Abstract
This chapter examines the structure of negation in early English and French child language.1 Given the assumption of underlying VP-internal subjects and the possibility that the early grammar does not force subject raising, one prediction of the model is that negative sentences with unraised VP-internal subjects will surface in English and French child language. Indeed, negation provides a test case for the model because the issue of whether the subject is situated in [Spec, IP] or [Spec, VP] is resolved by its location relative to the negative element. Following Pollock (1989) and Zanutinni (1989), among others, I assume that the negative element is either a VP-adjunct or in [Spec, NegP] and that its position to the left of the verb is fixed.
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© 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Pierce, A.E. (1992). Negation. In: Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2574-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2574-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-1553-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-2574-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive