Knowledge of tense semantics in early child Romanian

Abstract

Previous research on the acquisition of tense semantics in child Romanian has demonstrated that typically developing Romanian-speaking three-year-old children have difficulties in the comprehension and production of the imperfect (an imperfective past), and the future (Stoicescu 2013). The present study investigates whether Romanian children have difficulties with the contrasts between the present, the perfect compus (a periphrastic past), and the future. The children obtained high scores for the present in both comprehension and production. In the comprehension of the perfect compus the children performed above chance. In the comprehension and production of the future, the results were significantly lower than chance. The study provides evidence that children have an understanding of the present-past contrasts at this early age, although not at the adult level.

Keywords

• acquisition of tense
• Romanian
• periphrastic past
• present
• future