The Acquired Form of English Negation

Earlier approaches to the acquisition of negation in English which assume bottom-up derivation posit two stages of development. In one approach, functional categories (C, T and Neg) are not present in the early stage(s), and no, not, can’t and don’t are analyzed as adverbs. When functional categories become available, this early analysis is completely abandoned in favor of one involving functional categories. In another approach, functional categories are available from the start, but Neg, it is claimed, is inaccessible at first, meaning that negative expressions here too are first analyzed as adverbs. Negative concord data trigger a parametric change so that a Neg–as–adverb grammar changes to Neg–as–functional–head grammar. Both approaches posit an abrupt change between stages of acquisition. I propose an analysis of the acquisition of English negation utilizing top-down derivation. Under this view, the stage I analysis is a segue to the later stage II analysis in which Neg is introduced into derivation as an adjunct to T ([T [Neg]]). Neg may separate from T giving the appearance of an independent head. Aspects of Neg problematic for the bottom-up approaches above are resolved by the top-down approach.