Deprez and Pierce (1993) used negation data from German and other languages to support the hypothesis that subject noun phrases (NPs) originate within verb phrases (VPs). Deprez and Pierce argued that children go through an early stage of language acquisition during which subject NPs may optionally stay VP-internal. They claimed that during this stage, children do not distinguish between the negators nicht 'not' and nein 'no'. As a result, children produce negative utterances involving either negator, in which the negator occurs to the left of the subject. In their work, Deprez and Pierce did not systematically analyze German acquisition data, but rather relied on anecdotal data and examples cited in the literature. In this article, we analyze the negative utterances said by German-speaking children in transcripts of spontaneous speech. Contrary to Deprez and Pierce's claims, the results of our analyses indicate that German-speaking children distinguish between nicht and nein, using nicht in sentence-medial position for sentential negation and nein in sentence- initial position for anaphoric negation. Also contrary to Deprez and Pierce's theory, once negative utterances without overt subjects, anaphoric negatives, quantifier negatives, and unclear or stuttered negatives are excluded, there is no evidence that German-speaking children go through an early stage during which negation appears to the left of subject NPs.