THE ACQUISITION OF FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES IN TAMIL WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO NEGATION1
Deepti Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli
CIEFL, Hyderabad

0

Introduction

The absence of functional categories in early child language is well attested. Crosslinguistically, children first acquire lexical categories, and grammatical morphemes such as
tense, agreement, auxiliaries or determiners are absent. Early theories of acquisition believedthat since functional categories emerged later, they were a result of language ‘development’.
That is to say, functional categories are ‘learnt’ by the child, in some fashion. However, whatkind of learning takes place is not obvious, since the forms of functional categories arephonetically weak, and they are not obviously meaningful. Gleitman is reported (in Crain and
Lillo-Martin, 1999: 140) to have likened the jump required in the child’s language learning
capacities to that of a tadpole’s maturation into a frog.
The “learning” of functional categories brings back “Plato’s problem” into acquisition.
The converse hypothesis is that functional categories are present in UG. Evidence has
accumulated for a universal set and even order of functional projections (Cinque 1999). The
absence of functional categories in early child language can be attributed to processing
constraints. The Strong Continuity Hypothesis (Santelmann, Berk and Lust 2000) postulates
that UG remains continuously available throughout the course of language acquisition to thechild/learner. Thus, for as long as UG is being mapped onto specific language grammars, UG
components are accessible.
This paper is concerned with the acquisition of the functional category of negation in
Tamil, a major Dravidian language. Negation in Tamil poses a priori quite an interestinglearning problem, because sentential negation in this language superficially assumes at least
four different forms: one each for finite and non-finite clause negation; and forms for modal
negation (“negative modals”). There is also a verb of negative existence. Superficially,
negative clauses look quite different from affirmative clauses (they do not differ fromaffirmative clauses in simply including a Neg projection). We set out these facts in Section 1.
Our interest is in finding out how and when the child acquires these various negative
forms of Tamil. Given the apparent complexity of the language data pertaining to negation,
1

The data accessed here are from the CIEFL-MPI database created with funding from the Max Planck
Institute, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. We thank Bhuvana Narasimhan for initiating this project andGayathri Raman, Anu Kurien, Mini and R. Amritavalli whose efforts in creating this database madethis research possible.
Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1, 67-84©2007 Deepti Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

we might expect errors in the course of acquisition, even if we assume the Strong Continuity
Hypothesis. This is because in the mapping from UG to specific language grammars, there issufficient latitude to accommodate all possible grammars (the problem of “parameter setting”).
In fact, Santelmann, Berk and Lust (2000) document developmental errors in the marking offormal features (FFs) for Tense (and Agreement) in English, and show that these errors are all
predicted by the various options allowed by UG for realizing FFs on the main verb and/or theauxiliary. I.e., UG allows these FFs to be realized on both, either or neither of the elements inthe verb complex, and the errors that occur reflect these possibilities.
In the specific area of negation, studies in English, French and German show thatchildren make errors in the placement as well as the selection of the negative. In English, noappears instead of not, and in German, nein instead of nicht. Consider the following
examples in English (Deprez and Pierce 1993: 34):i. No my play my puppet. Play my toys.
(at 24 months)ii. No dog stay in the room. Don’t dog stay in the room.
(at 25 months)
We shall show that, somewhat surprisingly, we find in Tamil no errors in the placement or
position of the Neg, and none in the choice of the negative. The different types of sentential
negation that Tamil shows are all mastered and in use by the age of 25 months (2;1 years).
Section 2 of the paper presents and discusses the data.
In Section 3 we discuss the possible reasons for the apparent lack of errors in theacquisition of negatives in Tamil, as opposed to the errors documented in the acquisition ofnegatives in English, French and German.
1

The Grammar of Tamil Negation:

1.1

Main Clause Negation
Consider the Tamil verbs given below:(1)varaancome nonpst 3sgm‘(he) comes’pooraangononpst 3sgm‘(he) goes’
paarka- raansee
nonpst 3sgm‘(he) sees’

vandaancome pst
3sgm‘(he) came’poo- n- aango
pst 3sgm‘(he) went’
paa- tt- -aansee past 3sgm‘(he) saw’

varallecome inf neg‘did not/does not come’poo(ha)alle
go infneg‘(he) did not/does not go’
paark(a)- alle
do infneg‘(he) did not/does not see’We note that the affirmative verb forms are specified as past or non-past. The negative verb

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The Acquisition of Functional Categories in Tamil (D. Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli)

forms are not. The forms varalle, etc. are used for both past and non-past negation. It isevident that there is no “tense” morpheme in the negative form of the verb, nor is there anagreement marker. Affirmative verbs inflect for person, number and gender.
This “knocking off” of agreement and “tense” in the negative verb form is not unique toTamil. It has been documented by Amritavalli and Jayaseelan (2005) for Kannada. They
argue that in Kannada and Malayalam, what appears to be Tense in the affirmative verb isactually Aspect, and that Finiteness is a property of MoodP. The MoodP can be occupied byany one of the three elements agr, neg, or modal.
We shall adopt their analysis here, with one modification. In Tamil, as in Kannada, theNeg ille takes as its complement an infinitival verb (often indistinguishable from the non-pastverb stem). The infinitive forms in (2-3) may be compared with the negatives in (1).
(2)

avan [PROhe PRO

pooh-a]go-inf.

paaseettperf asp

aan
3msg

‘He tried to go.’(3)

avan [PROhe PRO

yenne paark-a]
I-acc. see-inf.

varcome imperf. asp

aan
3msg

‘He comes to see me.’But unlike in Kannada, in Tamil the choice of a matrix infinitival verb does not vary
according to the “tense” negated. That is, negation in Tamil does not encode “tense” in any
way. Let us therefore assume the structures (4a) and (4b) for affirmative and negative clausesin Tamil. In these structures, as in earlier proposals, the finiteness feature lodges in AgrP in(4a) and NegP in (4b), both being realizations of MoodP. But unlike Amritavalli andJayaseelan (2005), we do not postulate an Aspect Phrase complement to the NegP in (4b).
(4)

a.

Affirmative Clauseb.

Negative Clause

AgrP
Agr
-aan

NegP
AspP

Asp
[-perf] -r[+perf] -nd-

Neg
ille
VP

InfP
Inf
-a-

V
va(r)

VP

V
var-

The complement to both Agr and Neg is non-finite. This is obvious in the case of theinfinitival complement to NegP. But the AspP complement to AgrP is also non-finite (i.e. it is
not Tense). Therefore, although (4a) and (4b) look different in their clause structure, they are-69-

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

essentially still similar: a finiteness head taking a non-finite complement. The learning
problem for the child is to understand this clause structure, and (for Tamil) to understand thataffirmative and negative clauses differ in the inclusion or exclusion of aspect: the affirmative
clause has an aspectual complement to Agr, the negative clause has an infinitival complement
to Neg which does not carry an aspectual specification.
1.2

Non-finite Clause Negation

Tamil, like the other Dravidian languages (and some other languages as well) has adifferent form of negation in non-finite clauses. Thus consider the negation of (2). This does
not have the main clause negative form (5i), but the form (5ii).
(5)i.

* avanhe[PRO poo(h)-alle]
PRO go-inf. Neg

paattaansee-pst 3msg

‘He tried not to go.’ii.

avan [PROhePROpooh- aagoNeg-

me
part.

irukk- a]beinf.

paattaansee-pst 3msg

‘He tried not to go.’ (lit. ‘he tried to be without going’)
In (5ii), Neg occurs as a bound morpheme -aa- , the complement of participial morphologythat appears on the verb ‘go.’ A verb ‘be’ appears as a dummy to carry the infinitival suffix.
We represent the structure of the “negative participle” poohaame ‘without going’ in (6).
(6)

PartP
Part
-me

NegP
Neg
-aa-

VP
V
pooh

1.3

Non-finite Negation in Matrix Clauses

Since children do not readily produce subordinate clauses at the early stages (perhaps
due to processing constraints), we do not expect to find sentences such as (5ii) in earlyacquisition data. But the non-finite Neg -aa occurs in certain matrix constructions as well.
Indeed, there has been a tradition in linguistic theorization about learnability that there are no
structures peculiar only to subordinate clauses; embedded clause phenomena are usually
mirrored or signaled in the main clause in some way.
The non-finite negative, the bound morpheme -aa, occurs in the matrix clause if Neg-70-

The Acquisition of Functional Categories in Tamil (D. Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli)

does not occupy the finiteness position in the clause: i.e. when the finiteness position is
occupied by an element other than Neg. Consider first negative imperative sentences. These
have the form (7), with Neg -aa rather than Neg illa (7ii):(7)i.

poohgo-aaneg-deimperativeii.

‘don’t go’* poohgo-(de-) ille
(imp.) neg‘don’t go’

ImpP
Imp
-de

NegP
Neg
-aa-

VP
V
pooh

We assume that the Imperative mood occupies the finite position in the clause, the MoodP.
(We have said that the MoodP can be occupied by any one of the three elements agr, neg, ormodal, following Amritavalli and Jayaseelan 2005.) Since finiteness is already marked bymood, the finite Neg ille cannot occur in (7ii) in this position.
Consider next the modals. The modal of ability is muDi, which takes an infinitive
complement. In affirmative clauses, this verb is itself the complement of the future morpheme-um, which has been argued by Hany Babu (1997) to be a modal ((8i)). If -um occupies the
MoodP, Neg illa cannot occur ((8ii)). There then remain two possibilities for negating themodal: (8iii), where non-finite neg -aa is a complement to an agr that occurs in an invariant
third person neuter singular form; or (8iv). In (8iv), the modal is a complement to Neg illa;
but notice that the future morpheme -um does not occur here, contrasting with (8ii). (These
two forms encode nonpast and past time reference respectively, in ways not entirely clear tous. In the data we present in the next section, the structures (8iii) and (8iv) are instantiated by
the verb teri- ‘know’, which occurs in the three forms teri-yum ‘know’, teri-aa-du ‘don’t
know’ and teri-le ‘didn’t/don’t know’, corresponding to (8i) and (8iii-iv).)(8)

i.

poohgoainf.

muDiy- um
can
fut.

ii.

‘can go’* pooh-a-muDiygo
inf. can‘cannot go’

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um
fut.

-ille
neg

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

ModalP (future)
Modal
-um

VP
V

InfP

muDi(y)
Inf
-a-

VP
V
pooh

iii.

pooh- a- muDiy -aa
goinf. canneg‘cannot go’

-du
3nsg

iv.

AgrP
Agr
-du

NegP

NegP
Neg
-aa-

pooh- amuDiy -ille
go
inf.
can
neg
‘could not go’

Neg
ille
VP

V
muDi(y)VP

V
muDi(y)
InfP

Inf
-a-

InfP
Inf
-a-

VP

VP
V
pooh

V
pooh
The modal of prohibition, kuuD-aa-du ‘must not’, is identical in structure with the negative of
the modal of ability muDiy-aa-du in (8iii). The verb kuuD- occurs as a complement to Neg-aa, which is a complement to a “frozen” third person neuter agreement; and the wholecomplex takes an infinitive verb complement. This verb has no non-negative form *kuuDwith the putative meaning ‘must.’(9) poohgo

ainfkuuD- aamust neg

duagr

We have said that the future morpheme -um is analyzed as a modal. The negation of the
future is again achieved by the non-finite Neg -aa with the MoodP occupied by the invariant
third person neuter singular morpheme.

-72-The Acquisition of Functional Categories in Tamil (D. Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli)(10) i.

poohgo‘will go’

um
fut

ii.

ModalPModal-umpooh- aadu
goneg
agr
‘will not go’
AgrP

VP

Agr
-du

NegP
Neg
-aa-

V
pooh

VP

V
pooh
This morpheme –um also occurs in constructions of obligation and necessity, such as (11i)and (11ii).
(11) i.

pooh-a- veeN- um
go inf want fut.
‘ought (etc.) to go’ii.

pooh- aNgo
inf‘ought (etc.) to go’

um
fut.

We can reasonably surmise that the morpheme -N- in (11ii) is a remnant of the verb veeN‘want’ in (11i). The negative of (11 i-ii) is (11iii).
(11) iii.

poohaveeNDgo
inf
want‘ought not (etc.) to go’

aaneg

m
fut.

We must note that the verbs veeN-um and veeND-aa-m which in (11) occur as modals
and take an infinitive verb complement, can also occur as main verbs with nominal arguments.
(12) i.

ena-kku
I -datice-cream
ice creamveeN- umwant fut.

‘I want ice cream’ii.

ena-kku
I -datice-cream
ice cream

veeNDwant

aaneg

m
fut.

‘I don’t want ice cream’
There is also a main verb ille, a verb of negative existence. This observation was firstmade by Hany-Babu (1996) for Malayalam. Unlike Neg ille, which is a grammaticalized formof this verb, the main verb ille occurs with noun phrase arguments, rather than an infinitive
verb complement:-73-Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1(13) i.

deivam illeGod
neg-be‘God does not exist’ii.

enakku paNam ille
me-dat money neg-be‘I don’t have money’Summing up, the superficial wealth of negative forms in Tamil in (14) below can beanalyzed as, or reduced to, finite and non-finite negative forms ille and –aa respectively. The
non-finite form occurs of course in non-finite complements, but it also occurs in matrix
clauses in non-finite positions, when the finiteness position is occupied by agreement. This
happens in clauses with modals, which (as in Kannada) do not cooccur with the finite neg ille.
But (unlike in Kannada) modals in Tamil appear to be verbs that need to be licensed by agr,albeit in an invariant form (the third person neuter singular). Two negative forms, veeNDaam
and ille also occur as main verbs (cf. 12-13).
(14) i.

poohgo(a)infalle
neg

poohgo-aaneg-deimperative

poohgoainf.

muDiy -aacanneg

poohgoainf.

muDiy -illecanneg

poohgoainf

kuuD- aamust neg

duagr

poohgo-

aaneg

du
agr

‘will not go’vii. poohgo

ainf

veeNDwantaaneg

viii. ena-kku
I -datice-cream
ice cream

ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

vi.

‘does not/ did not go’‘don’t go’
-du
3nsg

‘cannot go’‘could not go’

veeNDwant‘I don’t want ice cream’-74-‘must not go’

m
fut.
aaneg

‘ought not (etc.) to go’mfut.

The Acquisition of Functional Categories in Tamil (D. Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli)ix.

enakku paNam ille
me-dat money neg-be‘I don’t have money’2

Acquisition of Tamil Negation

2.1

Database

The primary source for the data analyzed in this paper is the CIEFL-MPI database,created between 1999 and 2000 as a collaborative research project between Central Instituteof English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), Hyderabad, and Max Planck Institute (MPI), The
Netherlands. The database consists of data from 4 children, two female, and two male, thestarting ages ranging from 15 months to 32 months. The data are longitudinal, natural speechrecordings (video as well as audio) collected at one- hour sessions recorded at weeklyintervals for 52 weeks, or 1 year.
For the present work, we were looking to sample data from children between 18 months
to 30 months. The negation data for English and French reported in Deprez and Pierce (1993)
begin at 18 months and go up to 28 months. We had also noticed negation in Tamil in
Sarma’s (2002) data at the age of 18 months. Our choice of ages automatically excluded theeldest child (whose recordings began at 32 months). We had intended to sample data from one
female and one male child. However, the excluded child was female; and the other female
child’s speech was very sparse and unclear. Hence, we have sampled data from the two malechildren. In total, 24 hours of data were sampled, 12 from each child, at fortnightly intervals.
The first child’s (AC) data were available from the age of 15 months onwards. The
negation data reported here begin at the age of 21 months and end at 27 months, because theearlier recordings revealed no linguistic data pertaining to negation. The second child’s (AV)data begin at the age of 25 months and end at 31 months.
(15)
AC

Age (months)
No. of Rec.

AV

Age (months)
No. of Rec.

21
1
25
1

22
2
26
2

23
2
27
2

24
2
28
2

25
2
29
2

26
2
30
2

27
1
31
1
Total

Total

12
12
24

These data were supplemented by data from two sources:(i)

Vaidyanathan, R (1989). The data in this study are from two female children, ages 9months to 33 months. Data from both children are longitudinal, collected fortnightly.

-75-Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1(ii)Sarma, Vaijayanthi M. (2002). The study was a cross-sectional recording of the natural
speech of a group of ten children over one year of age, starting at 17 months. However
the relevant data happen to be only from one female child.

All data from the primary source used for this paper were transcribed by the first author,
while those from both secondary sources (i) and (ii) were already transcribed in the texts they
were taken from.
2.2

Data

Exclusions:
Several exclusions had to be made, as is the standard practice in acquisition studies.
1.

All instances of the free morpheme ‘ille’ occurring as a one-word utterance have been
excluded.

2.

Repetitive utterances of the same negative have been counted as a single utterance.

3.

Negatives that are not intended to negate a proposition, but to negate a prior utterance,
have been excluded. In the literature, the latter are known as “anaphoric negation”.
Stromswold and Zimmermann (1999/2000: 107) give the example:“You have to go to bed now.”“No, I want to stay up all night.”

An example of anaphoric negation from our data is the following:
Mother:AV:

acting daane?
acting only-wh.
ille… ille.
no… no‘Isn’t this only acting?’‘No, no.’Occurrences:
Though our database begins at 21 months, the earliest negatives that we consider here
occur from 24 months onwards.2 The first negatives are three instances of the main verb
2

The negatives from AC between 21 and 24 months are single word utterances of either maanaa, thebaby form of veeNDaam ‘don’t want’ or ille. The maanaa negatives are anaphoric, as they simply
deny a prior utterance or action. The ille negatives at 22 months are given below: (Res1 and Res2 are
the researchers).
i.

Child tries to walk. Falls down
Res1: aDi
paTTudHurtexperienced
AC:
ille.

aa?
Q

‘Did you get hurt?’-76-

The Acquisition of Functional Categories in Tamil (D. Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli)

veeNDaam ‘don’t want’ from AC, at the age of 24 months.
(16) i.

ii.

iii.

apple veeNDaã
apple don’t want‘(I) don’t want apple’

puu
veeNDaam3
flower don’t want‘(I) don’t want (the) flower’taataaveeNDaã
grandfather don’t want‘(I) don’t want grandfather (here)’AC also produces the verb of negative existence ille at the age of 25 months.
iv.

(looking at a picture of the Pied Piper)amma,
piipiiille
motherwind instrument
neg‘Mother, there is no pipe’

In AV’s data, which begin at 25 months, we find a range of negation: non-finite and modal
negatives, and neg ille. For example:v.

AV:

adu… soll-aa-dethat say-neg-imp

Negative Imperative‘Don’t say that’

vi.

AV:

teriy-aa-du
know-neg-3sgn

Non-finite matrix negation‘(I) don’t know’peeru teri- ili- yaa?
name know-neg-wh
teri -ilaknow-neg‘Don’t (you) know (her) name’?
Neg ille‘I don’t know’vii. Mother:AV:viii. AV:avinash (pause) kuuD-aa -du
avinashmust -neg-3sgn

Modal of prohibition‘Avinash (pause) must not’

Example (vii) is only apparently a one word utterance because it consists of a V(inf)complement to ‘ille’. Notice also that it is not a repetition of the mother’s utterance, as itomits the question marker ‘-aa’.

Res2:maamaa irukkaaUncle
be non-pst
agrAC:
iya… iya… iya.

laa?
Q

3

‘Is uncle there?’

The two transcriptions veeNDaã and veeNDaam, represent the two pronunciations (free variants) of
this form.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

In any case, AC produces both the neg ille and the verb of negative existence ille at 26
months.
ix. AC: …adu ille
that notx. AC:‘(It’s) not that’aic kriim valla
ice cream come-not‘Ice cream (van) didn’t come’Given in Table (17) below, are the ages at which each negative appears for the first time4 in
each child, and the number of instances. These are only the first instances of occurrence of thenegatives. Appendices (1) and (2) give the total number of negatives, and all the negatives
produced.
(17)
Age

Child

Number of first instances of
Neg Main Verbs

Vinf + Neg

Neg aamuDi/teri+ illeMain V

Main

veeND

ille

V

Vinf +

Vinf +

kuuD

muDiy-

Vinf

Vinf

ille

veeND

- aa-

/teriy-

+ aa

+ aa

aam

du

aa-du

+ fut

+ imp

aam
24

AC

25

AC

3
1

AV
26

1

AC

2

2

AV

1

1

1

4

1

3

28

In Table (17), we see an occurrence of all nine of the forms mentioned in our description of
Tamil negation. These forms have all appeared between 24 and 28 months. They appear tohave been acquired more or less at the same time. There are no errors in either the choice or
the placement of the negative.5

4

Deprez and Pierce (1993) consider a negative form only if they find more than two uses of that form
in a transcript. As the many kinds of negatives are collapsed into one form in their data, we can easily
meet this criterion in ours, since we differentiate the many kinds of negatives.
5

The only potential error we noted is a hesitation in the use of (and an avoidance in the use of) a
lexical negative maaT. This form translates to ‘I refuse to’ or ‘I will not’. Just like the English ‘will
not’, maaT can indicate a refusal as well as a promise not to do something. In the following excerpt,
AV refrains from using the negative maaT in the meaning ‘I promise not to’ and is corrected by his
mother.
Mother : sollu-vi-yaa
say –fut-Q

tiruppii adu
again thatmaadri?
like‘Will you say that again?’-78-

The Acquisition of Functional Categories in Tamil (D. Ramadoss and R. Amritavalli)

Since our database begins only at 21 months, and we had data only from male children,
we turned to secondary sources, instantiating female children, to see if we could find any
instances of negation prior to 24 –25 months.
Although Vaidyanathan’s (1989) database begins at 9 months, the first instance ofnegation is only at 24 months, which fits in very well with our findings. The negatives which
occur before this age are, like the ones in our database, anaphoric utterances of maanaã. The
first instance of negation found at 24 months is Neg ille with an infinitive complement:(18) liyaana inikki var- a- la
liyaana today come-inf neg‘Liyaana didn’t come today’

However, the interesting data comes from Sarma (2002). Though she reports data from amixed group of ten children, there are only two instances of negation, both from the samechild, a female, as early as 18 months.
(19) eekku naanaam
me-dat don’t want

‘I don’t want’(20) amma aZaada
mother, cry-neg-imp‘Mother, don’t cry’.

Notice the occurrence of a dative experiencer in (19), and the negative imperative in (20). As
in our data, we notice different negative forms appearing at the same time, and without any
error.
3

Conclusion

The apparent absence of error in the acquisition of a variety of negative forms in Tamilneeds an explanation. These data contrast strongly with the data in Deprez and Pierce (1993)AV: soll-a- lle.
soll-a- lle.
Say-inf- neg
say-inf- neg
Mother : enna?
What?
AV: soll-a- lle.
Say-inf-neg
Mother : soll-a- maaTT-een na sollu.
say-inf-will not-agr that say
AV: soll-a- maaTT- een
Say-inf-will not-agr‘Not say’‘What?’‘Not say’‘Say ‘I will not say’.’‘I will not say’We do not consider maaT as an instance of negation, as it behaves like any regular verb in thelanguage, taking appropriate agreement markings. Insofar as it contains the sequence -aa-, thispossibly negative morpheme seems to be lexically fused into the root.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 1, Vol. 1

for the acquisition of negation in English, German and French.6 Let us first inquire whether
the differences might be attributable to the databases themselves. Do errors occur in the
English data (for example) because they are from children younger than our subjects? We
think not. In the first place, we chose to investigate an age range comparable to the ages forwhich data are reported in the literature on the acquisition of negation. Thus neg-initialutterances in English occur throughout the period under consideration here, i.e. 18 - 28months (cf. Deprez and Pierce 1993: 35, Table 2). Secondly, the data from Sarma (2002)
show a correct use of negatives in Tamil as early as at 18 months. Hence, age does not seemto be a factor.
Nor does the size of the database appear a particularly promising site for the difference,
although it is possible that errors in acquisition, like slip-of-the-tongue production data, occur
infrequently enough to require more extensive documentation than we have undertaken.
Assuming that the databases are comparable, the explanation for freedom from error in
the acquisition of negative forms in Tamil must be that the mapping from UG to the particular
grammar of Tamil is in some way minimal. Insofar as this mapping requires a knowledge ofthe position of finiteness in the clause (which is required for Neg to be instantiated as
different forms in finite and non-finite positions), there is ample evidence that this knowledge
comes for free to the child. Thus Wexler (1994:331-334) maintains that even at the Optional
Infinitive (OI) stage – a stage where children use infinitive verbs instead of tensed verbs inmain clauses, in seven languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish andNorwegian) – the clause positions that finite and nonfinite verbs appear in, are correctly
distinguished (i.e. the child demonstrates knowledge of verb movement to Infl).
The evidence for verb raising to Infl during the OI stage in fact comes largely from thecorrect placement of Neg with respect to finite and non-finite verbs. In French, we findparallel data from the same child at the same age (Philippe, 2-1-3, in Deprez and Pierce
1993:40) showing the negative pas occurring, correctly, before a matrix infinitive but after afinite verb:(21) i.
ii.

pas chercher
not look for
Ca tourne pas.
this turns not

les voitures
the cars

The French child does not go wrong in the choice of the form of Neg (anaphoric non isnever substituted for non-anaphoric pas), and does not always place Neg sentence-initially(unlike the English child). The error that does occur is an optionality in the marking of tense(the OI phenomenon). A possible explanation for this that Wexler briefly entertains is that6

In this paper, we will not consider the German data, both because we lack knowledge of German,
and because of Stromswold and Zimmermann’s (1999/2000) disagreement with the Deprez and Pierce
analysis.

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matrix infinitives in early child language are licensed by an empty dummy modal, “an empty
version of the dummy modal do in English.” (The modal has to be pleonastic, because thenon-finite verbs are “used to describe real activity.”) As noted in Amritavalli and Jayaseelan(2005:216, n.21), all Wexler’s facts fall into place if children start out with a MoodP, as we
posit for Dravidian, and not a TenseP. The pleonastic modal is our finiteness feature. There isno dummy do in English negatives in the OI phase, suggesting that Tense is absent.
Agreement, however, is present at this stage in the languages that require it.
This suggests that errors in negation are a result of the ongoing acquisition of Tense. The
acquisition of tense in English appears to be a longer process than in French, perhaps becauseof the absence of verb-raising. Deprez and Pierce (1993) explain the surface misplacement of
the English Neg (in neg-initial utterances) in terms of the optionality of (the VP-internal)
subject raising out of the VP in child grammars. But they do not explain the choice of ‘no’
instead of ‘not’ in children’s non-anaphoric negatives in English. Suppose we assume,contrary to Deprez and Pierce, that the natural position of sentential operators such as Neg
and Finiteness/Tense is in the C-system; that utterance-initial Neg is in its unmarked position
in UG, and that no (unlike not) incorporates finiteness. Then, Neg “lowering” and the change
of no to not would be a consequence of the development of Tense and Tense-lowering fromC–to-I (a movement suggested in the history of English by Platzack(1995)), assuming thatNeg needs to be in the domain of Tense. We thus agree with Deprez and Pierce that initial
Neg is in its “correct” position in English children’s utterances, but differ in the account of
how the adult grammar is attained.
Finally, the various negations in Tamil suggest that there may be a variety of neg
elements in UG that are collapsed into the single English negative not; and this may be part of
the acquisition problem.7 Gillian Ramchand (2004:63), in an analysis of the two negatives na
and ni in Bangla, suggests that “natural language negation does not correspond to a purelogical propositional operator, but is a cover term for a number of selective negative binders…” In Bangla, we find a familiar difference between finite and non-finite negation: ni is
7

The data below (from Deprez and Pierce 1993: 26, 35; their numbering) show child utterances withno corresponding to negation with ille as well as to negation “with intended meaning of denial or
rejection”, expressed in Tamil by veeNDaam ‘don’t want’.
No I see truck = I didn’t see the truck (Ta. paark-ille: Vinf –Neg)(9a) No my play my puppet. Play my toys. (24 months)(uttered after the puppet is thrown on the floor)= I don’t want to … (Ta. puppet ooDe veLayaaDa veeNDaam(9b) No mommy doing. David turn.
= I don’t want Mommy to do this(not =‘Mommy’s not doing’, as Deprez and Pierce suggest )(9c-d) No lamb have it. No lamb have it.
“You don’t want the lamb to have it either?”
No lamb have a chair either.

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specified “for both tense and aspect features,” and cannot be used in non-finite clauses. It
differs in syntactic position and in its semantics from na, a “pure negation marker” that cooccurs with explicit tense marking. Ramchand analyzes ni as binding a time variable but na asbinding an event variable; and speculates that these two different logical types of negation
head functional projections that are at different levels in the phrase structure.

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Amritavalli,R. and K.A. Jayaseelan. (2005) “Finiteness and Negation in Dravidian”. G. Cinque andR.Kayne (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax 2005. Oxford University Press,
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Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross Linguistic Perspective. Oxford
University Press, New York.
Crain, Stephen and Diane Lillo-Martin. (1999). An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language
Acquisition. Blackwell Publishers, Massachusetts.
Deprez, Viviane and Amy Pierce. (1993). “Negation and Functional Projections in Early Grammar”.
Linguistic Inquiry 24: 25-67.
Hany-Babu, M.T. (1996). “The Structure of Malayalam Sentential Negation.” International Journal ofDravidian Linguistics 25: 1-15.
Hany-Babu, M.T. (1997). “The Syntax of Functional Categories.” Ph.D. diss., Central Institute ofEnglish and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, India.
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Roberts (eds.), Clause Structure and Language Change. 200-225. Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
Ramchand, Gillian Catriona. (2004). “Two Types of Negation in Bengali.” The Clause Structurein
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Language and Linguistics Theory 2004.
Sarma, Vyjayanthi, M. (2002). “Case and Agreement: The Issue of Non-Finite Sentences inAcquisition”. Ingeborg Lasser (ed). The Process of Language Acquisition: The Proceedingsof the 1999 GALA Conference.
Santelmann Lynn, Stephanie Berk and Barbara Lust. (2000). “Assessing the Strong Continuity
Hypothesis in the Development of English Inflection: Arguments for the Grammatical
Mapping Paradigm”. Roger Billerey et al. (eds). WCCFL 19 Proceedings. Cascadilla Press,
Massachusetts.
Sarma, Vaijayanthi, M. (2002). “Case and Agreement: The Issue of Non-Finite Sentences inAcquisition”. Ingeborg Lasser (ed). The Process of Language Acquisition: The Proceedingsof the 1999 GALA Conference.
Stromswold, Karin and Kai Zimmermann (1999/2000). “ Acquisition of Nein and Nicht and the VPInternal Subject Stage in German”. Language Acquisition 8(2).
Vaidyanathan, R. (1989). “Development of forms and functions of negation in the early stages oflanguage acquisition; a study in Tamil”. Journal of Child Language 18 1991.
Wexler, Ken (1994). “Finiteness and Head Movement in Early Child Grammars,” in David Lightfootand Norbert Hornstein (eds.) Verb Movement. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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