Before and after

[Brian MacWhinney]

On 10/18/03 12:56 PM, "Kathy Hirsh-Pasek" <khirshpa at temple.edu> wrote:

> One of my colleagues asked me a question I could not answer.  Could you
> please refer me to any research on the production and comprehension of
> "before" and "after."  At what age do we see comprehension of these terms?
> At what age production and is there any way to elicit the terms without
> being formulaic?  Thanks in advance for your response. Kathy
>
>
>
>

I thought Lois Bloom tracked these in some of her papers, but in any case
might I suggest that the same method used to track "my" and "mine" in the
CHILDES database can be used to track "before" and "after" in children's
productions. My first guess on how to elicit these terms would be to ask
children "when did you xxx?"  But a moment's reflection suggests that they
will respond with absolute, rather than relative answers, unless you ask for
a point that is conventionalized as "after" such as "after dinner".  I think
one good way to get a handle on intuitions about this is to look at the
database.  Here are the results of searches for "before" and "after" on
Bloom's Peter.  The first "after" is at 2;0 in Peter06.

*** File "english-usa:bloom70:peter:peter06.cha":
line 2946. Keyword: after
*CHI:    after dinner .

After that, there are occasional uses of "after" in "coming after him".
Never a use with "after X, then Y"

*** File "english-usa:bloom70:peter:peter19.cha":
line 3949. Keyword: before
*CHI:    xxx play with it before .
----------------------------------------
*** File "english-usa:bloom70:peter:peter19.cha":
line 3951. Keyword: before
*CHI:    xxx play with it before .
----------------------------------------
*** File "english-usa:bloom70:peter:peter19.cha":
line 5179. Keyword: before
*CHI:    before you [!!] did it .

Ross MacWhinney has a pretty similar pattern with early "after dinner" but
then a full-blown use at 2;11 in this example.

*CHI:    I'll clean up after I wash it and this will be clean with me
    [= I'm going to put my shirt in the wash] .

Good luck with your thinking about this.

--Brian MacWhinney