TY - JOUR
T1 - Revisiting the epistemic gap
T2 - It’s not the thought that counts
AU - Cournane, Ailís
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [BCS-1551628]. I extend thanks to my amazing RAs at the Child Language Lab @ NYU, Kathryn Rafailov and Michael Marinaccio, who helped with coding the data. For valuable discussions and insights, I thank the members of the ModSquad at UMD and NYU, especially Anouk Dieuleveut, Annemarie van Dooren, Valentine Hacquard, Maxime Tulling, and Dunja Veselinović, all of whom I’ve done related corpus work on modality with. And Dan Harris, Brian Leahy, Ana Pérez-Leroux, Tom Roeper, Petra Schulz and her lab, and Sandrine Tailleur.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This paper revisits the longstanding observation that children produce modal verbs (e.g., must, could) with their root meanings (e.g., abilities, obligations) by age 2, typically a year or more earlier than with their epistemic meanings (e.g., inferences). Established explanations for this “Epistemic Gap” argue that epistemic language production is delayed because small children can only reason about root meanings. However, root and epistemic uses of modal verbs also differ syntactically and in input representation. We present a corpus study on 17 English-learning children and their input, exploring early productions with both epistemic modal verbs and grammatically simpler and more frequent epistemic adverbs (e.g., maybe, probably). Results show that children use remarkably adult-like epistemic adverb sentences from even before age 2, when they are only producing modal verbs with root meanings. The Epistemic Gap is not well explained by general conceptual advancements. Instead, our data suggest input attestation and ease of form-to-meaning mapping may influence early child epistemic language. These findings are furthermore consistent with cross-linguistic differences in the timing of first epistemic uses of modal verbs, and with recent advancements in our understanding of infant and toddler modal reasoning abilities.
AB - This paper revisits the longstanding observation that children produce modal verbs (e.g., must, could) with their root meanings (e.g., abilities, obligations) by age 2, typically a year or more earlier than with their epistemic meanings (e.g., inferences). Established explanations for this “Epistemic Gap” argue that epistemic language production is delayed because small children can only reason about root meanings. However, root and epistemic uses of modal verbs also differ syntactically and in input representation. We present a corpus study on 17 English-learning children and their input, exploring early productions with both epistemic modal verbs and grammatically simpler and more frequent epistemic adverbs (e.g., maybe, probably). Results show that children use remarkably adult-like epistemic adverb sentences from even before age 2, when they are only producing modal verbs with root meanings. The Epistemic Gap is not well explained by general conceptual advancements. Instead, our data suggest input attestation and ease of form-to-meaning mapping may influence early child epistemic language. These findings are furthermore consistent with cross-linguistic differences in the timing of first epistemic uses of modal verbs, and with recent advancements in our understanding of infant and toddler modal reasoning abilities.
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U2 - 10.1080/10489223.2020.1860054
DO - 10.1080/10489223.2020.1860054
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85101040694
SN - 1048-9223
VL - 28
SP - 215
EP - 240
JO - Language Acquisition
JF - Language Acquisition
IS - 3
ER -