Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Symbols used in transcription
- Pronunciation table
- PART I INTRODUCTORY SECTIONS
- PART II INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND AUXILIARY VERB LEARNING IN SEVEN CHILDREN
- 3 Research design
- 4 Rate of development
- 5 Indicators of analytic and piecemeal learning
- 6 The complexity principle as an indicator of holistic learning
- 7 Individual differences and the development of auxiliaries in tag questions
- 8 The development of auxiliary DO
- 9 The development of CAN
- PART III ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN AUXILIARY VERB LEARNING
- Notes
- References
- Index
8 - The development of auxiliary DO
from PART II - INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND AUXILIARY VERB LEARNING IN SEVEN CHILDREN
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Symbols used in transcription
- Pronunciation table
- PART I INTRODUCTORY SECTIONS
- PART II INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND AUXILIARY VERB LEARNING IN SEVEN CHILDREN
- 3 Research design
- 4 Rate of development
- 5 Indicators of analytic and piecemeal learning
- 6 The complexity principle as an indicator of holistic learning
- 7 Individual differences and the development of auxiliaries in tag questions
- 8 The development of auxiliary DO
- 9 The development of CAN
- PART III ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN AUXILIARY VERB LEARNING
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
A dimension on which children might be expected to differ is the extent to which auxiliaries remain context restricted, or are applied to a variety of available contexts fairly quickly. In certain cases context-restricted usage would also indicate unanalysed usage. This is amenable to investigation by examining the set of main verbs with which specified auxiliary forms, or subforms co-occur. The forms chosen must, however, occur with sufficient regularity to allow comparisons both between children, and within children over time. For this reason, Chapters 8 and 9 concentrate on do and can as the forms which occur most frequently.
doas an operator
In standard English, forming the negative and in most cases the interrogative of main verbs requires do-insertion (see Section 1.5). Auxiliary do, therefore, plays a central role in the development of negation and questions. Like other auxiliaries, it is also available for emphasis and ellipsis. It can be supplied as a means of stressing the propositional truth of the predicate of a clause containing no auxiliary (# ‘He went out’ → # ‘He 'did go out’) and functions as an operator (with or without emphasis) where there is ellipsis of the main verb (# ‘He did’).
Unstressed forms
As a consequence of the limitation of auxiliary do to the NICE operations and its lack of independent propositional content, its paradigm is deficient in comparison with that of other auxiliaries; there is no place for do forms which are unstressed, declarative and affirmative (UDAs). Palmer (1965) suggests that such forms occur in ‘code’ (ellipsis) but their existence is difficult to substantiate.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Language Development and Individual DifferencesA Study of Auxiliary Verb Learning, pp. 113 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990