Modal verbs in Dutch first language acquisition

Dutch modal verbs, kunnen ('can'), moeten (‘must’), mogen (‘may’),
willen (‘will’/‘want’), zullen (‘shall’/‘will’), and hoeven (‘need’) are
complex, semantically, morphologically, and syntactically. Therefore,
one could expect that modals occur only rarely in early child language.
Surprisingly however, children as young as 2 years old use modal verbs
rather frequently in their spontaneous speech. But do these early modal
verbs already have the same semantic, morphological, and syntactic
characteristics as in adult speech? I answer this questions through
the investigation of corpus data, focusing on form and structure, and
through the analysis of experimental data, focusing on the meanings
of Dutch modals. Looking into the acquisition of modal verbs not only
gives insight in how children build complex utterances, but also in how
cognitive notions as necessity and possibility develop linguistically.