Today, Tomorrow, and Overmorrow
The Acquisition of Deictic Temporal Terms in English and German
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22157943 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katherine Williams (0009-0008-9856-1717, The University of Texas at Austin), Katherine Steele (0000-0001-8963-7574, The University of Texas at Austin), Anna Bánki (0000-0001-7532-7292, University of Vienna), Gabriela Markova (0000-0003-1092-0137, University of Vienna), Stefanie Hoehl (0000-0003-0472-0374, University of Vienna), Katharine A Tillman (0000-0001-9440-7239, The University of Texas at Austin) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Pages | 1826-1848 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Open MIND (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2470-2986 • E-ISSN: 2470-2986 |
| Publisher | MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1162/opmi.a.254 |
| PMID | 41210601 |
| OpenAlex | W4416009166 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
English and German both have single words for yesterday and tomorrow, but German also includes the words vorgestern (“the day before yesterday”) and übermorgen (“the day after tomorrow”). This study investigates how these differences in time-word sets influence children’s learning of temporal language. In two tasks, English- and German-speaking children ages 3 to 7 (N = 304) and adult controls (N = 75), marked the locations of temporal terms on a continuous timeline and a discontinuous calendar template. We assessed knowledge of three distinct facets of time-meaning (past/future status, sequential ordering, and temporal remoteness) and precise meanings for temporal terms. Our results show that German-speaking children were more likely to demonstrate precise understanding of items lexicalized only in German (e.g., übermorgen/day-after-tomorrow) as well as basic time words lexicalized in both languages (e.g., gestern/yesterday). The German advantage was primarily driven by children’s better understanding of these words’ temporal remoteness (i.e., distance from the present), while there were no language-group differences in children’s understanding of past/future status. These findings suggest that children acquire time-word meanings gradually, using different linguistic cues for different facets of meaning, and that having a more extensive time-word lexicon may help constrain German-speaking children’s early understanding of temporal concepts like yesterday and tomorrow
Deixis · German · Language acquisition · Lexicon · Phonology · Timeline · Categorization, perception, and language · Child and Animal Learning Development · Language Development and Disorders
Hard Words
On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after
Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4
Aspectual influences on early tense comprehension
The emergence of temporal adverbs in child Polish
Production of temporal terms by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children
Yesterday and tomorrow
Children’s processing and comprehension of complex sentences containing temporal connectives
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |