Acquisition of Sentential Negation and Negative Concord

by Sumrah Arshad née Sumrah
Doctoral thesis
Date of Examination:2023-05-02
Date of issue:2024-02-05
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Hedde Zeijlstra
Referee:Prof. Dr. Daniele Panizza
Referee:Dr. Jing Lin
Persistent Address: http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-10298

 

 

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Abstract

English

It has been shown in this thesis that the expression of negation in children’s naturalistic spoken speech is adult-like to an maximum extent (with 97% ratio of correct and grammatical expression). If a language exhibits NC in adult language, NC is also reflected in children’s language. If a language does not exhibit the presence of NC in adult language input, the same will also be reflected in children’s grammar until or unless there is a strong motivation to do otherwise. Based on the cross linguistic evidence gathered in this thesis, it is also argued that stages of the acquisition of negation cannot be completely established based on the onset of particular negative elements (e.g., the time when a negative element appears in a child’s language), as has been extensively reported in the literature so far. Evidence presented here strongly suggests that there is a clear overlap in the onset of certain negative elements, i.e., more than one negative elements appear simultaneously. Advanced methodological research techniques i.e., Python, R are used to extract and analyses data. The analyses constitute on descriptive and inferential statistics, in addition to post hoc analyses and subgroup analyses. The evidence presented in this thesis also suggests that it is very tricky to predict the stage of the acquisition of negation even based on age. As soon as children reach the age of 13-18 months, they begin expressing negation used in sentences of 2-3 words. After the age of 30 months, children are up to 97% of the time adult-like in their expression of negation. Some of the early- talking children are adult-like even before reaching the age of 30 months.
Keywords: Negation; Negative Concord; Acquisition of Negation; Child Language Acquisition; Syntax
 
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