Head movement and allomorphy in children's negative questions
2018 ◽
Vol 3
(1)
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pp. 33
English-speaking preschoolers occasionally produce negative questions with a ‘doubled’ auxiliary (e.g. Why did you didn’t know?). These 2AuxQs apparently involve a failure to raise [NEG n’t] to C (cf. Why didn’t you know?). I analyze 2AuxQs as the product of two independent errors: a planning error (raising T-to-C without raising Neg-to-T first) and an allomorphy error (overgeneralization of ‑n’t). The planning error results from lack of practice: serial head-movement is relatively uncommon in English, and true Neg-to-T-to-C may be rarer than appearances suggest. In e.g. Why don’t we play, ok?, -n’t is not interpreted within TP—and strikingly, 2AuxQs are unattested here.
1998 ◽
Vol 20
(3)
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pp. 311-348
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2019 ◽
Vol 4
(5)
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pp. 991-1016
2019 ◽
Vol 4
(5)
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pp. 1148-1161
2013 ◽
Vol 14
(4)
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pp. 95-101
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1999 ◽
Vol 58
(3)
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pp. 170-179
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Keyword(s):
2020 ◽
Vol 36
(4)
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pp. 545-553
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