ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the responses given by 21-month-olds, and asks whether there are areas where full understanding should not be taken for granted. The contextual factors that constrain overt responding do not, of course, influence the literal meaning of yes/no- and wh-interrogatives. Grice argues that should the maxims be flouted, sentences will normally fail to achieve their full meaning potential. As the completion of a sentence is always a potential transition point, every sentence should receive an overt, verbal response, again regardless of its inherent structure. Using observational data drawn primarily from Italian-speaking children, Antinucci and Miller made two important claims. The first was that up to two-and-a-half years children will see sentences in the past tense as expressing the aspectual relation of completion and this relation alone. The second was that up to two-and-a-half years, children will only contemplate such sentences as expressing completed phenomena when the result is in view.
