Learning Principles and Development of Negation in Child Language

Abstract

On the development of negation with respect to the answer to negative interrogative questions, I draw attention here to the explanatory adequacy of learning principles in child language acquisition, and present why the Subset Principle does not hold for relevant acquisition data. Choi & Zubin (1985) reported that both Korean children and English speaking children take three developmental stages in the acquisition of negation, regarding the answer to affirmative or negative interrogative questions. Both groups of children step through the same first and second stage of production of full propositional negation but diverge at the third stage, at which Korean children adhere to full propositional negation while English speaking children start to produce core propositional negation. Offering theoretical accounts of the developmental stages, Jang & Kwon (2008) deny the Subset Principle and support Markedness Hypothesis as well as the Growth Theory. In this article, I will point out potential problems of Jang and Kwon’s arguments through reinterpretation of Choi & Zubin’s findings, and argue that the Subset Principle does not hold in this case for a different reason. In addition, with retuning the notion of markedness, I will present different accounts of each of the three developmental stages against the Growth Theory.