Acquisition of Negation in The Anaañ Child Language

Abstract

The study on the acquisition of negation in the Anaañ child language aimed at examining how an Anaañ child acquires negation. It also identifies the negative forms used by the Anaañ child. Ten children from Afaha Esang, Abak Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State were studied between the ages of one and a half and four years. The children’s conversations with peers at play- the ground, with siblings and parents as well as interactive questionings by the researchers which were recorded formed the instrument for the collection of data for the study. The framework of principles and parameters (P&P) was adopted for the analysis of the data. The basic assumption for its adoption is the claim that children simply need to learn the values of relevant parameters to acquire the grammar of their native language. The study concluded that the Anaañ child makes use of the pre-verbal negation ‘kú’ – “don’t” and the one-word negation, ‘ìyó’ – “no” to communicate rejection, denial, and disagreement. I, therefore,e recommends that more studies on different aspects of linguistic analysis be carried out on the Anaañ child language acquisition.