This book presents a study of the development of time reference inyoung children acquiring Inuktitut as a first language. The first suchstudy of an Eskimo-Aleut language, its account of children'sdevelopment of time reference in a system that is fundamentallydifferent from those found in languages previously studied makes aunique contribution to the literature on the acquisition of tense andaspect. Drawing on longitudinal spontaneous speech data from eightInuit children between 2 and 3-and-a-half years old, this studyanalyzes the temporal structures, their meanings and context of use inchildren's communicative interactions with siblings, peers andcaretakers during the early stages of language development. Thecomprehensive study of previously unexplored temporal phenomena and itsunprecedented findings makes this book an important resource forresearchers, teachers and students of child language development,especially the development of time reference. In addition, thedocumentation of the Inuktitut temporal system, especially as used inconversational speech, will be of interest to researchers of timereference.