ERIC Number: EJ761580
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2003
Pages: 28
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1048-9223
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Available Date: N/A
Children's Judgments of Negative Questions
Hiramatsu, Kazuko
Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, v11 n2 p99-126 2003
In a series of production and grammaticality judgment experiments, I investigated the status of children's non-adult questions with 2 auxiliary verbs, such as "What did the smurf didn't buy." Previous studies showed that these questions were produced primarily in negative contexts. In the first part of the study, I tested whether children produce them in positive contexts with contrastive stress. The results confirm that these questions are limited to negative contexts. In the second part, I tested how children judge these questions. If children produce these questions because they have a non-adult grammar, then they should accept these questions. However, the results from 15 children (age 3;11-4;11) show that they produced these questions but judged them unacceptable. I argue that the production of these questions is not the result of a non-adult grammar but rather the result of a performance phenomenon based on incorrect lexical information regarding constituent negation.
Descriptors: Verbs, Grammar, Preschool Children, Language Processing, Language Patterns, Child Language
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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