“Nee, nee motorbike there”
A case study into bilingualism effects in the simultaneous acquisition of
English and Dutch negation
Honours dissertation Research Master in Linguistics
Faculty of Arts University of Groningen
Margreet van Koert S1332007
Acknowledgments
First of all, I would like to thank Kees de Bot without whose guidance I would never have started the data collection. This study started out very different from what it has become and it is Angeliek van Hout who blew new life into this study. She helped me find the focus of the present study and guided me through the many versions of this thesis. The analyses in this study would never have been conducted without the kind help of Monika Schmid, to whom I am indebted for explaining the CLAN programme. I discussed various ideas with Evelien Krikhaar to whom I am thankful for her help and time.
To carry out this study I depended on the hospitality of two families. First of all, I would like to thank Tina and Dagan Oomes for inviting me into their home and making me feel welcome. Secondly, I am greatly indebted to my aunt and uncle Aartje and Andries Gerrits who were kind enough to let me stay at their home so that my commute was considerably shortened. Also, I would like to thank both families for picking me up and taking me to the metro and train stations in Spijkenisse and Dordrecht respectively.
Explanatory list of terms and abbreviations
Adv Adverb
AgrP Agreement Phrase
Aux Auxiliary
BFLA Bilingual First Language Acquisition
Cont Continuous Marker
CP Complementizer Phrase
Dim Diminutive
DO Direct Object
DP Determiner Phrase
Dummy do A form of do that is used only to support
negation, question-formation or emphasis
Emp Emphasis Marker
Interj Interjection
IO Indirect Object
MLUw Mean Length of Utterance in words
Mod Aux Modal Auxiliary
NegP Negation Phrase
NP Noun Phrase
PP Preposition Phrase
SOV Subject Object Verb
Spec Specifier position
SVO Subject Verb Object
TP Tense Phrase
V2-language A language in which the finite verb form
appears in the second constituent position
Summary
Contents
Acknowledgements 1
Explanatory list of terms and abbreviations 2
Summary 3
Chapter 1 – Introduction 7
Chapter 2 – Background 9
2.1 Bilingual First Language Acquisition 9
2.2 Negation 11
2.2.1 Negation in English 11
Not and dummy do 11
No 14
2.2.2 Negation in Dutch 15
Nee 18
2.2.3 Places of possible cross-linguistic influence 18
2.3 First language acquisition of negation 20
2.4 Research Question 26 Chapter 3 – Method 29 3.1 Background information 29 3.1.1 The recordings 29 3.1.2 The subject 30 3.1.3 The mother 31 3.1.4 The father 32
3.2 Lee’s language development 32
3.2.1 Lee’s development in English 32
3.2.2 Lee’s development in Dutch 33
3.2.3 Lee’s bilingual development 35
3.3 Transcription 37
3.3.1 CLAN programme 37
3.4 Speech samples concerning negation 37
3.4.1 Lee’s negation speech samples 37
3.4.2 Mother’s negation speech samples 38
Chapter 4 – Results and analyses: input versus output 39
4.1 Aims of input versus output analyses 39
4.2 Analysis 1 40
4.2.1 Results for Lee’s English negator development 40 4.2.2 Results for Lee’s Dutch negator development 43 4.2.3 Results proportional frequency of negators in the English input 45 4.2.4 Results proportional frequency of negators in the Dutch input 46
4.3 Analysis 2 47
4.3.1 Syntactic comparison of English input and output 47
No 48
Not 50
Don’t 53
4.3.2 Syntactic comparison of Dutch input and output 54
Nee 54
Niet 57
Chapter 5 – Results and analyses: bilingual versus monolingual development 60 5.1 Aims of bilingual versus monolingual development analyses 60 5.2 Dutch monolingual versus English-Dutch bilingual development 61 5.2.1 Hoekstra and Jordens’ findings and conclusions 61 5.2.2 Lee’s Dutch negation in comparison to Jasmijn’s negation 62 5.3 English-German bilingual versus English-Dutch bilingual development 65
5.3.1 Schelleter’s findings and conclusions 65
5.3.2 Lee’s negation in comparison to Sonja’s negation 66
Chapter 6 – Discussion 70
6.1 Recapitulation of analyses 70
6.2 Discussion of input-output comparison 70
6.3 Discussion of monolingual-bilingual comparison 74
Chapter 7 – Conclusion 79
References 81
Appendix I – Lee’s animal sounds 85
Appendix II – Lee’s English negated utterances compared to his mother’s utterances 86
Chapter 1 Introduction
To most parents their child’s discovery of the word no comes as a nightmare. This feeling is shared by linguists, because young children produce original negated utterances almost constantly. It is sheer drudgery to reconcile these original utterances with linguistic theories. Bilingual children offer a double challenge to linguists: they develop negation in two languages simultaneously. Children start producing negated sentences quite early, as Drozd explains that:
[n]egation is one of the earliest functions to emerge in child languages. The word no in English, and corresponding words like nee in Dutch and nein in German, are normally the first negative expressions to appear in children’s speech. (Drozd, 2002, p. 77).
Since negation emerges in all languages early, it is a topic that easily allows comparison between the bilingual child’s languages.
Negation is a topic that has been diligently studied from Bellugi’s seminal paper (1967) onwards. Many studies have tried to explain children’s deviant language behaviour (e.g. Bloom, 1970; Clahsen, 1988; Drozd, 2002; Hoekstra and Jordens, 1994; Pierce, 1992; Schelleter, 2000; van der Wal, 1996; van Kampen, 2007), but there is still much debate on what children mean when they express multiword negated utterances and how these constructions are represented in their minds. It is interesting to examine negation in bilingual acquisition, because they might show different non-target negated patterns from monolingual children. These different non-target negated utterances might stem from cross-linguistic influence – i.e. when bilingual children use grammatical patterns from one language into the other – which is an issue that is still under debate. Furthermore, most linguists who are in favour of the possibility of cross-linguistic influence believe that the stronger language of the two influences the weaker one (Tomasello, 2003), but this may not always be the case (Döpke, 1999). Finally, cross-linguistic influence may be more likely to happen in languages that are highly similar, such as English and Dutch with regard to negation, than in languages that are very different (Hulk, 2000). Therefore, it is relevant to investigate cross-linguistic influence in English-Dutch bilingual acquisition of negation.
months to when he was two years and three months. Lee’s negation development is compared to the input he received and to monolingual and bilingual development in English and Dutch in order to determine whether Lee shows cross-linguistic influence. The comparison between Lee’s speech and his input in English and Dutch is made to check for cross-linguistic influence in the domain of negator frequency and in the syntactic patterns. The comparison between Lee’s Dutch and monolingual Dutch development reveals whether Lee is similar to monolinguals in his production of constructions that include negators and verbs and convey modality. Lee’s constructions that consist of negators and verbs in English and Dutch are compared and contrasted to those by another bilingual to check whether Lee set the verb-movement parameters correctly (see Figures 1 and 3 in Chapter 2).
Chapter 2 Background 2.1 Bilingual first language acquisition
In the past thirty years bilingualism has become an extensively researched field in linguistics. This holds for child bilingualism (Romaine, 1989; Barnes, 2006; De Houwer, 2009) as well as for adult bilingualism (de Bot, Lowie and Verspoor, 2005; Wei, 2007). The present study concerns child bilingualism, especially Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA). BFLA is defined as “the development of language in young children who hear two languages spoken to them from birth” (De Houwer, 2009, p. 2). This means that there is no chronological difference between the child’s acquisition of the two languages.
The first comprehensive study to investigate BFLA is Ronjat’s seminal case study (1913) on his son, who heard German and French at home from birth. Ronjat is typically known for advocating the ‘one person – one language’ principle, which is still adhered to today by many bilingual families in monolingual societies (Piller, 2002). Another thorough investigation in the early years of research into child bilingualism was done by Leopold (1939-1949). He minutely tracked his daughters’ acquisition of German and English and noted some examples of word order confusion in one of his daughter’s speech (Romaine, 1989, p. 187). Since bilingual children can – especially in their early language development – show language mixing, some linguists (cf. Volterra and Taeschner, 1978) believed that bilingual children do not differentiate their languages in the early stages. However, since then there have been many studies (e.g. Genesee, 1989; De Houwer, 1990; Barnes, 2006) that show that bilingual children develop their languages separately and autonomously. The language mixing that occurs in early bilingual children’s utterances is argued to come from the influence both languages have on one another.
BFLA is not equivalent to double monolingual first language acquisition, because in BFLA there is a potential presence of cross-linguistic influence from one language onto the other.1 The presence of two languages in close contact may offer a convergence of strategies that are used cross-linguistically. Hulk explains that the bilingual child may draw on strategies from one language and use them in the other, especially when the input is ambiguous and there can be more than one grammatical analysis (Hulk, 2000, p. 58). Hulk studied a
1
Dutch bilingual child and found that she used a certain word order pattern in her French more frequently than her French monolingual peers. According to Hulk this is due to indirect influence from Dutch in which that particular word order pattern is much more frequent in the input than in French.
In a longitudinal study Döpke (1999) found that her German-English bilingual subjects mainly followed the developmental path of monolingual children with regard to negation. Therefore, she concluded that the languages developed separately; however, she also found cross-linguistic structures which persisted over many months. Since these structures were bilateral, meaning that German influenced English and vice versa, Döpke argued that bilingual data show cognitive interaction between the languages.
Schelleter (2000) investigated her bilingual daughter’s negated syntactic structures in German and English. She found that the child differentiated the word order patterns of both languages, but that she used some negation patterns from German in her English. Therefore, Schelleter concluded that the child facilitated the expression of negation in English by choosing a structure that was already present in German, so that she did not need an additional negation pattern, which could only be used in English.
These studies (i.e. Hulk, 2000; Döpke, 1999; Schelleter, 2000) show that bilingual children differentiate their languages, but as the languages are in such close contact, children may sometimes generalise structures from one language to the other, particularly when the structures in these languages show overlap to a large extent.
The present study focussed on cross-linguistic influence apparent in negation patterns found in the child language data. It was decided to examine negation, because negation is one of the first functions to arise in child language; hence, much data on negation are present in the early period (1;06 – 2;03) which was investigated in the present study.2 The
recordings stopped too soon to properly study his grammatical development, since it was only during the last recordings that the subject began to combine more than two words productively. Furthermore, his speech lacked verb inflection, as he typically used non-finite verbs during this period. So, with regard to the nature of the data negation was the best grammatical function to examine. In addition, negation is an extensively studied topic in the
literature, so comparisons with monolingual children are easily drawn and cross-linguistic influence can be detected.
2.2 Negation
To explain the similarities and differences between adult standard English and Dutch negation, some of the negation peculiarities of both languages which are most relevant to the present study are described.
2.2.1 Negation in English
In English, as in many other languages, negation can be marked by individual words, such as not, no, never or by affixes, such as, for example, –n’t. In the present study only the negation markers no, not and don’t were studied, because these were the negation markers that occurred in the child’s speech samples.
Not and dummy do
Unlike other Germanic languages, as presented by the Dutch sentence in (1) and the German sentence in (2), English uses dummy do to form negative clause structures when lexical verbs are involved, as shown in (3) and (4).
(1) Hij loopt niet naar school
(2) Er läuft nicht zur Schule
(3) *He walks not to school
(4) He does not walk to school
As the examples show, the negation markers niet and nicht in Dutch and German respectively combine with the lexical verb to negate the clause. In English this results in an illicit sentence, as in (3). When dummy do is inserted, as in (4), the sentence becomes grammatically legal. Dummy do is not used in constructions that are formed with auxiliaries, such as to be, to have, modals, and copula be. To obtain a negative clause from a construction with an auxiliary, the negation has to be associated with the auxiliary verbs. In addition, auxiliaries have negative inflected forms, in other words, they end in n’t in both the past and present tense (Huddleston and Pullum, 2005; Radford, 2004).
lowering is blocked by the presence of the negation marker not. Figure 1 shows how the presence of not blocks –s from lowering to walk in X-bar theory representation. 3
Figure 1. Syntactic tree representation of *He walks not to school according to X-bar theory. (Based on an example from Carnie, 2002, p. 197).
The lexical verb is generated in the Verb Phrase (VP) in X-bar theory, but the affix of the lexical verb is generated in the Tense Phrase (TP). So, in Figure 1 walk is generated under V, but the affix –s for third person singular is generated under T. As the NegP appears in between TP and VP, not – which is the head of NegP – blocks affix lowering of –s to walk. Therefore, the sentence in (3) and in Figure 1 is illicit according to X-bar theory.
According to Radford, in Elizabethan English not used to be an adverb which was placed in the Specifier of NegP. The lexical verb could undergo head movement, so that it would move from V to the head of NegP, i.e. Neg, and then to T; thus, (3) would be grammatical. Modern day English does not allow this V-to-T movement anymore and instead dummy do is inserted in such sentences. The grammatically correct counterpart of (3)
3 The Dutch counterpart of the syntactic tree representation in Figure 1 is given in Figure 4 on p. 17.
is presented in (4). When auxiliaries or modals are generated under T, these verb forms will result in a grammatically legal sentence, as in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Syntactic tree representation of 1 He does not walk to school; 2 He can not walk to school; 3 He must not walk to school; 4 He has not walked to school; 5 He is not walking to school according to X-bar theory.
Figure 2 shows that does is inserted in T to obtain a grammatical negated sentence; modals, such as can and must, are generated under T to construct a grammatically correct negative clause structure; and, auxiliaries be and have are generated in T to create a negative construction which is grammatically licensed in English. In these cases, dummy do, modals and auxiliaries are often contracted with not to create a –n’t form. Sometimes, the contracted forms of the modals and the negation marker appear on their own in elliptical answers, e.g. Wash your hands! Shan’t! or I’m gonna tickle you! Don’t!, but normally these contracted forms cannot stand on their own to form a grammatically correct clause structure.4 Thus, sentences
such as *He can not to school or *He must not to school are ungrammatical, because a modal does
4 The example Wash your hands! Shan’t! is taken from Mackenzie, 1997, p. 84.
not provide representational content in English (Downing and Locke, 2006, p. 324). Radford (2004) explains that modal auxiliaries only allow a verb expression as their complement and that the semantic function of modal auxiliaries is to mark the grammatical property mood; i.e., modal auxiliaries have no semantic content of their own and hence cannot appear by themselves in a sentence.
No
As a negation marker no has different grammatical functions from not. Drozd notes that no can occupy several syntactic positions in Standard English: it can occur in determiner position (no child may cross the street), as an adjectival modifier (that is no good), as an adverbial modifier (he no longer works at the office), as a verb (he’s always noing and yesing her), as reported speech (the child cried no), and in reduced concessives (bad weather or no, we are leaving tomorrow) (Drozd, 2002, p. 81). Since the discussion of all those syntactic positions of no is beyond the scope of this paper, only the two most relevant meanings and functions will be discussed here, which are no as a quantifier in determiner position (no child may cross the street) and anaphoric no (did you go there? No, I didn’t).
Firstly, no can act as a quantifier (Schelleter, 2000; Radford, 2004). According to Downing and Locke (2006) no is an indefinite quantifier, particularly a negative determinative which combines with mass, count, singular and plural nouns, shown in (5)-(7).
(5) No child may cross the street. (6) No children may cross the street. (7) No milk was used in this recipe.
These no-QPs can appear in all grammatical positions: in Subject (S), Direct Object (DO) and Indirect Object (IO) position. Also, they may be found in there-existentials, as in (8).
(8) There are no children at this party.
Drozd (2002, p. 82-6) explains that in colloquial English many negative there-existentials are omitted, so the sentence in (8) would result in (9).
(9) No children at this party (, are there?)
former part of the sentence. Drozd argues that many of the no-QPs that young children use are modelled on adults’ production of these elliptical negative there-existentials.
Secondly, no may occur as an adverb expressing a negative reply to a question or a correction of a false assumption on the part of another person. In line with Hoekstra and Jordens (1994) this use of no is referred to as anaphoric no and is illustrated in (10).
(10) Did you tell her? No, I didn’t.
Usually, as shown in (10), this use of no is accompanied by an elliptical response in colloquial English. Figure 3 presents the X-bar theory representation of such an elliptical response.5
Figure 3. Syntactic tree representation of No, I didn’t according to X-bar theory.6
2.2.2 Negation in Dutch
In Dutch, as in many other languages, negation can be expressed morphologically and syntactically. Negation can be conveyed morphologically by the prefix n- in pronouns and
5
The V and Object-DP in Figure 3 are crossed out, because they are not pronounced. 6
Syntactic theories differ in the syntactic category of the projection of no. Anaphoric no is usually placed in an Adjunct position, which would generate an Adjunct CP in this case. However, for reasons of simplification, this No is placed in the Specifier position of CP.
adverbs (niets “nothing”, nooit “never”). Syntactically, negation can be articulated with adjectives or with adverbs, as shown in sentences (11)-(13). 7
(11) Ik heb geen spinazie gegeten. I have no spinach eaten. “I haven’t eaten spinach” (12) Ik heb dat boek niet gelezen.
I have that book not read. “I haven’t read that book” (13) Zoiets zou ik nooit doen.
Something would I never do. “I’d never do something like that”
Haeseryn (1997) describes that geen (no) in (11) is a fusion of the negator niet (not) and the indefinite determiner een (a). Since geen is in complementary distribution with other determiners, it appears as a negation marker of the DP. Niet, on the other hand, normally appears as negation marker of the VP (Model, 1991), as in sentence (12); thus, niet has scope over the whole sentence. Hoekstra and Jordens (1994) state that niet typically expresses sentential negation. Finally, nooit (never) in (13) is a negative adverb.
The syntactic tree representation of a Dutch negated sentence containing niet is different from that of an English negated sentence. Firstly, Dutch is usually considered an SOV language (Haegeman, 1994; Vandeweghe, 2000), while English is typically represented as an SVO language (Carnie, 2002; Radford, 2004).8 This means that the lexical verb of the
VP, i.e. the head, appears to the right of the object in Dutch, but to the left of the object in English. Secondly, Dutch has V-to-T raising, which means that the lexical verb moves to the head of TP to pick up tense. Since V can raise across Neg to T, there is no such operation as dummy do insertion in Dutch, when negated sentences are formed. Sentence (1) is represented as the syntactic tree representation in Figure 4.
7
Dutch – like all Germanic languages except English – is a verb-second (V2) language, which means that the verb which carries tense appears in the second constituent position in main clauses, as in (13).
Figure 4. Syntactic tree representation of Hij loopt niet naar school (He doesn’t walk to school) according to X-bar theory.
As can be seen in Figure 4, the negated sentence in (1) perfectly fits X-bar theory. The head of VP appears on the right, but is moved to T to create a correct Dutch sentence.
Unlike English not, Dutch niet is not restricted to the position immediately behind the tensed or modal verb. In fact, the Dutch negation marker niet is somewhat free regarding its syntactic positions in the clause. For example, niet in sentence (12) can be moved to the position behind the auxiliary, thus creating (14).
(14) Ik heb niet dat boek gelezen I have not that book read “I haven’t read that book”
There is a subtle change of meaning when niet is moved: (12) expresses negation of the process of reading, whereas in (14) having read a particular book is negated. There are many
more interesting features of Dutch negation concerning scrambling niet across the clause, but a discussion of these aspects is beyond the scope of this paper.9
As niet can appear in several positions in the clause, the literature describes two possibilities with regard to the status of negation in Dutch.10 Zwarts (1997) argues that niet is
in the Spec of NegP when niet is used to express sentential negation. Conversely, Hoekstra and Jordens (1994) claim that niet is an adverb which is projected in an adjunct adjoined to the VP. This line of reasoning would explain why niet is quite free to appear on the left or right of the Object-DP. Currently there is still much debate on this topic and a decision between these possibilities is beyond the scope of this paper.
Nee
Contrary to English no, Dutch nee has a limited reach of syntactic functions in Standard Dutch. Typically, nee appears anaphorically, but it may also appear as an interjection to retract a prior statement, as presented in (15)-(16).
(15) Wil je naar school? Nee, ik wil niet naar school.
“Do you want to go to school? No, I don’t want to go to school.” (16) Hij is nu twintig, nee, éénentwintig jaar.11
“He’s twenty, no, twenty-one years old now.”
The sentence in (15) shows an example of anaphoric use of nee, which is comparable to the anaphoric use of no in English. In (16) nee is used as an interjection, which is a function that English no can also take.
2.2.3 Places of possible cross-linguistic influence
For a bilingual child acquiring English and Dutch simultaneously, there are three differences with regard to negation structures that may contribute to cross-linguistic influence.
Firstly, Figures 1 and 4 show that Dutch allows V-to-T raising across Neg, whereas in English the presence of Neg blocks T-to-V lowering; hence, the insertion of dummy do. This holds for lexical verbs only, as auxiliaries and modals are generated under T in presence
9 Readers who are interested in Dutch negation are referred to Model (1991, p. 233-41). In this section Model explains the behaviour and the scope of niet with regard to verb-second and extrapositions.
10
Pierce explains that for all languages the negation marker is either positioned in the Specifier of NegP or in a VP-adjunct (1992, p. 51).
or absence of Neg. So, in English there is a difference between lexical verbs on the one hand, which always remain in V, and modals and auxiliaries on the other hand, which always remain in T. Dutch modal auxiliaries have no special properties that set them apart from lexical verbs (Hoekstra and Jordens, 1994, p. 124). Furthermore, modal auxiliaries in Dutch do not need an additional lexical verb to create a correct grammatical sentence, as can be seen in (17)-(20).12
(17) Dat kan niet! That can not! “That can’t be!”
(18) Dat zou ik nooit kunnen. That would I never can. “I could never do that” (19) Ik zal wel moeten.
I will [emp] must. “I’ll have to” (20) Ik wil naar huis!
I want to house! “I want to go home!”
The examples show that in Dutch, unlike in English, a lexical verb complement to a modal auxiliary is not necessary to generate correct grammatical clause structures. For negation, this means that Dutch modal auxiliaries can combine on their own with niet, as in (17), in contrast to English modals which cannot appear without a lexical verb (cf. He cannot to school and He must not to school further discussed on p. 13).
An English-Dutch bilingual child could overgeneralise the Dutch setting for negation in his English, so that he allows lexical verb negation, e.g. I climb not.13 Conversely, the child
could overgeneralise the English setting for negation in his Dutch and use modals in combination with lexical verbs rather than using modals on their own.14
Secondly, the position of not – as a sentential negation marker – is fixed (cf. Figure 1 in which not appears as the head of NegP), whereas niet is less limited in its positions (cf. section 2.2.2 which explains that Zwarts (1997) deems niet a head, but Hoekstra & Jordens (1994) argue niet is an adjunct). The bilingual child may overgeneralise the strict positioning
12 These sentences are examples 15, 16a, 16b and 16c in Vandeweghe (2000, p. 213).
of not to niet, so that niet always appears to the right of the tensed verb. On the other hand, the child may overgeneralise the free adjunction of niet to not, e.g. he plays today not, which is fine in Dutch (hij speelt vandaag niet), but not in English.
Thirdly, no and nee overlap in their function of anaphoric negators, yet only no can be used as a negative quantifier (e.g. no milk today). Since these words share the function of anaphoric negator, it may well be that the bilingual child overgeneralises the quantifier function of no unto nee. Conversely, the child may use no as anaphoric negator only, because he overgeneralises the strict anaphoric use of nee.
Finally, some expressions which require no in English, demand niet in Dutch, e.g. no way is echt niet, and no more is niet meer. This indicates that there are some slight variations between the use of the negation markers in Dutch and English.15 The bilingual child may
overgeneralise some of these specific expressions from one language into the other.
2.3 First Language Acquisition of Negation
One of the first studies to examine negation in a first language acquisition setting was Bellugi’s (1967) influential analysis of early child English negation. Bellugi studied three monolingual children and concluded that children in the early stages of language development produce an initial negator attached to the sentence nucleus to express negation, as in no pinch me or no the sun shining (1967, p. 196). This attachment of the negator to the clause is a facilitation of sentence-internal negation by the child which is unrelated to the adult model.16 Bellugi assumed that in later stages of language development these primitive
structures will disappear, as sentence-internal negators emerge.
Bloom (1970) also examined the negation development of three English monolingual children (1;07 – 2;03), but took a different position: she argued that negative sentences are not created by adding a negation marker external to the clause, but that by including a negation marker in a sentence the workload for young children is increased, so that they fail to realise certain constituents. Hence, negation markers appear sentence-initially in many of young children’s negative utterances. These negated sentences could be paraphrased as No, I
15 In these examples no and niet function as negative particles; nee cannot function as a negative particle, but not can when it precedes quantifiers, such as many and much.
16
Sentence-internal negation refers to sentential negators that appear within the clause, e.g. not in He is not
coming. Sentence-external negation refers to anaphoric negators that appear outside the clause, e.g. no in
don’t want X, which would result, for example, in No (I don’t want you to) pinch me. On the basis of this analysis Bloom concluded that “children’s language is directly related, from the beginning, to the adult model and is not an exotic language that is eventually supplanted by a different system” (Bloom, 1970, p. 225).
Usage-based theory thinks of children’s language development along similar lines: “the difference between the child and the adult inventories is in the balance between fully item-based constructions and partially or fully abstract constructions.” (Lieven and Tomasello, 2008, p. 177). Like Bloom’s explanation of children’s language development, usage-based theory assumes that children’s language is modelled on the adult input and grows to be increasingly similar to the adult system. The development of abstract constructions occurs only after a child has had sufficient exposure to several similar item-based constructions. Therefore, input frequency is essential to learning. The more often children hear a certain construction, such as that’s a dog, the more entrenched this construction will become and the more available this construction is for the processing and production of utterances. Tomasello (2003) argues that for BFLA this holds too, since some studies (e.g. Döpke, 1998) found that “bilingual children tend to overgeneralise syntactic structures from the language they hear most frequently and know best to the one they hear least frequently and know less well, rather than in the opposite direction” (Tomasello, 2003, p. 175). Yet, frequency is not the only explanatory factor, as Tomasello claims “[i]nput frequency and structural complexity interact in complex ways in the developmental process” (Tomasello, 2003, p. 175). Therefore, structurally more complex constructions, such as what did you do that for?, are learned later than structurally more straightforward constructions, such as that’s a dog. Furthermore, in usage-based theories it is assumed that children map meanings onto forms through the functions those forms have. Tomasello puts it thus: “Children learn words most readily in situations in which it is easiest to read the adult’s communicative intentions.” (Tomasello, 2003, p. 49). Moreover, he claims that “communicative function is the main basis for [children’s] linguistic generalisations over time.” (Tomasello, 2003, p. 324). So, adherents of usage-based theory believe children learn words and constructions and make linguistic abstractions on the basis of the communicative function of the adult’s utterance.
development of early negative constructions with verbs. The language development of the subject of their study, Brian, was closely tracked from 2;0 – 3;0 and his multiword utterances consisting of negators and verbs were coded for negative element type (no, not or -n’t) and semantic function of utterance (non-existence, failure, denial, rejection, prohibition, inability, epistemic negation, and other). In addition, Brian’s mother’s utterances were coded for negative element type and semantic function. Cameron-Faulkner et al. found that in the beginning of his language development Brian used no in combination with a verb for all his negator + verb utterances (such as no move). At 2;06 the construction not + verb (e.g. not open the lid) began to arise, which frequently resulted in an ungrammatical structure. At 3;0 the no + verb constructions had disappeared from Brian’s speech and can’t + verb (e.g. I can’t talk) and don’t + verb (e.g. don’t sit down here) constructions were increasingly present in Brian’s negative utterances. According to Cameron-Faulkner et al. this pattern related directly to Brian’s input, because his mother used no most frequently as a negator in single and multiword utterances. Based on that, Brian created a no + X construction which he used for whatever he wanted to negate. The frequency of no in the input – and in Brian’s own speech – resulted in novel constructions, such as no reach, which were not attested in the input. Cameron-Faulkner et al. claimed that these non-target constructions are generated in close interaction with the frequency of forms in the adult’s speech and of the child’s own usage.
It was not only frequency that determined Brian’s pattern of negator development. Cameron-Faulkner et al. found that the speed with which not + verb constructions replace no + verb constructions, and subsequently the replacement pace of don’t + verb or can’t + verb for the not + verb constructions, also reflects the variety of negators that the mother uses for a certain function. They explain that “the most frequently used ‘nt [sic] negators in the input were the first to emerge in Brian’s speech, and furthermore they emerged earliest in the functions in which they were used frequently in the input.” (Cameron-Faulkner et al., 2007, p. 272). For example, the mother consistently used can’t + verb to express inability, so Brian used this form earlier to convey inability than if inability was expressed by several auxn’t + verb constructions.17 Cameron-Faulkner et al. argued that Brain’s negation development could be explained from a usage-based perspective, because Brian based his linguistic generalisations concerning negation on input frequency and on communicative function of the forms used.
At the time of the present study there were no studies to be found that analysed early Dutch acquisition of negation or early BFLA of negation from a usage-based perspective. Most early Dutch acquisition studies on negation are conducted from a generative grammar perspective, and this holds for early BFLA studies on negation too. Many studies in the generative grammar tradition base their work on the Continuity Theory (e.g. Clahsen, 1988; Pierce, 1992; Hoekstra and Jordens, 1994; Drozd, 2002; Gilkerson, Hyams and Curtiss, 2003) which was developed in the 1980s and 1990s. The Continuity Theory basically states that language experience is analysed by means of the same notions and relations at all stages of development. The strong version of the Continuity Theory entails that all syntactic categories are available from the earliest moments of language development (e.g. Lust, 1994). Hence, language acquisition is reduced to parameter setting and lexical learning. To explain the deviant patterns found in child language negation, the child data are analysed in line with the Continuity Theory. Pierce (1992) examined four English and four French monolingual children between 1;08 – 2;03. She found that the negative utterances by the English children showed a developmental pattern, because during the first stage the negator remained in the first position, but in the second stage the subject was raised over negation. In her study Pierce assumed the VP-internal subject hypothesis, in which subject-DPs are thought to be generated in the Spec position of VP. Adults raise these subject-DPs to the Spec position of TP – since subject-DPs pick up nominative case in the Spec position of TP – but children fail to do so. Sentences attested in child language such as no the sun shining can be explained as failure of raising the subject-DP. The negative element no, however, is generated in the same position as the adult’s negative element, i.e. in the Spec position of NegP.18
Drozd (2002) took a different approach and argued that Bloom’s paraphrase I don’t want X of children’s rejections is not in line with the Continuity Theory and it does not represent children’s knowledge of the grammar of no. Drozd claimed that “external clause negation with no (as in No Mommy do it) expresses metalinguistic exclamative negation (No way Mommy do it)” (Drozd, 2002, p. 114). Van der Wal disputed Drozd’s explanation of some children’s negative utterances as exclamatory negation. She stated that especially in her Dutch corpus “[o]nly very rarely is an example found which clearly has the function of
18
exclamatory negation” (van der Wal, 1996, p. 195). In addition, she claimed that other interpretations of these utterances are possible.
Hoekstra and Jordens (1994) studied a Dutch girl, Jasmijn, from 1;07 to 1;11 and found that she used nee in non-finite constructions (e.g. nee poes hier zitten (no pussycat sit here)) as modal negation expressing I don’t want X. Furthermore, Hoekstra and Jordens determined that niet was considered a non-modal negator, as Jasmijn used it to negate descriptions pertaining to the here-and-now and only occurred with finite verbs.19 Hoekstra and Jordens
concluded that the negative modals, such as kannie (can’t) and magnie (mayn’t), in Jasmijn’s speech received an identical syntactic analysis to nee, because both were analysed by the child as adjuncts. They concluded that children have all the syntactic structures at their disposal from earliest language development onwards. Negation can be expressed by a functional head projection of NegP, like English not, or by an adverb which is adjoined to another projection, like Dutch niet. Hoekstra and Jordens assumed that less information is required for the child to set the parameter to the adverb option than to the functional head option. Hence, they proposed that “at least in a number of cases, the child starts out with an adjunct structure, which only later is reanalyzed as a [functional head] structure.” (Hoekstra and Jordens, 1994, p. 123).
Van der Wal (1996) investigated the development trajectory of a different modal, namely hoeven niet (need not), from earliest language development onwards.20 She investigated
15 Dutch corpora and found that young children (1;06 – 1;11) use modals such as kunnen (can), mogen (may) and hoeven (need) exclusively in combination with niet.21 From 2;0 onwards
the distribution of modals such as kunnen and mogen is extended to affirmative sentences, but that of hoeven remains limited to negative sentences. She concluded that children know from the earliest stages onwards which licensers control hoeven expressions.
Döpke (1999) studied longitudinal data from four German-English bilingual children (2;0 – 5;0) and analysed two- and more word utterances which featured negation. She looked at mid-sentence negation modifications which were typical for German and English and examined whether they were used cross-linguistically. Döpke determined that the bilingual
19 Unfortunately, Hoekstra and Jordens give no examples of a finite verb in combination with niet in Jasmijn’s speech.
20
Hoeven is a negative-polarity item; hence, it usually only occurs with licensers, such as niet (not), geen (no), alleen (only) (van der Wal, 1996, p. 209).
children follow the developmental path of monolingual children for the most part; yet, cross-linguistic structures can be apparent for many months. She concluded that bilingual “children are aware of lexical categories cross-linguistically and that they compare and contrast their two languages.” (Döpke, 1999, p. 171).
Schelleter (2000) examined early child negation in her German-English bilingual subject, Sonja, who was studied from 1;11 to 2;09. Sonja used mainly not as a sentential negator – there was one occurrence of an auxiliary + n’t – and placed it after auxiliaries, copulas and main verbs (cf. I climb not). Schelleter explained that the occurrence of sentences such as I climb not in English originates from “negation [being] analysed as a lexical category that has the status of an adverbial.” (Schelleter, 2000, p. 119). Sonja treated adverbials in both languages correctly, as they appeared to the right of lexical verbs in English, but to the left in German. Schelleter concluded that her subject used negation structures in both English and German as adjuncts, rather than as functional head projections in English.
The Continuity Theory says that children have a full grammar at their disposal from the beginning. Many linguists (e.g. Clahsen, 1988; Pierce, 1992; Hoekstra and Jordens, 1994; Drozd, 2002; Gilkerson, Hyams and Curtiss, 2003) work in this tradition, but Tomasello took a very different approach, as he reasoned that:
There is not one shred of evidence for the continuity assumption. The reason children’s language does not look like adult language is that it is not like it in terms of underlying representations involved; children’s language is structured by much weaker and more local linguistic abstractions. (Tomasello, 2003, p. 323-4)
changed. Roeper stated that some innate learning mechanism is necessary to guide the frequency effects in language. For bilingual acquisition of negation this means that alongside input frequency an explanation needs to be found for children’s mental representations of negated structures in both languages.
2.4 Research Question
The present study focuses on the acquisition of negation in an English-Dutch bilingual child who has received equal exposure to English and Dutch. In particular, cross-linguistic influence - which plays a role in BFLA (Van der Linden, 2000) – is examined. Thus, the research question for this study is:
Are there any cross-linguistic influences on the child’s negation development in English and Dutch caused by his BFLA?
To check for cross-linguistic influences the bilingual child’s development in negation is compared to his parents’ use of negation and to monolingual and bilingual negation development.
The comparison between the subject’s and his parents’ use of negation is studied from a usage-based theory perspective. Usage-based theory considers frequency effects of input most relevant for the child’s acquisition of sentence structures. Frequency effects are extended to BFLA: “bilingual children tend to overgeneralize syntactic structures from the language they hear most frequently and know best to the one they hear least frequently and know less well, rather than in the opposite direction” (Tomasello, 2003, p. 175).22
Analysis 1 in the comparison between the subject’s and his parents’ use of negation focuses on negator frequency. This analysis is done to determine whether frequency of the negators in the input is directly reflected in the child’s acquisition path of negators. Differences are expected between the negator frequency in the English and Dutch input and the subject’s developmental path of negators; hence, cross-linguistic influence from the stronger language to the weaker language, such as Tomasello described, is predicted.
Analysis 2 in the comparison between the subject’s and his parents’ use of negation highlights syntactic patterns of negated utterances. This analysis is carried out to determine whether the child modelled his negated utterances on the syntactic patterns of his parents’ negated utterances. Difference are expected between the subject’s and his parents’ syntactic
patterns of negated utterances; hence, cross-linguistic influence from the stronger language to the weaker language, such as Tomasello described, is predicted.
The comparison between and other monolingual and bilingual children’s use of negation is examined from a generative grammar theory perspective. Parameter setting and lexical learning are the two most important aspects in language acquisition according to a generative grammar theory perspective. Evidence for the correct parameter setting is taken to mean that there is no cross-linguistic influence, whereas deviating language patterns from monolingual data are understood to originate from cross-linguistic influence.
Analysis 1 in the comparison between the subject’s and a monolingual Dutch girl’s use of negation draws attention to modality and the placement of nee and niet with regard to finite and non-finite verbs. This analysis is done to determine whether the subject shows similar negated constructions to monolingual Dutch children. Differences are expected between the subject’s and the monolingual Dutch girl’s negated constructions, because monolinguals receive different input than bilingual children. Thus, cross-linguistic influence from English to Dutch is predicted.23
Analysis 2 in the comparison between the subject’s and an English-German bilingual girl’s use of negation focuses on verb movement and adverbial treatment of not and niet. This analysis is done to determine whether the subject and the bilingual girl show similar verb movement and adverbial treatment of not and niet in English and Dutch or German. It is expected that the subject behaves similarly to the bilingual girl: he performs correct verb movement in English and Dutch, but treats both not and niet as adverbials. So, cross-linguistic influence from Dutch to English is predicted.
The study is set up as follows: in chapter four, a recent usage-based study into negation development by Cameron-Faulkner et al. (2007) is partially replicated in Analysis 1 to verify if the negator frequency in the input relates to the child’s developmental path of negators. negations patterns differs from the child negations patterns. Analysis 2 compares and contrasts the syntactic patterns of the negated utterances in the input to the subject’s negated utterances and is roughly based on Döpke’s study (1999). In Analysis 1 in chapter five, the subject’s placement and choice of negators in relation to the verb in Dutch is compared and contrasted to that of a monolingual Dutch girl, whose Dutch is described in Hoekstra and
Chapter 3 Method 3.1 Background information
3.1.1 The recordings
Since there are few corpora on early child bilingual Dutch and English, the investigator decided to collect the data herself. The subject, Lee, was found through acquaintances.24 The
data for this study were collected on three to four consecutive days at bimonthly intervals from the 26th of March 2006 on until the 14th of December 2006. Lee was one year and six
months when the recordings started and he was two years and three months when the recordings ended. The exact dates, length of tapes, number of utterances in English and Dutch, number of mixed utterances, and Lee’s ages are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Information on the recordings and Lee’s utterances.25 Date (day/month/year) Length of tape (hr.min:sec) # of English utterances by Lee # of Dutch utterances by Lee # of mixed utterances by Lee Total # of utterances produced by all speakers Lee’s age (year;month.day) 26/03/2006 0.22:22 171 (/171) 0 0 733 1;06.26 27/03/2006 0.33:56 277 (/277) 0 0 1033 1;06.27 28/03/2006 0.06:15 24 (/24) 0 0 179 1;06.28 29/03/2006 0.20:46 66 (/66) 0 0 613 1;06.29 03/05/2006 0.03:32 33 (/33) 0 0 142 1;08.03 05/05/2006 0.02:52 8 (/9) 1 0 119 1;08.05 06/05/2006 0.06:58 36 (/37) 1 0 239 1;08.06 23/06/2006 0.44:00 324 (/324) 0 0 1565 1;09.23 24/06/2006 0.29:00 173 (/173) 0 0 910 1;09.24 25/06/2006 0.33:00 221 (/221) 0 0 969 1;09.25 26/06/2006 0.22:45 117 (/117) 0 0 557 1;09.26 03/10/2006 0.41:11 309 (/323) 14 0 1310 2;01.03 04/10/2006 0.42:52 309 (/313) 4 0 1196 2;01.04 05/10/2006 0.26:43 228 (/241) 12 1 804 2;01.05 12/12/2006 0.49:27 295 (/582) 282 5 1823 2;03.12 13/12/2006 0.45:17 417 (/599) 178 4 1612 2;03.13 14/12/2006 1.00:16 577 (/603) 32 4 1876 2;03.14
The recordings usually lasted for about half an hour. The recordings were made on a Philips Voice Tracer and later digitally stored on a computer’s hard disk. The recording apparatus was a small device which could be easily picked up and taken to the place in the sitting room where the child was to ensure maximum audibility. The child was commonly
24
Lee is a pseudonym.
recorded in the sitting room, although some of the recordings in May and June were done outside in the back garden, because of the sunny weather.
Since the investigator and the family had not met before, the 25th of March was spent getting to know one another, explaining what the investigator was interested in and having Lee get familiarised with the investigator. All recordings started after the investigator had been in the house with the mother and child for at least one hour. Brown (1973) recommends that analyses and calculations, e.g. for mean length of utterance, should start from the second page of transcription onwards, since the child can be shy and, therefore, a bit quiet at first. However, in this case the child was already accustomed to the investigator when the voice recorder started recording. Therefore, the decision was made to conduct the analyses on the whole transcripts.
At the time of recording, Lee’s parents tried to adhere to the one-parent-one-language principle, so his mother spoke English to him and his father conversed with him in Dutch. When his parents were together, they spoke English.
Most interactions on the tapes consisted of mother-child dyads, which were in English, or father-child dyads, which were in Dutch; however, some were investigator-child dyads, which could be in either English or Dutch. Some of the interactions were triads between the mother, child and investigator, in which English was used, and there were father-child-investigator triads, which were in Dutch. Finally, there are a few examples of father-mother-child triads, in which the child switched between his languages.
All recordings contained spontaneous speech; therefore, the investigator could not control which language was spoken. Furthermore, most recordings were collected in the afternoon when the father was at work, so that there are few data on Dutch. The subject refused to speak Dutch to the investigator during the first few months. He only yielded when he began to speak more Dutch in general. According to his mother he started to speak Dutch to his grandmother – i.e. his father’s mother – at that point too. Lee’s paternal grandparents always spoke Dutch to him, even though his paternal grandmother was originally British-English; Lee’s father’s background will be explained in section 3.1.4.
3.1.2 Subject
small village near Rotterdam. His mother speaks British-English to him, while his father speaks standard Dutch to him. His grandparents on his father’s side speak Dutch to the child and his grandparents on his mother’s side speak British-English to him. He saw his maternal grandparents almost every six weeks for a whole week, so he was in close contact with them. His paternal grandparents were also often in touch with him, as they baby-sitted biweekly.
Other than his English family and his mother’s friends, Lee did not have much contact with English-speaking people. The same held for Dutch, other than his Dutch family, he did not have much contact with Dutch-speaking adults or children. His mother took him to baby gym every week at which they learnt to sing Dutch nursery rhymes. Nevertheless, his mother indicated that he was not as quick in learning the lyrics to the Dutch nursery rhymes as the other children, because she did not practice those songs with him. Instead his mother taught him English nursery rhymes which he was able to sing. Eight months after the last recordings, his mother reported that whereas Lee’s English had been stronger at first, his Dutch became the stronger language when he started going to playschool (which was from March 8 2007 onwards).26 This shift of language dominance –
language A is stronger than language B – is common in the BFLA literature, as Romaine reports that the notion of language “dominance is not static” (1989, p. 173).
Lee was an only child until November 2006 when his brother was born. The corpus does not contain any Lee-brother dyads.
3.1.3 Mother
Lee’s mother was born on the 8th of August in 1969 in Dagenham, near London, in
Great-Britain. Her parents are monolingual English speakers and she grew up in London. The highest education she received were her A-levels, which are comparable to pre-university exams, and at the time of recording she worked two days a week as a consultant which she often did from home.
At the time of recording Lee’s mother spoke very little Dutch, although she used some Dutch words while speaking English.
3.1.4 Father
Lee’s father was born on the 28th of August in 1978 in Dirksland in the Netherlands. He
grew up in Middelharnis and Melissant in Goeree Overflakkee, which is an island in the south of Zuid-Holland. His mother is English and his father is Dutch. He was raised bilingually in the Netherlands, but attended a monolingual Dutch school. His Dutch shows very slight traces of a Goeree Overflakkee dialect, but only in pronunciation, not in choice of words; however, his overall use is standard Dutch. His English does not show an apparent accent.
Lee’s father’s highest education is MBO-SPH, which roughly translates to intermediate vocational education in social pedagogical assistance. Lee’s father worked with mentally and physically handicapped children during the time of recording.
As Lee’s father had to work on most days of recording, he was often absent. However, during the last days of recording he was present and he interacted with the child. At that point Lee had become confident in Dutch and was very willing to use it with other people who used Dutch. Lee’s father only used Dutch with Lee and the investigator; he spoke English with Lee’s mother.
3.2 Lee’s language development 3.2.1 Lee’s development in English
The recording sessions started when Lee was one year and six months. At this time he did not have an extended productive vocabulary. He produced a variety of animal sounds – e.g. eeep for mouse, woof or beuh for dog, baah for sheep and goat – in response to both interrogatives (such as What does the dog say? or in Dutch Wat zegt het hondje?) and declaratives (such as This is a dog or in Dutch Dit is een hondje).27 Furthermore, he used that, this, there and at
as accompanies for pointing, as questions (meaning what is that?) and as answers (as in that, woof meaning that is a dog). Other words that he used are: flower, out and mama. Finally, at this age he also produced no and yeah.
The recording sessions ended when Lee was two years and three months. In the nine-month-period during which he was recorded he built up his vocabulary to include quite an extensive choice of words in English and in Dutch. His language spanned a whole range from names (Mickey Mouse, Nana, Margreet), adjectives (big, little, groot (big)), prepositions (on, op
(on), in, voor (in front of)) to some functional (do, does) and lexical verbs (hurt, went, slapen (sleep), zitten (sit)).
Lee’s Mean Length of Utterance in words (MLUw) in English increased over time, as shown in Table 2.28
Table 2. Lee’s English MLUw development.29 Lee’s age
(year;month)
MLUw # of utterances # of tokens highest # of words per
sentence (# of occurrences) 1;06 1.071 538 576 2 (5) 1;08 1.052 77 81 2 (1) 1;09 1.063 718 763 2 (11) 2;01 1.721 846 1456 6 (4) 2;03 2.185 1289 2817 9 (1)
As can be seen in Table 2, Lee’s MLUw fluctuates around the 1.0 until he is two years of age. From then on his MLUw rapidly increases to a little over 2.0 and his longest sentence contains even nine words (that box for Lee and that box for rabbit).
In his seminal work on child language acquisition, Brown (1973) described five developmental stages based on MLU. He explains that stage I ranges from an MLU of 1.0 to 2.0 and stage II stretches from an MLU of 2.0 to 2.5. In stage I children begin with overt grammar and morpheme-combining; subsequently in stage II “a set of little words and inflections begins to appear, a few prepositions, an occasional article, an occasional copular am, is, or are, the plural and possessive inflections on the noun, the progressive, past and third person indicative inflections on the verb” (Brown, 1973, p. 249). This difference between stages I and II is also attested in Lee’s data; Lee’s English language development is in stage I from when he is 1;06 to 2;01 years old, and in stage II when he is 2;03 years old.
3.2.2 Lee’s development in Dutch
According to his mother Lee spoke Dutch to his father at the time when the recording sessions began. Unfortunately there is no evidence in this corpus, since the father was not present during the first recordings. Nevertheless, Lee shows signs of understanding Dutch, because he answers questions concerning animal sounds correctly, as can be seen in (1)-(4).
28 Lee’s MLU is calculated in words, rather than in morphemes; hence, the abbreviation MLUw. There are differences in morpheme complexity between English and Dutch; therefore, it was decided to use MLUw. Döpke (1999) gives similar reasons.
(1) Investigator: Dit is een eend. This is a duck.
Child: Tm, tm, tm. (1;06.29)
(2) Mother: Here’s a duck.
Child: Tm, tm, tm. (1;06.26)
(3) Visitor: En wat zegt die hond dan? And what does that dog say?
Child: Beuh. (1;08.05)
(4) Mother: What’s that? Child: Beuh, beuh, beuh.
Mother: A dog. (1;06.29)
The examples in (1)-(4) show that he uses the same sound for the word duck to refer to the word eend, and the same sound for dog as for hond.30 So his understanding in Dutch
stretches as far as his understanding in English. However, his reliance on English shows in his production of Dutch, as shown in (5).
(5) Investigator: En wat zegt het varken? “What does the pig say?” Child: That?
Investigator: Ja. “Yes” Child: Gn, gn. Investigator: Oh, goed hoor.
“Well done” (1;08.06)
In (5) the child asks for affirmation in English before producing the correct animal sound. The investigator continues speaking Dutch and the child understands.
Only during the last recording sessions Lee produced enough Dutch utterances to calculate a reliable MLUw. According to his mother he had had much exposure to Dutch before the last recording sessions and his paternal grandmother insisted to speak Dutch with him, which probably made the child more willing to speak Dutch to other people as well. Table 3 illustrates Lee’s Dutch MLUw and his number of utterances and tokens in Dutch.
30
Table 3. Lee’s Dutch MLUw development.31 Lee’s age
(year;month)
MLUw # of utterances # of tokens highest # of words per
sentences (# of occurrences) 1;06 0 0 0 0 1;08 1 1 1 1 (2) 1;09 0 0 0 0 2;01 1.533 30 46 2 (6) 2;03 2.502 492 1231 8 (2)
Table 3 shows that during the last recordings Lee produced two utterances consisting of eight words (en deze konijntje potje en die ook nee (and this bunny potty and that also no) and Lee ook Lee een boekje lezen met mama (Lee also Lee a book read with mama)).
3.2.3 Lee’s bilingual development
There are some conversations in which Lee spontaneously translated from Dutch to English or from English to Dutch. These conversations show that Lee is clearly able to distinguish the languages, because he uses English when speaking to his mother and Dutch when talking with his father. The conversations in (6) and (7) show at which point he switches between his two languages.
(6) Father: Heeft het konijntje ook zo veel speelgoed? “Does the rabbit have so many toys too?” Child: Ja.
Yes
Father: Ja, heeft het ook zo'n grote doos? “Yeah, does he have such a big box too?” Child: Dat, dat grote doos daar.
That, that big box there. Father: Ja, jouw grote doos is daar.
“Yes, your big box is there” Child: En konijn-tje is daar.
And rabbit-[dim] is there. Father: Ja.
“Yes”
Child: Konijn-tje ook speelgoed. Rabbit-[dim] also toys. Father: Wat zeg je?
“What are you saying?”
Child: Konijn-tje ook speelgoed daar, konijntje ook daar. Rabbit-[dim] also toys there, rabbit-[dim] also there. Father: Lee z'n speelgoed is daar, ja.
“Lee’s toys are there, yeah”
Child: En konijn-tje ook speelgoed daar speelgoed ook speel. And rabbit-[dim] also toys there toys also toy. Father: Speelgoeddoos.
“Toy box”
Child: Pelegoed, speelgoeddoos. Oy, toy-box. Father: Ja.
“Yes” Mother: What is it?
Child: That box for Lee and that box for wabbit. Mother: Is that the box for rabbit?
Child: And that box for Lee.
Mother: Box for Lee? Oh, is that the rabbit's box? Child: Yeah.
Mother: Oh, and that's Lee's toy-box.
Child: And that Lee toy-box and that Lee box and that rabbit box. Mother: Oh, that's nice, isn't it?
Child: Hm. (2;03.13)
(7) Mother: This? Child: Gommel.
Swing
Mother: And what does mummy call it? Child: Swing.
Mother: Swing that's a clever boy. Child: And papa says ommel.
And papa says swing Mother: And papa says schommel?
“And papa says swing?” Child: Yeah.
Mother: Oh, clever boy. (2;03.13)
In (6) father and child are reading a book about a rabbit and his toy box and they start talking about the child’s toy box in comparison to the rabbit’s toy box. After a few conversation turns, the mother asks what they are talking about and the child immediately switches from Dutch to English. The child explains that they are talking about his toy box and the rabbit’s toy box.
3.3 Transcription
The recordings were largely transcribed in the spring of 2007. They were edited to standard CHAT conventions from CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) in the summer of 2008. The recordings were then again listened to, so that the transcriptions were checked by the investigator. Due to the fact that this was a thesis project, the transcriptions were not checked by an independent researcher. The specific topic of investigation was only decided upon after the recordings were fully transcribed; hence, there was no bias towards negation during transcribing.
3.3.1 CLAN programme
The KWAL (Key Word And Line) function from the CLAN programme available from CHILDES was used to search for every use of no, not, don’t, doesn’t, can’t and won’t in Lee’s speech and in his mother’s speech in the transcripts. In addition, every use of nee, niet and geen by Lee and his father in the transcripts was also searched for by using the KWAL function.32
In addition, the MAXWD function from the CLAN programme allowed searching for the longest English and Dutch utterances in Lee’s transcripts.
3.4 Speech samples concerning negation
Several speech samples were analysed. First of all, Lee’s speech sample was used for the usage-based analysis and for the syntactic analyses. The mother’s speech sample was used to compare the English input with Lee’s English utterances in the usage-based analysis. Finally, the father’s speech sample was used to compare the Dutch input to Lee’s Dutch productions in the usage-based analysis. More detailed information is given in the sections below.
3.4.1 Lee’s negation speech sample
The speech sample used for the investigation of Lee’s use of negation included all transcriptions; however, since the child only began using negation embedded in a sentence when he was two years of age, most of the analyses are conducted on the last six recordings
32
Four other negation markers (never, nooit, nothing and niets) and two negative polarity items (more and
for English and the two penultimate recordings for Dutch (see Table 1). Imitations, self-repetitions and incomplete utterances were excluded from the sample.33 Table 4 lists the
overall number of utterances containing a negator in Lee’s speech.
3.4.2 Mother’s negation speech sample
The English input sample included four recordings: the first four which were made when the child was 1;06.26 until he was 1;06.29. These recordings were chosen, because they were completely in English, so there was no Dutch spoken at all during those recordings. Moreover, the majority of the conversations consisted of mother-son dyads.
Data from later recordings were not included in the analyses, because Cameron-Faulkner et al. (2007) found no significant differences in the number and use of negators in the input between earlier and later recordings. Hence, the first recordings were deemed sufficient to compare and contrast the mother’s and Lee’s use of negators.
In total 83 minutes and 19 seconds of data were analysed. Incomplete utterances and routines (e.g. story-telling and songs) were excluded from the analysis.Table 4 presents the overall number of utterances containing a negator in Lee’s mother’s speech.
3.4.3 Father’s negation speech sample
The Dutch input sample included two recordings: the 2;03.12 and the 2;03.13 recordings. These were the only times when the father interacted much with the child and the child demonstrated great knowledge of Dutch. In total 94 minutes and 44 seconds of data were analysed. Incomplete utterances and routines (e.g. story-telling and songs) were excluded from the analysis. Table 4 shows the overall number of utterances containing a negator in Lee’s father’s speech.
Table 4. The overall number of utterances containing a negator in Lee’s mother’s, Lee’s and Lee’s father’s speech.
Lee’s mother Lee Lee’s father
No 52 (/156) 120 (/160) - Not 66 (/156) 34 (/160) - Don’t 38 (/156) 6 (/160) - Nee - 34 (/48) 28 (/53) Niet - 14 (/48) 19 (/53) Geen - 0 (/48) 6 (/53) 33
