The acquisition and use of negation in the early child language

Abstract

This paper investigates how negation develops in the speech of a Turkish-speaking child in the very early stages of language acquisition. The study features the video recordings of a child between the ages of 19 and 22 months and the analyses of negative forms in the recorded data. The development of negation in parent-child interactions is discussed with demonstrative examples between the boy and his parents. The data was recorded by the mother in a regular fashion, particularly at play and lunch times. For the detailed data analysis, the recordings have been divided into three sets according to the age of the child as 1;8, 1;9 and 1;10. The initial step is to identify and explain how negation is formed in Turkish, which is followed by the data analysis in order to track the development of negation in the child’s speech. The ways in which his formation of negation improves have been given special attention and interpreted as the child’s linguistic knowledge expands. The data evidences that the child not only starts to use most forms of negation as early as the age of 1;10, but also does this strategically by performing them for a successful communication in a clear developmental sequence. Some of his strategies traced in the data are using variety sets, complementing one negative form with the other to emphasize his point and providing reasons and results for his statements. The findings confirm that the child acquires the forms in an order from more independent to the dependant as well as in a sequence from the easy to the linguistically and cognitively more challenging.