Children’s acquisition of negation in L1 Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language that originated in South Africa as descendent of Dutch. It displays discontinuous sentential negation (SN), where expressed by two phonologically identical negative particles appear different positions the sentence. The system argued to be an innovation came about through reanalysis discourse-dependent (pragmatically conditioned) structure Dutch, reinforced proponents standardisation who prescriptively imposed concord onto Dutch system. therefore artificially created, making it crosslinguistically rare and syntactically complex, latter possibly having delaying effect on acquisition. This study investigates both comprehension production young child speakers Afrikaans. Sentences containing indefinites (NIs) ( niks ‘nothing’ geen ‘no’/ ‘none’ with final particle) are compared those (referred SN), which less complex. We examined (1) whether sentences NIs more difficult acquire than using SN (2) when how produced children. Data were collected picture selection task (comprehension) recordings spontaneous speech during free play (production). Results show was acquired before NI, indicating indeed comprehend SN. data showed even youngest participants (age 3;0) could produce grammatically well-formed negated constructions, but errors occurred until age 4;3. In comparison found for other languages, Afrikaans’ complex expressing seems have negation, specifically NIs, not production.