linguistics Society. 282–294. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society. find
  89. Kuczaj, Stan A. 1977. The acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16(5). 589–600. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(77) 80021-2 ↗
  90. Kuczaj, Stan A. 1978. Children’s judgments of grammatical and ungrammatical irregular past-tense verbs. Child Development 49(2). 319–326. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1978. tb02318.x Le Normand, Marie-Thérèse. 1986. A developmental exploration of language used to accompany symbolic play in young, normal children (2–4 years old). Child: Care, Health and Development 12(2). 121–134. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.1986.tb00492.x ↗
  91. Legate, Julie Anne. 2014. Voice and v: Lessons from Acehnese. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262028141.001.0001 ↗
  92. Levin, Beth. 1999. Objecthood: An event structure perspective. In Billings, Sabrina & Boyle, John & Griffith, Aaron (eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, vol. 1, 223–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. find
  93. Lieven, Elena & Salomo, Dorothé & Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Two-year-old children’s production of multiword utterances: A usage-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 20(3). 481–508. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/COGL.2009.022 ↗
  94. Lightfoot, David. 1991. How to set parameters: Arguments from language change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. find
  95. MacWhinney, Brian. 1985. Hungarian language acquisition as an exemplification of a general model of grammatical development. In Slobin, Dan (ed.), The cross-linguistic studies of language acquisition. vol. 2: Theoretical issues. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. find
  96. MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. find
  97. MacWhinney, Brian & Snow, Catherine. 1985. The child language data exchange system. Journal of Child Language 12(2). 271–295. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900006449 ↗
  98. Martin, Fabienne. 2022. Jean-Pierre Koenig and Yanwei Jin’s analysis of expletive negation: commentary. Talk presented at Time in Translation workshop, Universiteit Utrecht, September 23, 2022. find
  99. Martin, Fabienne & Nie, Yining & Alexiadou, Artemis & Guasti, Maria Teresa. 2022. Wearing Causation on Its Sleeve: Overt cause in Child French Causatives. In Gong, Ying & Kpogo, Felix (eds.), BUCLD 46: Proceedings of the 46th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 497–510. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. find
  100. Martin, Fabienne & Nie, Yining & Driemel, Imke & Hein, Johannes & Alexiadou, Artemis. 2023. Morphological transparency and redundancy in child language. Manuscript, Utrecht University, San Jose State University, York University, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and ZAS Berlin. find
  101. McCawley, James D. 1978. Conversational implicature and the lexicon. In Cole, Peter (ed.), Pragmatics, 245–259. Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368873_009 ↗
  102. McCune, Lorraine. 1995. A normative study of representational play in the transition to language. Developmental Psychology 31(2). 198–206. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037//0012-1649.31.2.198 ↗
  103. Morgenstern, A. & Parisse, C. 2007. Codage et interprétation du langage spontané d’enfants de 1 à 3 ans. Corpus 6. 55–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/corpus.922 ↗
  104. Morgenstern, Aliyah & Benazzo, S. & Leroy, M. & Mathiot, E. & C., Parisse. & Sekali, M. 2009. L’enfant dans la langue. De l’observation du naturaliste à l’analyse du linguiste. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. find
  105. Morisset, Colleen & Barnard, Kathryn & Booth, Cathryn. 1995. Toddlers’ language development: Sex differences within social risk. Developmental Psychology 31(5). 851–865. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1037//0012-1649.31.5.851 ↗
  106. Nelson, Katherine. 1989. Narratives from the crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. find
  107. Newman, Rochelle & Rowe, Meredith & Ratner, Nan Bernstein. 2016. Input and uptake at 7 months predicts toddler vocabulary: The role of child-directed speech and infant processing skills in language development. Journal of Child Language 43(5). 1158–1173. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1017/S0305000915000446 ↗
  108. Ninio, Anat & Snow, Catherine & Pan, Barbara & Rollins, Pamela. 1994. Classifying communicative acts in children’s interactions. Journal of Communication Disorders 27(2). 157–188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0021-9924(94)90039-6 ↗
  109. Paradis, Johanne & Nicoladis, Elena & Genesee, Fred. 2000. Early emergence of structural constraints on code-mixing: Evidence from French–English bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3). 245–261. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728900000365 ↗
  110. Penhallurick, John. 1985. The semantics of auxiliary do. Studies in Language 9(3). 311–333. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.9.3.02pen ↗
  111. Piñón, Christopher. 1997. Achievements in an event semantics. In Lawson, Aaron & Cho, Eun (eds.), Semantics and linguistic theory (SALT) 7, 273–296. Ithaca, New York: CLC Publications, Cornell University. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v7i0.2781 ↗
  112. Post, Kathryn Nolan. 1992. The language learning environment of laterborns in a rural Florida community. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University dissertation. find
  113. Punske, Jeffrey & Butler, Elizabeth. 2019. Do me a syntax: Doggo memes, language games and the internal structure of English. Ampersand 6. Article 100052. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j. amper.2019.100052 ↗
  114. Quirk, Randolph & Greenbaum, Sidney & Leech, Geoffrey & Svertvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London & New York: Longman. find
  115. Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Levin, Beth. 1998. Building verb meanings. In Butt, Miriam & Geuder, Wilhelm (eds.), The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors, 97–134. Chicago: CSLI Publications. find
  116. Rizzi, Luigi. 1993. Some notes on linguistic theory and language development: The case of root infinitives. Language Acquisition 3(4). 371–393. DOI: https://doi.org/10 . 1207 / s15327817la0304_2 ↗
  117. Roeper, Thomas. 1991. How a marked parameter is chosen: Adverbs and do-insertion in the IP of child grammar. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 17(1). 9. find
  118. Rollins, Pamela Rosenthal. 2003. Caregivers’ contingent comments to 9-month-old infants: Relationships with later language. Applied Psycholinguistics 24(2). 221–234. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0142716403000110 ↗
  119. Ross, John Robert. 1972. Act. In Davidson, Donald & Harman, Gilbert (eds.), Semantics of natural language, vol. 40 (Synthese Library), 70–126. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-94-010-2557-7_4 ↗
  120. Rowland, Caroline. 2007. Explaining errors in children’s questions. Cognition 104(1). 106–134. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2006.05.011 ↗
  121. Sachs, Jacqueline. 1983. Talking about the there and then: The emergence of displaced reference in parent-child discourse. Children’s Language 4. 1–28. find
  122. Sauerland, Uli & Alexiadou, Artemis. 2020. Generative grammar: A meaning first approach. Frontiers in Psychology 11. 3104. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.571295 ↗
  123. Sawyer, Keith. 1997. Pretend play as improvisation: Conversation in the preschool classroom. New York: Psychology Press. find
  124. Schoenmakers, Gert-Jan. 2023. Linguistic judgments in 3D: The aesthetic quality, linguistic acceptability, and surface probability of stigmatized and non-stigmatized variation. Linguistics 61(3). 779–824. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0179 ↗
  125. Schütze, Carson T. 2004. Synchronic and diachronic microvariation in English do. Lingua 114(4). 495–516. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(03)00070-6 ↗
  126. Schütze, Carson T. 2013. Superfluous do and comparison of spell-outs. In Blom, Elma & van de Craats, Ineke & Verhagen, Josje (eds.), Dummy auxiliaries in first and second language acquisition, 13–38. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. find
  127. Sert, Cansel & Hubers, Ferdy & Redl, Theresa & Hoop, Helen de. 2023. On the acceptability of the not so dummy auxiliary ‘do’ in Dutch. In Leufkens, Sterre & Bril, Marco (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 40, 210–229. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00088.ser ↗
  128. Shirai, Yasuhiro. 1991. Primacy of aspect in language acquisition: Simplified input and prototype. Los Angeles: University of California dissertation. find
  129. Shirai, Yasuhiro & Andersen, Roger W. 1995. The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: A prototype account. Language 71(4). 743–762. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/415743 ↗
  130. Siddiqi, Daniel. 2006. Minimize exponence: Economy effects on a model of the morphosyntactic component of the grammar. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona dissertation. find
  131. Slobin, Dan. 1971. On the learning of morphological rules: A reply to Palermo and Eberhart. In Slobin, Dan (ed.), The ontogenesis of grammar: A theoretical symposium, 215–223. New York: Academia Press. find
  132. Slobin, Dan. 1973. Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, Charles A. & Slobin, Dan (eds.), Studies of child language development, 175–208. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. find
  133. Slobin, Dan. 1985. Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In Slobin, Dan (ed.), The cross-linguistic studies of language acquisition. vol. 2: Theoretical issues, 406–605. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. find
  134. Spelke, Elizabeth & Kinzler, Katherine. 2007. Core knowledge. Developmental Science 10(1). 89–96. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00569.x ↗
  135. Sprott, Richard. 1992. Children’s use of discourse markers in disputes: Form-function relations and discourse in child language. Discourse Processes 15(4). 423–440. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1080/01638539209544821 ↗
  136. Steube, Anita. 2001. Correction by contrastive focus. Theoretical Linguistics 27(2–3). 215–250. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.2001.27.2-3.215 ↗
  137. Strickland, Brent. 2017. Language reflects “core” cognition: A new theory about the origin of cross-linguistic regularities. Cognitive Science 41(1). 70–101. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs. 12332 ↗
  138. Stromswold, Karin. 1990. Learnability and the acquisition of auxiliaries. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation. find
  139. Suppes, Patrick. 1974. The semantics of children’s language. American Psychologist 29(2). 103– 114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036026 ↗
  140. Theakston, Anna & Lieven, Elena & Pine, Julian & Rowland, Caroline. 2001. The role of performance limitations in the acquisition of verb-argument structure: An alternative account. Journal of Child Language 28(1). 127–152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900004608 ↗
  141. Tommerdahl, Jodi & Kilpatrick, Cynthia. 2014. The reliability of morphological analyses in language samples. Journal of Language Testing 31(1). 3–18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0265532213485570 ↗
  142. Tyler, Matthew. 2022. Non-valency-increasing causatives in a Distributive morphology perspective. Talk presented at LAGB 2022, 15–18 September. find
  143. Valian, Virginia. 1991. Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children. Cognition 40(1–2). 21–81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(91)90046-7 ↗
  144. van Hout, Angeliek. 2016. Lexical and grammatical aspect. In Lidz, Jeff & Pater, Joe & Snyder, William (eds.), Handbook of developmental linguistics, 587–610. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199601264.013.25 ↗
  145. Van Houten, Lori. 1986. Role of maternal input in the acquisition process: The communicative strategies of adolescent and older mothers with their language learning children. Paper presented at the 11th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. find
  146. van Kampen, Jacqueline. 1997. First steps in wh-movement. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht dissertation. find
  147. van Rooy, Robert. 2004. Signalling games select Horn strategies. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(4). 493–527. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LING.0000024403.88733.3f ↗
  148. van Valin, Robert & Wilkins, David. 1996. The case for “effector”: Case roles, agents, and agency revisited. In Shibatani, Masayoshi & Thompson, Sandra (eds.), Grammatical constructions, 289– 322. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198235392.003. 0011 ↗
  149. Wang, Jing & Shirai, Yasuhiro. 2015. The development of third person singular present form -s. In Ayoun, Dalila (ed.), The acquisition of the present, 1–20. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/z.196.01wan ↗
  150. Warner, Anthony R. 1993. English auxiliairies. Structure and history, vol. 66 (Cambridge studies in linguistics). find
  151. Warren-Leubecker, Amye. 1982. Sex differences in speech to children: Georgia Institute of Technology dissertation. find
  152. Weist, Richard M & Pawlak, Aleksandra & Hoffman, Karen. 2009. Finiteness systems and lexical aspect in child Polish and English. Linguistics 47(6). 1321–1350. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ LING.2009.046 ↗
  153. Wells, Gordon. 1981. Learning through interaction, volume 1: the study of language development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  154. Wiese, Heike. 2009. Grammatical innovation in multiethnic urban Europe: New linguistic practices among adolescents. Lingua 119(5). 782–806. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua. 2008.11.002 ↗
  155. Wilson, Elspeth & Katsos, Napoleon. 2020. Acquiring implicatures. In Schneider, Klaus P. & Ifantidou, Elly (eds.), Handbooks of pragmatics. Developmental and clinical pragmatics, 118–148. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110431056-005 ↗
  156. Wilson, Elspeth Amabel. 2017. Children’s development of quantity, relevance and manner implicature understanding and the role of the speaker’s epistemic state: University of Cambridge dissertation. find
  157. Wittenberg, Eva. 2018. He Gave My Nose a Kick or He Kicked My Nose? Argument structure alternations and event construal. Psychology of Learning and Motivation 68. 337–360. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.plm.2018.08.008 ↗
  158. Yamakoshi, Kyoko & Miura, Kaori & Jorinbo, Hanako & Angata, Kayoko & Yamasaki, Kaori. 2018. An experimental study of children’s comprehension of lexical and productive causatives in Japanese. In Nishiyama, Kunio & Kishimoto, Hideki & Aldridge, Edith (eds.), Topics in theoretical Asian linguistics: Studies in honor of John B. Whitman, 229–250. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.250.12yam ↗
  159. Zukowski, Andrea. 1996. Auxiliary auxiliaries: Spare parts in early speech. Manuscript, Boston University. find

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/martin-2025-what-do-children-do-em/