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The development of inversion in wh-questions: a reply to Van Valin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2003

CAROLINE F. ROWLAND  and
JULIAN M. PINE
CAROLINE F. ROWLAND
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
JULIAN M. PINE
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Abstract

Van Valin (Journal of Child Language29, 2002, 161–75) presents a critique of Rowland & Pine (Journal of Child Language27, 2000, 157–81) and argues that the wh-question data from Adam (in Brown, A first language, Cambridge, MA, 1973) cannot be explained in terms of input frequencies as we suggest. Instead, he suggests that the data can be more successfully accounted for in terms of Role and Reference Grammar. In this note we re-examine the pattern of inversion and uninversion in Adam's wh-questions and argue that the RRG explanation cannot account for some of the developmental facts it was designed to explain.

Type
Note
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 2003 , pp. 197 - 212
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Elena Lieven, Anna Theakston and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft.