| Summary: | There is considerable debate within the Minimalist framework about the hierarchy of elements above the verb. Some linguists argue that the Tense Phrase dominates the Agreement Phrase (Pollock, 1989) while others argue the opposite using evidence from a variety of languages (Belletti, 1990). One area that has not been explored, however, is whether first language acquisition can show if there is a specific order of acquisition. Previous research has shown that acquisition is a worthwhile place to look for evidence. Littlefield (2006) used L1 longitudinal child data and found a specific order of acquisition for prepositions based on a lexical, functional binary distinction. Language acquisition data has also supported a specific order of acquisition of verbal elements like intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, auxiliaries and tense, and idiomatic expressions (Littlefield, Martinek, and Rubenstein, 2011). The current study builds on these previous findings by examining agreement and tense in a more precise, fine-grained way. To see if language acquisition can shed light on the hierarchy, we analyzed Sarah, Eve, and Nina'€™s (Brown 1973, Suppes 1974) longitudinal data from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney & Snow, 1985, 1990). The child's utterances were coded for agreement and tense in all obligatory instances. A total of 25,631 obligatory instances were identified for Sarah, 10,207 for Eve, and 23,103 for Nina. Using the threshold of 90% accurate usage in obligatory contexts, Sarah acquires agreement before tense, indicating that the Tense Phrase dominates the Agreement Phrase. Nina, however, acquires them at the same stage and Eve'€™s data does not show acquisition of either agreement or tense by her last MLU group. All three children use agreement correctly at a higher percentage than tense indicating that agreement may be acquired before tense in all three children.
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