Child Language: A language which does not exist? 9783110882292, 9783110133097

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Child Language A language which does not exist?

Willem Kaper

A language which does not exist?

1985 FORIS PUBLICATIONS Dordrecht - Holland/Cinnaminson - U.S.A.

Published by: Foris Publications Holland P.O. Box 509 3300 AM Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sole distributors for the U.S.A. and Canada: Foris Publications U.S.A. P.O. Box C-50 Cinnaminson N.J. 08077 U.S.A. CIP-DATA KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Kaper, Willem Child language: a language which does not exist? / Willem Kaper. Dordrecht [etc.]: Foris With bibliogr. With examples ISBN 90-6765-096-X SISO 803.3 UDC 800.863-053.2 Subject heading: child language.

The publication of this book was supported by a grant of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (ZWO).

ISBN 90 6765 096 X ©1985 By the author No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the Netherlands by ICG Printing, Dordrecht.

To my faithful son Hans To the memory of my dear son Erik

Contents

Preface Introduction I. Container and contents II. Relative temporal adverbs III. Intensification IV. Degrees of comparison V. International correspondences VI. The use of some interrogatives VII. Antonymous use of words VIII. Self-reference 1. There is no linguistic form expressing self-reference 2. Self-reference in the full sense of the word a. Using the proper name b. Using a personal pronoun IK subject IK not subject Using personal pronouns other than IK c. Using a possessive pronoun IX. Some concluding remarks References Index of proper names Index of subjects, words and expressions

1 3 11 15 23 31 37 49 55 65 65 71 71 75 75 86 91 97 101 103 111 115

Preface

In 1959 there appeared under the title Kindersprachforschung mit Hilfe des Kindes 'Child language research with the help of the child' the commercial edition of my thesis Einige Erscheinungen der kindlichen Spracherwerbung erläutert im Lichte des vom Kinde gezeigten Interesses für Sprachliches 'Some phenomena of language acquisition in children elucidated with the help of the linguistic interest shown by the child'. This book was based on a very small part of my material on child language collected from the spontaneous speech of my two sons. I discussed principally those utterances in which the children showed a kind of reflection on language. The work met with approval, and repeatedly I was asked to publish the remaining material. Pressure of other work and unforeseen circumstances prevented me from complying with these requests. Also, the revolution in linguistics since 1957 made me reluctant, because my approach to language is essentially different. Notwithstanding all that, I was encouraged to publish my material by remarks such as "Still, we can never get too much firsthand material on child language" (Leopold 1964:272), and "What we need just as urgently are extensive transcripts of utterances made available to workers in the field, against which theories can be tested" (Schlesinger 1968:10), and by demands for much more data on children's acquisition of various native languages, especially on later stages than the earliest ones (Slobin 1970:184; for Dutch see Schaerlaekens 1977:VII). As German was the foreign language with which I was most familiar (I was then a teacher of this language), I wrote my thesis in German. However, in order to make my work accessible to a larger reading public, I now prefer to present my observations in English. The point is that many American researchers don't read German. What Nickel (1981:2) remarks with reference to a paper on the contrastive analysis hypothesis holds for publications on child language as well: "Typically enough, the list of references includes, like those of the majority of articles written in the USA and also sometimes in the UK, only Anglo-American publications. No reference is made to research in Europe or other parts of the world." I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. W.J.M. Levelt for his encouragement and advice concerning the publication of this book. With sadness I remember my late friend Prof. Dr. F.C. Maatje, whose stimulating letters helped me to continue my study in unfavourable circumstances. But most of all, I thank my son Hans, who not only allowed me to publish the awkward sentences he produced in his childhood, but who has also displayed all along a keen interest in my linguistic work.

Introduction

T h e objective of the present work is very modest: I only wish to offer a collection of spontaneous child utterances to all interested researchers of child language, hoping that they will be of some value. I made my notes in 1938-1944, for the greater part the years of the Second World War. At that time tape-recorders were not yet in c o m m o n use, but I noted d o w n scrupulously what I heard, often adding some remarks about the situation. I n t h a t w a y a k i n d ofdiary c a m e about, although I did not make entries every day. Most of the notes are taken from my sons Erik (E), born 23.6.36, and Hans (H), born 21.8.38, both of them in Rotterdam, where they also grew up. M y first entry from E speaking completely intelligible words was made at age 1 ;11.14, from H at ±1;7.10 (ages given in years, months, and days; '±' means: about that day). I stopped making notes w h e n the younger son went to school; the last ones are E 8;2.24 and H 6;0.10. S o m e comparable examples from other children (either observed by myself, or taken from literature) are added now and then. A younger generation is represented scantily in examples from E's daughter Yvette (Y), born 4.12.70 in Amsterdam, and growing up near that city. Setting aside those utterances in which the children showed a kind of reflection on language, discussed at length in Kaper 1959,1 only noted constructions and other linguistic phenomena which struck me as deviant from adult language use. Consequently, in most cases I cannot tell whether the children used the correct forms as well, and only occasionally can I give information about the frequency of deviant constructions. T h a t is why I cannot draw convincing conclusions from my material. However, by analysing the examples as carefully as possible, and by comparing them with each other and with colloquial adult speech, I now and then venture to put forward a tentative explanation which possibly can be falsified. I a m fully aware of the fact that in doing so I run the risk of belabouring the obvious. Writing in English about Dutch linguistic phenomena is more complicated than writing about them in German, although English and Dutch are also cognate languages. M a n y deviations from adult language in Dutch children need no further explanation for German readers, because they correspond to deviations of the same kind in German, whereas for English-speaking readers they often do not. Aconstruction such as Hans doetnietdrinken, for instance, translated into English as 'Hans does not drink', seems to be grammatical, so that I must explicitly add that the usual form is Hans drinkt niet 'Hans drinks not'. And in Watnoemen jullie dat? (literally 'what call you that?') the deviation is not that the periphrasis is

Introduction

/ 4

lacking, but that the interrogative wat 'what' is used instead of hoe 'how'. That is w h y it is s o m e t i m e s impossible t o translate the childish utterances in such a way that the deviation shows up. In such cases, explicit c o m m e n t is necessary in order to avoid m i s u n d e r standing. T e r m s such as "deviant", " ( u n ) g r a m m a t i c a l " and " c o r r e c t " on the f o l l o w i n g pages are always to be u n d e r s t o o d in relation t o adult language as it is spoken in the e n v i r o n m e n t of the children, i.e., in the Western Netherlands. N o w and t h e n I alternate " a d u l t lang u a g e " w i t h " a d u l t speech", w h e n I want t o emphasize that the spoken (not the w r i t t e n ) language is meant, whereas " c o l l o q u i a l D u t c h " refers to adult speech in informal conversation. By " s t a n dard D u t c h " I mean again the adult language of t h e Western Netherlands, but w i t h e m p h a s i s on the normative aspect. I agree with Seuren (1981:52) that p r o b a b l y there are various " s t a n d a r d s " ; my restriction to t h e " W e s t e r n " language is purely practical, because it was this l a n g u a g e that was the " m o d e l " for m y children. It goes w i t h o u t saying, however, that d r a w i n g hard lines between the aforesaid kinds of language is impossible. A l t h o u g h I try t o avoid an " a d u l t o c e n t r i c a p p r o a c h " (Sachs 1979:393) t o c h i l d language, e.g., by not p r e s u p p o s i n g the parts of speech of adult language in children, m y e x p e r i e n c e i s t h a t w e m u s t always keep in m i n d that the language learning child is u n c o n sciously g u i d e d by the language of his environment. That is w h y in m y o p i n i o n s t u d y i n g c h i l d language as an exotic language (McNeill 1966b:16) is not the right w a y (cf. B l o o m 1970:225); we must c o n t i nually c o m p a r e the child's utterances w i t h adult speech. In d o i n g so I f o u n d again a n d again that there is no essential difference between c h i l d l a n g u a g e and adult language. Hence the provocative sub-title of m y book: " a language w h i c h does not exist?" (by w a y of p r e c a u t i o n w i t h a q u e s t i o n mark for the time being). As B l o o m (1978:232) puts it: "all the c h i l d r e n for w h o m data have been reported appear to have c o n v e r g e d on the adult m o d e l f r o m the beginning. T h a t is, all the variation that has been observed is consistent with variation that is also systematic, in some respect, in the target language." G o o d l u c k & Tavakolian (1981:22) speak of " t h e child's use of processing m e c h a n i s m s and parsing principles essentially identical t o those p r o p o s e d f o r a d u l t sentence processing". C o n s e quently, careful study of adult language, mainly of c o l l o q u i a l speech, is indispensable. A d i f f i c u l t y is that w h e n an adult uses a f o r m deviant f r o m standard D u t c h and a child does the same, we o f t e n c a n n o t k n o w w h e t h e r the c h i l d has taken over the f o r m f r o m the adult or vice versa, whereas a t h i r d possibility is that b o t h the

Introduction

/ 5

child and the adult have constructed a potential form which is not actualized in standard Dutch (see p. 8). Since my material is mainly taken from two boys only, the objection that the conformity may be accidental is not without foundation. I a m mindful of Wick R. Miller's admonition (Miller 1973:381): "Children start off on different paths, and it is only when there is a certain amount of convergence that it is profitable to compare the development of the child's grammar with the adult model." But in accordance with the purpose of this book, I simply point out the occurrence of the phenomenon, hoping to contribute in this way to the solution of the problem whether there is a typical "child's grammar" or not. A second thing we must keep in mind - also according to my experience - is that the child's approach to language is essentially different from the linguist's. T h e child tries to speak the language he is learning, the linguist tries to describe it (cf. Derwing 1973:47 and 82, and Derwing 1977:81). This difference is neglected by Chomsky (1965:4; cf. also Roeper 1973:189). And must we really assume "that the child unconsciously, quickly and faultlessly does the same as that which the linguist for years exerts himself toarrive at" (Seuren 1975:26)? Erreich, Valian & Winzemer (1980:158) try to make clear that they "are using the notion of the child as a little linguist or little scientist strictly metaphorically" (my emphasis). Although they admit that "the child seldom consciously projects and tests hypotheses, whereas the linguist always does", and that "there are many other disanalogies between children as language learners and linguists as grammar writers", they do not draw the conclusion that the metaphor is senseless, but continue: "The importance of the analogy, aside from suggesting a model of learning, is that we know a hypothesis-testing model is empirically realizable because examples of it, e.g. linguists, exist." In other words, the metaphor of the child as a little linguist (testing hypotheses) is important not only because it provides us with a possible model for language acquisition, but also because the fact that (among others) linguists exist produces evidence that such a model can be converted to reality. But does that prove that children proceed like linguists? In this connection the question arises whether the child learns rules (for the meaning of the term "knowing rules" cf. Gleitman, Gleitman & Shipley 1972:137-138). In Kaper19591 give many e x a m ples showing that some linguistic regularities may strike the child, which is less than what Gleitman et al. (1972:160) observe: "All of the children we have studied show at least a muddy capacity to be

Introduction / 6

reflective about knowledge." I propose to replace "knowledge" by "language". Certainly my sons reflected on language, but in doing so they always referred to concrete forms (cf. "awareness of structures as opposed to awareness of rules" (Read 1978:67), and Derwing (1973:193 n.1); see also Kaper (1959:56) forexamples).Thisis supported in a sense by Bogoyavlenskiy's experiment, cited in Slobin (1966:143) and Clark (1978:21), showing that children aged 5 and 6, although knowing the difference of meaning caused by the addition of diminutive, augmentative, and agentive suffixes to nonsense words, were not able to identify the word endings as the elements that actually made the difference. My observations are also taken from children far beyond the two-word stage, and in fact linguistically untrained language users do not behave differently. Even linguists, although always occupied with language systems, do not "apply" rules when speaking. As for myself, I can tell exactly which diminutive ending must be added to any Dutch noun, also to nonsense words, and I can provide other examples when desired, but I am unable to formulate the complicated rules of Dutch diminutive formation. Vygotsky (1962:100-101) mentionssimilarobservations. And contrary to what Nuchelmans (1978:113) supposes, when the explicit formulation of the rules is presented to me, I do not recognize it as that by which I in fact am guided in my linguistic behaviour. The same can be said of my pupils in secondary schools (cf. Kaper 1959:83). Not being a psychologist, I take care not to stir up a hornet's nest by tackling the problem of linguistic awareness (the main topic of Sinclair, Jarvella & Levelt, 1978). It is evident that we can know something without knowing that we know it (cf. Read 1978:65), which probably is also thecase in children. In the literature on child language, however, many researchers speak of children "formulating" grammar, rules, or hypotheses (e.g., McNeill 1966a:100; Limber 1973:177; Richards 1973:116; Erreich et al. 1980:160,161, 173). I am convinced that none of them intends to say that children "formulate" rules etc. in the same way as linguists do, but what else does this term mean? Perhaps that children "formulate unconsciously"? But that is a contradiction in terms. Marshall & Morton (1978:225) are right in opposing "tacit awareness" to "explicit formulation". More convincing, in my opinion, is the definition given by Wick R. Miller (1973:381): "When it is stated that a child learns a certain transformational rule, it is to be understood that he has learned a certain grammatical relationship which can be described by the transformational rule. This does not necessarily mean that the

Introduction

/ 7

child's rule is identical to one found in a transformational grammar, but the two must in some way be isomorphic. T h e grammatical relations could, of course, be translated into any other adequate linguistic model besides the transformational model." But what does it mean, in view of this definition, when Miller in the same paper o n p. 386 says that what the girl S u s a n does when answering No, not yet to a question, is to "derive the sentence fragment from She doesn't walk yet by the use of a deletion rule"? Of course the child knows that not yet refers to the walking mentioned in the question, but that is not to say that she has learned the grammatical relationship between She doesn't walk yet and Not yet. Linguists may discuss the question whether this relation c a n best be described as a deletion or not (cf. Dik 1968:200), but I do not see any reason to s u p p o s e that children or adults make use of a deletion rule when answering a question in the above way. In this respect I agree with Smith (1970:111), who, speaking of the unproved "psyc h o l o g i c a l reality of linguistic rules", says that it is not clear that people behave more or less a c c o r d i n g to the rules stated in generative grammar. My experience is that children, when at s c h o o l they are forced to learn grammatical rules (first of their native tongue, later on of foreign languages), by nature do not apply them. In order to test whether a linguistic form is right or wrong they prefer to speak it aloud to hear "what it s o u n d s like", (cf. B o h m e 1983:211, and her examples on pp. 213,218 and 259), or to write it d o w n to see "what it looks like". Many adults proceed in the same way. More often than not, there is an aversion to s u c h rules. In my opinion this is a sign that learning a language by means of grammatical rules is contrary to nature. For non-linguists (not only for children, as S l o b i n (1978:52) supposes), the main criterion of acceptability (rather than grammaticality) is w h e t h e r a linguisticform s o u n d s f a m i l i a r o r not. Does an error in constructions such as Did you came home? "result from an incorrect formulation of subject-aux inversion in which tense . . . is c o p i e d into pre-subject position but not deleted from its original post-subject position" (Erreich et al. 1980:160)? A c c o r d i n g to Erreich et al. (1980:165) this is because the child "might misanalyse a sentence like Do you like it? as V + P r e s N P V + P r e s NP", for "the untensed form of like can consistently be interpreted as a tensed form in the present tense, except for third person singular". But this explanation of Did you came home? only obtains for English examples, and does not apply to Dutch constructions of the same kind, e.g., Chaa Kees chaapt 'go Kees

Introduction / 8

sleeps' (van Ginneken 1917:229). More natural is the hypothesis that both the Dutch and the English constructions are contaminations, e.g., of Nu gaat Kees slapen 'now Kees goes to sleep' and Kees slaapt 'Kees is sleeping' in Dutch, and of Did you come home? and You came home in English (see Kaper 1977:305-306). The gist of this hypothesis is that it is a process of imitating overheard sentence fragments and combining them into new structures (cf. Kaper 1959:XX). A child's constructions such as Hans doet niet drinken and Wat noemen jullie dat? mentioned above (p. 3) in connection with the translation are also interesting from another point of view: they are examples of the phenomenon of "international correspondences". By this term I mean the repeatedly observed fact that linguistic forms produced by children which are deviant with regard to adult use of the mother tongue now and then correspond to forms usual in some foreign language (see Kaper 1977:303 for references). The explanation is that in each language there are more potential constructions than those actualized in normal language use, and the actualization varies from language to language. International correspondences arise because the child does not yet see the (often indistinct) borderlines between allowed and unallowed actualizations in the language he is learning. Consequently, it is self-evident that many international correspondences are due to chance and there are many individual differences. In chapter V several examples are given, especially of correspondences between Dutch child language and German adult speech. On the whole, the amount of individual differences in children's endeavours to speak in accordance with the way in which people in their environment speak is striking; cf. K.E. Nelson (1981:40), who distinguishes between "low-imitators" and "high-imitators", and Van Kleeck & Street (1981:60), who point out that "the existence and nature of the communicative behaviors which differentiate talkative from reticent children have been virtually ignored". An entry in the diary for H reports that this boy in the first half of his third year still used to parrot nearly all the words he heard (also when not addressed to him), without paying attention to the meaning. E never did; on the contrary, he refused to repeat words when he was prompted to do so. But even in his fourth year, lying alone in his bed, he was heard speaking such words silently; when somebody entered his bedroom he stopped immediately. Apparently he did not speak the words before he felt sure of the right pronunciation (see Kaper 1959:3). Consequently, the number of deviant pronunciations noted down from H is much larger than those taken

Introduction

/ 9

from E. But Y on her part at 1;5.8 already spoke complete "sentences" without words, but with adult intonation ("jargon": see Bloom 1970:102, referring to McCarthy; cf. also Schaerlaekens 1977:88), which E and H never did. A t 2 ; 0 . 0 I heard her speaking in complete (apparently stereotyped) sentences, without mistakes which would have indicated system building by herself. As late as at 2;3.17, I observed for the first time her speaking the words of her sentences "staccato", making the impression that now she was choosing the words by herself. Such individual differences may be due partly to qualities of character (E was more of an introvert than H), partly to the environment (Y's mother was nearly always together with her), and perhaps they also c o m e about by the merest chance. For a clear comprehension of language acquisition they are in any case very important: "The problem of individual differences between children in their approaches to language acquisition has not been addressed frequently in developmental psycholinguistics, but is obviously of great importance " (Slobin 1973:193, n. 8). T h e chapters of this book vary in length in proportion to the amount of examples I had at my disposal for the subjects discussed. My material on self-reference is relatively abundant; in consequence chapter VIII is very long, and I can even put forward some tentative conclusions. In the other chapters more or less casual subjects are discussed, according to the random collection of examples of which I had to make a choice. T h a t is why the chapters are rather independent of each other, whereas their sequence is virtually accidental. Nevertheless, I hope that my very accurate notes may be an unpretentious contribution to the badly needed collection of spontaneous utterances of preschool and school-going children. At the risk of be labouring the obvious, I wish to point out that although I now and then make some critical remarks w h e n my material gives occasion for it, it is not my intention to deal with all the hypotheses put forward by various researchers concerning the subjects which I touch upon. Consequently, the list of references is not to be regarded as a complete bibliography. For the convenience of the reader, I have collected the child utterances in an appendix at the back of the book.

I. Container and contents

When E in the third year of his life uses the word opete(n) 'eat' for taking a liquid medicine or for drinking tea (examples 1 and 2), where opdrinkefnp would be more adequate, the deviation from adult language is the same as in a eat juice (example 74 in Bloom 1970:122). However, the meaning of the component op- does not differ from standard Dutch: strictly speaking, although not necessarily, it expresses that by means of eating or drinking, the food or the beverage will be finished. In (3) and (4), however, op expresses absence: the child only wants to say that there is no (not: no more!) water in the kettle, and that there are no candles in the box, respectively. In (5) the meaning is again different: here op does not referto the contents of the box of bricks (the absent bricks), but to the box (more generally, the 'container') itself, as in the examples from o t h e r c h i l d r e n (6), (7), (9), (10),and (11). Example(8) is ambiguous: does the child Y mean that the pretended drink is finished, or that the container is empty? By asking this question, we lay open the cause of the children's deviant use of op: when the food (or the drink) is eaten (or drunk), the plate (or the cup) is empty; how can the child know that the mother by saying op! refers to the disappeared food and not to the empty plate? As a matter of fact, it is more plausible to suppose that the child's attention is held by the plate before him than by the food, because the latter is no longer present. On the other hand, there is no doubt that in (3) and (4) op refers to the absent water and the absent candles, respectively. Therefore in my opinion the best explanation is that in the child's mind the reference is rather vague, in other words, that even at the age of about 2;6 the "semantic fog" (cf. Leopold 1949a:132-133, and Barrett 1978:212) has not yet cleared away. The child's thought is still "a dim, amorphous whole" (Vygotsky 1962:126). A striking individual difference is that the discussed utterances with op were spoken by my sons in the third year of their lives, but by the girl Y in the second. Conversely, it is interesting to observe that E and H use the word leeg 'empty' in the sense of op in standard Dutch (12 and 13), expressing that the contents of a container are finished. In (14) a periphrasis takes the place of the inflected form of leeg\ an adult would say lege flesjes 'empty bottles'. The opposite of leeg is vol 'full', which in normal linguistic usage refers t o the container, not to its contents. In that sense it is used by E i n ( 1 5 ) - volmaken 'make full' is a colloquial variant of vullen'W1. In the Western Netherlands the final -n of the Infinitive is mostly n o t p r o n o u n c e d , a l t h o u g h a c c o r d i n g t o the o r t h o g r a p h i c rules it must be written.

Chapter I / 12

and by H as well (19); what is deviant in an exclamation of this kind is only the negation. But in (16), (17), and (18) one is inclined to think that the child means that the contents are vol, not the container. In (17) this is very clear, but both of the other examples arouse doubts in this respect, because in adult language de Sanatogen (a medicinal powder) and de lucifers 'the matches' may refer to 'container+contents': when asking: Will you pass me the matches? one expects the box with the matches to be handed to him, not the matches taken out of the box. H, as he grew older (I do not remember the exact age) became sensible of the illogicality of this convention, and when asked for "the chocolates", for fun he carried out such a request literally: he took the chocolates out of the bonbon dish, and handed them over. The possibility that a usage as described in the preceding paragraph has promoted the misunderstanding of the meaning of op, vol, and leeg in children is not to be excluded. At any rate, although the examples show deviant language use, the child does essentially the same as the adults: he uses the name of the contents to indicate container+contents. There is evidence that children really use the name of the contents referring to container+contents. In (20) the singular form of the finite verb does not stand in congruence with the plural lucifers 'matches', but its use is easily accounted for, because E was asking for a box containing matches. In the same way the plural of the mass nouns schoensmeer 'shoe-cream', boter 'butter', and jam 'jam' in H's utterances (21), (22), and (23) are explicable. As a matter of fact, such deviant plurals may also be observed in adult speech. Recently I asked my wife Kan je¿¿n van je tandpasta's missen?'can you spare one of your toothpastes?' although tandpasta is an uncountable noun. Concerning (24) it must be observed that in standard Dutch we never say that a kettle is boiling when we mean that the water in the kettle is boiling. It may be that in H's utterance de fluitketel 'the whistling kettle' refers to container+contents, but the possibility is not to be ruled out that at that time the boy did not know the usual meaning of koken 'boil', and by speaking this word referred to the whistling sound. But it is clear that in (25) the girl Y at a much earlier age was really speaking of the contents, the water (that in this and in the following example the phonetic forms are deviant is of no importance in this connection). On the same day, her grandfather said to her Ga maar naar het water 'just go to the water', referring to the tub containing water, which order she understood perfectly. On the contrary, it is very likely that in (26) the word wade 'water' referred to the container, because the watering-

Container

and contents

/ 13

can was almost empty, and the child did not want to have it filled with water. A very curious exam pie is (27). Did E have a notion of the fact that by naming the contents we may mean container+contents? In fact he used the name of the container to refer to the contents, which in a certain sense is the reverse.

II. Relative temporal adverbs

In Kaper (1959:156-161) an extensive description is given of children's struggle to learn the exact meanings of the words denoting the parts of the day (morning, noon, afternoon, evening), and it is shown how they sometimes erroneously connect them with situational circumstances, e.g., the presence of a person in the house, or the burning of the light in a room. In this chapter I will focus my attention on the use of relative temporal adverbs such as yesterday and tomorrow, the learning of which is more complicated because the referent changes in the course of time: today becomes yesterday, etc. My observations are not new (cf. Grégoire 1947:119-121), but the examples may contribute to extending the material already collected by others. Considering (28)-(34), we find that both E and H use gister(en) 'yesterday' referring to the past, but in contrast to standard Dutch the span of time between the moment of speaking and that of reference varies. As in English, the normal reference of gisteren is the previous day, which may be the case in (32), but in the other examples the span of time is either longer (28,33) or shorter (29,31, 34). Uncertainty about the choice of the right word is revealed in (30): E wavers between gister 'yesterday', morgen 'to-morrow', and vanmorgen 'this morning', so it may only be by chance that the last word is the correct one. This example corresponds to (52), where his brother also uses vanmorgen 'this morning' and gisteren 'yesterday' referring to the same time. In (34), however, H is speaking of gisteren and vanmiddag 'this afternoon' as if these words were synonyms. It may be significant that H does not say 'gisteren is vanmiddag' but 'gisteren was vanmiddag', from which one gets the impression that the child is not speaking of a linguistic term but of the extralinguistic reality. In (63), on the contrary, his brother E, already aged 6;0.14, commenting on H's use of vroeger 'in the past' says Dàt is natuurlijk gisteren 'that, of course, is yesterday', using the present of the finite verb, which possibly points to a more linguistic attitude. It goes without saying that this is only a suggestion on my part. An interesting phenomenon is mentioned in one of my notes on E±4;1.14: about that time the boy often spoke the word gisteren to indicate the time before his afternoon nap, and morgen 'to-morrow' for the time after it. This corresponds to other observations (see Kaper 1959:158-159). As a matter of fact, all these examples show that the boys to a certain extent use the word gister(en) in the adult way: referring to the past or to the time before sleeping; but the restriction to the day immediately before now and to sleeping as a night's rest is neglected. Obviously in the fourth year and in the first month of the fifth

Chapter

II / 16

year of their lives, the concept of time is still very hazy (here again a "semantic fog"; see p. 11), which is also apparent from (35)-(37), where weken 'weeks' (diminutive weekjes) and week 'week' are used in the sense of dagen (daagjes) and dag 'day(s)', respectively. Piaget's notion of "unstable schemes of thinking" may still apply at this age (Furth 1969:212). T h e opposite to glsteren, the adverb morgen 'to-morrow', presents a special difficulty in Dutch, because it is h o m o n y m o u s with the noun morgen 'morning' (also in German, see Rau 1979:361), from which the adverb vanmorgen 'this morning' is derived by composition. As the adverbial morgen refers to the future and vanmorgen to the present time or to the past, it is understandable that children mix up the meanings in this respect. So in (38)-(41), in (44), and in (46), morgen refers to the past - only in (40) the span of time is longer than in standard Dutch; (44) leaves us in doubt in this respect - whereas in (54) and (55) vanmorgen refers to the future, probably to the next day, consequently meaning morgen 'to-morrow'. O n the other hand, morgen 'to-morrow' is repeatedly used referring to the future: (42), (43), and (45), but - as with gisteren the span of time is either too short: (42) and (45), or too long (43). Vanmorgen referring to the past embraces too much time in (47), (48), (49), (51), (52), and (53), or it is used adequately, in (50) and (56). By his utterance in (56), H means that if St. Nicholas had intended to give him nothing, he would not have put anything into the shoe placed under the chimney, where H had found something that morning. Most interesting is (51), because here vanmorgen 'this morning' is treated as if there were degrees of it. It must be emphasized that vanmorgen does not mean 'this very morning' but'very this morning', for the child wanted to express that the time at which Jaap's act took place was vanmorgen to a very high degree. T h e examples containing vanmorgen are almost exclusively from H; only (30) is spoken by E. A n entry in the diary for E makes mention of the fact that up to the age of 4;0.19 he used to say gemorgen instead of vanmorgen - except at3;6.26 (whereby (30) is meant) - but that on that day I heard vanmorgen again. T h e r e is not much point in comparing the utterances of the two brothers as to the differences in the deviations, because I only noted those which struck me as interesting. A notable fact is that morgen, contrary to gisteren, is repeatedly used to indicate a direction of time opposite to standard Dutch, viz. referring to the past. M y hypothesis that this is due to confusion of morgen and vanmorgen is supported by (30), where E changes the former into the latter, and by (54) and (55), in which H by vanmorgen very probably means morgen.

Relative temporal

adverbs / 17

From (46) it appears that for H at 4;0.20 morgen 'tomorrow' (referring to the past) and vanmiddag 'this afternoon' are synonymous, or rather that he is not aware of any difference in the meaning of these words. This proves again that at this age the consciousness of the meaning of such relative terms in this child is still very vague. N o w vanmiddag, like the English this afternoon, in normal language use either refers to the present afternoon, or is pro- or retrospective. In the last sense it is used b y H in (57) and (59), but as in both examples it refers to yesterday afternoon it covers too long a span of time. In (58), on the contrary, the same child uses it in prospective sense, and the span of time is shorter than in standard Dutch, for he is speaking of a later stage of the present morning. There is no doubt about this, because he wanted to polish his shoe in the kindergarten, and since that day was a Saturday, he went there only in the morning. It is astonishing that H well into the sixth year of his life is so uncertain in the use of vanmorgen and vanmiddag, because the nouns morgen 'morning' and middag '(after)noon' were familiar to him already in his fourth year (cf. Kaper 1959:157). This provides evidence that a child - this child at least does not analyse the words in a linguistic way. From E there are no examples with vanmiddag. T h e Dutch adverb vroeger 'in the past, in formertimes' as a matter of course refers to the past, and in this retrospective sense it is used by E in (60), and by H in (61)-(64); I don't have any examples showing the use of this word in the opposite meaning. However, it normally refers to a past which is rather remote; this restriction is neglected by H, whereas in E's example it is not clear what time the child is referring to. With H the span of time varies from one or two days in (62) to five days in (61); in (64) it seems unlikely in the situation that H was referring to a remote time. But E's remark in (63), Dat is natuurlijk gisteren 'that, of course, is yesterday' with reference to H's speaking of vroeger wel es 'once in the past' indicates that (in E's experience at least) H by vroeger usually meant 'yesterday'. This is affirmed by H himself, who says Vroeger dat is gisteren 'in the past that is yesterday'. But this affirmation is not very convincing, because of his practical use of gisteren and vroeger in (33), (34), (61), and (62): both of the words have a variety of meanings, but they do not coincide (cf. also p. 15). This is again a corroboration of my thesis about the vagueness of the notion of meanings in the young child. Aanstonds in standard Dutch refers to the very near future. The most adequate translation is 'in a little while', but it should be kept in mind that the Dutch word (in contrast to the English expression) is

Chapter II / 18

not transparent, so that when a child uses it with reference to the past, the contradiction is not as striking as in the English translation. Examples of s u c h a contradictory use (exclusivelyfrom E) are (65), (66), and (67). Here the meaning intended by the child may best be rendered by 'some time ago' or 'a few minutes ago'. But in (68), where aanstonds refers to the future, it is clear that for E the meaning of this word is rather elastic: it can cover a span of time not only of a few minutes, but also of several days (cf. Kaper1959:146). From the same example it appears that H (at that time 4;1.0) understood aanstonds in the usual way. It is interesting to c o m p a r e the elasticity of the meaning of aanstonds with that of vanmorgen in (51), dealt with on p. 16, where H at 3;11.0 is speaking of a very high degree of this concept. Curious, however, is the difference in age, for in E the p h e n o m e n o n was observed as late as in the third month of his seventh year! Apart from that, the use of aanstonds in both prospective and retrospective sense c o r r e s p o n d s to that of straks in adult speech: straks c a n mean not only 'in a little while', but also 'a little while ago'. T h e c o r r e s p o n d e n c e is not complete, because in (68) the prospective aanstonds does not refer to the immediate future (it is possible, to be sure, that E also used it in this non-deviant way, but I only noted the deviations), and the retrospective use in (65)-(67) was noted about 21/2 to 3 years earlier. But in straks in adult speech as well as in aanstonds in E's utterances, the temporal references move in opposite directions. Moreover, like aanstonds in (66) and (67), the retrospective adult straks is often followed by nog (untranslatable in this context) or al 'already'. Essentially the child does the same as the normal adult speaker. Ejik s(l)aapt al! 'E is already asleep', spoken by H at 2;2.24 and again at 2;3.13 (69), seems to be a normal Dutch sentence. H did not speak it, however, when going to bed in the evening, but when rising in the morning. It is clear that he wanted to say that his brother was 'still' asleep: Erik slaapt nog. C u r i o u s l y enough, in former times he did use the correct expression in this situation. Probably it was a mechanical imitation at that time, whereas the later misuse reveals a "reorganizational process" ( B o w e r m a n 1978a:1). O n the other hand, about a month later I noted (74), where nog 'still' is used instead of al 'already'. From E there are no examples of this kind, but for H there is no doubt that in his third year he did not clearly distinguish between these words, which are antonymous in the sense that al implies a new state of affairs that c o u l d have been expected to set in later, whereas nog implies a state of affairs that c o u l d have been expected to end earlier (cf. G a l t o n 1977:379). It is instructive to observe that the same mistake o c c u r s

Relative temporal

adverbs 7 19

in speech errors of adults. From the boys' mother, for instance, I noted (later on, to be sure): 'k Weet niet of Erik nu nog thuis is 'I don't know if Erik is still at home now'. As she spoke it in the evening, with reference to E's coming home from his daily work (he was already grown up at that time), it is evident that she m e a n t ' . . . if E is already at home now'. Even more interesting is that in adult Dutch at and nog sometimes may be used to express the same temporal relation from different points of view. Writing a covering letter w h e n sending a text to a friend, I intuitively formulated: 'Ik hoop dat je dit verhaaltje morgen nog ontvangt' (emphasis added now) 'I hope you will receive this story not later than to-morrow', but at the moment of writing it down, my linguistic consciousness came between and I chose al 'already' instead of nog 'still'. Afterwards I decided that nog would have been the better word after all. As a matter of fact, nog 'not later than' and al 'as early as' are synonymous in this context, the former expressing that it is not too late, the latter that it is early enough. Both words are opposites to the Dutch adverb pas 'not until', as in 'Ik vrees dat je het boek pas morgen ontvangt', meaning 'I am afraid that you will receive the book not until to-morrow', expressing that the receipt of the book threatens to be late. Consequently the confusing of al and nog is due to a potentiality inherent to the Dutch language. T h e Russian adverb jisjtsjo can be translated as 'still' or as'already', depending on the context; the same is true of Rumanian Tnca. So we find here international correspondences between Dutch child language and foreign adult speech (see Introduction, p. 8). In (70) and (71) the useof a / b y H isgrammatical;deviantareonly the tense of the verb in the former (see Kaper 1977:306) and the absence of concord in the latter, problems which are not under discussion here. In (75) and (76) Weet je nog 'do you remember' may be a stereotyped expression, perhaps influenced by H's brother, who spoke the grammatical (77) in the same calendaryearand month. In H's utterance (75) the meaning could be 'do you know already' or 'do you know', for the child had just returned from a visit downtown, and he could suppose that the person addressed did not yet know that he had drunk lemonade with his mother in the department store. However, there is no doubt that this supposition was right, and that is why it is more likely that Weet je nog is a meaningless introduction. T h e same may be the case in (76), but since this was spoken three days later, Weetje nog here can really mean 'do you remember'. In the last paragraph but one, I stated that nog and al are opposites to pas 'not until'; I now add that depending on the context,

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II / 20

translating pas as 'only then' may be adequate. It is illogical therefore that H in (72) and (73) combines a / p n d pas to a!pas, which is a contradiction in terms. W e can explain this p h e n o m e n o n by supposing that this child in the first half of his fourth year did not yet have a clear notion of the meanings of al and pas. Again a case of "semantic fog" (see p. 11 above). An explanation of the same kind is possible for (78), where H instead of the expression nog niet 'not yet' uses its antonym niet meer 'not . . . anymore'. Both boys had difficulties in using tot 'till, up to', which in standard Dutch functions as conjunction and as preposition. In (79) and (81) E and H, respectively, replace this word in a temporal clause by dat 'that', E in the beginning of his seventh year, H at the end of his fourth year. This amounts to saying that they did it at about the same calendar time, H about a month earlier than E. Probably, then, the utterances are interdependent, but there is no evidence that one brother imitated the other. In (82) H, aged 4;0.1, uses tot in the function of a preposition in an adverbial adjunct of direction (which is grammatical in adult language), but in an antonymous sense, meaning not 'up to', but 'from'. Presumably he did not know the right word vanaf 'from': because of his restricted vocabulary he had to resort to another. W h y to an antonym? Perhaps because it was the only word known to him containing a feature of the intended meaning 'movement with respect to something', although in the opposite direction. This explanation is only tenable by assuming a vague consciousness of meaning in the child. There are also some examples in which local fof'(up) to' is used normally, viz. (83) and (84), spoken by H at about the same time. In (80) E expresses himself in a rather unusual way, but there is no deviation in the use of tot as a directional preposition. Although the examples are scanty, we may conclude thatthe use of fof by H up to about his fourth birthday and by E even some years later was not yet stable. T h e lack of precision in the use of adverbs of time up to the fifth year of life is illustrated by (85), where H says bijna 'nearly' in the sense of dadelijk 'immediately'; if his mother had asked 'are you ready to c o m e and eat?' the reply would have been adequate. A promising working hypothesis may be that such a deviant use of a word is due to the fact that children and adults usually pay attention to speech acts (Searle 1969), and not to linguistic formulations. Moreover, we find here an interesting correspondence to sixteenth century Dutch: in the last verse of the fourteenth stanza of the Dutch national song (written about 1568-1572), Tsal hier haestzijn

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temporal

adverbs

/ 21

ghedaen 'it will s o o n be finished here', the adverb haest, nowadays written haast and s y n o n y m o u s to bijna 'nearly', means 'soon', which c o r r e s p o n d s to H's use of bijna referring to the immediate future.

III. Intensification

In adult language, intensifying adverbs are frequent; they intensify the meaning of the adjective or adverb to which they refer, but - as distinct from the comparative - without a degree of comparison. The intensifier may also be the first component of a compound, cf. 'it is very/terribly dark' and 'it is pitch-dark'. Both phenomena occur in child language as well, with instructive deviations. In (86) and (87) E and H in the sixth and the fourth year of life, respectively, intensify anders 'different' by preposing vee/'much', whereas in standard Dutch heel anders 'quite different' is the usual expression. This deviation is not hard to explain, because veel (which differs from heel only in the first phoneme) in combination with a comparative has intensifying power, e.g., in veel mooier 'much more beautiful'. Besides, adults also replace heel by veel now and then; from the boys' mother I noted some years ago Nou'st weer veel anders 'now it is much different again' (speaking of the sunlight shed over the sea), and a moment afterwards opeens heel anders 'all at once quite different'. I even saw a written text from the painter Piet Mondriaan running as follows: datalles ... veel anders moet worden ultgebeeld 'that everything . . . must be depicted much different'. Very probably the children repeatedly heard the word anders intensified by veel, so that we must doubt their creativity in regard to this construction. But whether this deviation from standard Dutch is created by an adult or by a child, the real cause of the phenomenon must be connected with the fact that it is a potential construction (see Introduction, p. 8) in the Dutch linguistic system. The adverb veel as a syntactic device intensifying a comparative, in the final analysis intensifies a difference: veel mooier' much more beautiful' intensifies the difference in degree of beauty between two entities. This function of veel implies the possibility of intensifying the difference between the qualities of two entities, which may also be expressed by the adjective anders 'different'. The (grammatical) use of dan 'than' after both comparatives and anders in Dutch (in English we say 'different from') may be due to the same cause. And the consequence of the use of dan with comparatives and other forms expressing inequality is the ungrammatical use in adult speech of dan in comparisons such as vier maal zo groot dan 'four times as big than', where als instead of dan is obligatory. In point of fact, vier maal zo groot expresses inequality and could be replaced by vier maal groter 'four times bigger', which explains the use of dan. Only linguistic scrutiny brings to light that als is the right word, because zo groot expresses equality ('big in the same degree'), and this "being equal" must be taken fourtimes. In child language, however,

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the misuse of dan is more extensive, and at any rate the problem is more complicated (see p. 34). Very c o m m o n in colloquial Dutch, although ungrammatical, is the declension of the adverb erg 'very' and heel 'quite' (in standard Dutch, adverbs are indeclinable); so it is not surprising that also children may say èrge leuke autootjes instead of erg leuke autotjes 'very nice little cars', as in (88). Such deviations demonstrate that neither children nor adults - not even philologists - , when speaking freely, clearly differentiate adverbs from adjectives. C u rious, on the contrary, is the metanalysis in (89), where E splits up the word eerbiedig 'devoutly' into two parts, erroneously taking eer- for the intensive heel 'quite', regardless of the fact that biedig does not make any sense (eerbiedig is derived from eerbied 'devotion'). Obviously, children even in the eighth year do not analyse linguistic forms consistently. It is c o m m o n knowledge that in general, compounds of which the first component is an intensifying word originally are similes, e.g., pitch-dark = as dark as pitch. Both adults and children, however, do not feel the compound to be a kind of comparison, but they do feel the first component as an intensifying word. This is evident because they combine a component of this kind with various adjectives or adverbs the meaning of which is such that a comparison is out of the question. So Dutch keihard 'stone-hard' may mean 'as hard as a stone', which is a logical comparison; but Dutch hard also means 'loud', 'fast' (as opposed to 'slow'), and 'hard' in the sense of 'strenuous(ly)' (e.g., in hard werken 'work hard'). In all of these meanings it can in colloquial Dutch be combined with kei- 'stone' as well, e.g., in De radio stond keihard aan 'the radio was turned on very loudly', although 'as loud as a stone' is a nonsensical comparison. Parenthetically, it may be remarked that the same is true of a d v e r b s w h i c h a r e n o t components of compounds, e.g., in English a bloody difficult book is not a book as difficult as blood. In (97) H uses keihard in the sense of 'very fast', which is not deviant from colloquial language use, but keiheet 'stone-hot' in (98) and (99) is. T h e examples (90)-(101) show that different combinations of this kind are made by E and H. In Kaper (1959:124-125) I have already discussed (90)-(93). Very interesting is (90), in which H first constructs the c o m p o u n d stiklicht, but then corrects himself by saying piklicht. Both compounds are deviant, to be sure, but there is hardly room for doubt that they are constructed on the analogy of stikdonker 'inky dark' and pikdonker'pitch-dark', respectively (the translation 'inky dark' is unsatisfactory, because it suggests a c o m parison with (black) ink, which is absent from stikdonker). O n the

Intensification

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grammaticality of such compounds, see Lightner (1976:181-182). In fact H of his o w n accord builds antonyms to the standard Dutch words stikdonker and pikdonker. Such an antonymy is very important, because in consequence there arise other illogical compounds such as ijsheet 'icy-hot', and ¡¡swarm 'icy-warm' ( 9 8 , 1 0 0 , 101). Also pikrood'pitch-red' (92) is a kind of antonym, as contrasted with the logical pikzwart 'pitch-black'. Obviously, the child does not take any notice of the contradiction between the components of such a compound, perhaps with the exception of (98), where a joke is possible; he does apprehend, however, the intensifying power of the first component. H emphasizes this component now and then (see 90, 91, 92), E only in (96); in (101) the second component is emphasized. As appears from the above , it is not only children who construct compounds with intensifying components deviant from standard Dutch. T h e y are also found in the Southern Netherlands language spoken in Belgium, e.g., stekezot 'utterly crazy'. In the Northern Netherlands steke- can only be combined with blind'blind' (stekeblind 'stone-blind'). In general an intensifying component which is grammatical in one language may be ungrammatical in another. For instance, stone- can be combined in English with blind, but the corresponding Dutch word steen- can not; in G e r m a n stein- 'stone' can be combined with alt 'old', but not in Dutch, where we say stokoud 'very old'. Colloquial steengoed 'very good' is as illogical as the childish compounds discussed above. T h e differences between standard Dutch and the Dutch of children often correspond to differences between standard languages: that is what I have called "international correspondences" (see chapter V). N o w consider the examples (102)-(107). T h e y all contain a c o m pound in which alter- (historically a genitive meaning 'of all') is combined with a superlative, with the exception of (107). C o m pounds of this kind are meaningful in standard Dutch, e.g., de allermooiste 'the most beautiful of all'. Essentially, mooiste and allermooiste are synonyms, but aller- intensifies the superlative. According to this description, the way in which aller- in (102) and (103) is combined with the superlatives of vee/'much' and weinig 'little' (as opposed to 'much') is grammatical from the viewpoint of adult word-formation; only the use of the regular superlative form instead of the irregular one - meeste and minste, respectively - is deviant (see p. 34). In (104) from the substantive pijn 'pain'a superlative is formed by adding -ste as if it were an adjective, an often observed p h e n o m enon in child language; Schaerlaekens (1977:164), for instance,

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III / 26

gives an example with the comparative pijner and one with the superlative pijnste, spoken by children aged 3;6 and 4;4, respectively. But apart from this transposition, the compound allerpijnste (with emphasis on the intensive) is grammatical and meaningful. T h e c o m p o u n d allerrooiste 'reddest of all' (105) is not a very usual one, but it could be formed by adults as well. Deviant in all respects are only (106) and (107). T h e present participle vo/gencTfollowing' is often used as an adjective meaning 'next' in normal speech, but it is not susceptible of degrees of comparison; consequently allervolgendste in (106) is deviant. T h e emphasis on aller- suggests that the child wanted to emphasize that he meant the very next stop, not, for instance, the next but one. In (107), however, allerderde 'third of all' can only mean 'third', the intensifying aller- is devoid of sense here, which in the English translation is not as conspicuous as in Dutch; 'most third of all' therefore might be a better translation, although derde is not a superlative. Allerderde must have been formed on the analogy of allereerste 'first of all'. In order to avoid premature conclusions about the sequence in which meaningful and senseless compounds with aller- appeared, we have to take into account that H may also have spoken sentences containing aller- which were grammatical and therefore not noted down. There is only evidence that H used aller- in intensifying function, and that the compounds formed with this c o m p o nent are not always meaningful. A striking fact is that, as the comparatives in (102) and (103) spoken by E show, even schoolgoing children up to 7;6 do not always have full control of the morphology of their mother tongue. An intensified word of his own was composed by E in thefirst half of his eighth year, viz. levensgoed (108-110). I only noted these three examples, but with the remark that the child used this compound again and again. Its meaning is 'extremely well', and the intensifying component levens- was often stressed. Very probably the model was the word levensgroot 'life-sized', used by the father in sentences such as Er staat levensgroot "Parijs" op 'in life-size there is (written) "Paris" on it' (i.e., on a bag). Here levensgroot means 'extremely visible', and that is why we can understand that the boy took levens- for an intensifying component. In (109) al dichterbij possibly means 'nearer and nearer', which amounts to saying that al is used here in the usual sense. But (111) throws doubt upon this interpretation, because al kleiner cannot mean 'smaller and smaller' here. Probably al intensifies kleiner, so that 'much smaller' is meant; it is possible that the child has misun-

Intensification

/ 27

derstood a/ w h e n used by adults. Consequently al dichterbij in (109) can also be interpreted a s ' m u c h nearer'. However, this interpretation is by no means compelling, because (109) was spoken nearly a year later than (111). T h e curiosity of (112) is of another kind: by adding veel te 'much too' to stikdonker'p\Xch-6arW, which in itself is an intensification of donker 'dark' and as such already expresses a high degree of darkness, the child suggests that there are degrees of this intensified dark. This example may be compared with (51), where vanmorgen 'this morning', which is a fixed time, is treated as if there were degrees of it (see p. 16). The difference is, however, that vanmorgen in itself does not express a high degree. Not only children form degrees of comparison of intensified words or combine them with te 'too'. S o m e years ago a Dutch newspaper (Algemeen Dagblad 27.7.79) wrote of de meest foeilelijke fontein 'the most extremely ugly fountain'. T h e translation does not show the curiosity of the construction, because by most the superlative of the adverb extremely seems to be expressed. In the Dutch example, however, meest is used to form the superlative of the adjective lelijk 'ugly', which is already intensified by foei-. A Dutch author (Oosterhuis 1976:162) wrote that returning a blow makes one te doodmoe 'too dead-tired', which may be paraphrased as 'in too high a degree tired in an extremely high degree', corresponding to veelte stikdonker'm (112). My conclusion is again that deviant linguistic usage observed in children can in principle be observed in adults as well. Contrary to adult language use, my sons (H in the fourth and fifth, E in the sixth up to the eighth year of life) manipulated the intensifying component more freely now and then. In (113) it does not precede but follows the intensified adjective. O n e could be inclined to think that in this example, comparable to (112), the child intensifies the already intensified donker 'dark' by means of h$el 'very' (with emphasis); another possibility is, however, that H speaking heel donker 'very, very dark' suddenly remembered the intensifying component stik-, and added it too late. In this way, not only in child language but also in adult speech adverbs very often are added afterwards, which brings about a deviant word order. This phenomenon is known as "afterthought" ( H y m a n 1975:119ff.). Many examples could be given, but one may suffice: WiltU misschieneen kopje koffie nog? is repeatedly heard in adult speech instead of Wilt U misschien nog een kopje koffie? 'would you like another cup of coffee?' Although in H's utterance (113) stik may be understood as a

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component of a c o m p o u n d (donkerstik), the heavy emphasis on it suggests the possibility that it is a free adverb. In E's sentences (114)-(116) stik, klbts, and dddd undeniably are free adverbs. It is impossible to translate them adequately, because in standard Dutch they are never used in this function, but only as intensifying components of compounds such as stikdonker 'pitch-dark', kletsnat 'wet through', and doodeerlijk 'dead honest', respectively. T h e child is not likely to have heard the last o f t h e s e t h r e e c o m p o u n d s ; I chose it to demonstrate the correspondence with the English deadas an intensive component ('dead wrong' is more c o m m o n , but there is no Dutch equivalent of it). In reality E often heard doodzenuwachtig 'extremely nervous' spoken by his mother. Examples of this kind produce evidence that the source of such self-made intensifying free adverbs is on the one hand imitation of the parents' speech, and on the other hand a due sense in children of the intensifying power of some components of compounds. The e m phasis on klets and dood is another proof that the child wants to express that the communicated events have a very high degree of intensity. In (117) and (118) H speaks sentences that are non-deviant but for the word order. W h e n erg, h6el, and verschrikkelijk ('very', 'quite', and 'terribly', respectively) are meant to intensify leuk'nice', these words are normally placed between iets 'something' and the declined form of leuk: iets heel leuks, etc. T h e reason w h y the child places it before iets, so that the whole complex form (Bloomfield 1950:160) iets leuks appears to be intensified, is very probably that this complex form as a whole is familiar to the child. Such familiarity plays an important role in language acquisition; I will return to it in due course (see p. 33). Besides, here again the childish sentence structure corresponds to the adult's, because instead of iets heel anders 'something quite different', adults very often say heel iets anders. An isolated instance is (119). In Dutch eenpaar not only means 'a pair of . . . ' in the sense of 'two', but can also denote a small quantity; so een paarpruimepitten means 'some (or: a small quantity of) prune-stones'. N o w E in (119) wants to express that the quantity he is speaking of is very small, and therefore he makes use of the intensifier heel, which usually intensifies an adjective, e.g., in een heel (colloquial: hele, cf. p. 24) kleine auto 'a very small car'. As a matter of fact, paar is a noun which cannot be intensified, but in the sense of 'a small quantity of . . . ' it has the same value as an attributive adjective. S o it is easy to understand that E extends the use of hele in such a w a y that it intensifies a noun (paar) in its

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attributive function, although he does not explicitly speak the noun (pruimepitten) that is determined by paar. Finally, the adverbs of time eermorgen 'the day before to-morrow'and overgisteren 'the day after yesterday' (120 and 121) may be mentioned here. T h e way in which E and his cousin Joke (J) construct these compounds is opposite to normal language use: overmorgen 'the day after to-morrow' and eergisteren 'the day before yesterday' are the usual forms. In the English translation the absurdity of the children's word-formation is more obvious than in the Dutch compounds themselves. Evidently, both of the children were not fully conscious of the right meanings of eer- 'before' and over- 'after'; only the notion of surpassing was present with them, while the unreasonableness of the compounds escaped them. This phenomenon is comparable to the building of contradictory compounds expressing intensification. That is why I discuss (120) and (121) here, although strictly speaking they belong to chapter II. The confusion in these examples must be due to the fact that morgen and gisteren are associated somehow in the children's minds as having opposite meanings.

IV. Degrees of comparison

Deviant use and deviant formation of the degrees of comparison were noted mainly in the fifth year (from H) and in the sixth year (from E). Examples of the fourth year appear only in the diary for H, those of the seventh and eighth year only with E. Consequently, it is likely (although not irrefutable) that the younger son mastered the formation and use of the degrees of comparison earlier than his brother. At 4;8.19 E spoke (122), which corresponds to Waarom gaatLien veel later naar huís? 'why does Lien go home much later?' in standard Dutch. The formation of the comparative of erg 'bad' by means of the suffix -er is normal when it is used as an adjective, but in erg laat 'very late' it is an intensifying adverb, and in this function it has no degrees of comparison. The ungrammaticality of erger laat may appear from the translation 'verier late' or 'more very late'. Given the construction erger laat, the intensification of erger by preposing veel cannot be regarded as ungrammatical. Example (123), spoken more than a year after the preceding one, shows a similar phenomenon; here E uses the superlative of the intensifying erg in erg veel 'very much'. In this case the normal language user would choose de meeste, the superlative degree of the indefinite numeral veel 'much': de meeste rails 'most (of the) rails'. It is interesting to observe that although the comparative and the superlative of an intensifying adverb are not usual in Dutch, a deviation of the same kind is not impossible in adult language. In an important Dutch newspaper (NRC/Handelsblad 30.9.78) the heading of a dramatic review read: Vier niet al te erg duidelijke vrouwen in Zuidpleintheater'four not too much profiled women in SouthernSquare Theatre'. Here the adjectiveduidelijk'profiled' isintensified by erg, which may be translated as 'much' but also as 'very'. Now, al te 'too' negated by niet 'not' gives expression to the meaning of the critic that the degree of intensity of the "profiledness" of the women was not very high. Attributing a degree to the intensifier (which in itself denotes a degree) instead of to the intensified adjective- that is what E d o e s in (122) and (123). Parenthetically, heel erg duidelijk 'very much profiled' is in common use. Moreover, also in the standard Dutch expression Ik dank U ten zeerste' I thank you very much' (literally: 'I thank you most very much') the superlative of an intensive adverb (viz. zeer 'very') is formed. Here again we find support for my hypothesis that there is no essential difference between child and adult language. In (124) E uses the inappropriate word erg instead of ftoog'high' (for he wants to say that 55 is a number that in the scale of notation is higher than 29), but the formation of the comparative is gram-

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matical. T h e same is true of H's use of the comparative erg in (125). Here it is hard to find a more suitable word expressing the force with which his brother caused the dripping of the washrag. W e cannot expect a little child to use adverbs like energiek 'energetically' or even krachtig 'vigorously'. In both examples the translation 'worse' is unsatisfactory, because erger only expresses a higher degree of intensity, without any negative connotation. T h e presumable cause of the misuse of this word is the restricted vocabulary of the boys. For a clear comprehension of (126) it is necessary to know that vlug and hard are synonyms, corresponding to 'quick(ly)' and 'fast'. Instead of simply adding the comparative ending -er to either of these words, H expresses the higher degree of quickness by placing the comparative of vlug before its synonym hard. I never heard the combination vlug hard from him (otherwise I would surely have made a note of it); that is why I do not consider vlugger as the comparative of an intensifiercomparableto erger in erger laat (122) derived from the c o m m o n erg laat 'very late'. It is more likely that vlugger hard is a contamination; perhaps of nog vlugger'even more quickly' and erg(er) hard '(more) very fast'? Not until over ten months later did H discover consciously the synonymy of vlug and hard, as is shown in (127), spoken just after his mother had used the expression vlug lopen 'walk quickly'. T h e tautological combination of these synonyms in (126) suggests that he unconsciously already knew that these words express the same meaning, not being aware of the illogicality of combining them syntactically. T h e utterances (128)-(142) and (146)-(148) are for the most part illustrations of the well-known phenomenon of overextension of regularity. It is to be emphasized, however, that it is deceptive to speak without qualification of "regularization" in the sense of producing regular forms where the language contains an irregularity ("la production de formes 'régulières', là où la langue contient une 'irrégularité' ", S l a m a - C a z a c u 1973:77). Not always are the forms produced by the child regular from an adult point of view; cf. (146) and (147), where the child forms a superlative and a comparative, respectively, adding the endings -ste and -der, respectively, to a comparative form. In my opinion the last-mentioned observation is very important, because it provides evidence that the child does not proceed like a linguist (cf. Introduction, p. 5). H e does not consciously add a suffix (meaning 'most' or 'more') to an undeclined adjective. Rather, he knows the meanings of words such as meer 'more', (het) meeste 'most', warm and warmer, he has a vague feeling that also -der is used, e.g., in zwaarder 'heavier', duurder 'more expensive', etc.

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when you wish to say that something is more heavy or more expensive, etc.; and when speaking himself he makes use of this foggy knowledge, combining meer with -ste, perhaps on the analogy of forms such as zwaar and zwaarste, whereby meeste may also play a role; he adds -der to warmer, forgetting that the latter form already denotes a higher degree of warmth, and so on. T o preclude misunderstanding, I want to stress that I do not presume to give a description of the factual process of the acquisition of the degrees of comparison; rather, I want to give an impression of the vagueness, semi-consciousness of the "knowledge" of the child and of his partly mechanical, partly intentional act of composing words (for further evidence see Kaper 1959:53-54). Such a proceeding may be typical for the preschool child, but it occurs in linguistically untrained adults as well. T h e fact that at school they learned that beter 'better' is the comparative of goed 'good' does not prevent a number of Dutch adults from forming the double comparative beterder 'betterer'; on the other hand they are not likely to say beterer, although the rule that adjectives ending in -r take the comparative suffix -der instead of -er is unknown to them. This is a striking parallel to H's double comparative warmerder in (147), where warmer ending in -rtakes the suffix-cfer, not-er. Probably a rule is less decisive than the euphony of a word or the familiarity with its acoustic form (see Kaper 1959:58 f. for discussion, and cf. Introduction, p. 7). H's uncertainty in finding the right form appears from the repetition of the sentence in (147) with the change of warmerder into warm. In (128), (129), and (130) three different children form the comparative of goed (spoken [xut]) 'good' by adding the "regular" but in this case ungrammatical comparative suffix -er, at the same time changing the voiceless final stop [t] into [j]. The latter change can be traced back to a normal phenomenon in colloquial Dutch: the inflected form of goed [xut], in cultivated speech goede, is mostly spoken [xuje] (written: goeie). E in (131), half a year after he entered elementary school, added -er without changing the final stop into [d] or [j], but also the form goeter has a model in adult language: words such as groot 'big' and laat 'late' have the regular comparative forms g r o f e r a n d later. In fact, the difference between the voiced and the unvoiced dental stop (e.g., grofe as opposed to goede) is neutralized in final position: both groot and goed are spoken with final [t]. The comparative form wijter instead of the grammatical wilder 'wider', constructed by E as late as in his eighth year (141), but by H already at4;1.26 (142), can be explained in the same way. T h e phenomenon is not confined to comparatives, as is

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shown by the forms wijte (143), gewarmte (144), and kleete (145), instead of wijde, gewarmde, and klede(n), respectively. The superlative het goedst (132) instead of het best 'best', and de/hetveelste (134-136), instead of de/het meeste'mosX', as well as the comparatives veler (133), and weiniger (137, 138) instead of meer 'more', and minder 'less', respectively, are regularizations in the full sense of the word. Notable is the fact that E at about 5;7 and 5;8 repeatedly spoke de/het veelste in combination with van allemaal 'of all' (134,135,136); apparently the expression had become stereotyped for him. Compare also the forms het allerveelste and het allerweinigste 'most/least of all' in (102) and (103), discussed on p. 25. E's criticizing question in (137) proves on the one hand that in the middle of his eighth year he had an eye forthegrammaticalityof the comparative form, and on the other hand that H, who was 5;4.9 at that time, still used the ungrammatical comparative form weiniger instead of minder as he did over half a year before (138). Interesting is the fact that in German the comparative weniger'\ess' is grammatical and more usual than its variant minder. Again an international correspondence (see chapter V). The Dutch adjective net 'neat, tidy' is in this meaning seldom used as an adverb. In the latter function the diminutive netjes is more common. Curiously enough, however, the degrees of comparison are derived from net, consequently the form netjezer in (139) and (140) is a deviant comparative. Here again the child makes use of a potential form which is not actual in adult language (see Introduction, p. 8). The form of the superlative graagste is grammatical when graag 'eager' is an adjective, but in adverbial function meaning 'preferably' the actual form is het liefst, so E's construction het graagste (148) is again morphologically possible, but unusual. Finally, in the comparison of equality in standard Dutch the adverb zo is used correlating with the conjunction als, e.g., zohoog als 'as high as'. When the construction is negative the conjunction does not change: nietzo hoog als 'not as high as'. It is conceivable, however, to consider niet zo hoog as an expression of inequality, which could explain the use of dan 'than' in this construction in both child and adult speech. The problem was broached already on p. 23. Examples are (32) from E, discussed for other reasons on p. 15, and (151) from H. I even noted written and printed examples from adults, e.g., in a letter: Hij vindt niets zo erg dan als iemand over zijn gezondheid praat 'there is nothing that annoys him so much than when somebody talks about his health'. Here the correct use of als instead of dan would have caused a doubling of this word,

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but in my other examples this is not the case, so that the inequality explanation is more plausible. But although this explanation holds for (32) and (151) as well, it is not satisfactory in view of (149) and (150), where E uses dan after hetzelfde 'the same' and gelijk 'at the same time', respectively, words which unambiguously express equality. Such examples do not suggest that children apply linguistic rules such as "in comparisons of inequality dan is required". I would rather venture the hypothesis that E was vaguely aware of the fact that people use both a/sand dan when speaking of things which are similar or different, but did not know the exact distribution (Carroll 1955:32). Hence the possibility of using dan in comparisons of equality, and probably in comparisons of inequality as well (which I did not note down since this is not deviant). T h e reverse, viz. the use of a/s in the latter case, occurs abundantly in colloquial Dutch; only pedants require dan there. Obviously the boys' father was such a pedant; whence otherwise E's deviant use of dan? M y hypothesis may turn out to be false, but on the basis of E's use of dan with comparisons of e q u a l i t y - whereas in the speech of his environment it only occurred in comparisons of inequality - it is evident that in this child's mind the two types of comparison • /ere associated.

V. International correspondences

Repeatedly it is observed that children use words, expressions, or sentence-constructions in a way which is deviant from the standard of their mother tongue, but with corresponds to the use of these linguistic forms in a foreign language; cf. e.g., Bowerman (1978b:284 n. 2), Clark (1976:450), Kaper 1977:303 and 1980:70). There are many individual differences, and the special quality of each individual correspondence may be due to the merest chance, but the possibility that such correspondences do occur is inherent in language use (see Introduction, p. 8). Each language is a system by means of which we can express what we want to communicate, and each linguistic system offers possibilities to do so. Cognate languages have many possibilities in common, but the constraints on the use of them may be different. That is w h y overextension of the meaning of a word or of the use of a construction in child language may produce a linguistic form corresponding to a form which is grammatical or the meaning of which is non-deviant in a foreign language never heard by the child. In a previous publication (Kaper 1977:304-305) I demonstrated this phenomenon by c o m p a ring the deviant use of the auxiliary doen 'do' by a Dutch child with the grammatical use of the English do. Such "international correspondences" may be attributable to non-linguistic causes as well. W h e n the Belgian boy Gijs uses expressions such as Bij Gijs is niet een huis 'with Gijs there is not a house' (Schaerlaekens 1973:61) in order to say that he does not yet have a picture of a house, he avails himself of the Russian construction denoting the concept of possessing something. T h e explanation of this correspondence can only be situational: the picture was really not located within his reach. W h e n the child extends the use of the construction to situations where there is no question of local proximity, 'possession'remains as its only meaning; in other words, bij X is Y 'with X is Y" becomes equivalent to X heeft Y 'X has Y". It is natural to assume that in Russian the etymology of the expression has been the same. It is not my intention to undertake historical investigations. In accordance with the aim of this book, I only wish to present some examples of international correspondences observed with my own children, and to put forward some hypotheses about their causes. More often than not, it will turn out that although the linguistic forms and constructions used by the children deviate from standard Dutch, there is no essential difference from adult colloquial speech. M a n y possibilities presented by a linguistic system are blocked by tradition or custom, but the violation of such constraints does not impede intelligibility (cf. Pos 1930:88). That is why, not-

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withstanding the deviant language use in children, natural c o m m u nication with adults is possible. A few examples from other researchers will be used for completion and additional illustration of my observations. It is to be expected that correspondences between child language and foreign languages mainly occur when the mother tongue of the child and the foreign language are cognates, although even correspondences with exotic languages are conceivable as well (see Kaper 1977:306). T h e language most closely related to Dutch is German, and really there are many instances of Dutch children's deviant language use corresponding to standard German. In this chapter I will henceforth restrict myself to correspondences to this language. O n p. 25 I discussed already the essentially regular superlative form weinigste (example 103) and the also regular comparative form weiniger (137 and 138), deviant from an adult point of view (the grammatical forms are minste 'least, fewest' and minder'less', respectively), but corresponding to the grammatical German forms wenigste and weniger, respectively. T h e same applies to the imperfect form kam, spoken by E instead of kwam 'came' (152), corresponding to G e r m a n kam. In G e r m a n the vowel is l o n g e r a n d more tensed, but both in this language and in that of the Dutch boy the form is spoken w i t h o u t / w / between / k / and / a / . Viewed synchronically this is regular, because the infinitive form of the verb is Dutch komen and German kommen 'come', but the grammatical Dutch form is kwam. It is very interesting to observe that in this case the historical development of a G e r m a n verb presents the same regularization as in the language of a Dutch child. In Old High G e r m a n the infinitive is queman, and the regular imperfect form is quam. After the phonetic form of the infinitive via koman had changed into komen (later on written kommen), in G e r m a n the imperfect form was adapted to the new infinitive (van Dam 1963:78). In Dutch standard language the form with / w / (kwam, corresponding to O H G quam) remains up to the present, but E proceeded like the Germans, and created the form kam, which he had never heard in his environment. True enough, my example shows only an occasional correspondence, no "identity of the structural laws" (Jakobson 1969:90), but it contributes its mite to the evidence that there is no essential difference between child and adult languages. In G e r m a n and in Dutch, adjectives meaning 'long', 'short', 'high', etc., can form verbs to express that something is made longer, shorter, higher, etc.; cf. lengthen, shorten, heighten, etc. In German these verbs are generally formed from the comparatives: verlän-

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gern, vergrößern (from länger 'longer', größer 'bigger'), etc., but verbs derived from the positives do occur, e.g., (ver)kürzen (from kurz 'short'), erhöhen (from hoch 'high'). In Dutch, deriving from the positive is very c o m m o n : verlengen, verkorten, verhogen (from lang 'long', kort 'short', hoog 'high'), etc., but verbs formed from comparatives are possible as well, e.g., verbeteren (from beter 'better'), and verslechteren (from slechter 'worse'). The examples (153), (154), and (155) s h o w that both Dutch and G e r m a n children now and then derive verbs from comparatives where the standard languages require derivation from positives. In (153) the result is a verb c o r r e s p o n d i n g to the grammatical G e r m a n form; the verb? (154) and (155) are alien to both the G e r m a n and Dutch standard languages. In (155) even the use of verhoogd (the grammatical past participle of the verb verhogen 'raise') w o u l d a c c o r d i n g to my linguistic feeling be less acceptable; referring to the pavement I would prefer ophogen. But this may be a somewhat idiosyncratic judgement. At any rate, in G e r m a n erhöhen can be used in this context. In a sense the word-formation in these three examples may be regarded as regularization, because they all consist in imitation of the model "verb derived from comparative"; the international c o r r e s p o n d e n c e is only an accidental c o n s e q u e n c e . The p h e n o m e n o n that Dutch and G e r m a n children derive verbs from comparatives is easily understood, because what they wish to express is that something really b e c o m e s longer, shorter, higher, etc., and, as mentioned above, the mother tongue itself contains the possibility of forming verbs in that way. T h e diminutive stukkeltje (156) instead of stukje 'small piece' is formed by adding two diminutive endings {-el and -tje) to the noun stuk 'piece'. Now, the diminutive suffix -tje is very usual in our language, whereas -el is no longer productive in that function. In German, on the contrary, diminution by means of -el is still possible, and very c o m m o n in Bavaria and Austria. T h e d o u b l e diminutive-ending -eichen o c c u r s as well, when the root-word ends in a velar consonant, e.g., in Büchelchen as a diminutive of Buch 'book'. That is why stukkeltje may be considered an international correspondence. However, the child H never heard such G e r m a n diminutives; so where does -el c o m e from in his language? A g a i n the possibility is offered in the Dutch language to which the child is exposed. O n the one hand he is likely to have heard the word stippeltje as a diminutive of stip 'dot, point', or the expression een tikkeltje kleiner 'a thought smaller' or something like that, in which tikkeltje is a colloquial variant of een tikje. O n the other hand, he

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was familiar with diminutives like lepeltje 'little spoon', appeltje 'little apple', pukkeltje 'little pimple', in which -el is part of the underlying noun lepel, appel, pukkel. It must be borne in mind that neither children nor linguistically untrained adult speakers are conscious of the fact that when saying tikkelije they use a diminutive derived from the noun tik 'touch' by means of the double ending -el + -tje; consequently, for them there is no difference in word-formation between tikkeltje and pukkeltje. C o m p a r e my observation (Kaper 1968:226) that many pupils of secondary schools are not aware of the difference between pluralendings of nouns such as bladeren (blad + -eren) 'leaves' o n the one hand, and wateren (water +-en) 'waters' on the other. T h e form stukkeltje in (156) may very well be constructed on the analogy of the for the most part homonymous pukkeltje. In (157) the deviant form is te kopeir, the usual expression is te koop 'for sale'. Corresponding to the childish construction (fe + inf), in German advertisements we can read Zu kaufengesucht:... 'wanted to purchase: . . . ' , where zu kaufen corresponds to te kopen. However, again the model of te kopen is to be found in the child's mother tongue, for in standard Dutch we can say that something is niet meer te krijgen 'not to be had anymore', using the same infinitive-construction, which moreover has the same meaning as niet meer te koop 'no longer for sale'. I n 158) there are two phenomena corresponding to German. T h e Dutch adjective wijd'wide' is the equivalent of the G e r m a n weit, which is pronounced in almost the same way, but when followed by the ending -e the unvoiced final dental stop in G e r m a n does not undergo any change, whereas in Dutch it is voiced. T h e use of op- in the sense of open 'open' in opdeed (imperfect of the verb opdoen 'open') is also deviant; the usual form is opendeed. By pronouncing wijte instead of wijde, the boy inflects the adjective phonetically as in German. By combining deed with op- instead of with open- he also proceeds like the Germans, because in their language auf- (corresponding to op-) is always used when the inchoative aspect is meant; in colloquial German it denotes the durative aspect ("state") as well, although in cultivated speech offen- (corresponding to Dutch open-) is preferred. But in this example as well, the ultimate cause of the deviations may lie in the language that the child hears around him. As for the form wijte with [t], instead of [d], see p. 33f., where this example is already mentioned as (143). And the use of op- for the inchoative aspect is also known in standard Dutch in the expression een grote mond opzetten 'to cheek somebody' (literally: 'to open a big mouth'). For the use of the indefinite article with a proper name, see Kaper 1975:25.

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Now consider (159)-(161). In all three of these examples a c o m parison is made: in (160) and (161) by means of hoe, English: how, meaning 'in the same way as'; in adult language the conjunction zoals, English: as would be used. In (159) the comparison is made by means of the expression het lijkt net 'it looks just like', and hoe means 'the w a y (in which)'; here, too, a Dutch adult would say zoals. The constructions used by these children correspond to those with the G e r m a n wie 'how', which is either an interrogative adverb in direct and indirect questions ( W i e machst du das? 'how do you do that?'; Ich weiß nicht, wie du das machst 'I don't know how you do that'), or a comparative conjunction (Mach(e) es, wie ich es mache 'do it as I do it'). It is natural for Dutch and English speaking children to extend the function of hoe and how, respectively, in conformity with the G e r m a n linguistic system, because also in their languages these words are used in both direct and indirect questions: Hoe doe je dat? Ik weet niet hoe ¡e dat doet and How do you do it? I don't know how you do it. Limber's observation (Limber 1973:180) that in child language w/7-adverb sentences such as (161) appear at the same time that those same adverbial forms appear in questionword complements to verbs (e.g., in I show you how to do it) is very instructive in this connection. For how can an English speaking child, not being aware of the differences between indirect questions, comparative adverbial clauses and verb-complements, know where to draw the line between the constructions in which the word how from the direct question may be taken over, and where it must be replaced by as? Dutch children are confronted with the same difficulty, but when G e r m a n children proceed as the Dutch ones in (159) and (160), the result is a grammatical construction. C o m p a r e the following sentences: German: Wie sitzt Peter? Ich weiß nicht, wie P. sitzt. Es sieht aus wie J.v.W., wie P. sitzt. Dutch: Hoe zit Piet? 'how is P. sitting?' (English) Ik weet niet hoe Piet zit. 'I don't know how P. is sitting.' Het lijkt net Jopie v. W. zoals Piet zit. 'It looks just like J.v.W. the way P. is sitting.' This comparison makes the deviant construction produced by the Dutch child understandable. For discussion on the difficulty of separating the Dutch interrogative hoe 'how' (German: wie) from wat (German: was) 'what', where English and Swedish speakers only use what and vad, respectively, see p. 49 f. W h e n a D u t c h m a n wants to know what time it is, he usually asks Hoe laat is het? (literally: 'how late is it?'). In German w e can ask in

Chapter V / 42

the same way: Wie spät ist es? but not less common is the question Wieviel Uhr ist es? 'what (lit.: how much) o'clock is it?' The latter corresponds to E's question in (162), and it is but slightly different from What o'clock is it? in English, Quelle heure est-il? in French, and Che ora ä? in Italian, where what or its equivalent is used instead of how much. The reply to the question explains how E came to his formulation, for we say Het is e6n, twee, etc. uur 'it is one, two, etc. o'clock'. The question Hoeveel uur is het? is more in ag reement with the expected answer than Hoe laat is het? (see also Kaper 1959:98 n.1, and 1966:47). For people learning a foreign language, the correct use of prepositions is always a stumbling-block. In fact, it may be questioned whether we never hesitate about the choice of the right preposition in our native language. Many of my (teenage) pupils were astonished to learn that it makes a difference whether we say in Dutch zieh Verheugen OP 'look forward to', zieh Verheugen IN 'to enjoy (e.g., good health)', or zieh Verheugen OVER 'to rejoice over (e.g., a victory)', and without doubt many adults never learn to make such subtle distinctions. In some expressions even two or three prepositions are possible without any difference in meaning: 'to go on holiday', for instance, may in Dutch be rendered as MET or OP vakantie gaan, and as the Dutch equivalent of'there you are right' I heard Daarheb je gelijk IN, AAN, and BIJ. In these circumstances it is not surprising that children often make deviant prepositional constructions. In Kaper 1966:40-56 I discussed this problem at some length; in the present connection I only single out the deviations which correspond to grammatical German usage. In (163) H says boven het bruggentje 'above the little bridge' instead of over het bruggetje'overthe little bridge'. In normal Dutch the use of boven in this context would suggest that we are floating above the bridge, whereas over means that we are walking over it. In German the preposition über is used in both meanings; in the former it governs the dative, in the latter the accusative. Consequently, in (163) H uses boven in the sense of German über+acc. It is hardly to be doubted that he also used it in the normal meaning of über + dat. Since in Dutch there is no difference in cases in prepositional phrases, it is possible to regard H's use of boven as an international correspondence in that, as in German, one preposition has both meanings. In (164) op de zolder 'into the loft' corresponds to German auf den Dachboden; in standard Dutch the preposition naar 'to(wards)' is required, because motion to the loft is being expressed. Op (de) zolder is grammatical when meaning the state of being in the loft ('place' as opposed to'direction'); in this

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sense the G e r m a n equivalent is auf dem Dachboden, with dative instead of accusative. In both (163) and (164) the choice of the incorrect preposition would correspond to the incorrect case in German. However, the cause of the deviation lies in the Dutch language itself, for both boven het bruggetje (as opposed to onder het bruggetje 'under the little bridge') and op (de)zolderare grammatical constructions; the child is only unaware of the fact that the former does not express being in touch with the surface of the bridge, and that in the latter the notion of 'direction towards' is lacking. Adding to this that in other contexts op can express both 'place' and 'direction' (e.g., in Hij zat/klom op het dak 'he was sitting /climbing on the r o o f ) , we may claim that the deviant use of the preposition is explained. In (165) the preposition in (instead of naar) is deviant as well, although it may very well express'direction towards'; it is only not actual (see Introduction, p. 8) here: according to actual linguistic usage we can go in de /camer'intotheroom', but not in de zolder 'into the loft'. The deviant use of the latter may be due to the familiarity of the former. In Dutch and in German the passive voice is expressed by means of the auxiliary worden and werden, respectively: Dutch Hij wordt gedragen 'he is carried' corresponds to G e r m a n Er wird getragen. T h e past perfect tense of this construction is regular in German, and goes: Er war getragen worden 'he had been carried', which corresponds to H's utterance (166); only the form of the past participle of the auxiliary is different, in that in G e r m a n it is formed without t h e p r e f i x g e - . In Dutch, however, in unaffected speech, this participle is always omitted, so that the child can only have heard: Hij was gedragen. Probably the adding of geworden is caused by the fact that the verb worden is also used as a copula, in which function it cannot be omitted. So E's constructions (167) and (168) are grammatical in this respect. It is natural that for a nearly fouryear-old child it does not make any difference whether w o « / e n is an auxiliary or a copula; that is why I suppose that constructions such as (167) have been the models for (166). Evidence that children construct deviant sentences on the model of grammatical ones is provided by (169) and (170). In (169) the first of the sentences, Ikhoef nog niet naar bed'\ need not yet go to bed', is grammatical; the second is partly a copy of it, but here the use of hoef is ungrammatical: the modal verb hoeven 'need' must not be used w h e n there is not any negative connotation in the utterance; moeten 'must' is to be used instead. Parenthetically, the hypothetical rule formulated by Verkuyl (1974:17), "that hoeven can only occur in the environment of a negative word" (the latter emphasis is mine) is surely wrong, as

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Uhlenbeck (1977:192) points out. However, what Uhlenbeck does not take into account is that the use of hoeven presupposes at least some negative connotation, which can also be expressed in a rhetorical question or by using a word as only ('no more than'), Dutch slechts or alleen maar. T h e same holds for the G e r m a n equivalent brauchen (cf. Duden 1973b:533, section 1246, and Paul 1966:111, s.v. brauchen). As a matter of fact, Uhlenbeck's examples corroborate this contention; Hij werkt harder dan hij hoeft 'he is working harder than he needs (to do)', for instance, suggests that the person referred to by hij'he' does not need to work as hard as he does. A description of the use of this interesting verb is also given by Paardekooper (1955:169-172), who in his conclusion e m p h a sizes that an immense amount of details remains to be studied. That the problem is much more complicated than has been realized up to now is shown by Zwarts (1981:35-132) in an extensive paper with many examples. N o wonder that children are thrown off the scent when using this word! In one of Uhlenbeck's examples with hoeven, the negative connotation is lacking in the sentence itself, viz. in Dat hoeft well which may be translated as 'but that is necessary!', spoken as a reaction (as the author himself remarks) to Dat hoeft n/'ef'that is not necessary'. This is a special case, because the use of hoeft in combination with the affirmative wel is called forth by the sentence with the negative niet to which it is a reaction. In other words, the preceding sentence is partly repeated, and the negative adverb is replaced by an affirmative one. This is essentially the same as what E does in (169): he partly repeats the sentence he has spoken before, replacing nog niet naar bed 'not yet (go) to bed' (that which he does not want to do) by nog eten 'still eat' (that which he does want to do). In (170) - spoken more than two years later - the construction can be explained as the reproduction of a usual sentence, Je hoeft hem toch niet te hebben?'you don't want him (or: it), d o you?', again with replacement of the negative adverb by the affirmative one, which makes the sentence ungrammatical. In G e r m a n müssen ' must' is often used in negative expressions where brauchen zu 'need to' would be grammatical as well, e.g., in Ich muß nicht kommen ( D u d e n 1973b:533, section 1246), synonymous to Ich brauche nicht zu kommen 'I need not come'. As brauchen is the G e r m a n equivalent of Dutch hoeven, replacing brauchen by müssen in negative sentences is the reverse of replacing moeten by hoeven in positive sentences (as E did), so that here is a kind of inverted international correspondence. But this correspondence is also fount within the Dutch language itself, because,

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as in German, in the Southern Netherlands moeten is used instead of hoeven (van Dale 1961 s.v. moeten 2). This occurs in sentences with a negative connotation. It goes without saying that such a usage also communicates itself to other parts of the Dutch-speaking community. In G e r m a n the use of brauchen is influenced by müssen, because the former originally was a main verb which could be combined with zu + inf, but now in colloquial G e r m a n is also combined with the bare infinitive, so that it becomes a modal auxiliary like müssen. This construction is extending more and more, to such a degree that this way of use "at least ought to be tolerated" ( D u d e n 1973b:533, section 1246). In E's language w e can observe the reverse, for in (171) he constructs a sentence with moeten + fe + inf. However, this construction is not likely to be created on the analogy of hoeven + te + inf, because there is a more plausible explanation. T h e full equivalent in standard Dutch of the grammatical Moetjij nog zoveel doen? (without fe) is Heb jij nog zoveel te doen? (with fe), and (171) must be a blend of these constructions. My last example of a linguistic form used by a Dutch child corresponding to adult German is semantic in character, viz. (172), in which E calls a moustache een baard 'a beard'. T h e right Dutch equivalent of English moustache is snor (with which word he more than a year before - in (173) - referred to a person's mouth), but in German Bart (diminutive Bärtchen) means both 'beard' and 'moustache'. In Er trägt ein Bärtchen auf der Oberlippe 'he wears a little moustache on his upper lip' ( D u d e n 1971 s.v. Bart), which corresponds to E's utterance, the diminutive baardje would be impossible in normal Dutch; snorretje 'little moustache' would be the right word here. I will not treat at length the reverse case: German children using deviant words or constructions corresponding to Dutch grammatical ones, because I principally wish to present my own material. But in the present discussion it is interesting to remark that Hilde Stern at 1 ;7 metaphorically called the toe-caps of boots Nase 'nose' (Stern 1928:188). Stern's explanation is rather complicated, but in Dutch both 'nose' and 'toe-cap' are normally denoted by neus 'nose'. And when Günther in his third year says pau instead of Pfau 'peacock' (Stern 1928:97), that word corresponds phonetically to the Dutch equivalent pauw. A variety of other examples could be given. It is not without importance to observe that the researcher himself now and then is not aware of the possibilities of his own language: Leopold (1949b:138) ranges ein schöner Rücken 'a beautiful back' ( H d g 6;2.10) under "anglicisms", because with the

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word Rücken (normally 'back' as part of the body) the girl refers to the back of a chair. According to him it should be eine Lehne, which really is an adequate term, but several dictionaries (Sanders & Wülfing 1924, Sprach-Brockhaus 1965, Klappenbach & Steinitz 1974) mention (Rücken)lehne 'back of a chair' as one of the m e a n ings of Rücken. And Stern (1928:71) cites Ich will gefahren sein (a passive construction spoken by Hilde at 3;3 instead of Ich will gefahren werden 'I want to be wheeled') with the remark that it reminds one of the French way to express the passive voice, forgetting that conversion into the passive by means of sein 'be' is not u n c o m m o n in standard German. M y tentative conclusion drawn from the above examples is that international correspondences (child language: foreign languages) are accidental. Not accidental is the fact that they can mostly be traced back to the system of the language which the child is learning. Deviations from normal language use are very often due to the fact that there are potential constructions which are not actual in adult speech, but which are used by the child (with individual differences). My impression is that at first unconsciously, but gradually more consciously (with individual differences, and depending on the environment), the child imitates not only words and expressions, but also systematic phenomena. T h e motivation of his speaking apparently is the wish to communicate with others; the wish to speak as correctly as possible may be an additional stimulus (also depending on the environment), but the main point is that the child wants to be understood, because he wants to attain the ends he has in view (see p. 84, and cf. Bridges 1980:100). W h e n deviant words or constructions have "approximately the same communicative power" (Brown 1 9 7 4 : 3 8 9 ) a s t h e g r a m m a t i c a l o n e s , there is no need to change them. Several examples in the preceding chapters suggest that the development of language use moves from foggy expression and understanding to clearer language use and reception, a development that continues in adulthood. It is true that this argumentation does not explain the emergence of "late errors" (errors in domains of language that the child earlier appeared to have mastered: Bowerman 1982:102). That is why I mentioned the wish to speak as correctly as possible as an additional stimulus depending on the environment: parents interested in linguistic phenomena are likely to stimulate this propensity. Children and linguistically untrained adults may observe some systematic phenomena in their language now and then, and they may form constructions on the analogy of other ones, perhaps suppos-

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ing that they speak correctly in that way, but also often unconsciously. However, having insight into the linguistic system as a whole is something quite different.

VI. The use of some interrogatives

In the preceding chapter (p. 41) the use of hoe'how' instead of zoals 'the way (in which)' or 'in the same way as'was discussed. A similar difficulty for E (from his 4th up to his 7th year!) was to separate hoe 'how' from wat 'what' in direct and indirect questions; see (174), (175), and (176) for the former, and (177) for the latter. It is impossible to translate his utterances in such a w a y that the deviation is demonstrated, because a literal translation of the deviant sentences (which I made, rendering wat by 'what') results in perfectly grammatical English constructions. In Dutch, however, in all four of these sentences not wat but hoe would be the right word. T o make the deviation perceptible, think of a child saying 'what beautiful!' instead of 'how beautiful!', or consider (179) and (180). T h e use of dat 'that' in (178), where zo 'so' would be the appropriate word, is systematically consistent, because wat:dat=hoe:zo. T h e child's choice of wat and dat corresponds to English adult language, as appears from the translation; it is true, however, that Dutch heten is formally (although not in meaning) active, whereas to be called is passive. Even greater is the correspondence to Swedish, in which language for instance Vad heter det? 'what is it called?' and Det heter det'that is what it is called' are usual expressions. In German, on the contrary, the constructions with wie 'how', and so 'so', respectively, are grammatical, corresponding to standard Dutch. How are these deviations (which, incidentally, are instances of international correspondence) to be explained? Again, the cause must be sought in the system of the adult language. First, in standard Dutch there are constructions which in form and meaning are very similar to the questions under discussion, in which not hoe but wat is required, e.g., Wat is dat? 'what is it?' corresponding to Hoe heet dat? 'what (lit.: how) is it called?' A n d second, there are constructions in which both hoe and wat are grammatical. T h e question Watzeg je? 'I beg your pardon (lit.: what do you say?)' is frequently asked, along with the affected Hoe zegt U? (lit.: 'how do you say?'). T h e latter is not likely to be heard by children, but the following questions are. 'What is your name?' may be rendered into Dutch by saying Wat is je naam? as well as Hoe isje naam? English 'What d o you mean?' is in Dutch Wat bedoel je? but the construction Hoe bedoel je (dat)? (literally: 'how do you mean (that)?') is not less c o m m o n . The possibility of blending constructions such as Wat is dat? and Hoe heet dat? (result: Wat heet dat?) is obvious. In this case the resultant construction is ungrammatical, but a child blending Hoe heet je? and Wat is je naam? may produce not only the ungrammatical construction Wat heet je? but also Hoe is je naam? which happens to be grammatical. In other words, in the

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former case the potential blended form is not actual, in the latter it is. In view of the fact that such contaminations occur in adults as well (I heard a village-headmaster saying Dat (instead of: zo) heet het niet meer 'that it isn't called any more'), it is no wonder that E even in the seventh year of his life mixes up wat and hoe. Besides, recently I caught myself saying Net wat je't noemen wil instead of Net hoe je't noemen wilt 'just what you like to call it', a misuse of wat that is not likely to be caused by contamination. Also the examples (179) and (180) are probably due to contamination, because while on the one hand exclamations such as Wat gaat ie hard! 'how fast it goes!' and Wat heb ik er nog veel! 'how much I have left!'are constructed with wat, on the other hand hoe is required in the indirect form: Kijk eens hoe hard ie gaat! 'look how fast it goes!' and Kijk eens hoeveel ik er nog heb! 'look how much I have left!' In German, as in English, both in the direct and in the indirect form wie 'how' must be used: Wie schnellergehtlSieh mat, wie schnell er geht! and Wie viel ich noch habe! Sieh mat, wie viei ich noch habe! The interesting point is that in standard Dutch one must choose between two words (wat and hoe), whereas in German, in English, and in the child's language, only one word is used for both constructions; in German and English it is the latter of the two, in the child E's language it is the former. So in a sense the phenomenon in German and in English is the reverse of that in the child's language. A different phenomenon is illustrated by (181) and (182). As equivalents of English for what and from what we could in Dutch use voor wat and van wat, respectively, but more usual are the compounds waarvoor and waarvan. These compounds may be split up as in (183) and (184), where E and H construct grammatical sentences, except for the lack of concord in (183), and the unusual accentuation in (184), to which I will return presently. In (181) and (182), however, E replaces waar by wat, which is quite natural, because the meaning of the compounds is 'for/from what, not 'for/from where'. In English, compounds like wherefore and wherefrom are obsolete or very formal, but in German wofur 'for what' and wovon 'from what' hardly differ in use from their Dutch equivalents. In English, instead of 'For what is that bacon?' and 'From what is this?' we consistently say 'What is that bacon for?' and 'Wrtafisthis from?', respectively; a consistency of the same kind is found in E's constructions in (181) and (182). Again, an international correspondence. The stress on voor in (184) is a problem, because the normal accentuation heard by the child can only have been Waar is die

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schbar voor? Nevertheless, it is likely that an adult accentuation is the cause of this deviant stress, in view of such questions as Waar ligt die schaar in/bij/6p? 'in/with/on what are those scissors lying?' where the preposition is stressed. T h e problem deserves a separate discussion, but that is beyond the scope of this chapter. While in the above examples the boy E replaces either hoe 'how' or waar 'where' by wat 'what', in (185) his brother uses hoe in a direct question instead of the interrogative adverb waar, asking for the indication of a place. There is no cogent reason to assume that there is a direct connection between this p h e n o m e n o n and the ones already discussed, but taking together all these examples, I conclude that the possibility that wat, hoe, and waar are somehow associated with each other in the minds of these children cannot be left out of account. Further evidence for this conclusion is provided by the fact that E not only replaces hoe by wat, but also conversely wat by hoe. In (186) and (187) we have only to read wat instead of hoe to get acceptable or almost acceptable sentences. En wat is het dan morgen voor dag? 'and what day is to-morrow?' (cf. 187) is entirely grammatical; in (186) the word order must be slightly modified: Wat voor dag gaat dat kipkarretje? 'what day does that dumping-cart go?' In standard Dutch, to be sure, wat voor dag is preceded by op 'on', but in colloquial speech the preposition is often omitted. In a letter from an adult woman, I read for instance: Welke vakken ga jij nu examen doen dit jaar? '(in) what subjects will you be examined this year?' T h e absence of initial prepositions in spoken Dutch is also pointed out by Uijlings (1956:47-48); her phonetic explanation (which in my opinion is not quite convincing) is of no importance to this discussion. Although a Dutch adult is not likely to say hoe... voor dag in the sense of wat voor dag, as E does in (186) and (187), there isa certain correspondence in view of the fact that in colloquial adult speech hoe een . . . , with reference to a degree, is equivalent to wat voor een This is confirmed in van Dale (1961) s.v. I hoe 6, and illustrated with the example Je weetniethoe'n (alternative: wat voor een) pijn dat doet 'you don't know how (much) that aches'. A different deviation is the use of welke 'which' by H in (188) instead of wat voor 'what'. In cultivated speech we ask Wat voor pap? when we wish to know what sort of porridge is dished up, and Welke pap? when asking for o n e particular porridge as opposed to other porridges (the answer could be: 'the porridge I bought yesterday', for instance). T h e mother's reply to H's question was Tarwepap 'frumenty - a porridge made from wheat', for in fact H was asking after

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the sort. But the difference is so subtle that it is often neglected by adults as well. In one example (189) the interrogative adverb hoeveel 'how much' is used by E instead of wat voor 'what'. T h e meaning of his utterance is not quite clear, but as this boy was very interested in numbers, he was probably asking for a calendar date. In (190) he wants to know on what date his boots were bought, using hoe 'how' instead of wanneer 'when'. Because his mother does not understand the meaning of his question, he not only repeats the word hoe, but surprisingly he adds the right word wanneer. This example is very instructive, for it demonstrates that the choice of an inappropriate word is not always due to incompetency. Maybe out of an inclination to laziness, the child uses the interrogative adverb hoe as a passepartout framing different aspects of the interrogative function. A similar tendency is often found in adults, e.g., in the use of prepositions. M a n y examples could be adduced, but that would take us too far afield. In the third year of his life E repeatedly said zo mooi'so beautiful' instead of wat mooi 'how beautiful'; when he was about 3;1.13 I noted the correct expression wat mooi for the first time (191). It is hardly to be doubted that two constructions are blended here: (Het is)zo mooi '(it is) so beautiful' and Wat (is het)mooi!'how beautiful (it is)!' It is true that the mother, too, now and then constructed sentences such as Kijk es, zo mooi! 'look, so beautiful!', but the hypothesis that the children themselves also create contaminated forms is supported by the examples (192)-(194), in which both E and H combine wat with zo. It is striking that in all three of these examples, wat zo and wat zo'n are followed by the adjective mooi 'beautiful', from which it may be concluded that the collocation (wat) zo('n) mooi had become a stereotyped phrase. In E's utterance (192) the adjective is duly inflected; in H's examples (193) and (194) the ending -e is lacking. In (193) the form mooi with no ending might be considered an adverb to the adjectivelange, but in (194) it is clearly an attributive adjective to trapjes 'little stairs', so that this construction would be ungrammatical in adult language. This reinforces my conclusion that the contaminated form in the long run had become stereotyped. For H the model must have been a construction such as zo'n mooi boek 'such a beautiful book', in which the adjective grammatically occurs without ending, because boek is neuter. Undeniable contaminations are the constructions hoe uit and zo uit (195, 196), meaning 'what way' and 'that way', respectively. In adult language we can ask Hoe ging ie? 'how did it go?' or Weike

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kant ging ie uit? 'what way did it go?', and the answer may be Z o ging ie 'so ( = like that) it went' or Die kant ging ie uit 'that way it went'. Nevertheless, in the Municipal Museum in T h e Hague I recently heard a custodian saying Dan kunt U zo uit, hoor Mevrouw! 'then you can (go) that way, Madam!' From this observation I conclude again that, independently of each other, children and adults may create similar contaminations. A separate issue is that H did not always distinguish the interrogative pronoun wie 'who' from wat 'what', as illustrated in (197) and (198). In (197) he asks wie, pointing to something inanimate; in (198) he responds to a question with wat as if it referred to a person. The latter example is different from the former, because with wat the father is not asking about something inanimate, but about a kind of behaviour. As late as at 4;3.19, H asked: Ingeborg? Wie is dat voor kindje? apparently blending sentences such as Wie is dat kindje? 'who is that little child?' and Wat is dat voor kindje? 'what little child is that?' In view of this explanation, we cannot say that the cause of the misuse of wie here is the inability to differentiate between wie and wat.

VII. Antonymous use of words2

By " a n t o n y m o u s use of w o r d s " I mean the w e l l - k n o w n p h e n o m e n o n that a child uses a lexical item ( w o r d or expression) the m e a n i n g of w h i c h in n o r m a l adult language is opposite t o what he intends t o say, e.g., hot for 'cold' (Hdg 1;7. L e o p o l d 1949a:144); cf. " g e g e n s i n n i g e n W o r t g e b r a u c h " (Stern 1928:239). T h e c h i l d mostly uses t h e item in the n o r m a l meaning as well, so that L e o p o l d (1949a:143) is right w h e n speaking of "a striking special case of extension of m e a n i n g " (cf. Evans 1981:18). Probably this is always t h e case: I c a n n o t give any e x a m p l e p r o v i d i n g evidence that a child uses a w o r d or an expression o n l y in the o p p o s i t e meaning. T o give an instance of the p h e n o m e n o n : I noted that Y at 1;7.17 t o u c h i n g a cold dish e x c l a i m e d H e e f / ' h o t ! ' ( 1 9 9 ) , but w i t h o u t d o u b t t h e c o m m o n use of this e x c l a m a t i o n had been d e m o n s t r a t e d to her referring to a hot stove or a hot dish. In fact, very o f t e n dishes with f o o d are hot, but w e can understand that the child by an e r r o n e o u s association c a m e to the belief that w h e n t o u c h i n g a stove or a dish w i t h f o o d we say Heet!, because she failed to observe that this w o r d refers to the h i g h temperature. T h i s is a very early example. A n t o n y m o u s utterances of the same k i n d can be f o u n d e v e r y w h e r e in the literature. T h e bulk of m y o w n examples are of later date, up to the n i n t h year of life. Very interesting in this c o n n e c t i o n is the use of the verbs zoeken 'look for' a n d vinden 'find' by E and o t h e r children. In E this use is inadequate up t o his ninth year. As a matter of fact, these w o r d s are "in c o m p l e m e n t a r y rather than c o n t r a s t i n g relation" (cf. L e o p o l d 1949a:145). Both in D u t c h and in English (and in G e r m a n as well) these verbs p r e s u p p o s e not-having, a n d t h e m e a n i n g s o f t h e w o r d s themselves both refer to the end of this not-having. W h e n w e f o c u s our attention on the a t t e m p t to have, we say zoeken 'look for'; w h e n we f o c u s o u r attention o n the result, we say vinden 'find'. T h e errors of E and o t h e r c h i l d r e n reveal t h a t t h i s relation is more c o m p l i c a t e d than it appears t o be o n the surface. In (200) E by age 4;1.16 uses zoeken meaning vinden, but in this period of his life he repeatedly said vinden in similar c o n t e x t s . In other w o r d s , he used b o t h zoeken and vinden t o express the n o t i o n 'vinden'. At 4;1.25 he avails himself of zoeken in a particular way: in the sense o f ' m e e t i n g a person at the railway station' (201). In adult speech w e never use the verb in this meaning, but we can understand the deviation by a s s u m i n g that the usual meaning of zoeken,

2. Part of this chapter was read as a paper at the Second International Congress for the Study of Child Language, August 9-14, 1981, in Vancouver.

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viz. 'try to find', lies at the root of it. Parenthetically, this is again a case of international correspondence, because in French we can say chercher quelqu'un a la gare. At any rate, he uses the word zoeken here in a sense which corresponds more closely to 'zoeken' than to 'vinden'. Very clear is (202), for here E asks what his father wants to find, although the usual question for that purpose is Watzoek je?'what are you looking for?' Both this question and E's utterance could be translated as 'what do you try to find?' More complicated is (203). In this case an adult would say Zal ik hem zoeken? 'shall I look for it?', because one can at most offer to look for something; whether the attempt to find it will be successful remains to be seen. However, what E wants to attain is the finding of the file card, and that explains the use of vinden instead of zoeken. Leopold's daughter Hdg in the first half of her sixth year (204) asks the same question in German in a corresponding way: Soilich's mal finden?'shall I find it?' (Leopold 1949b:107). Leopold classifies this utterance under "loan-translations", which on the surface seems a plausible explanation, because in English we can ask Shall I find your hat? etc. But since E never heard English, this explanation cannot obtain with him; at most we can say that (203) displays an international correspondence. Again, the correspondence may be accidental, but in view of my explanation, the possibility of such a correspondence is to be found in the usual meaning of the verbs: the children E and Hdg, like English adults, ask whether the person addressed wishes that the child shall have the file card or the hat, and they therefore choose the verb vinden, finden and find; Dutch and German adults ask whether the listener wishes them to try to have it, and they therefore choose zoeken and suchen. The different points of view are clearly expressed in (205): a child cited by Kainz (1943:62) says Find mir den Ball! 'find the ball for me!' and after being corrected for using find instead of such, protests with the words Nein, finden, vom bloBen Suchen habe ich nichts 'no, find, only looking for is of no use to me'. Unfortunately Kainz does not give the age of the child; the critical remark speaks well for a certain mental maturity. Not always does the interchange of zoeken and vinden (or of their equivalents in another language) give evidence of such a discrimination. Bubi Scupin at about 2;7 spoke (206): Geh, find mal mein Bilderbuch, ich kann's nich gar nich suchen! 'go and find my picture-book, I cannot look for it not at all!' (Scupin 1907:148). Taking into account that the English translation does not reflect the deviation of the use of find (see above), we might be inclined to think that Bubi simply mixes up finden and suchen. It is possible, however, to

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explain this antonymous use on the basis of the supposition that the child has a notion of the current meanings of these verbs. He does not want the person addressed to 'look for' his picture-book; what he desires is the result, viz. the appearance of the book (cf. 205); 'looking for' is what he already does himself without any result. This lack of result is expressed in a rather awkward way ('I cannot not at all'), but we cannot expect a 2 1 / 2 -year-old to say something like 'I am vainly looking for it'. Consequently, in find!h\s attention is focused on the result, in suchen on the (ineffective) attempt - which corresponds to the normal meanings of these verbs. I do not claim that this is necessarily the right explanation, but w e must take this possibility into account. Even at a later age, knowledge of the meaning of a word does not exclude deviant use. In the first half of his ninth year E spoke (207). Of course he wanted to 'look up' the place by means of the index (Dutch: opzoeken), hoping to 'find' it (Dutch: vinden). T h e compound opvinden 'find up' may be considered a contamination of these verbs. But what I want to emphasize is that n e i t h e r . . . ofikhet kan opzoeken nor ... of ik het kan vinden would have expressed exactly what the boy wanted to communicate. Evidently he knew very well that he 'could' - was able to - look it up, so that opzoeken would have been inadequate in this context. True, he wanted to try to 'find' it, but vinden does not express the opening of the book of maps and the consulting of the index. Consequently, this child has constructed a new compound which is just the thing for his purpose. From H I did not note any deviation in the use of the verbs in question. But now and then I have caught myself using zoeken in such a way that it is interesting to compare it with the errors of children discussed in this chapter. As a directive for my study of child language, I once made the note quoted in (208). Immediately after writing it down, I realized my error. I cancelled the word zoeken and replaced it by vinden. Most probably proberen te zoeken is a contamination of proberen te vinden 'try to find' and zoeken 'look for', expressions which are similar in meaning. T h e interesting point is that an adult - like the children in (200) and (206) - used zoeken instead of vinden, and that this happened to him not as a slip of the tongue, but as he was quietly making notes. Also the error of the same kind in ( 2 0 9 ) - i n a n official document! - is instructive in this respect, the more so as I myself, when reading the text for the first time, did not even notice the antonymous use of zoeken. T h e possibility of interchanging complementary or antonymous words is something both children and adults have in common.

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Missing my spectacles, I asked (210). This example is quite different from (208), for zoeken, although at first hearing it strikes us as strange, expresses broadly what I meant, comparable to vinden in (202) and opvinden in (207): I wanted to know where my attempts to find my glasses could be successful. Waar kan ik hem vinden? 'where can I find it?' sounds more familiar, but would have been inadequate here, because it suggests that the addressee knows where to find the object being looked for. In retrospect, I think that the formulation Waar zou ik hem kunnen vinden? 'where could I possibly find it?' would have been preferable, but when speaking spontaneously we do not take the time to weigh one formulation against another. Enough about these complementary verbs. I will now turn to the use of some real antonyms. On p. 561 compared childish utterances such as (203) and (204) with English Shall I find your hat? etc. The difference between Dutch and German vinden/finden in the children's questions on the one hand, and English find on the other is that here vinden/finden presupposes 'looking for', that is to say that the speaker does not yet know where the object to be found is at the moment of speaking, whereas in the English expression find presupposes that he knows where to fetch it. That is why the adequate translation of Shall I find your hat? into standard Dutch is not'Zal ik Uw hoed vinden?' but 'Zal ik Uw hoed (even) halen?' Now in (211) - my earliest note about the antonymous use of words - H says Nel stoel halen - gang 'Nel fetch chair - corridor', meaning the opposite, viz. that Nel (the servant-girl) is taking the chair to the corridor. An adult would say: Nel brengt de stoel naar de gang. In contrast to English bring ('cause come', Bowerman 1982: 106), Dutch brengen can be used not only to indicate that something is brought towards the speaker, but also that it is taken away from him to some point on which he is focusing his attention. lets halen 'fetch something' implies the notion 'brengen', in that it means that we first move away from the speaker or from the focuspoint, and then return bringing something towards him or to that point. In this sense halen is more comprehensive than brengen: we cannot halen 'fetch' something without'bringing' it somewhere, but we can brengen 'bring, take' something towards or from the speaker or his focus-point without first going to fetch it. The misuse of the more comprehensive verb by H may be due to misunderstanding its meaning when used in various situations, for when the servant-girl performs what she is speaking of as de stoel halen 'fetching the chair', part of her "performance" is taking up a chair and carrying it somewhere. On the interchanging of bring and take 'm English child language, see Bowerman 1978c:981 and n.6.

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In (212) we can observe that a child by age ten may be more or less conscious of the antonymous use of a verb, without noticing, however, that it is caused by a difference in point of view. The girl Vivie intends to say that her little brother is too sweet to get a thrashing, but taking the point of view of the castigator she uses the verb geven 'give' instead of krijgen 'get', forgetting that normally the subject of the infinitive in the construction om te + inf is identical with the subject of the main clause. Her friend Bartke, intuitively placing herself in the position of the little boy, duly corrects her, although we may safely assume that the syntactic rule mentioned above was not known to her. Probably she simply felt that Vivie said the opposite of what she intended to express. The Dutch verbs komen 'come' and gaan 'go' express contrary notions: a movement towards and away from the speaker (or his focus-point), respectively. I have not noted any example indicating that my sons confused these words, except in compounds. In the first half of his third year H spoke (213). The English translation does not show the deviation from the standard language, but in Dutch the normal expression is Het wantje is uitgegaan (literally: 'has gone off), as opposed to the potential but in this context rather unusual aangekomen. We can say that H's use of uitgekomen instead of uitgegaan is antonymous, because in fact the mitten has moved away from (the hand of) the child. In a sense an international correspondence may be observed here, because in English we say, e.g., 'a button has come (not: gone) off. At much later ages H interchanges opkomen and opgaan, but in a meaning which in neither case is usual in standard Dutch, viz. 'get up from bed'. The common term is opstaan. Example (214) shows that E also at least once used opgaan in this sense, whereas in (215)-(218) H alternates opgaan and opkomen. But as (214) and (215) fall on exactly the same calendar day, it is possible that E has taken over the expression from his brother. The use of opgaan for opstaan may be due to the fact that these words are phonetically similar, and that the opposite of opstaan is: naar bed gaan 'go to bed'. Moreover, the equalization of opgaan and opkomen is non-deviant when referring to the rising of the sun. The expressions de zon komt op and de zon gaatop, both meaning 'the sun rises', were familiar to the boys, although, as (219) shows, the exact meaning was not yet clear to H in his fifth year. This familiarity may contribute to the explanation of the use of these verbs as synonyms in other contexts. Afterwards, I noted several examples of the parents using both opgaan and opkomen in the sense of opstaan. I will not exclude the

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possibility that the father was willy-nilly influenced by his son, for some of his utterances show hesitations and self-correction; see (220), (221) and (222). Very instructive is (222): the father hesitated because he could not hit upon the right word immediately, and speaking -gegaan he was conscious of his being wrong. In chapter II above I discussed many examples of the misuse of temporal adverbs; in some cases the children used adverbs the meani ng of which was opposite to what they intended to say. I need not return to this now. In the examples (223) and (224) w e observe another p h e n o m enon: the use of a negative local adverb instead of a positive one. Phonetically, there is only a slight difference between the antonymous adverbs: the positive ergens 'somewhere' is made negative by preposing n-. E spoke the negative form instead of the positive one during a period of at least a month. In both of the adduced e x a m ples, the adverb is combined with the verb zitten 'sit'. A similar phenomenon was observed in H: at4;2.21 he said Erik heeft, toen ie uit school kwam, zonder niemand gegeten 'E has coming from school eaten without nobody'. Here a blending of zonder iemand 'without anybody' and met niemand 'with nobody' is improbable, because the former is an unusual expression. More likely, H's attention was exclusively focused on the negative, so that the doubling of the negation escaped him. In (225) H proceeds the other way round, speaking the temporal adverb oo/'f'ever' meaning nooit 'never'. This occurred repeatedly at about 3;10.17, but always in the relative clause . . . die je nog ooit van je leven gezien had'... that you ever saw (lit.: had ever seen) in your life'. In view of this restricted use, it is likely that H carelessly reproduced the stereotyped phrase oo/'f van je leven, which in normal speech is usual in exclamations such as Heb je zo iets ooit van je leven gezien? 'did you ever see something like that?' Very often the phrase is reduced to Heb je ooit van je leven! or even Heb je ooit! corresponding to English Well I never! T h e use of a positive adverb or pronoun instead of the negative one and vice versa is also found in Middle High German, where in certain syntactic contexts (see Paul/Mitzka 1963:273) words such as ie 'ever' and iemer 'always', ieman 'somebody' and iht 'something' replace the negative forms nie and niemer, nieman and niht, respectively, whereas conversely niht and niemer are sometimes used instead of iht and iemer. Again an international correspondence of child language and a foreign standard language, this time a medieval one, never heard by the children. See also Leopold (1949a: 143) and the illustration of his assertion that "designation of

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opposites by the same word is not unknown in standard languages". As for the Dutch language, it may be added that the verb rijzen 'rise' in South-Netherlandish (spoken in Belgium) can also be used for opposite movements such as the falling of the leaves in autumn (cf. Van Dale 1961 s.v. I rijzen 8). And while the Dutch verb stijgen generally means'rise', it is also used for both mounting and dismounting a horse (te paard/van het paard stijgen). In the last half of his fourth year H said, speaking of the time when he would be grown up: Als ik klein ben ... 'when I shall be small (226). It is very improbable that the child at that age did not distinguish klein 'small' from groot 'big, grown up', and it is not surprising that about ten days afterwards he correctly used groot in a similar context (227). W h y should not children make speech errors, what adults very often do? Did not I myself speak of a school-house being te groot 'too large', meaning that it was te klein 'too small', and conversely of the housing shortage continuing to be zo klein 'as small as that', meaning that it was zo groot 'as great as that'? I regret that at the time w h e n I noted the examples of deviant language use of my sons, I did not record the frequency of the deviations (see introduction, p. 3), for, as Maratsos & Kuczaj (1978:342, n.2) properly remark, "apparently nearly anything can happen once or very infrequently, so isolated citations cannot mean much". T h e only conclusion I can draw from my observations is that deviations from the standard language in children in many instances correspond to speech errors in adults, and that both children and adults again and again use the antonym of the intended word; see also the examples discussed on p. 18f. In adult conversation such errors often pass unobserved, because the hearer unconsciously corrects them. Grégoire (1937:158) also draws our attention to this fact. A very convincing example of my own is cited in Pohl (1974:687): speaking of a boy who had failed an examination, I mistakenly said to my wife (who was already aware of the fact): Ik heb maar nietgezegddatdezoon vanXgeslaagdis'\ didn't tell (him) thatX'sson has passed'. Perceiving my error, I corrected it immediately, but my wife had not even noticed it, for she said in astonishment: Ik verstond 'gezakt"\ understood "failed"'. Antonyms must be associated somehow in the memory of children and adults, for how otherwise can w e explain that even when translating from Dutch into German or vice versa pupils of a secondary school rather often choose German or Dutch words which are opposite in meaning to the right ones? S o m e of my pupils translated kwalijk nemen 'take ill' as verzeihen 'forgive', others verleden week 'last week' as nächste Woche 'next week',

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even in sentences like Unser Haus ist nächste Woche niedergebrannt 'our house burned down next week'. The pupils were generally about 15 years of age, and the translations were written, so that they had time enough to think about the choice of the words. Orally a Dutch pupil of about 16, speaking German to me, told me that she had learnt her lesson of nächste Woche, again meaning vorige Woche 'last week'. According to a colleague teaching English, some pupils of about the same age also translated de vorige week 'last week' as next week, although it did notfit in with the context. A boy of about 16 wrote in a test translation toen na 35 jaar 'at that ti me after 35 years' as a renderi ng of damals vor 35 Jahren 'at that time 35 years ago'; this is the more surprising as German vor and Dutch voor are phonetically similar and toen voor 35 jaar would have been an acceptable translation. Evidently, contradiction in terms does not confuse the children. In Kaper 1959:48 and 131,1 discussed this problem. Anotherexample is (228), in which een beetje (meer) 'a little bit (more)' contradicts (een) heleboel meer 'quite a lot more'. Probably the expression (een) heleboel meer as a whole was familiar to the child, and diminishing it by een beetje (with emphasis) he was not aware of the contradiction. Slightly different is (229): after having spoken of the little ear of his teddy bear, H wants to express that the ear is not so very small, and - presumably not having a better expression immediately at hand - he says that to a low degree it is big. As a matter of fact, (230) shows a contradiction as well, in that heel 'very long' in E's utterance expresses a notion opposed to that in the diminutive ending of tijdje 'little while'. However, een heel tijdje (literally 'a long little while') - the translation 'very long' is a rendering of E's emphasis - is also usual in adult speech, meaning simply 'quite a time'. Neither the child (in his seventh year!) nor adults speaking spontaneously feel that they are producing a contradictory utterance. In this connection it is interesting to point out the fact that my pupils in Rotterdam, aged 14 years and over, spontaneously understood the Dutch expression ampele besprekingen 'ample discussions' in an antonymous way: they thought that very concise discussions were meant. My explanation of this misunderstanding is that they unconsciously associated the word ampel with the adverb amper 'scarcely', which was very common in their regional speech. Such misunderstandings, if they continue as the children grow up, may lead to a general use of the word or expression in the deviant meaning; in other words, the antonymous use may be "formalized" (Bowerman 1978b:284). The fact that the foreign ad-

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jective frugal, which in German cultivated speech has the same meaning as English frugal, nowadays in colloquial speech is often used for üppig, schlemmerhaft (Duden 1973a s.v. frugal) 'luxurious, gormandizing', may be attributable to a similar misunderstanding. According to a note in my material, H in the second half of the sixth year of his life repeatedly used the adjective breed 'broad' when meaning smal 'narrow'. For lack of sufficient examples it is impossible to recover whether this was the right interpretation of my observation, but now I have my doubts about it. The only example is H's speaking of zulke brede poppetjes 'such broad figures', marking with his fingers a very small size (231). Leaving aside the question whether breed can be used forthe size of figures cut out of a sheet of paper, I will only discuss the problem as to whether the child really intended to express that the figures were smal. In my opinion this is not the case, not only because a child at his age is likely to know the difference between breed and smal, but especially because in adult Dutch the adjective breed is not only used as opposed to smal, but may also merely indicate that the size is meant. When we replace in (231) zulke by zo, we get the grammatical construction zo brede poppetjes 'figures as broad as that'. In technical terminology, the child makes use of the "unmarked" term which is "neutral" with respect to a certain contrast (see Lyons 1971:79 and 466; cf. Dik 1969:16-18 and his references in note 28; cf. also the term "nominal" vs. "contrastive" in H.H. Clark 1970:270). The deviation is not the use of breed instead of smal, but of zulke 'such' for zo 'as . . . as that', a mistake also made by H at 5;3.22, when he said dat doet zulke (instead of: zo'n) pijn 'that aches so much'. By this analysis of (231), the seeming misuse of the word breed turns out to be the utilization of a possibility inherent in the system of the adult language. What can we conclude from the examples showing antonymous use of words or expressions? Not being a psychologist, I can only put forward some hypotheses, running the risk of belabouring the obvious, and must rely on the expertness of others to test their tenability. My first hypothesis is that children and adults, when trying to find the right word to express what they intend to say, sometimes and somehow (I must be very vague here) may make use of oppositions in meaning. It is as if they are scanning a semantic field in which among other things words are associated with each other because they are opposites. Assuming that speakers may proceed in that

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way (of course quite unconsciously), we can understand that they sometimes grasp an antonym (cf. Fromkin 1973:237). By this assumption, many speech errors in adults and misuse of terms in children can be explained. T h e second hypothesis is that in children the discrimination of word-meanings is initially very hazy: the "semantic fog" (Leopold 1949a:133; cf. Introduction, p. 11) clears away in the course of time. As a matter of fact, the lifting of the fog (or rather: the haze?) is not always completed in adulthood: it is a continuous process. T h e first hypothesis is corroborated by the fact that my children, shortly after they began to speak, made use of antonyms as a c c o m paniment of opposite movements. I noted E's first intelligible spontaneous spoken words at about 2;4.29, and already at2;5.19 he said, moving the cradie-hood up and down: op - af'up - down'. This pairing of opposites must have been his own work, for although af may be used as opposite of op (e.g., in de trap af 'downstairs' as opposed to de trap op 'upstairs'), for moving a hood downwards an adult would choose the word neer. At about 1;10.9 (three months after I heard his first words) H said open - dicht 'open - closed', speaking of curtains. Such examples provide evidence that words with opposite meanings are already associated somehow in the minds of very young children (cf. also Weir 1962:101, quoting Wallon). Support for my second hypothesis is provided by Leopold (1949a:144-145) speaking of "undistinguished uses" of light on and light out in Hdg's speech at 1;8and 1;10. His explanation is that "the child used a single word to indicate a deviation from a normal condition in any direction", whereas "specifying the direction represented a later semantic stage, into which Hildegard was entering already without as yet reaching clear differentiation". In my opinion this may be called the clearing away of the semantic fog. In the same way, w e can understand "that polarity is an aspect of the meaning of spatial antonym pairs that is learned early by children, even before the particulars of each spatial dimension" (Tanz 1977:478, citing Brewer & Stone). Tanz's o w n explanation of the use of cooler instead of warmer by a 3-year-old boy - "what the child seems to have overgeneralized is the abstract structure of bipolarity itself" - sounds rather sophisticated. Herexamples, however, show clearly that the boy has understood that cool indicates a higher temperature than cold, but not yet that the former adjective is only used as opposed to warm, not to cold. T h e semantic fog has partly cleared away.

VIII. Self-reference

When recording the deviant utterances of my sons, I paid special attention to the way in which they made understood that they were speaking of themselves. That is why the number of entries concerning this phenomenon is much larger than that of the other topics. Consequently, the collected examples enable me to c o m e to some tentative conclusions about self-reference in young children. Roughly speaking, we can say that there are three possibilities for the child to make understood that he is speaking of himself: (1 ) without any linguistic form of self-reference, so that the hearer must conclude from the situation that the child is speaking of himself; (2) using his proper name; (3) using a pronoun, particularly a personal pronoun. These pronouns are the most important class of the "shifters", in Jespersen's terminology (Jespersen 1922:123). Only (2) and (3) are "self-reference" in the full sense of the word.

1. There is no linguistic form expressing self-reference It is c o m m o n knowledge that in the first stage of linguistic development children may express what they want to say by using single words. When according to van Ginneken (1917: 30) the little boy Keesje at 1;2 on seeing his pram cries ija! ija! jije! (for: rijden! 'ride!'), it is evident that he means that he himself wants to ride; when his mother forgets to give him his pap at the usual time, and he says bappa (for: pap), it is clear that he himself wants to eat pap. I did not note similar utterances from E, although he may have issued them. His brother H, at about 1;7.10, cried Thee! Kaas! 'tea! cheese!' very probably meaning that he wanted to drink tea and to eat cheese, respectively. I will leave such examples out of consideration. Some multiple-word sentences produced by H do not contain any verbal forms, as (232) - (234) show (I neglect the phonetic deviations, because they are of no importance in this chapter). It must not be overlooked that the construction of these sentences corresponds to that in adult speech. By adding I + copula or I + modal auxiliary, viz. ik ben 'I am' in (232), and ik wil'\ want'or'I will' in (233) and (234), we get syntactically correct sentences. The child's utterances may be considered incomplete imitations of adult structures. It is not surprising that constructions of the same kind still occur in the time in which H already refers to himself by using his proper name or the pronoun ik 'I', for they are c o m m o n in colloquial adult speech as well. In the post-office we ask for tien postzegels van zestig cent 'ten sixty-penny stamps', mostly omitting the self-evident 'I want to have'. Both children and adults can

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speak of themselves without reference by means of a proper name or a pronoun, and without using any verb. Very often, however, in the language of young children a verb is present, either as a single word (as the first of the above examples of van Ginneken shows), or in two- and more-word sentences. In my notes on utterances without explicit self-reference, usually some verb form shows up, and H's examples without verbs do not occur earlier. The verbal form may be (a) a past participle, (b) an infinitive, or (c) a finite form. There is no chronological order in which (a), (b), and (c) occur; see (235) - (259). In E the possibilities (a), (b), and (c) are all realized at the same age; see (235) - (238), (239) - (242), and (243), respectively. Since I have not taken down all utterances, there is no evidence that any of the three constructions emerged earlierthan the others, but there is no doubt that in the second half of his third year they all occurred. It is notable that most of them can be transformed into syntactically acceptable sentences by adding the first person singular personal pronoun; in addition nearly always an auxiliary, often an article, and sometimes a preposition must be inserted, whereas the past participle must be supplied with the prefix ge-. Compare the following sentences with possibilities (a) and (b). The words and syllables in brackets are added to demonstrate the reduction: (235) (ik heb een) paardje (ge)kregen, (van) Sinterklaas (ge)kregen. (236) (ik heb een) kop thee op(ge)dronken. (237) (ik heb de) grote trommel uit de keuken (ge)haald. (238) (ik ben) morgen met (de) tram naar (de) bootjes geweest. (242) (ik ga) even de Statendam lezen. The semantically deviant use of morgen 'to-morrow' instead of gisteren 'yesterday' (in 238), and lezen 'read' instead of bekijken 'look at' (in 242) are syntactically irrelevant (I discussed the former as example (40) on p. 16). In (235) the construction produced by the child is analytic; an adult would rather combine the two sentences synthetically: Ik heb een paardje van Sinterklaas gekregen 'I have got a horsie from St. Nicholas'. However, he may also speak two sentences, in the second referring to the object paardje of the first one by the anaphoric het 'it': Ik heb het van Sinterklaas gekregen. More complicated are the other utterances. As for (240) and (243) - the latter with possibility (c) - the deviant way in which the negation is expressed is the only additional difficulty; I discussed these constructions in Kaper 1975:20-23. Leaving out the negation, we can regard them as reduced adult sentences like the above examples:

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(240) (ik wil een) broodje (met) rooie jam eten. (243) (ik) lust (een) boterham met banaan. In both examples the child speaks these reduced sentences, but in order to express that the information must be denied, he attaches a negation particle to the sentences, nee 'no' in (240), niet 'not' in (243), in the latter case after having already inserted the same particle after the finite verb, in which position it very often occurs in standard Dutch. In the completed construction niet een o u g h t t o be combined to geen, but as the child omits the indefinite article, we cannot say that the use of niet is deviant. The double negation is ungrammatical in Dutch, but frequent in Afrikaans, w h i c h as we know has developed f r o m our language. Again an international correspondence. Deletion of first person singular personal pronoun and auxiliary as in the examples discussed above is a well-known phenomenon in child language, but it occurs in adult language as well, albeit less frequently. In colloquial Dutch, sentences like t h e f o l l o w i n g one are usual: (ik ga) even de krant inkijken '(I'll) just take a glance at the newspaper'. Consequently, it is pointless to look for the age at w h i c h a child does not use such reduced constructions anymore. From this it does not follow, however, that adult sentences of this kind must have served as a model for constructions such as (235). Rather we may assume that they originally are formed in analogy to questions such as Heb je een paardje gekregen? 'have you got a horsie?' or Wat heb je van Sinterklaas gekregen? 'what have you got f r o m St. Nicholas?' I will return to this when discussing (254); see p. 69. The examples (239) and (241) cannot simply be explained as reductions of grammatical sentences. The grammatical equivalent of (241) is Zal ik Beertje aan Mamma laten zien? or Zal ik Mamma Beertje laten zien? In both of these sentences the w o r d Mamma, as contrasted with the child's w o r d order, precedes the verb laten. Nevertheless, it is possible that here, too, a grammatical adult utterance was the model on which the child constructed his sentence. It is natural t o assume that now and then, e.g., when the child was drawing something, the mother said Laat maar eens aan Mamma zien! 'show (it) to Mamma, will you?' In analogy to such an utterance, a construction like (zal ik) Beertje laten (aan) Mamma zien? is conceivable. This hypothesis presupposes a certain linguistic activity of the child: he changes the imperative laat into an infinitive laten, and he places the object Beertje in front of the whole sentence (the bracketed words are not spoken by the child); cf. be-

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low, where (247) is discussed. In an analogous way w e can put forward the hypothesis that a question like Ga je erop staan? 'are you going to stand on it?' in spite of a slight difference in meaning has been the model for (239): the child places the name of the object on which he is standing, viz. kussen 'cushion' in front of the reduced sentence. Viewed in this way, sentence construction in young children is a combination of remembered sentence fragments (see Introduction, p. 8), not the application of known syntactic "rules" (cf. C h o m s k y 1965: 25). As examples of possibility (c), the use of a finite verb form in sentences without explicit self-reference, I only noted (243) from E, and (259) from H. In both of them the finite form of the verb corresponds to that of the first, second, and third person singular in normal speech (kan instead of kunt for the second person is only possible in informal style), so that we must conclude from the situation that the first person is meant. The double negation in (243) has already been discussed above (p. 67); the deviant word order in the first sentence of (259) will be discussed on p. 69. In Dutch, omission of the personal pronoun is ungrammatical, except in telegraphese. In many languages, however, it is grammatical (e.g., in Latin, Italian, Rumanian), so that here again we can speak of an international correspondence. In H the possibilities (a), (b), and (c) are all realized at the same time; see (244) - (249), (250) - (258), and (259), respectively. But utterance, in which (a) and (b) occur are already issued in the second half of his second year, at which age E scarcely spoke any words. Consequently, the realization of these possibilities was later by the first-born. Just as in E's speech, in all of H's sentences containing a past participle, addition o f / * + auxiliary (exclusively ik heb) is necessary, but not always sufficient, to make them grammatical in standard Dutch: (244) (ik heb mij) los (ge)maakt! (245) (ik heb een) bah (ge)daan! (246) (ik heb mijn) plas (er)naast (ge)daan. (247) (ik heb de) koek in (de) doos (ge)daan (for the word order see below). (248) (ik heb) dozen (ge)kregen; (ik heb ze van) M a m m a (ge)kregen! (249) (ik heb) een keer een plasje gedaan, etc. They all have the form of reduced grammatical constructions. T h e only problem is the word order in (247), but as in (241), discussed on p. 67, we may assume that Doos koek in daan is a reduced reproduction of the construction of the question (heb je de) koek

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(er)in (ge)daan? 'have you put the cake in it?' with the word doos 'box', referring to the container in which the cake is put, placed in front of the whole sentence. A comparable utterance is (246), which can be regarded as a reduced form of (heb je de) plas (er)naast gedaan? 'have you made pee beside it?' Here the word potty is not added by the child. Different, but also comparable, is (259). Different is the use of the modal auxiliary kan 'can'. But both of the sentences in this example er)nietbij? may again be modelled on adult questions, e.g., Kan(je 'can't you reach it?' and Kan (je de) hijskraan niet pakken? 'Can't you take the crane?' In the former the child, omitting the personal pronoun, inserts the word hijsk(r)aan after the modal verb, in the position of er in adult speech, which is quite natural, because in e r . . .bij 'at it' the pronominal adverb er refers to the crane. T h e latter sentence corresponds to the supposed model but for the omission of the personal pronoun and the definite article. So all the deviant sentences discussed here can be reduced to adult language constructions. T h e examples (250) - (258) represent possibility (b): the verbal form is an infinitive. All of these constructions can be transformed into grammatical ones from the standard point of view by preposing ik + auxiliary (in (254) aux + ik, because it is a question). In most of them, viz. in those in which the infinitive is hebben 'have' (now and then pronounced by H with [a] instead of [e]), the most suitable auxiliary is w/'/'will'; in (250) i t i s m o e f ' m u s t ' . T h e incorrect phonetic forms of some nouns, the omission of article and preposition, and the wrong form of the determiner (in view of the gender) are of no consequence in this connection, so that I will ignore such deviations. T h e most interesting example is (254), because here the model of the question Boeke kome? 'touch books?' is known. T h e fact is that the father, partly in jest, but also as a warning, at that time very often said: Mag Hansje aan de boeken komen? 'may little H touch the books?', followed by the answer spoken by himself, Poe-nee! 'pooh-no!' This g a m e amused the boys very much, and H repeatedly tried to provoke the funny Poe-nee! by posing the question himself, addressing the father, but also the m o t h e r a n d the servantgirl, and even lifeless objects, such as a bottle. At that time E, aged 4;2.3, once described the game to other people, saying Hijzegtaan de boeken komen en dat betekent poe-nee 'he says touch the books, and that means pooh-no', repeating the question asked by his brother, still in reduced form, but making it more complete by adding preposition and definite article. Such an example (I men-

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tioned it already in Kaper 1959: XX and 85f.) provides evidence that sentences of this kind are really constructed after models in adult language, with deletion of the auxiliary (cf. Leopold 1949a: 42). Most of the other exam pies under consideration express the wish of the child to have something; in (251) and (252) he wants to have a spoonful of food, but - probably because the right w o r d did not immediately come to mind - he asks for it using words w h i c h in adult language denominate table-ware. All these examples were observed d u r i n g a space of about eight months, partly at a later age than with Hdg when she spoke the sentences cited in Leopold 1949a:42, but most of them earlier than E's. As a matter of fact, Dutch adults use sentences with infinitives in which the auxiliary is lacking as well, but ordinarily the meaning is different. Saying, e.g., Mes hebben? 'have knife?' adults do not mean that they themselves want t o have a knife, but they ask whether the person addressed wants to have it. As a speech act, this sentence is a question, not a command. About Y's language use I only made some incidental observations, so that there is no evidence for her use of constructions of the types discussed above. At 1;7.17 she said rather clearly Zitte! 'sit!' after her mother had taken her on her lap. In this situation it is impossible to interpret this utterance as a reduction of (ik wil) zitten 'I want to sit'; the child is more likely to mean 'I am sitting'. Since the first example in which H used the infinitive was noted at about 1 ;10.9 (250), it is obvious that Y did not begin to use this verb form later than he, and in the utterance under discussion she spoke it with another intention. At about the same age she reproduced the verb inpakken 'pack' approximately as inpatte; I heard it at first as imitation (Y 1 ;7.20), but in the course of the same day she repeatedly used it of her own accord when putting little toys into a gauntlet. Here, too, the intended meaning of this "holophrase" (Jakobson 1977: 25, in the discussion) can only be'I am packing', not'I want to pack', for she was already performing the act. It may be of interest to report that Y at 1 ;7.17, t o u c h i n g successively the noses of grandad and granny, rather indistinctly said neus - neus 'nose', but on grandad's question Waar is jouw neus? 'where is your nose?' and Waar is Yvettes neus? 'where is Y's nose?' she did not react with a clear pointing gesture. Obviously she did not understand that grandad was referring to her. From the above discussion it is clear that children can speak about themselves without using any linguistic form expressing self-reference, and that they are able to show in this way that they want to do or t o have something. But soon self-reference in its proper sense emerges, as we shall see in the next section.

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2. Self-reference in the full sense of the word a. Using the proper

name

The first utterance in which I heard E using his proper name for self-reference is (260), spoken at2;9.14, about three months after I first noted his speaking of himself by means of participle- and infinitive-constructions, viz. at ± 2;6.8 and 2;6.11 in (235) and (239), respectively. As I was not always present, he may have used his proper name earlier, but since I paid special attention to this phenomenon it can at most have occurred incidentally. That is why we can safely assume that E did not use his proper name before the second half of his third year. His parents always called him " B u m m e l t j e " (see Kaper 1959:105, n.1), which he mostly reproduced as Butje, but also as Bumtje, Bumpje, or Bumptje. In mosteases this pet-name is subject of the sentence, as the examples (260) (277) show, and apart from (263) and (270) it is also the first word of the sentence. I noted only two utterances in which the name is not subject of the sentence, viz. (279) and (280). The situations in which they were issued induced me at that time to attribute to the proper name the function of the English genitive (expressing possession), but there is no cast-iron evidence for this assumption. At any rate such examples were scanty. As for the examples in w h i c h the alternatives of Bummeltje are subject of the sentence, it is interesti ng to observe that the possibilities discussed in the previous section reappear; there are sentences without any verb (260) - (262), and sentences in w h i c h a verb is present; in the latter the verb is either (a) a past participle (263 and 264), or (b) an infinitive (265 and 266), but mostly (c) a finite form, sometimes combined with a past participle or an infinitive (267277). We can say that the constructions with the proper name as subject are expansions of the constructions without it, expansions moving towards the adult constructions w h i c h the child is trying to imitate. In the constructions without a verb, and in (a) and (b) where it is present, the expansion consists in furnishing an explicit subject, whereas the auxiliary is still lacking; in (c) the auxiliary, or the finite form of a full verb, is added as well. In the same way as in the examples discussed on p. 65-70, we can convert the childish sentences into standard Dutch ones - in (260) and (262) by simply adding wil; in (261) just as well, but here also the preposition van and the genitive-ending -'s (to Oma) is obligatory, and moving af to the end of the sentence makes it more

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acceptable: Bummeltje wil van Oma's stoel af. T h e explanation of the less acceptable word order may be that Butje af is a reduced reproduction of adult interrogative constructions such as (Wil) Bummeltje (er) af? 'Will B down?', combined by the child of his own accord with the name of the piece of furniture from which he wants to be taken down: Oma toel(for: Oma'sstoel'granny'schair'). Such a "construction by imitation and combination" (see Introduction, p. 8; see also p. 73 not only corresponds to the way in which the sentence doos koek in daan (247), discussed on p. 68f., was supposed to be built, but also to sentence constructions in colloquial speech. An adult may ask Wil ¡e er af? and then, realizing that his question is not clear enough, as an "afterthought" ( H y m a n 1975:119; see p. 27 and cf. "tail" in Dik 1978:130,153) add van Oma's stoel? 'from granny's chair?' T h e child's proceeding is essentially the same as the adult's. In (263) and (264) the verb forms geten (instead of: gegeten 'eaten') and had (instead of: gehad 'had'), respectively, are past participles. T h e use of morgen 'to-morrow' with reference to the previous day is, of course, deviant (cf. p. 16, and cf. Kaper1959:XVI and 145), but syntactically these sentences correspond to standard ones, except for the lack of the auxiliary heeft 'has'. It is instructive to know that E at 2;10.10 not only spoke (263), but also said Dat Pappa morgen ook geten 'that D a d d y also eaten to-morrow': there is no grammatical difference between the use of the child's own name and the name of another person. Consequently, we may expect that when the child begins to use the auxiliaries, those functioning as predicates to the child's name will have a form which may be interpreted as third person singular. As I hope to d e m o n strate, in some cases this expectation is evidently realized, whereas there is no evidence that the child combines his own name with a first person singular finite verb. T h e examples (265) and (266), where the verb form is an infinitive, correspond to, e.g., (250), in that the auxiliary moet'must' can be inserted to make the sentence grammatical according to standard requirements. It may be a coincidence that they are the first instances of the use of a subordinate clause, albeit with the causal conjunction omdat 'because' lacking. In all constructions discussed so far in this section, the verb that can be inserted is a temporal or modal auxiliary. Evidence for this claim is provided by the fact that it is at about the same time that the child begins to use such auxiliaries himself, as appears from (267) and (274) - (277). As I remarked above, we may expect that in most cases the verbal form of the predicate to the child's proper name may be interpreted as that of the third person singular. This is

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incontrovertibly the case where heeft 'has' is used, because in standard Dutch this form can only referto the third person singular; see (267), (268), and (274). In (268) Butje is the subject in the construction Butje zwarte handjes heeft 'Butje has dirty hands'; the word order is that of the subordinate clause. T h e main clause Nene ook 'Nene, too' is, so to speak, "sandwiched" between subject and predicate; the standard Dutch word order would be Nel(zegt) ook (dat) Bummeltje zwarte handjes heeft 'Nel, too, (says that) B has dirty hands'. I think this analysis is right, because it corresponds to the meaning which the child (in view of the situation) wished to attach to his utterance. In colloquial Dutch the form heb is often used instead of heeft, although in standard Dutch it only refers to the first person singular (with inverted word order also to the second). That is why in Butje/Bumtje/Bumpje heb in (269), (272), and (276), respectively, heb may be considered both first and third person singular. Sure enough E combined heb also with Pappa 'Daddy': Pappa heb stikvuil haar! 'Daddy has (have?) inky dirty hair!' ( E 4 ; 1.13, discussed already as (96) in an other connection on p. 25), and with hij 'he': Hij heb wel uitgerust 'he (i.e., the tram-car) has rested well' (E 4;1.21). Later on w e shall see that ik T is combined with verb forms which undeniably are third person singular forms. There is not any example in which there is an undeniable first person singular verb form combined with the child's proper name. W h e n the root of a Dutch verb ends in -t, the three singular finite forms are identical, so thathoesf'cough(s)' in (270) and moet'must' in (277) formally may be first, second, or third person singular. But gaat 'go(es)' in (275) cannot be the form of the first person singular, because the root ga has no ending in that case. W e must content ourselves with this negative determination, for in standard Dutch gaat functions both as second and as third person singular. Incidentally, (277) is a convincing example of construction by immitation and combination (see p. 78), f o r t h e f a t h e r h a d s a i d Wilje even me (colloquial for: mijn) zaag halen? 'will you just fetch my saw?' T h e child reproduces the most important part of the utterance, me zaag halen, placing his own construction Bumpje moet in front of it, obviously unaware of the fact that the possessive pronoun me now no longer refers to the real possessor of the saw. It must be stressed that constructing sentences in such a way here occurs as late as in the fifth year of the child's life. T h e modal auxiliary willen 'will' in the simple present has no ending in the first and third person singular, so that the form wil in (271) and (273) may have either function. At any rate these e x a m -

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pies do not provide any evidence that E used the first person singular form of the verb as predicate to his name. In none of my examples is such evidence found. I noted only one example in which E refers to himself with his real name Erik instead of his pet-name. This example (278) is also interesting because it shows that E in the sixth month of his fifth year still referred to himself by means of his proper name, whereas ik - as appears from (283) - showed up already at 2;9.26. Another striking phenomenon is that in the second of the coordinate clauses the pronoun ik is used, here in anaphoric function: it is a substitute for Erik in the preceding subordinate clause. I have discussed the latter problem already in Kaper 1970/71:255-256, where I put forward as a working hypothesis that the apparent inconsistency might be due to the fact that an embedding transformation with the obligatory change in word order is more complicated than coordination (in consequence of which the transformation proper name=^>pronoun in the subordinate clause did not occur), but now I consider this explanation too "linguistic". Transformations are very useful for describing sentence constructions linguistically, but there is no compelling reason to suppose that a child unconsciously performs such transformations. More probably E imagined himself in his mother's thought, viz. Erik maakt een huis, which he reproduced verbatim in indirect speech, adding his own thought formulated as (maar) ik maak een kerk. Compare the way in which H at a much earlier age (2;5.5 and 2;10.22) reproduced his brother's speech, replacing ik by E's proper name, but taking over the finite verb in its first person singular form (examples (337) and (338), discussed on p. 81. It is beyond any doubt that H began to refer to himself using his proper name at least two months earlier than E, for I registered exactly the day on which I observed it for the first time: H 2;2.6, whereas E did not speak spontaneously at all before about 2;4.29. From H I only noted the examples (281) and (282); in the former (H 2; 4.11) H also spoke ik T in the same utterance, in the latter (H 2;4.26) he quoted himself, so to speak. If there was a period in which H referred to himself exclusively with his proper name, it cannot have lasted longer than from 2;2.6to2;4.11, that is to say, about two months. Since I noted in E the use of his proper name for the first time at 2;9.14 (260), and self-reference by ik at 2;9.26 (283), this period can have lasted at most 12 days in his case. My conclusion, therefore, is that the use of the proper name and the use of ik nearly coincide in both of the boys; in the case of E, who began much later with the use of his proper name as self-reference, the use of ik may have begun relatively earlier.

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From Y only two observations on self-reference by her proper name are of value in this connection. The first one, taken at age 1; 7.17, is already discussed on p. 70, obviously she then did not yet understand that her grandad saying Waar is jouw neus? and Waar is Yvettes neus? 'where is your/Yvette's nose?' was referring to her own nose. But according to another note at 2;0.22, she spontaneously pointed to her grandfather, touching him and saying Opa, or Dat is Opa '(that's?) Grandad' (the articulation was not clear), and then to herself saying in the same rather indistinct way (Dat is) Yvette. In spite of the indistinctness, this performance showed that she now referred to herself with the name Yvette. Since I noted H's first self-reference with his proper name at 2;2.6 (see above), it is certain that she came to this use at least one month and a half earlier than H. For the sake of completeness I call attention to the known fact that adults, too, may refer to themselves by using their proper names, mostly in jest or ironically: Daar ging Joop! 'there J o o p went!' e.g., speaking about a fall, or a wrong step. Especially Dutch soldiers or taxi-drivers now and then refer to themselves as deze jongen 'this fellow'. Haverkate (1981 ;162) points out the curious fact that there is no feminine counterpart, such as dit meisje 'this girl', and also gives some other examples of the use of the proper name. His supposition that the latter use is an expression of superiority or emphasis of disagreement may be correct, but it is not the only one, as my above example shows. In my opinion this adult use is more or less ironical, and therefore different from the childish self-reference by means of the proper name. b. Using a personal

pronoun

Above, I concluded that the use of the proper name and the use of ik T nearly coincide in both of the boys. The question arises whether for the children the word ik was in the beginning simply a proper name, an alternativeto names such as Bummeltje or Hans. I hope to demonstrate in the following discussion that in regard to my sons, this question must be answered in the affirmative. Cf. also Bohme (1983:40 n.). IK subject In most of the examples ik is the subject of the sentence. Again there are constructions without any verb, in E (283) - (286); in (287) a past participle is used, but there is no finite verb. As in the examples with his proper name, some constructions can be con-

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verted into normal Dutch sentences by adding an auxiliary: iv/'/'will' in (283), ben 'am' in (286) and (287). In the last example ben in ben (ge)weest would be grammatical; it corresponds to English have in have been. Addition of a preposition in (283) makes the sentence more acceptable: ik (wil) mee (naar) buiten\ the translation 'with you' contains the second person personal pronoun, but mee is an adverb, the use of which without this pronoun is grammatical. In (284) and the first sentence of (285) the main verb ga 'go' is lacking; also lacking in (284) are preposition and definite article: naar de dokter is the grammatical form. The insertion of ga after the emphatic form ikke T in the second sentence of (285) would make the sentence less acceptable, but after Butje the third person finite verb form gaat 'goes' and the definite article are necessary to make the sentence grammatical: Butje gaat naar de beesten toe. For lack of a finite verb we cannot decide whether ik is dealt with as a proper name or as a pronoun, but in the second of the utterances in (285), ikke and Butje obviously are interchangeable. In (284) E "quotes" as it were a sentence which his brother could have spoken: consequently, by using ik here he does not refer to himself. E places himself in H's position (cf. the discussion of (278) on p. 76), and the choice of ik in this case proves that he is aware of the fact that other persons, too, can use this pronoun to refer to themselves. Concerning (283) it is to be remarked that in that period (E 2;9.26) the boy nearly exclusively referred to himself with Butje, so that the use of ik at that time was still sporadic. By E 2;10.27 (287), on the contrary, I noted that at that age he very frequently said ik, although now and then Bumtje was heard as well. However, as late as at 4;0.8 I again observed that he frequently used Bumpje for ik. As (275), (276), and (277) show, this name still appeared repeatedly in the following months. The most plausible inference from this wavering between two ways of self-reference is that the child is not aware of any difference in the function of the proper name on the one hand, and the pronoun on the other. In many examples starting from (288), age 2;11.28, E produces sentences with a finite verb construction as predicate to the subject ik. In some of them, (288), (289), (290; first sentence), and (295), he uses a finite verb form which in standard Dutch can only be that of the third person singular, viz. is'is' or heeft'has'. In (290) a sentence with is is immediately followed by two others in which/'sisreplaced by ben 'am', a form that in normal speech can only be that of the first (or, with inversion, of the second) person singular. In (292) and (293), instead of speaking the usual irregular form heeft 'has', he attaches -t to the root heb of the verb hebben 'have', making the form regular. This regular form is ungrammatical in Dutch as third

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person singular form; it can only function as second person singular. Root+t is also found in (291) and (294), where it is ungrammatical in combination with ik (ik nies 'I am sneezing' and ik val'I fall down' are the standard forms); normally it is used in the second and the third person singular. However, in Rotterdam, the town in which E and H grew up, rooH-f in thefirst person singular isfrequent in the vulgar tongue. E may have overheard such verbal forms from the servant-girl. An example like (290) shows that E sometimes combines ik alternatively with verbal forms which in adult speech are undeniably third orfirst person singularforms, respectively. Inother cases, he combines ik with root forms lacking endings, which in standard Dutch only agree with the first person singular pronoun (with the second only in inverted word order), viz. (296), (298), (301), (304), (306), and (312); example (200), discussed in another context (see p. 55), may be added. Ik ben 'I am' in (300), (303), and in the second and third sentence of the above-mentioned (290) shows the normal irregular form, which can only be first person singular (again also second person when the word order is inverted). In the preceding paragraph we found ik combined with third person singular forms, so that it is indisputable that both combinations occur simultaneously. It is no wonder that the child wavers between the two possibilities, because in Dutch there are many verbs in which there is no difference between the first and the third person singularforms. Restricting myself to those verbs which E uses in my examples, I mention the following instances: the modal auxiliaries willen'wWV, mogen 'may', and kunnen 'can', the relevant forms of which are wil (297, 299, 302), mag (308), kan (310), and the modal auxiliary moeten 'must', the present singular forms of which are all moet (307, 311). As I remarked already on p. 73, verbs with roots ending in -t never have a present singular ending. T h e past tense of the verb denken 'think' in all three persons singular is dacht (305, 309). In the sentences where ik is followed by a finite verb form, deviations from normal language use apart from the forms discussed above are not frequent; they appear from the translations, and I will not try to explain them all. T h e redundant use of meer 'any more' (290) is discussed in Kaper 1978:352. Concerning (304) I interpreted altijd niet'always not' as nooit 'never' (Kaper 1975:41). I now should like to reconsider this view: probably altijd niet is not a syntactic unit. Rather, altijd is inserted into the familiar sentence Ik ga niet huilen'\ am not going to cry' between ga and niet, the usual place of adverbs: e.g., nu'now', misschien 'perhaps', and helemaal

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'at all' would also be inserted here. In (307) ook 'too' although it does not belong in the subordinate clause, is inserted in the right place. As in so many cases, the usual language has been the model for the child. Comparable to this example is (349); see p. 84f. The repetition of ik in (306) points the same way. Both ikgeloof and geloof ik 'I believe' are stereotypes in everyday speech; contamination of these synonymous expressions by the child is natural. An example (313) in Tinbergen (1919:75) represents an intermediate stage of this process: Luuk, aged 2;7, speaks in one utterance gloof{only once: geloof) four times, alternately preceded and followed by ik, in almost completely grammatical sentences. The translation is unsatisfactory, because in English the word order is always I believe and never believe /; in Luuk's utterance the word order corresponds to standard Dutch usage. The boy does not blend the alternatives; that is why his sentences are grammatical, as contrasted to (306), which is spoken by E at an age nearly 11/2 years older. Turning now to the use of ik by the younger son, we find that H, too, speaks this pronoun in sentences without a finite verb. I noted only three examples: (314), (315), and (358); the last one will be discussed on p. 89, the others are the first utterances in which I heard this pronoun. The first sentence of (314) was spoken spontaneously: Ik ook thee! 'I, too, tea!', but in order to be quite sure that the pronoun was used, I asked Wie moet er thee? 'who wants to have tea?' The reply was unmistakably Ik. So it is an established fact that the first occurrence of ik in H was at the latest at 2;3.22, that is to say, a good six months earlier than in E, who spoke it first at 2;9.26 (see p. 74). Obviously the use by H was not very frequent, for when he was aged 2;4.11 I still thought fit to elicit it by asking Wie doet dat, Hans? 'who is doing that, Hans?' The attempt was successful (315). In both (314) and (315) ik is to be considered the subject of a (spoken or unspoken) sentence. On the same day as (315), the pronoun was used without any stimulus in a question (281; see p. 74), this time immediately followed by a repetition of the sentence, but now with the proper name of the child instead of the pronoun: Doet ik? Doet Hans? 'does I? does H?' (meaning: what am I doing? H 2;4.11). In both of these sentences a finite verb form is used which in standard Dutch cannot be combined with the first person singular pronoun, but which is grammatical as predicate to a proper name. In standard speech the questions would go: Wat doe ik? Wat doet Hans? (the interrogative wat 'what' is omitted by the boy). As mentioned in the entry, H repeated these questions alternately, which supports the hypoth-

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esis that at the outset ik is treated as a proper name. This is again corroborated by the fact that H in many following examples combines ik with a finite verb form which for different reasons may be considered third person singular; see (316) - (323), (329), (330), (334), and (335). As I mentioned above (p. 76), the finite verb forms heeft'has' and is 'is' in standard Dutch refer exclusively to the third person singular. H, however, uses them as verb forms of the predicate to the pronoun ik; see (318), (329), and (330) for heeft, and (322) and (323) for is. For heeft see also (417), which will be discussed on p. 99 in another context. In (319) he constructs a regular form of the verb hebben 'have', viz. hebt, in normal speech this form is used only for the second person singular. H uses it in combination with both Erik and ik - in other words, as a predicative verb form to a proper name (not his own) as well as to the pronoun of the first person singular. While this is already an indication that he treats the pronoun as if it were a proper name, the most convincing example in this respect is (322). In the second sentence of this utterance H refers to the pronoun ik by means of the demonstrative pronoun die 'that one'. It is to be emphasized that when ik here is replaced by a proper name, this sentence is grammatical according to the standard language. In my translation neither'he' nor'thatone' isthe exact equivalent of die in this context, because he is not a demonstrative but a personal pronoun, only referring to masculine substantives or living creatures, whereas that one referring to a human being in my linguistic feeling has a pejorative connotation that is completely absent in the Dutch sentence. Consequently, the construction would be exactly the same if instead of ik a proper name were used. That is why it is justifiable to consider the verbal form root+t in the above-mentioned other examples, viz. doet (281, 317), heipt (316), openmaakt (320), krijgt (321), and tekent (334, 335), as third person singular forms. Doet in (281) and (317), and krijgt in (321) correspond to the third person singular standard form only, not to the second as well (which is the case with the other quoted forms), for when the word order of subject and finite verb is inverted, in the second person singular the ending -t is deleted, as we know. This supports my hypothesis that the child treats the pronoun as if it were a proper name. The above finding is contrary to Chiat's suppposition (Chiat 1981:84): "I suspect that, at least in some cases, the child's use of its name is more 'pronominal' than the adult's." The implication of my hypothesis is rather that the child's use of the pronoun is more 'nominal' than the adult's. In my opinion genitive forms such as

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hims and she's (Chiat 1981:86f.) also show that the child treats personal pronouns as If they were nouns; cf. ikkes krant'i's newspaper' (Y 2;4.7), discussed on p. 86. T o avoid misunderstanding, I stress that I am speaking of grammatical forms, not of references in a semantic sense. According to my hypothesis, the child treats the personal pronoun ik as a proper name, consequently as a noun with which the third person singular verb form agrees. My material does not allow me to express my opinion on the problem of whether this pronoun has a "fixed reference" (Chiat 1982:372), that is to say, that it always refers to the same person. It is true that in H's active language use, ik always refers to himself (also in adult language the referent of ik is always the speaker), but there is not any evidence that when somebody else speaks this pronoun, the child thinks that he (the child himself) is meant. And as appears from the examples (324) - (327), (331), and (336), H addresses different people with je (emphatic: jij) 'you' in conformity with adult use. Chiat's subject, Matthew, was younger than H, to be sure (2;4.16 - 2;5.11. Chiat 1982:360), but none of my notes, either from H or from E, taken at this earlier age points to agreement with Chiat's observations. A somewhat different example is furnished by Tinbergen (1919:16): Ik die doedat (Luuk in his 3rd year). W e can translate this utterance approximately as 'I, he am doing that', from which it appears that the third person singular pronoun is combined with the first person singular finite verb form, but just as in the case of H in (322) not the personal but the demonstrative pronoun is used (see p. 79). This is a kind of transitional sentence structure: the demonstrative suggests that ik is treated as a noun, viz. as a proper name, whereas the finite verb form stands in congruence (Bloomfield 1950:191) with ik as first person singular pronoun. Here again is a correspondence between child and adult language, for in the word order ik die dat doe 'I w h o am doing that', where die is a relative pronoun, doe also stands in congruence with ik, not with die; in this case it is grammatical. T h e problem in constructions of this kind is that the finite verb syntactically refers to the relative pronoun, but as this pronoun in turn refers to the personal pronoun, the finite verb indirectly refers to ik, which in regard to the content is more satisfactory. In Dutch w e accept the syntactic disagreement in the relative clause in favourof the concord in content. In G e r m a n the problem is solved in a different way, viz. by repeating the personal pronoun: ich, derichdas tue'l w h o I a m doing that'. Luuk's construction above is comparable to the Dutch solution. An accidental circumstance in (316) is that H repeatedly used the verb helper) 'help' to indicate the rolling up of a scrap of paper. T h e

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explanation is that he was often allowed to "help" when after dinner his father wound up the canvas table-cloth round a stick. A convincing example of misinterpreting the meaning of an expression: the father referred to the assistance that the boy gave him, whereas H thought that he was speaking of the act with which the assistance was given. That is the way in which a child, w h e n learning a word or an expression from practice, may c o m e to use it in a deviant meaning. T h e construction is + past participle in (323) must be H's own creation, because in adult speech the perfect of an intransitive durative verb such as slapen 'sleep' is formed with the auxiliary hebben 'have', not with zijn 'be'. T h e present is in standard Dutch can only be the third person singular form, but from (324) - (328) it appears that H uses it with the second person singular pronoun as well. In (326) the use of the auxiliary is instead of heb (Heb ¡e gezwommen? is the grammatical construction) corresponds to that in (323). T h e second sentence of (324), Gaje iopen?'are you going for a walk?' is normal Dutch, provided that it refers to the immediate future, not - as in H's utterance - to the past (see Kaper 1977:306, and 1980:75-76). In (325) and (327) the non-deviant forms benjij or ben je (/'//' is emphatic) alternate with the deviant isje. Looking at the ages at which the utterances with je/jij are issued, and considering that in principle I did not note down non-deviant forms, w e see that at least from 2;6.16 up to 3;4.26, that is during about 10 months, H oscillated between is and ben in combination with the second person singular personal pronoun. Adding to this the fact that H also used is as a third person singular form, we find that H in the second half of his third and in the first half of his fourth year combined is with the first, second and third person singular personal pronouns, but instead of is also used ben now and then. For a clear comprehension of this phenomenon we must draw (337) and (338) into the discussion. Here w e see that H takes over the predicate from his brother's utterance, combining it with E's proper name without changing the verb form. W h e n such a construction by imitation and combination is possible immediately after the child has heard an utterance, it is not very far-fetched to assume that it also may occur as a delayed reaction. More concretely: of course H often heard sentences such as Hans is ..., papa is Constructing sentences himself, he may have taken over the predicates of such models in the same way as he took over ben... in (337) and (338). And in the same way as in these examples he changed of his own accord ik into Erik, he may have combined is... with pronouns instead of with proper names, these pronouns being

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ik, jij/je (and also, correctly, hij'he'), according to the situation. A comparable example is Moortje is naast je zitten 'Moortje is sit beside you' (398), spoken by H at 2;8.3 (meaning: Moortje (a toy dog) is sitting beside me); see p. 94. The use of heeft 'has' by H corresponds to that of is in that this verb form functions not only as a predicate to proper names, as in standard Dutch, but also to the personal pronouns ik and je (emphatic /// 'you', 2nd person singular); see (318), (329), (330), and (331), (332), (333), respectively. Jij heeft 'you has'was also spoken by him in (18), discussed on p. 12 in another connection. In (330) the use of the auxiliary is ungrammatical: vallen 'fall' is in adult speech conjugated with zijn 'be', not with hebben 'have'. These utterances are all issued in H's 3rd and 4th year of life; a glance at the exact ages shows that the deviant use of the verb form lasted at least from 2;5.15 (318) up to 3;7.11 (18), that is to say, about one year and two months. Now consider (334) - (336). S i n c e in standard Dutch the verb form root+t is only used as a second or third person singular form, whereas by inversion of the second person subject and the finite verb the ending -f is deleted, the form tekent 'draws' is ungrammatical in all of these examples; it is impossible to show this adequately in the translation. Significant is (335), because here the ungrammatical form root+t is followed by the grammatical one without ending. Possibly this is a kind of self-correction, but there is no evidence that this is the case. At any rate we may conclude that H in the eleventh month of his fourth year was not yet quite sure about the use of the verbal forms. He often used the form roof+f correctly for the third person singular (I don't think it necessary to cite such examples), so that here again he spoke this form with reference to the three persons singular. Does this amount to saying that "in the child's grammar" (cf. C h o m s k y 1965:25) root+t was the verb form for all three persons singular? In my opinion this is not the right conclusion, because the child wavered between different forms. His use of the verb forms is not systematic, but is mostly an unconscious but perhaps nowand then alsoconscious.efforttopspeaklike the persons in his environment by imitating the way in which they speak. This imitation may be more or less automatic; see (337) and (338) discussed on p. 81. But at the same time, the child is creative in combining the constructions heard. This may be more or less conscious. My observations are in keeping with Jakobson's finding: "Gewisse Forscher legen den Nachdruck auf die Nachbildung, andere hingegen auf die schöpferische Gabe. Es scheint, daß eine Synthese vorzuziehen wäre. Was hier stattfindet, ist weder

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eine m e c h a n i s c h e Ü b e r n a h m e n o c h eine w u n d e r b a r e S c h ö p f u n g aus d e m Nichts. Das N a c h a h m e n öffnet den s c h ö p f e r i s c h e n Kräften des A n f ä n g e r s weite M ö g l i c h k e i t e n " ( J a k o b s o n 1977:8). 3 H very o f t e n c o m b i n e s ik w i t h a verb f o r m w h i c h in adult language is the first person singular, but as I m e n t i o n e d above (p. 77), in m a n y D u t c h verbs there is no f o r m a l difference between the first and the third, a n d in s o m e cases the f o r m is the same for all three persons, singular. Examples of the latter are mag 'may', used by H in (340), (345), (350), (351), (353), and (354), and kan 'can' in (259), discussed on p. 69, and (347). For the sake of completeness I must add that in adult speech along with je kan also je kunt is possible, whereas w i t h inversion kan je and kun je are used. But it is a deviation f r o m n o r m a l language use w h e n H at 2;5.10 says Ejik wilt er uit 'E wants (to get) out' (339), c o n s t r u c t i n g a root+tthird person singular f o r m of the verb willen 'will', w h i c h in standard D u t c h has no e n d i n g in the first and third person singular. A l t h o u g h I have no entry f r o m this time in w h i c h the g r a m m a t i c a l f o r m ik wil or wil ik occurs, I am sure that he repeatedly spoke these forms. While this c o u l d be an i n d i c a t i o n that H systematically added -t to verbal roots in order to c o n s t r u c t t h i r d person singular forms, other examples c o u n t e r this c o n c l u s i o n . True, in (342) and (344) he f o r m s the regular but deviant t h i r d person singular hebt ie (ie for hij is here the usual f o r m ) and Jan hebt, respectively, w h e r e heeft w o u l d be the g r a m m a t i c a l f o r m , whereas (341), (346), and (352) c o n t a i n the g r a m m a t i c a l first person singular f o r m w i t h o u t e n d i n g . In (343), however, the -t is lacking a l t h o u g h the verb is c o m b i n e d w i t h a p r o p e r name, so that the t h i r d person singular f o r m w o u l d be required. A n d a b o u t 4 m o n t h s earlier, in (319), he said b o t h Erik hebt and ik hebt in one utterance (see p. 79); the l a t t e r f o r m may be an a u t o m a t i c repetition of the f o r m e r ; cf. t h e repetition of ben in (337) and (338), discussed on p. 81. We will see later on (p. 96) that w i t h H jullie heb instead of jullie hebt or jullie hebben 'you (plural) have' is also f o u n d , so that w e c a n say that H uses the f o r m s with and w i t h o u t -t in an unsystematic way. No w o n d e r he does so, for in adult speech we hear hij heeft but also (colloquial) hij heb; we hear j i j hebt a l o n g w i t h heb j i j ; we hear jullie hebben, but in cultivated speech also jullie hebt, whereas in informal conversation heb jullie may be heard. H o w haphazard the f o r m a t i o n of finite verbs in child language can be appears f r o m a c o m p a r i s o n of (357) and 3. "Certain researchers emphasize the imitation, whereas others empahsize the creative endowment. A synthesis may be preferable. What occurs here is neither a mechanical taking over, nor a micraculous creation from nothingness. The imitation offers great potentialities to the beginner's creative power."

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(330): in the former H, aged 3;2.9, speaking of a little accident, uses the construction heb ikgevallen (instead of ben ik gevallen 'I had a fall'), but in the latter example, three days later, talking of the same accident, he formulates heeft ik gevallen. W h e n studying child language development we must constantly keep in mind that normally the child's attention is concentrated on the content of his message, not on the linguistic form (cf. p. 46, and see Levelt, Sinclair, and Jarvella 1978:8). Evidence for this claim is produced by the fact that more often than not, linguistic corrections on the part of adults are misunderstood by the child as referring to the content of the utterance. T h e following conversation may illustrate this phenomenon: Y 3;10.2: 't Moet gebakt worden. Grandfather: Gebakken? Y: Ja, het wordt gebakt. In the first sentence the little girl Y tells her grandfather that something must be baked, using the ungrammatical weak form gebakt. T h e grandfather tries to draw her attention to this mistake by asking gebakken? using the grammatical strong form of the verb, but the child is not aware of being corrected, and answers in the affirmative, again using the ungrammatical form. An example of the same kind is given by Berko (1958:175); cf. also Emerson (1980:150), Hirsh-Pasek, Gleitman & Gleitman (1978:100), and the experiments, partly with c o m m a n d s containing nonsense words, reported by Wilcox & Palermo (1982: 139-150). Besides, although older children and adults have learned at school to pay attention to the linguistic form, they often behave in the same w a y (cf. Derwing 1973:160f. and 163 n.2). More instances of H's using verb forms as predicates of ik which in standard Dutch can only be first person singular are (349) and (355). In (348) krijg could also be the second person form, because the word order is inverted. But while the form krijg in this example is grammatical, krijgt ik in (321), which he spoke about two weeks earlier, is not, because here he combines ik with the root+tform. In (349) he echoes the phrase ik denk van... 'I think . . . ' spoken by his father, but his own creative act (the substitution of wel - the opposite of niet 'not' - by ook 'too') makes the sentence ungrammatical. If he had intended to express an opinion opposite to his father's, the substitution of wel by niet would have been correct: Ik denk van niet 'I think not'. By making use of the possibility of substitution to express agreement with his father's opinion, however, he goes off the rails; the right expression would have been Ik denk ook van wel 'I, too, think it is'. In the form in which H's

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utterance is spoken in reality, Ik denk van ook, it could roughly be rendered in English as 'I think it, too, is the case', but that is not the meaning intended by the child. The adverb ook 'too' is inserted in the subordinate part of the sentence, whereas its right place is in the main part. The phenomenon is essentially the same as in (307), spoken by E at 4;0.27 (see p. 78). On p. 53 I discussed example (198) in connection with the use of the interrogative pronoun; in the present context it may be referred to as providing evidence that H at 3;2.8 already spoke sentences in which the first and second person singular pronouns were neatly combined with the corresponding verb forms of the auxiliary zijn 'be'. Yet about two and a half months later he produced constructions of second person singular pronouns with third person singular verb forms of that same auxiliary as predicates, as (328) proves. Such an inconsistency points to a learning of language use by trial and error and not to the development of "an internal representation of a system of rules" (cf. Chomsky 1965:25 and Derwing 1973:276f.). It seems to me advisable to pay attention to such indications. Probably there is in language development not only a "semantic fog" (see p. 11), but also a morphologic and a syntactic fog, which clears away (to a certain extent) in the course of time. Finally, in (356) the concord between the subject ik and the finite verb form is not deviant, but since bothz/'fand had are grammatical forms for all three persons singular, there is no opportunity for making mistakes. The only deviation is the use of the present tense of the verb zitten 'sit', because the boy is speaking of the past, as appears from the use of the past tense of hebben 'have', and of the adverb toen 'then'; this adverb really means 'at that time' here, and is not superfluously inserted as in (348) and (353), discussed in Kaper 1978:347-353. Obviously the use of the tense forms by H was not yet completely developed in the first months of his fourth year. As for Y, at 2;1.17 she said quite distinctly, seeing that her mother was helping herself to some food, Ik oo/c'l, too'. It was not the first time I heard ik from her, for as early as at 1;10.30 I noted Zo zit ik'\ am sitting in that way'. This utterance, however, is likely to be an imitation of the words spoken by her grandfather a moment earlier. At this age she often repeated words spoken by adults, although by no means on all occasions, often not even when requested to do so. The grandfather, to be sure, was speaking of himself, and she of herself; consequently the utterance was indeed a kind of self-reference. But leaving the entry of 1 ;10.30 out of consideration, we still do not know whether ik ook at 2;1.17 was her first use of ik, because I

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could only occasionally observe her speaking. Nevertheless, it is an established fact that her first self-reference by means of the personal pronoun ik occurred not later than at 2;1.17. As we saw on p. 78, H spoke his first /Ac at the latest at2;3.22 (example314), sothat it is hardly deniable that Y in this respect was about two months earlier. While in Y's utterance under discussion there is no finite verb, (359) - (364) are examples with such a form. In all of them ik is the first word (except in (364), where the conjunction maar 'but' precedes it), and is the subject of the sentence. In (359), (360), (362), and (364) the verb has a form that in standard Dutch can only be first person singular. The auxiliary kunnen 'can' has the form kan (in (363) used by Y in agreement with ik) in standard speech not only in the first, but also in the third person singular, whereas in the second person kan is used in colloquial speech (for the alternative kunt, see p. 83). Strikingly unchildlike is (364). The explanation is that Y, being an only child, was very often alone with her mother; moreover she spoke it at a considerably later age: in the second half of the fourth year. In (361) an imperfect form appears referring to the present, a use which is not deviant. Also the form wou 'would, wanted' itself is grammatical, because in normal speech it is the only form for the three persons singular. The only deviation in this utterance is that in adult speech geen 'no' would be used instead of niet 'not'. The above examples from Y do not suggest a use of ik in the same function as a proper name. However, atthe age when she produced the utterances cited she also constructed the phrase ikkes krant'Vs newspaper' (Y 2;4.7). Here ikke, the emphatic form of the pronoun ik, is declined as if it were a noun, viz. by adding the genitive ending -s, as in e.g., in Yvettes krant, but it must betaken into account that Y's mother, instead of mijn krant 'my newspaper', now and then said mijnes krant'my's newspaper'. This probably idiosyncratic declination of a possessive pronoun is even more deviant from standard Dutch than the genitive of the personal pronoun. The child Paula, at 2;8.1 constructing the genitives hims and she's (Chiat 1981:86f.; see above p. 80) does essentially the same as Y at 2;4.7. My final conclusion is that the hypothesis that children may treat the personal pronoun as a proper name is not without foundation. IK not subject Both E and H now and then referred to themselves by using the pronoun ik not only as subject of a sentence, but also after a preposition. The number of examples from E is larger than from H;

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see (365) - (370) and (380), (381), respectively. Most of them are spoken in the fourth year, by H also a little later; one isolated example was noted from E at 6;10.21 (370). I cited these examples already in Kaper 1976:439, discussing the opinions of Tanz (1974: 271-276). In this discussion I remarked that I - a s opposed to Tanz never observed the use of the object form mij/me' me' instead of the subject form ik. The first instance of E using /'/cafter a preposition was observed at 3;4.5: Is dat van ik? 'is that of I?' (365), but more than five months earlier I noted from him the grammatical Hanza kijkt naar mij 'Hanza is looking at me' (371). The latter sentence may be the reproduction of a sentence pattern heard from adults, whereas the former shows that the child constructed a sentence by himself; in other words, (365) justifies the supposition that there is a progress in language development consisting of "reorganization" (Bowerman 1978a:1).4 In (372), (373), and (374) the prepositions are again followed by the grammatical objectformm/'/, whereas some preceding entries contain constructions of preposition + ik. In (368) van ik 'of I' is constructed in order to protest against somebody who had said van Hans 'Hans's (literally: of Hans)'; here the pronoun follows the preposition in unchanged form, in the same way as the proper name. In (374), spoken as late as at 4;0.17, the first person singular pronoun has the grammatical form, but /'//'you' in the first part of the utterance has the subject form. The possibility must not be excluded that jij instead of the grammatical jou arose automatically, the diphthong [ei] being an anticipation (Cohen 1965:180) of [ei] in mij. The last mentioned example shows that the use of the pronoun forms was still unsteady around E's fourth birthday, but as appears from (370), in the second half of his seventh yearthere is still atrace of this unsteadiness. In the first paragraph of this section I mentioned the fact that I never observed the use of the object form mij/me'me' instead of the subject form ik. The construction net als mij in (375) and (376) seems to contradict this contention, for in standard Dutch we say Je moet net als ik doen (or, more acceptable, Je moet netzo doen als ik), and Misschien krijg je wel hetzelfde als ik. The subject form in these sentences is easily accounted for as "subject in deep structure"; in traditional grammar terms we can say that the adjunct net als ik or hetzelfde als ik is an elliptical construction representing

4. A problem is that naar mij 'at/to me' cannot have been spoken by other people with reference to E; taking over this expression he must somehow have been aware of the fact that it is used to refer to oneself.

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the subordinate clause net als ik doe and hetzelfde als ik krijg. I deliberately don't take into account the English translation, because in that language the equivalent of net als ik is just like me, which structurally does not correspond to standard Dutch, but to E's language. In this construction like is a preposition, and that is why w e can say that in (375) and (376) mij does not represent the subject in deep structure or in an elliptical construction, but is governed by (or "object of"; Hornby 1977:55, Jansen 1981:3 n.2) the preposition als (see also p. 91). T h e examples at issue are convincing instances of international correspondence. Incidentally, we also encounter here the phenomenon that there is no essential difference between child and adult speech, for the construction als mij where als ik is required also occurs in colloquial Dutch. T o give one example: in an interview a bus-driver said Mijn collega, ..., die is drie keerzogroot als mij 'my colleague he is three times as tall as me' (newspaper "Het Parool", 31.12.81, p. 15). O n p. 35 I discussed example (150), in which gelijk dan mij corresponds to standard gelijk met mij; here met is a preposition in standard Dutch as well. I claimed that gelijk dan mij 'at the same time than me'shows that E (5;3.15) had a notion of the use of a/sand dan in comparisons, but that the notion was very vague. This "syntactic fog" (see p. 85) was tentatively explained by the fact that the child heard both a/sand dan after adjectives in the comparative, and als after adjectives in the positive degree, without reflecting, of course, on the possibility of a grammatical difference between positive and comparative: children do not learn such differences until they go to school. At school they learn rules, but that does not imply that from that time on they always proceed according to these rules. This is also apparent from the use of mij instead of ik in sentences like (375) and (376). Not only preschool children make this mistake: when speaking (376) E was already in his 8th year! I even heard a girl aged about eleven saying hetzelfde als mij 'the same as me' instead of hetzelfde als ik. Also English-speaking adults may in colloquial style produce constructions like Is she as tall as me? where grammatically as I (am) is required (Hornby 1977:224). T h e reverse happens in (377) and (378): here the subject form of the second person singular pronoun is used as object of a preposition. W e saw a similar case in (374), discussed on p. 87, but - as opposed to this example - in (377) and (378), which are earlier, an anticipation of the diphthong cannot be assumed. Since E three days after having spoken (378) constructed (379), containing the

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grammatical form jou, we may suppose that in the use of this pronoun he was also wavering between the case forms. As for the younger son, the most interesting utterance is (358). O n the one hand iepei hebben 'have spoon' illustrates the fact that H at 2;5.4 still constructed sentences in which he refers to himself without a pronoun or proper name and not using a finite verb form, although he spoke ik already at 2;3.22 (see p. 78, where (314) is discussed). O n the other hand, van ik and van Hanza 'of Hanza' show the use of the first person singular personal pronoun in the subject form after a preposition alternating with his proper name. Such linguistic behaviour does not fit in with any rule: it is a mixture of imitation and construction by the child himself, inconsistent because it occurs unconsciously, without reflection on the linguistic forms. T h e alternation of the pronoun and the proper name supports my hypothesis that the pronoun is dealt with as a proper name. T h e grammatical form mij 'me' as object of a preposition appears with H already at 2;6.8 (example 383); the combination tegen + mij may be taken over as a whole, because sentences like Hij heeft het tegen mij gezegd 'he told it to me' are very c o m m o n . However, in adult speech the verb snijden 'cut' is never combined with this preposition (on this problem see Kaper 1966:55 and 48-51); consequently this construction is the child's own creation. The deviant subject form after a preposition reappears at 3;11.26 (380) and even at 4;1.25 (381), that is to say, over 1 1 / 2 years after mij was correctly used in this position. T h e correct use of mij was noted again in the meantime, viz. at 4;1.7 (384). Example (381) shows the last occurrence of preposition + ik which I observed with H, aged 4;1.25, whereas I noted such an occurrence with E as late as at 6;10.21 (370). As I paid special attention to this phenomenon, it is not too bold to assume that E came to the completely right use of the pronoun about two years and nine months later than H did. Both with E and with H there is a period of several months in which they combined prepositions alternatively with ik and mij. I do not see any reason to call this a systematic linguistic use; it is rather a question of hitting or missing the mark. T h e r e is only one entry in which ik is direct object, viz. H 2;6.6 (382). It fits in with the hypothesis that a child may use the first person singular personal pronoun as an alternative to the proper name. Since there are no examples of this kind from E or Y, we can only conclude that the use of ik as direct object does occur in child language. In my accidental observations on the girl Y's speech there are no

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instances of ik used as direct object or after a preposition, so that comparison with E and H is impossible. However, a phenomenon not occurring with Eand H was observed with her, viz. the use of the reflexive pronoun zich 'him/herself (in Dutch there is no distinction in gender here) instead of mij/me 'me' after the preposition bij 'with'; see example (385). I noticed the construction several times on one day, at 3;4.10; the misuse was restricted to the construction ik heb ... bij zich 'I have . . . with himself/herself. Evidently this is an imitation of the use of this expression with reference to the third person, e.g., when the mother spoke about Y or some other person. Interestingly, Schaerlaekens (1977:15) observed the use of zich instead of mij in the function of direct object in a boy about one year younger than Y: Ik ga zich wassen instead of Ik ga mij wassen 'I am going to wash myself (Gerrit 2;5) and also instead of the second person singular personal pronoun: Gaat gij zich scheren? instead of Ga jij je scheren? 'are you going to shave yourself?' (Gerrit 2;6). The above explanation applies here as well. Compare also (410) and (411), discussed on p. 97f. At a much later age E (5;7.24) spoke in a similar way an inadequate reflexive pronoun, viz. the singular instead of the plural form of the first person: Nou hebben we iedereen jampot bij me' now we have each a jam-jar with me'; the right form would have been bijons 'with us' (386). It is intriguing to consider the fact that the singular, although ungrammatical, is not unjustifiable, because ieder'each' is individualizing: each person of the company meant by we can say I have a jam-jar with me. When we replace ieder by allemaal '(we) all'this paraphrase does not fit the case, because the latter of these words is collective. It is also interesting to observe that not only children but also adults may occasionally chooseawrong reflexive pronoun. In the Cultural Supplement of the Dutch newspaper "NRC/Handelsblad" of 18.6.82, p. 3,1 read: "Op een paar luie stoelen zitten leerlingen van de Engelse school . . . Voor zich op tafel staan de thermosflessen" 'some pupils of the English school are sitting in easy chairs . . . In front of themselves on the table stand the vacuum flasks'. Here the pronoun zich refers to the third person plural indeed, but nevertheless it is inappropriate in this context, because the noun phrase to which it refers, leerlingen van de Engelse school, is not the subject of the sentence in which it occurs; the right construction would have been voor hen 'in front of them', or else the sentence ought to have run: Voor zich op de tafel hebben ze de thermosflessen staan 'in front of themselves on the table they have standing the vacuum flasks'. The mistake can be explained as a contamination of these two constructions. Again we

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conclude that child and adult language use do not differ in an essential way. Comparable to (375) and (376), in which E uses the object form m/y instead of the subject form ik after nef als 'just like' (see p.87f.) is (387). Here Y also replaces a grammatical subjectform (w/y'we') by the corresponding object form (ons 'us') after the conjunction zoals, which has about the same meaning as net als. The difference is that in this example not the first person singular, but the first person plural personal pronoun is at issue, but it is the same phenomenon: the conjunction is treated as if it were a preposition. Leopold (1949b:138) gives an instance of it in German concerning the second person singular: Beinah so gut wie dich instead of Beinah so gut wie du 'nearly as right as you' (Hdg6;2.10). A striking fact is that these deviations from standard language are found in school-going children: Hdg's utterance was issued in her seventh year, E spoke (376) in his eighth, and Y spoke (387) as late as in her ninth year. I conclude this enumeration with an example in which evenals (synonymous with zoals) is followed by the third person plural object form instead of the grammatical subject form: Fromm was evenals hen (instead of: evenals zij) een Duitser 'Fromm was like them a German'. This sentence was not spoken by a child, but was written by an adult in the respectable Dutch newspaper "NRC/Handelsblad" of March 19th, 1980, p. 4. Calling to mind the generally known fact that many Dutch adults in slipshod style use the object form of the third person plural personal pronoun hun 'them' instead of the subject form zij 'they' (even mentioned in the dictionary Koenen-Drewes 1980, s.v. hun), we have good reason to doubt whether in this respect there is a borderline between child and adult language. Using personal pronouns other than IK In some utterances E refers to himself by using the third person singular personal pronoun hij 'he' (unemphatic with inversion and in subordinate clauses ie): see (388)-(392). The age at which this phenomenon was observed (the last three months of his 4th year and the first weeks of the 5th) coincides for the greater part with the period in which he used his proper name in this function, but since the uses of the proper name and of ik overlap as well (see p. 75) we cannot say that there was a stage in which E referred to himself by using his proper name with hij/ie as its substitute, talking of himself as of another person, as it were. Rather, he used these forms and the pronoun ik alternatively, at random. While gelooft ie 'he believes' (instead of: bedoelik'\ mean') is spoken at3;9.15 (388) and ik

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geloofik 'I believe I* later, at4;0.0 (306), ik wil'I will'at3;4.22 (297), 3;5.24 (299) and 3;6.4 (302) is spoken earlierthan Butje iv/7at3;6.17 (271) and 3;7.18 (273), this being followed by hij wilat 3;10.12 (389). W e hear hij dacht 'he thought' at 3;10.19 (390) earlier than ik dacht at 3;11.24 (305), but then again hij dacht at 4;0.14 (391) and4;0.16 (392), and later on again ik dacht at4;1.10 (309). As I did not note all utterances, these examples reflect only part of the reality, but they are sufficient to show that there is no systematic sequence in the use of proper name, hij/ie, and ik. Incidentally, the indirect speech (or rather, indirect thought) in (390)-(392) shows another inconsistency, in that the present tense in (390) and (391) alternates with the past tense in (392); in both cases the subordinate clause is dependent on hi} dacht. T h e use of the present tense in a subordinate clause dependent on a main clause containing a past tense form is again an instance of international correspondence, because it also occurs in Russian. And if 'he does harm' in the translation of (391) strikes the reader as strange, this is due to the fact that normally this expression is used in the negative; the deviation corresponds to that in Dutch. As for H, there is only one entry in which ie is used instead of ik, v i z . . . . bedoeltie'... he means' ( H ± 2;3.27; I wrote down only this part of the utterance). T h e meaning of this expression corresponds to E's example (388), but as opposed to E, the younger son speaks the right verb. Moreover, the age at which he spoke it is nearly 1 1 / 2 years earlier than E. Corresponding examples given by Tinbergen (1919:66), spoken by Luuk, were observed at about the same age as by H, at2;3. T h e most interesting utterance is Luuk magtie niet 'Luuk he mustn't', because here both the proper name and the personal pronoun ie appear in the same sentence. T h e form magtie (for: mag ie) is likely to be taken over as a whole from adult speech, for the insertion o f - f between finite verb and pronoun also occurs in colloquial Dutch (cf. Jalink & van den T o o r n 1963:55). Taking over as a whole may also have happened in the case of gelooft ie, bedoelt ie, and hij dacht, discussed above. The use of the reflexive pronoun zich with reference to the speaker, discussed on p. 90, points the same way. Recently this hypothesis was corroborated once more by a Dutch speaking girl of about five, with w h o m I played a children's game. Her task in the game was to guess the position of a handkerchief which I held behind her back. I asked her whether it was hanging, stretched horizontally, or compressed into a ball. T h e formulation of the question about the last-mentioned position was deugt ie niet? 'is it good-for-nothing?' W h e n the child chose this solution, she invariably said Hij deugt ie niet 'it is it good-for-nothing' (in-

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stead of: Hij deugt n/'ef'it is good-for-nothing'); so she took over the construction of the question as a whole, correctly adding an initial personal pronoun, not being aware that the pronoun ie thereby became redundant. Again a construction by imitation and combination. In all of the examples cited above in which the third person singular personal pronoun is used for self-reference, the form and function of the pronoun are those of the subject of the sentence. Different in this respect are my observations concerning the use of the second person singular pronoun, to which I will turn presently. In parentheses, however, I should like to communicate the observation that an Amsterdam taxi-driver upon receiving a telephone call to come to a certain address may react with the announcement Hij komt er an! 'he is coming!' In this context the pronoun hij could grammatically refer to the cab, but given the mentality of the natives of Amsterdam, I am inclined to regard it as a humorous self-reference, corresponding to expressions such as deze jongen 'this fellow' (see p. 75). Of course such a deliberate deviation from normal language use is quite different from the unconscious misuse of the shifter (see p. 65) in child language, and there is no question of influence of a taxi-driver on the linguistic behaviour of a child. However, there is no denying the fact that in adult speech, self-reference in the form of reference to a third person is possible. As early as at about 2;6.8 (393), and in the following months up to 2;10.6 (395), E spoke the phrase bij je 'by, to you (singular)' to express the meaning bij me 'by, to me' (cf. "pronoun reversals": Charney 1980:510). T h e entry from which (395) is taken mentions explicitly the fact that E was "still" making use of this phrase referring to himself (I added '(must)' in the translation to signify that 'come' is an infinitive, not an imperative), from which we may conclude that during a period of four months he did so again and again. O n e gets the impression that for this child bijje is one word (an "unopened package"; R. Clark 1974:3) taken overfrom adults in the same way as, e.g., Y at about 1 ;5 used to say mooie? w h e n she admired something; in adult speech this is a phrase: mooi, 'lovely, isn't it?' However, in the months in which E repeatedly said bijje referring to himself, he now and then also combined bij with the appropriate me (394). But curiously enough, at a later age he does in a sense the opposite: at 3;6.26 he uses the possessive pronoun me (the colloquial form fortheunemphaticm//'n'my') with reference to his mother (396). T h e explanation of this inconsistency may be that on the one hand he takes over phrases consisting of preposition + pronoun and preposition + possessive + noun as

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wholes, whereas on the other hand a foggy notion of the right differentiation arises. As a matter of fact, the taking over of phrases as wholes continues in adult speech. The Dutch equivalent of English 'upside-down' is op z'n kop (literally 'on his head'), where z'n is the third person singular possessive pronoun; but it is customary to say De boeken staan op z'n kop 'the books are standing upside-down', although for the matter of concord the plural form hun 'their' would be required here. De boeken staan op hun kop sounds rather pedantic. Evidence that H treats the expression op zijn kop as one word is provided by the fact that at 4;1.16 he speaks of allemaal op-zijnkoppe borden '(they are) all upside-down plates', inflecting op zijn kop as an adjective. Nearly one month and a half earlier, speaking of bears, he said Op zijn buik liggen ze dan gewoon 'then they are simply lying on his belly' (H 4;0.5), where op hun buik 'on their belly' would have been the right construction (in Dutch the singular noun referring to more than one "possessor" is grammatical). Evidently E, aged 6;2.3 at that time, although he always was rather critical, did not feel the singular form of the possessive pronoun as unusual, for he replied without any protest: Ja, beren liggen altijd op zijn buik 'yes, bears always lie on his belly'. In my linguistic feeling this use of the singular is more deviant from adult speech than in op zijn kop. Confer also p. 95. The examples (397) and (398) show that the construction preposition + je in which ye 'you' (singular) refers to the speaker is spoken by H at about the same age as by E; only the prepositions are different. Especially (398) is an instructive illustration of the phenomenon "construction by imitation and combination". Of course the construction proper name + copula + nominal part of the predicate was often heard by the child: Moortje is lief, stout 'Moortje is nice, naughty', etc. On the other hand his mother may frequently have said Laat Moortje maar naast je zitten 'let Moortje sit next to you', Mag Moortje naast je zitten?'may Moortje sit next to you?'etc. The sentence Moortje is naast je zitten 'Moortje is sit next to (or: beside) you' may be a combination of fragments of both of these models. I discussed this problem already in Kaper 1968:231; see also p. 81 f. above. The combination may be facilitated by the fact that in standard Dutch proper name + copula + infinitive construction is not unusual, e.g., in Moeder is meik halen 'Mother is out for milk'. From the linguist's point of view this is a different construction, because here the function of is is to express that the man or woman referred to by the subject of the sentence is out for doing something, whereas in Moortje is lief, etc. it attributes a quality to

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the creature referred to by the subject, but such reflexions are alien to a child. He imitates and combines at this age almost entirely unconsciously, at most hearing whether an utterance sounds strange or familiar. My experience is that even pupils of secondary schools learning a foreign language proceed in that way. W h e n they are asked to judge whether a construction is "right" or "wrong", they seldom appeal to linguistic rules. T h e same is true of many adults (see Introduction, p. 7). Hulstijn (1982:157-161) lends support to thisfinding. In the background information from his subjects (adults learning Dutch as a second language) about their approach to the study of language, several of them say "I don't think of the rules", and one of them declares that he speaks "on sound". I did not observe any other construction by H in which the second person singular pronoun was used instead of the first person, and from V I did not note any observation of this kind. There is, however, a comparable example in which H refers to his mother and himself by using the second person plural personal pronoun jullie (example (407)), discussed on p. 96. Plural self-reference by means of wij (unemphatically we) 'we' by E does not show any deviation in form or meaning of the pronoun, and the diary entries do not allow any conclusion about the first use of it. Only the concord between pronoun and verb form is incorrect in (399), f o r h e e f f ' h a s ' is the third person singularform. As appears from (400), (401), and (402), fteeftisalso used by him as a predicate to /// (unemphatically je) 'you' (singular), and on p. 76 we shaw it in combination with ik (289). Evidently, in the first half of his fourth year and a little later, the use of this verb form was not yet restricted to the third person singular. W e will return to this phenomenon when speaking of H (see p. 96). Aside from the possibility of using a singular verb form as a predicate to the plural wij/we, w e can hardly expect the child to violate the concord, because all three persons have the same plural form root + e(n). T h u s both pronoun and concord are grammatical in (403), and the phrase met zijn negentjes '(we are) nine' cannot be considered ungrammatical, although the diminutive form negentjes instead of negenen is here less usual than in met zijn tweetjes, drietjes, and viertjes '(we are) two, three, four'. A curious fact is that in (406) metonze tweeen '(sit) two (on a chair)' is deviant only because of the inflected form onze instead of ons, whereas met ons tweeen, '(we) two', although in regard to the concord more acceptable than met zijn tweeen is not more usual than the latter (cf. op zijn kop, discussed on p. 94). E is likely to have constructed met onze tweeen himself, declining the personal pronoun ons as if it were a possessive. As for the use of the plural pronoun, the child is

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seemingly a better "logician" than the adults w h o use the singular, because there is talk of two people, but (404) and (405) show that also the reverse is true: in these examples the possessive zijn 'his' is singular; with reference to two people hurt bed and hun ogen 'their bed, their eyes' would "logically" be the right expressions. It is true that E when he spoke (406) was considerably older than when speaking (404) and (405), but in my experience even the language use of adults does not produce evidence that linguistic development implies logical development. Apart from that, w e can compare (405) with (386), discussed on p. 90 where E (5;7.24) also uses a singular instead of a plural pronoun. In Dutch the plural form of jij/je 'you' is jullie. In one utterance (407) this pronoun is used by H with reference to himself and his mother, instead of wij/we. Here it is the subject of the sentence, and the auxiliary of the predicate, heb 'have', is that of the first person singular. However, as indicated on p. 83, in informal conversation the inverted construction heb jullie may be heard. That is w h y in my opinion the deviant use of both pronoun and verb form may have emerged because a question like Wat heb jullie gehad? 'what have you had?' was present to the mind of the child, although he was not conscious of it. In (75), discussed on p. 19, a communication is made in the form of a question; perhaps also in (76), although here it may be a real question. As I remarked on p. 19, weetje nog'do you remember' may be a sterotyped expression spoken under the influence of H's brother; at any rate the child is not aware of the fact that in his communication it is senseless. In a similar way, in (407) the child may have taken overthe often heard phrase heb jullie ... ? 'have you . . . ?' from his parents, but now turning the question into a statement by changing the word order, unaware of the fact that by failing to change jullie into we the sentence does not express the intended meaning. In accordance with Chiat's observations, I conclude that this "cannot simply be an imitation of an utterance or utterance-fragment" (Chiat 1982:376f.). I could not say for certain that here "the child is taking the perspective of the addressee in his use of the form" (Chiat 1982:377), but I will not exclude this possibility. As w e saw on p. 76 in the discussion of (284), a child may do so already in the second half of his third year. T h e r e are in H's case no further deviations concerning the choice of the first person plural personal pronoun, but as appears from we ... gedrinken heeft 'we has drunk ' in (75), and we ... geweest is 'we has been' in (76), and also from (409), the concord of pronoun and verb is not always correct. In (75) and (76) the auxiliary of the predicate to we has the third person singular form: rteeff'has'and is

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'is', respectively. In (409) an attempt seems to be made to pluralize heeft by adding -e (the plural ending -e, written -en, is grammatical, but ought to be attached to the stem of the verb, in this case heb-)\ the grammatical construction wehebben 'we have'was repeatedly noted before and after (409), e.g., H 3;2.6 and H 3;6.8 (the former with inversion: hebben we). T h e pronoun form me instead of we, as in (409), also occurs in vulgar speech, and may b e t a k e n over from the servant-girl. A linguist might be inclined to think that the sequence we heeft (75) - me heefte (409), spoken at2;9.2 and3;2.11, respectively, is an interesting instance of linguistic development (the beginning of pluralizing the auxiliary), but I regret to be obliged to dispel this illusion. I have my doubts whether the -e in heefte (409) is a plural ending. It is more likely to be an anticipation of the -e in brote, a phenomenon which is known to be the most frequent category of speech errors ( C o h e n 1965:180 and 1973:89; see also p. 87 above). So here again w e c o m e across a correspondence between child and adult language. Child language researchers must not forget that not only adults, but also children, make slips of the tongue. However, I agree with Wick R. Miller (1973:388), who, speaking of some ungrammatical slips of the tongue, remarks: "Such slips occur in adult speech, too, but they are more frequent in children's speech." In (408) the concord is correct, but instead of zijn 'be' the verb hebben 'have' is required in adult language. In general we can say that in the predicates to wij/we H used the grammatical verb forms concurrently with the deviant ones. I don't think it necessary to cite examples of the correct use. In my observations there is nothing pointing to a systematic development of such forms, but the material is too scanty to draw conclusions from it. My only example of Y's deviant use of the first person plural pronoun is (387), discussed already on p. 91. As a matter of fact, in zoals ons 'like us' the pronoun is that of the first person plural indeed, but the use of the object form after the conjunction zoals is ungrammatical. Striking is the age at which this example was noted: 8;5.22; the girl had already been at primary school for two years! c. Using a possessive

pronoun

O n p. 95 I discussed example (406), in which E produced the expression met onze tweeen (E 7;6.30), declining the personal pronoun ons 'us' as if it were a possessive. H, in (410) and (411),

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nearly four years younger, says op me knieen 'on my knees' meaning op onze knieen 'on our knees'. Me in such a construction is in adult colloquial speech an unemphatic form of the possessive mijn 'my'. T h e explanation of this deviation may be that the phrase op me knieen is not analysed by him: he uses the expression as an indivisible whole, like op zijn kop 'upside down' (see p. 94). That is why we cannot say that by means of me 'my' he refers to himself-and-another (as a plural self). In (413), however, he constructs mij toel (instead of: mijn stoel 'my chair') to express that he is speaking of his own chair. In the same way - but at a later age - his brother proceeds in (412), saying jij pannetje instead of jouw pannetje 'your little pan', and mij pannetje instead of mijn pannetje 'my little pan'. In all three of the phrases a personal pronoun is used instead of the possessive (cf. Böhme 1983: 172). As late as at 2;9.0 H still speaks of jij tiktak'you tick-tick' meaning jouw ('your') tiktak\ see (350), lightly touched upon in a different connection on p. 83. Such mistakes are easily accounted for when we take (415) as a starting point. In this utterance H uses the emphatic form of the second person singular personal pronoun in the function of possessive pronoun, and since the right form of the latter is jouw 'your', the deviation is evident. In the same utterance, however, he uses the unemphatic form je, and this rather trivial change makes the phrase completely grammatical. T h e point isthat in standard Dutch /'eis the unemphatic form of both personal and possessive pronoun (jij and jouw, respectively). T h e form me is the unemphatic variant of the personal pronoun mij, and in colloquial speech, of the possessive pronoun mijn as well (at least in the part of our country where the boys grew up). Since the use of je and me is correct in both functions, it is understandable that children also use the equivalent emphatic forms in both of them. It is unimportant that jij/je is a subject form and mij/me an object form, for a child has no more notion of the difference between subject and object than of that between personal and possessive pronouns. As additional evidence for the last-mentioned claim, I c a n t e l l f r o m my own experience that an elementary schoolboy said hem tante 'him aunt' meaning zijn tante 'his aunt'. C o n versely, I heard a Rotterdam tram conductor speaking a rather vulgar language using a possessive instead of a personal pronoun in the utterance Dus hijgeeftsijn (instead of: hem) eenswiep'so he gives his (instead of: him) a push'. And as mentioned already on p. 91, the object form hun 'them' often serves as subject instead of zij 'they' in uncultivated Dutch, e.g., in Hun hebben hetgezegcTthem said it'.

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T h e examples (414) on the one hand, and (416), (417), and (418) on the other, demonstrate that both the emphatic and the unemphatic forms of the first person singular possessive pronoun are already used by H at an earlier age than some of the deviant forms cited. In (419) w e see an instance of the substantival use of the possessive pronoun, quite grammatical, in an utterance produced by H at 3;9.7. And from E I noted the normal use of mijn in mijn lepel 'my spoon' as early as at 2;10.23, whereas the deviant mij pannetje 'me little pan' in (412) was spoken by him as late as at about 3;3.9. O n the grounds of these data, it is not unreasonable to conclude that both boys spoke their correct and deviant forms more or less simultaneously.

IX. Some concluding remarks

O n the foregoing pages I have presented and discussed a large part of my material on child language. M a n y utterances of my sons could be added, but since the most important phenomena have passed in revue, I prefer to end my work here. I hope that both examples and comments will be of some value for child language researchers. I am fully aware of the fact that my terminology is somewhat old-fashioned now and then, but I am convinced that notions such as "contamination" and "imitation" must not be ruled out, although of course not all is explained by them. S o m e of my observations must be emphasized. M y experience both as a teacher of a foreign language and as a student of child language is that it is deceptive to speak of children "learning linguistic rules". Rather, children seem to construct linguistic forms by "imitation and combination" (see Introduction, p. 8). In my opinion this does not differ very much from Park's observation (Park 1981:111) on children in the "concrete rule stage", in which they "try to bring their sentence constructions in line with the structure of the mother's particular sentences"; I only take exception to the misnomer "concrete rule stage", because modelling sentences according to particular sentences cannot be regarded as applying rules. See also Introduction, p. 5f. Nobody will deny that there are many individual differences in children's linguistic development, but in my opinion the value of this fact is underestimated (see Introduction, p. 8f.). T h a t is why I am convinced that attempts to write a grammar of child language cannot be successful. Neither can the conception of the child as a little linguist be fruitful, because study of language is essentially different from language acquisition (see Introduction, p. 5). I hope that my observations provide some support for this hypothesis. M y most important conclusion - which I vainly search for in the literature on child language - is that the child, in spite of his abundant deviations, essentially speaks the same language as the adults in his environment: many deviations can be explained as an attempt to imitate the systematic phenomena of his mother tongue. Even when a child constructs linguistic forms quite different from the usual adult ones, so that it seems that he has a system of his own, a closer examination very often reveals that he is making use of a potentiality inherent in the language he is learning to speak. Similarly, when the child's form corresponds to a form usual in another language (international correspondence, see Introduction, p. 8), it is usually possible to trace it back to a potential form in his native tongue. Such facts remain hidden w h e n we study child languageas an exotic language (see Introduction, p. 4), but again and again my observations corroborate this conclusion.

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Consequently, I ask myself whether it is justifiable to speak of "child language" as an existing language. I am inclined to believe that it is a language which does not exist, but out of modesty I do not cancel the question mark.

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Galton, H. (1977). "Noch" und "schon" im Deutschen und Russischen. Folia Linguistica X 3/4. 377-384. Ginneken, J. van (1917). De roman van een kleuter. Nijmegen: Malmberg. Gleitman, L.R., Gleitman, H. & Shipley, E.F. (1972). The emergence of the child as grammarian. Cognition 1. 137-164. Goodluck, H. & Tavakolian, S. (1981). Parsing mechanisms, developmental sequences, and children's sentence processing. Paper read at the Second international congress for the study of child language, August 9th to 14th, 1981, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Quotation from abstracts. Grégoire, A. (1937). L'apprentissage du langage: les deux premières années. Paris: Alcan. - (1947). L'apprentissage du langage II: la troisième année et les années suivantes. Liège and Paris: Droz. Haverkate, H. (1981). Pragmatic aspects of speaker-reference in Dutch. In S. Daalder & M. Gerritsen (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 1981. Amsterdam, Oxford, and New York: North-Holland Publishing Co. 159-167. Hirsh-Pasek, K„ Gleitman, L.R. & Gleitman, H. (1978). What did the brain say to the mind? A study of the detection and report of ambiguity by young children. In A. Sinclair, R.J. Jarvella & W.J.M. Levelt (eds.), The child's conception of language. Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York: Springer-Verlag. 97-132. Hornby, A.S. (1977). Guide to patterns and usage in English. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Hulstijn, J.H. (1982). Monitor use by adult second language learners. Meppel: Krips repro. Hyman, L. (1975). On the change from SOV to SVO: evidence from NigerCongo. In Ch. N. Li (ed.), Word order and word order change. Austin and London: Univ. of Texas Press. 113-147. Jakobson, R. (1969). Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze. Frankfort a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag. English edition: Child language, aphasia and phonological universals. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1968. - (1977). Der grammatische Aufbau der Kindersprache. Opladen: Westd. Verlag. Jalink, J.M. & Toorn, M.C. van den (1963). Langenscheidts praktisches Lehrbuch Niederländisch. Berlin-Schöneberg: Langenscheidt. Jansen, F. (1981). Syntaktische konstrukties in gesproken taal. Amsterdam: Huis aan de drie Grachten. Jespersen, O. (1922). Language: its nature, development, and origin. London: Allen & Unwin. Kainz, F. (1943). Psychologie der Sprache, Band 2: vergleichend-genetische Sprachpsychologie. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag. Kaper, W. (1959). Kindersprachforschung mit Hilfe des Kindes: einige Erscheinungen der kindlichen Spracherwerbung erläutert im Lichte des vom Kinde gezeigten Interesses für Sprachliches. Groningen: Wolters. - (1966). Läßt sich beim noch nicht in die Schule gehenden Kind ein

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"Gefühl" für die "Leistung" des Genitivs und der Präpositionen feststellen? Lingua 16. 40- 56. - (1968). Kindersprache und 'linguistic competence'. Lingua 21. 224-236. - (1970/71). "Transformational history" en zinsvorming door kinderen. Tijdschrift van de V.U.B. 13. 252-262. - (1975). Negatie in de kindertaal: enige observaties bij Nederlandse kinderen en volwassenen. Forum der Letteren 16. 18-44. - (1976). Pronominal case-errors. JChLang 3. 439-441. - (1977). Observations on the use of some auxiliaries by Dutch children and adults: meaning and grammaticality. Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny24. 303-309. - (1978). 'Blacky always has a tail': some observations on apparently superfluous adverbs in child and adult language. In N. Waterson & C. Snow (eds.), The development of communication. Chichester, New York, Brisbane, and Toronto: Wiley. 347-353. - (1980). De bedden komt opgemaakt 'the beds is coming made': observations on the use of some auxiliaries by Dutch children and adults. In W. Zonneveld & F. Weerman (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 7977-1979. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. 70-83. Klappenbach, R. & Steinitz, W. (eds.) (1974). Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, Band 4. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Kleeck, Anne Van & Street, R. (1981). Talkativeness as a source of individual variation in children's language use. Paper read at the Second international congress for the study of child language, August 9th to 14th, 1981, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Quotation from abstracts. Koenen, M.J. & Drewes, J.B. (1980). Verklärend handwoordenboek der Nederlandse taal. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. Leopold, W.F. (1949a). Speech development of a bilingual child: a linguist's record, Vol. III. Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press. - (1949 b ). Speech development of a bilingual child: a linguist's record, Vol. IV. Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press. - (1964). Review of R.H. Weir, Language in the crib. Language40.269-273. Levelt, W.J.M., Sinclair, A. & Jarvella, R.J. (1978). Causes and functions of linguistic awareness in language acquisition: some introductory remarks. In A. Sinclair, R.J. Jarvella & W.J.M. Levelt (eds.), The child's conception of language. Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York: SpringerVerlag. 1-14. Lightner, Th. M. (1976). Review of S. Peters (ed.), Goals of linguistic theory. Language 52. 179-201. Limber, J. (1973). The genesis of complex sentences. In T.E. Moore (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York, San Francisco, and London: Academic Press. 169-185. Lyons, J. (1971). Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Univ. Press. McNeill. D. (1966a). The creation of language by children. In J. Lyons & R.J. Wales (eds.), Psycholinguistics Papers: the proceedings of the 1966 Edinburgh Conference. Edinburgh: Univ. Press. 97-115. - (1966b). Developmental psycholinguistics. In F. Smith & G.A. Miller

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(eds.)t The genesis of language: a psycholinguistic approach. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 15-84. Maratsos, M. & Kuczaj II, S.A. (1978). Against the transformationalist account: a simpler analysis of auxiliary overmarkings. JChLang 5. 337-345. Marshall, J.C. & Morton, J. (1978). On the mechanics of Emma. In A. Sinclair, R.J. Jarvella & W.J.M. Levelt (eds.), The child's conception of language. Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York: Springer-Verlag. 225-239. Miller, W.R. (1973). The acquisition of grammatical rules by children. InCh. A. Ferguson & D.I. Slobin (eds.), Studies of child language development. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 380-391. Nelson. K.E. (1981). Language-learning styles that combine semantic, syntactic, and discourse components. Paper read at the Second international congress for the study of child language, August 9th to 14th, 1981, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Quotation from abstracts. Nickel, G. (1981). Aspects of error analysis (EA): errare humanum est. AILA Bulletin 1981, No. 1 (29). 1-28. Nuchelmans, G. (1978). Taalfilosofie: een inleiding. Muiderberg: Coutinho. Oosterhuis, H. (1976). Mensen voor dag en dauw. Baarn: Ambo. Paardekooper, P.C. (1955). Syntaxis, spraakkunst en taalkunde. 's-Hertogenbosch: Malmberg. Park, T.-Z. (1981). The development of syntax in the child with special reference to German. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. Sonderheft 45. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Ges. zur Pflege der Geisteswiss. Paul, H. (1966). Deutsches Wörterbuch, bearbeitet von W. Betz. Tübingen: Niemeyer. - (1963). Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, bearbeitet von W. Mitzka. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Pohl, J. (1974). Analyse linguistiqueet temps de l'auditeur. Proceedings of the eleventh international congress of linguists, Bologna-Florence, Aug. 28 - Sept. 2, 1972, edited by L. Heilmann. Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 679-692. Pos, H.J. (1930). De eenheid der syntaxis. In Wetenschappelijke bijdragen aangeboden door hoogleeraren der Vrije Universiteit ter gelegenheid van haar vijftig-jarig bestaan. Amsterdam: De Standaard. 73-125. Rau, M.L. (1979). Die Entwicklung von Vergangenheitsstrukturen in der Sprache eines Dreijährigen. Folia Linguistica XIII 3/4. 357-412. Read, Ch. (1978). Children's awareness of language, with emphasis on sound systems. In A. Sinclair, R.J. Jarvella & W.J.M. Levelt (eds.), The child's conception of language. Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York: Springer-Verlag. 65-82. Richards, J.C. (1973). Error analysis and second language strategies. In Oiler, jr., J.W. & Richards, J.C. (eds.), Focus on the learner: pragmatic perspectives for the language teacher. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. 114-135. Roeper, Th. (1973). Connecting children's language and linguistic theory. In T.E. Moore (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York, San Francisco, and London: Academic Press. 187-196.

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Sachs, J. (1979). Review of C. Garvey, Play. JChLang 6. 390-394. Sanders, D. (1924). Handwörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, achte, neubearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage von I.E. Wülfing. Leipzig: Bibliogr. Institut. Schaerlaekens, A.M. (1973). The two-word sentence in child language development: a study based on evidence provided by Dutch-speaking triplets. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. - (1977). De taalontwikkeling van het kind: een oriëntatie in het Nederlandstalig onderzoek. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. Schlesinger, I.M. (1968). Learning grammar: from pivot to realization rule. Paper presented at the Center for Advanced Study in the Developmental Sciences - Ciba Foundation joint study group on "Mechanisms of Language Development", May, 1968. Scupin, E. & G. (1907). Bubi's erste Kindheit: ein Tagebuch über die geistige Entwicklung eines Knaben während der ersten drei Lebensjahre. Leipzig: Dürr'sche Buchhandl. Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Univ. Press. Seuren, P.A.M. (1975). Tussen taal en denken: een bijdrage tot de empirische funderingen van de semantiek. Utrecht: Oosthoek, Scheltema & Holkema. - (1981 ). Variabele kompetentie: linguïstiek en sociolinguïstiek anno 1980. Handelingen van het zes en dortigste Nederlands Filologencongres, gehouden te Groningen op 9, 10 en 11 april 1980. Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA-Holland Universiteitspers. 41-56. Sinclair, A., Jarvella, R.J. & Levelt, W.J.M. (eds.) (1978). The child's conception of language. Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York: SpringerVerlag. Slama-Cazacu, T. (1973). La régularisation: l'un des universaux de l'acquisition de la langue. Cahiersde linguistique théorique et appliquée 10. 63-92. Slobin, D.I. (1966). The acquisition of Russian as a native language. In F. Smith & G.A. Miller (eds.), The genesis of language: a psycholinguistic approach. Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press. 129-148. - (1970). Universals of grammatical development in children. In G.B. Flores d'Arcais & W.J.M. Levelt (eds.), Advances inpsycholinguistics: research papers presented at the Bressanone conference on psycholinguistics, summer courses of the university of Padova, July 1969. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co. 174-186. - (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ch. A. Ferguson & D.I. Slobin (eds.), Studies of child language development. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc.: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 175-211. - (1978). A case study of early language awareness. In A. Sinclair, R.J. Jarvella & W.J.M. Levelt (eds.), The child's conception of language. Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York: Springer-Verlag. 45-54. Smith, C.S. (1970). An experimental approach to children's linguistic competence. In J.R. Hayes (ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York, London, Sydney, and Toronto: Wiley. 109-135. Sprach-Brockhaus, Der: Deutsches Bildwörterbuch für jedermann. Wiesbaden: F.A. Brockhaus. (1965). Stern, C. & W. (1928). Die Kindersprache: eine psychologische und sprachtheoretische Untersuchung. Leipzig: Barth.

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Tanz, Ch. (1974). Cognitive principles underlying children's errors in pronominal case-marking. JChLang 1. 271-276. - (1977). Polar exploration: 'hot' and 'cold', 'cool' and 'cold'. JChLang 4. 477-478. Tinbergen, D.C. (1919). "Kinderpraat". De Nieuwe Taalgids 13.1-16 and 65-86. Uhlenbeck, E.M. (1977). Nederlandse voorlichting over generatieve grammatica. Forum der Letteren 18, 167-210. Uijlings, B.J. (1956). Syntactische verschijnselen bij onvoorbereid spreken. Assen: Van Gorcum. Verkuyl, H.J. and others. (1974). Transformationele taalkunde. Utrecht and Antwerp: Het Spectrum. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language, edited and translated by E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar. New York, and London: MIT Press, and Wiley. Weir, R.H. (1962). Language in the crib. The Hague: Mouton. Wilcox, S. & Palermo, D.S. (1982). Children's use of lexical and non-lexical information in responding to commands. JChLang 9. 139-150. Zwarts, F. (1981). Negatief polaire uitdrukkingen 1. G/oM. 35-132.

Index of proper names

Algemeen Dagblad:

27

Barrett, M.D.: 11 Berko, J.: 84 Bloom, L.: 4 , 9 , 1 1 Bloomfield, L.; 28, 80 Bogoyavlenskiy, D.N.: 6 Böhme, K.: 7, 75, 98 Bowerman, M.: 18, 37, 46, 58, 62, 87 Brewer, W.F.: 64 Bridges, A.: 46 Brockhaus: 46 Brown, R.: 46 Carroll, J.B.: 35 Charney, R.: 93 Chiat, S.: 80, 86, 96 Chomsky, N.: 5, 68, 82, 85 Clark, E.V.: 6, 37 Clark, H.H.: 63 Clark, R.: 93 Cohen, A.: 87, 97 Dale, van: 45,51,61 Dam, J. van: 38 Derwing, B.L.: 5, 6, 84, 85 Dik, S.C.: 7, 63, 72 Drewes, J.B.: 91 Duden: 44, 45, 63 Emerson, H.F.: 84 Erreich, A.: 5, 6, 7 Evans, M.: 55 Fromkin, V.A.: 64 Furth, H.G.: 16 Galton, H.: 18 Ginneken, J. van: 8, 65 Gleitman, H.: 5, 84 Gleitman, L.R.: 5, 84 Goodluck, H.: 4 Grégoire, A.: 15, 61 Haverkate, H.: 75 Hirsh-Pasek, K.: 84 Hornby, A.S.: 88

Index

of proper

names

/ 112

Hulstijn, J.H.: 95 Hyman, L.: 27, 72 Jakobson, Ft.: 38, 70, 82 Jalink, Ü.M.: 92 Jansen, F.: 88 Jarvella, R.J.: 6, 84 Jespersen, O.: 65 Kainz, F.: 56 Kaper, W.: 1,3,5,6,8,15,17,18,19,24,33,37,38,40,42,62,66,70,71,72, 74, 77, 81, 85, 87, 89, 94 Klappenbach, R.: 46 Kleeck, A. Van: 8 Koenen, M.J.: 91 Kuczaj II, S.A.: 61 Leopold, W.F.: 1, 11, 45, 55, 56, 60, 64, 70, 91 Levelt, W.J.M.: 6, 84 Lightner, Th.M.: 25 Limber, J.: 6, 41 Lyons, J.: 63 McCarthy, D.: 9 McNeill, D.: 4, 6 Maratsos, M.: 61 Marshall, J.C.: 6 Miller, W.R.: 5, 6, 7, 97 Morton, J.: 6 National song: 20 Nelson, K.E.: 8 Nickel, G.: 1 NRC/Handelsblad: 31,91 Nuchelmans, G.: 6 Oosterhuis, H.: 27 Paardekooper, P.C.: Palermo, D.S.: 84 Park, T.-Z.: 101 Parool, Het: 88 Paul, H.: 44, 60 Piaget, J.: 16 Pohl, J.: 61 Pos, H.J.: 37

44

Index of proper

names / 113

Rau, M.L.: 16 Read, Ch.: 6 Richards, J.C.: 6 Roeper, Th.: 5 Sachs, J.: 4 Sanders, D.: 46 Schaerlaekens, A.M.: 1 , 9 , 2 5 , 3 7 , 9 0 Schlesinger, I.M.: 1 Scupin, E. & G.: 56 Searle, J.R.: 20 Seuren, P.A.M.: 4, 5 Shipley, E.F.: 5 Sinclair, A.: 6, 84 Slama-Cazacu, T.: 32 Slobin, D.I.: 1 , 6 , 7 , 9 Smith, C.S.: 7 Steinitz, W.: 46 Stern, C. & W.: 45, 46, 55 Stone, M.B.: 64 Street, R.: 8 Tanz, Ch.: 64, 87 Tavakolian, S.: 4 Tinbergen, D.C.: 78, 80, 92 Toorn, M.C. van den: 92 Uhlenbeck, E.M.: 44 UijMngs, B.J.: 51 Valian, V.: 5 Verkuyl, H.J.: 43 Vygotsky, L.S.: 6 , 1 1 Wallon, H.: 64 Weir, R.H.: 64 Wilcox, S.: 84 Winzemer, J.: 5 Zwarts, F.:

44

Index of subjects, words and expressions

On the pages referred to in the index the subjects at issue are discussed, but the technical term of the entry is not always mentioned there. Italicized entries are linguistic forms, words and expressions, mostly from children, especially from my sons, discussed in the text. aanstonds: 17 f actual constructions: see potential vs actual constructions adult model: see model adult speech comparison with - : 3, 4 influenced by child: 60 vs adult language: 4 adultocentric approach: 4 adverb declension of - : 24 not differentiated from adjective: 24 deviant degrees of comparison of - : 31 negative instead of positive - and vice versa: 60 relative temporal - : 15-21 wrongly inserted - : 85 Afrikaans: 67 afterthought: 27, 72 a/ instead of nog and vice versa: 18ff. as intensification: 26f. alleras intensification: 25f„ 34 a/s as preposition: 88 see dan altijd niet: 77 analogy: 24, 26, 40, 45, 46, 67 analysis, linguistic not by child: 17, 24, 40, 98 see metanalysis analytic construction: 66 anders followed by dan: 23 intensified by veel: 23 anglicism: 45 answer: see question anticipation: 87, 88, 97 antonyms: 18,20,25,55-64 accompanying opposite movements: consciousness of - : 59 translation with - : 61 f. aspect: 40

64

Index of subjects,

words and expressions

7 116

association: 29, 35, 51, 55, 61, 64 attention not to linguistic form: 20, 46, 84 auxiliary constructions without -: 67, 70, 72, 76 first use of -: 72 hebben or zijn: 81, 82, 97 modal -: 69, 73 awareness, linguistic: 6, 59 baard: 45 bijje: 93f. biina: 20f. blend: see contamination boeke kome?: 69f. boven for over: 42f. Bummeltje, variants of -: 71 child as little linguist: see linguist, child as little child language not essentially different from adult language: 4,12,19,27,28,31,33,37, 44, 53, 57, 61, 63f., 65f., 67, 72, 80, 88, 91, 97, 101 studied as an exotic language: 4, 101 non-existent?: 4, 102 colloquial Dutch vs standard Dutch: 4 communicative power: 46 comparative double:-: 33 of an intensified word: 27, 31 complementary relation: 55, 57 concord: 80, 85, 96, 97 lack o f - : 1 9 , 5 0 , 9 5 , 9 6 concrete rule stage: 101 congruence: see concord conjunction treated as preposition: 88, 91, 97 connotation, negative: 43ff. container and contents: 11-13 contamination: 8, 32, 45, 49f., 53, 57, 78, 90, 101 contradiction: 18, 62 not noticed by adults: 62 not noticed by child: 25, 29, 62 contrastive: see nominal correction misunderstood as referring to content: unconscious -: 61 creativity: 23, 82f., 89

84

Index

of subjects,

words

and expressions

/ 117

see imitation dan or als after comparative: 23, 34f., 88 for met: 88 see anders see zo dat for zo: 49 deep structure: 88 degrees of comparison: 31-35 of intensifying adverbs: 31 see comparative see superlative demonstrative pronoun referring to ik: 79, 80 -der as comparative suffix: 33 diminutive: 6, 40, 96 with double suffix: 39 doen as auxiliary: 3, 8, 37 d66d as free intensifying adverb: 28 Dutch: passim eermorgen: 29 -el as diminutive ending: 39f. ellipsis: 88 English: passim er: 69 -(er)en as plural ending: 40 erg (adv.) declension of -: 24 comparative of intensifying -: 31 euphony: see sound exotic language: see child language studied as an expansion of constructions: 71 familiarity: 7, 17, 28, 33, 40, 43, 58, 59, 62, 95 first words: 3 fixed reference: 80 fog clearing away in development: 46, 64 morphologic -: 85 semantic-: 1 1 , 1 6 , 1 7 , 2 0 , 6 4 , 8 5 syntactic -: 35, 85, 88 formalization: 62

Index

of subjects,

words

and

expressions

/ 118

f o r m u l a t i n g g r a m m a r , rules, h y p o t h e s e s by c h i l d r e n : F r e n c h : 42, 46, 56 f r e q u e n c y of deviant c o n s t r u c t i o n s : 3, 61, 97 gaan: s e e komen geloven for bedoelen: 91 gemorgen: 16 generative grammar: see grammar, generative genitive: 71,79,86 G e r m a n : 1, 3, 16, 25, 34, 38-46, 49, 50, 55, 56, 80 geven instead of krijgen: 59 gister(en): 1 5 f f „ 29 graag (adv.) s u p e r l a t i v e of - : 34 grammar of c h i l d l a n g u a g e : 5, 82, 101 generative -: 7 transformational -: 7 halen

6

instead of brengen: 58 hebben: see auxiliary heefte: 97 heel (adv.) d e c l e n s i o n of - : 24 p o s i t i o n of - : 28 heel bledig: 24 helperi: 80f. hem for p o s s e s s i v e zijn: 98 hij/ie as self-reference: 91 f. a l t e r n a t i n g w i t h ik: 91 in time of u s e c o i n c i d i n g with p r o p e r n a m e a n d Ik: with p r o p e r n a m e in o n e s e n t e n c e : 92 by adults: 93 hims: 80, 86 hoe for waar: 51 for wanneer: 52 for zoals: 41 s e e wat hoe ult: 52f. hoeveel for wat voor: hoeven

52

91

Index of subjects, words and expressions

/ 119

vs moeten: 43ff. holophrase: 70 hun for zij: 91, 98 identity of structural laws: 38 ieder vs allemaal: 90 /teas intensification: 25 ik alternating with proper name: 76, 78, 89 treated as proper name: 75, 76, 79, 87, 89 in time of use coinciding with proper name: 74, 75 in anaphoric function: 74 first use of -: 74, 78, 85f. completely right use of -: 89 form of predicate after -: 73, 77, 78f., 81 ff. subject of sentence: 75-86 not subject of sentence: 86-91 as direct object: 89 after preposition: 86ff. repetition of -: 78 see hij/ie see mii/me ikke: 76,86 ikkes krant: 80, 86 imagining oneself in another's position: 59, 74, 76, 96 imitation: 28, 65, 70, 85, 90, 96, 101 makes creativity possible: 83 of linguistic phenomena: 46,71,82 mechanical -: 18, 82 low- and high-imitators: 8 imitation and combination, constructions by: 8, 73,81,82,89,93,94,95, 101 in for naar. 43 incompetency deviation not due to -: 52 see also knowledge inconsistency: 85, 92, 93 indirect speech tense in -: 92 indirect thought: 92 individual differences: 8, 11, 37, 46, 101 infinitive: see verb intensification: 23-29 by comparison: 24

Index of subjects,

words

and expressions

/ 120

by free component: 27 international correspondence: 8, 19, 25, 34, 37-47, 49,50, 56, 59, 68, 88, 92, 101 to former language: 20, 38, 60 reversed - : 44, 50 interrogatives: 49-53 see hoe, wat inversion: 7, 73, 77, 79, 82, 84, 96, 97 Italian: 42, 68 jargon: 9 ye both personal and possessive pronoun: 98 referring to speaker: 93 iii/ie alternating with jou: 88f. for jouw: 98 normal use: 80 form of predicate after -: 81, 85, 95 after preposition: 87, 88f., 93, 94 jou: see ¡¡¡He jullie form of predicate after - : 83, 96 for wij/we: 95, 96 keias intensification: 24 kldts as free intensifying adverb: 28 knowledge not excluding deviant use: 57 of possibilities of own language: 45f. vagueness of - : 32f„ 35 komen instead of gaan: 59 late errors: 46 Latin: 68 leeg: 11. levensas intensification: 26 linguist, child as little: 5, 32, 46f., 101 loan-translation: 56 logic: 96 main clause sandwiched between subject and predicate: 73 me both personal and possessive pronoun: 98 for 2nd person singular: 93 for we: 97

Index

of subjects,

words

and expressions

meaning elasticity o f - : 18 extension of -: 55 misunderstood in situation: 58, 81 metanalysis: 24 Middle High German: 60 mij/me for ik: 87, 88 for mijn: 93, 98 after preposition, alternating with ik: 87 as reflexive pronoun: 90 model adult -: 4, 40, 43, 52, 67, 69f., 78, 94, 101 hypothesis-testing -: 5 transformational -: 7 "Western" language as -: 4 moeten: see hoeven mooid?: 93 Moortje is naast je zitten: 82, 94 morgen: 15f., 29, 66, 72 morphologic fog: see fog -n (final): 11n negation: 67 double -: 60, 67, 68 see also niet negative instead of positive: see adverb nergens for ergens: 60 netjes (adj): 34 nous: 45, 70, 75 neutral term: 63 niemand for iemand: 60 niet for geen: 86 nog: see al nominal vs contrastive: 63 numbers interest in -: 52 om te + inf: 59 ons for wij: 91 ooit for nooit: 60 ook\ see subordinate clause op/op- (adv)

/ 121

Index

of subjects,

words

and expressions

/ 122

expressing absence: 11 opposed to af: 64 vs open-: 40 op (prep.) for naar: 421. open opposed to dicht: 64 opgaan for opstaan: 59f. see opkomen opkomen s y n o n y m o u s with opgaan: 59f. for opstaan: 59 opvinden: 57 op zijn kop inflected as adjective: 94 treated as one word: 94, 95 overextension: 32, 37 overgisteren: 29 paar intensified: 28f. parents, stimulus from: 46 participle: see verb pas: 19, 20 passive: 43, 46 personal pronoun as self-reference: 75-86 declined as possessive: 95, 97 instead of possessive: 98, 99 finite verb form after - : 81 objectform of - as subject: 91, 98 omission of -: 67, 68, 69 see hun, ik, ons pijn (noun): 63 degrees of comparison of -: 25f. pikas intensification: 24f. place vs direction: 43 plural ending not clearly distinguished: 40 after finite form: 97 point of view: 19, 59 polarity: 64 position: see imagining oneself in another's position possession expression of - : 37 possessive pronoun

Index

of subjects,

words

and

expressions

/ 123

as self-reference: 97-99 correct and deviant forms of - simultaneously: 99 instead of personal pronoun: 98 not referring to real possessor: 73 singular instead of plural: 96, 98 substantival use of -: 99 see me see personal pronoun potential vs actual constructions: 5,8,19,23,34,37,39,43,46,50,59,63,

101 preposition choice of -: 42 deviant stress on -: 50f. object of -: 88, 89 omission of initial -: 51 see a/s see ik pronoun negative instead of positive - and vice versa: 60 see demonstrative, personal, possessive, reflexive, relative pronoun see interrogatives pronoun reversal: 93 pronunciation deviant: 8 proper name as self-reference: 71-75 article with -: 40 first use o f - : 7 1 , 7 4 , 7 5 form of predicate after -: 72, 74 more 'pronominal' use of -: 79 as subject of sentence: 73 s e e hij/ie,

ik

pupils of secondary schools: 6, 40, 42, 61, 62, 95 question in agreement with expected answer: 42 communication in form of -: 96 direct and indirect -: 41, 49 as model: 96 reduced reproduction of -: 69, 72, 73 quoting by child: 74, 76 redundancy: 77, 93 see also adverb, superfluously inserted reflection on language: 3, 6 reflexive pronoun singular instead of plural: 90 s e e mij/me,

zich

regularization: 32, 34, 38, 39, 76, 83 relative pronoun

Index

of subjects,

words

and

expressions

/ 124

finite verb form after -: 80 reorganization: 18,87 repetition automatic: 83 see also imitation root + t for 1st person singular: 77,84 rules formulating - by children: 6 learning and applying -: 5ff., 35, 68, 85, 88, 95, 101 deletion rules: 7 transformational -: 7 Rumanian: 19, 68 Russian: 19,37,92 schemes of thinking: 16 self-correction: 82 self-reference: 9, 65-99 no linguistic form expressing -: 65-70 using proper name for -: 71-75 using personal pronoun for -: 75-97 using possessive pronoun for -: 97-99 ironical - by adults: 75, 93 semantic field: 63 semantic fog: see fog sentence fragments combination of -: 8, 68, 94 see also imitation and combination sentences without words: see jargon she's:

80, 86

shifters: 65, 93 similes: 24 slips of the tongue: 57, 97 sound as criterion for acceptability: 7, 33, 95 speech acts: 20, 70 speech errors: 1 9 , 6 1 , 6 4 , 9 7 staccato speaking: 9 standard Dutch: see colloquial Dutch steke-

as intensification: 25 stereotypes: 1 9 , 3 4 , 5 2 , 6 0 , 7 8 , 9 6 stik-/stik

as intensification: straks:

24f„ 27f.

18

subordinate clause first use of -: 72 insertion of ook in -:

78, cf. 85

Index

of subjects,

words

and expressions

7 125

relative - : 80 superlative of an intensifying adverb: 31 deviant regular - : 25 Swedish: 49 s y n o n y m y discovered by child: 32 syntactic fog: see fog

-t/-troot of verb ending in - : 73 between finite verb and pronoun: tail: 72 taking over as a whole by child: 89, 92, 93f., 96, 98 by adult: 94 fe + infinitive: 40

tegen\ -tie

92

89

as diminutive ending: 39 tot. 20 transformation: 74 transformational grammar: see grammar, transformational transitional sentence structure: 80 translation of utterances: 3f., 49 by pupils: 61 f. see a n t o n y m s trial and error: 85, 89 unmarked term: 63 unopened package: 93 vagueness of meaning see fog, semantic see knowledge vanmiddag: 15, 17 vanmorgen: 15ff. degrees of - : 16, 27 veel (adv.) see anders verb derived f r o m adjective: 38f. finite f o r m of - : 66, 68, 71, 83 three persons singular of - same form: imperfect referring to present: 86 present referring to past: 8 1 , 8 5 infinitive: 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 94 past participle: 66, 68, 71 vinden

77, 83, 85

Index

of subjects,

words

and expressions

/ 126

for zoeken and vice versa: 55-58 vlug use of comparative of - : 32 as synonym of hard: 32 vocabulary deviations caused by restricted - : 20, 32, 62, 70 vol: 11f. vroeger: 17 wat for hoe and vice versa: 4, 8, 41, 49f, 51 for waar: 50 see wie see zo weet je nog: 19f., 96 welke for wat voor: 51 wie for wat: 53 wij/we form of predicate after -: 95, 96 see jullie worden: 43 word-formation consciousness of - : 40 word order deviant: 67f„ 71, 73, 78 zieh instead of mij/me: 90, 92 zijn (verb) as copula + infinitive: 94 see auxiliary zo for wat: 52 with adjective and als/dan: 23, 34f. see zulke zoeken see vinden zo uit: 52f. zulke for zo('n): 63

Willem Kaper - CHILD LANGUAGE

EXAMPLES

Example

( ( ( ( ( ( ( (

(

( (

( ( ( ( ( (

( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( (

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

sentences

/1

Taan op-ete 'eat cod-liver oil'. E 2;5.19. Thee opeten 'eat tea'. H 2;4.29. Water op 'water finished'. E ±2;6.8. Kaasjes op 'candles finished'. E ±2;6.8. Blokkendoos op 'box of bricks finished'. E 2;6.11. (in reply to question Watzit daar/n?'what is in it?' when showing an empty tin:) Op! 'finished!'. H 2;0.12. 7) Is ie op? 'is it finished?' (i.e., the jam-jar). H 2;6.8. 8) (after pretending to drink from an empty plastic cup:) Op! 'finished!' (she repeats the act several times in succession, afterwards with a napkin-ring as well). Y 1;7.13. 9) (spontaneously when seeing an empty tea-cup:) Op! 'finished!' (attempts to make her say the same by showing her another empty cup are not always successful). Y 1;7.20. 10) (pointing to an empty glass:) Op 'finished'. Y 1;8.3. (repeatedly in similar situations). 11) (a mentally deficient child, seeing an empty tramcar:) Op! (his caretaker affirmatively answers: Ja, de tram is leeg 'Yes, the tramcar is empty'). 12) Pap bijna leeg 'porridge nearly empty'. E 2;9.13. 13) Jus is nog niet leeg, hb? 'gravy is not yet empty, is it?' H 2;6.11. 14) Flesjes waar niks in zit 'small bottles inwhich is nothing'.E±2;10.28. 15) Die heeft Nel volgemaakt 'Nel (the servant-girl) has made full (= filled) that' (i.e., the coal-bucket). E 3;7.24. 16) Laat's kijken, of die Sanatogen vol is! 'just show me if that Sanatogen is full!' H 3;0.20. 17) Erik laat telkens maar het water weg laten lopen — dan hebben we geen vol water 'Erik makes make run off the water again and again — so we don't have full water'. H 3;1.2. 18) Pappa, laat's kijken, hoe voile lucifers jij heeft?'Daddy, just show me what full matches you has?' H 3;7.11. 19) (speaking of a bus:) Kijkes watienietvolis! 'look what not full it is!' H 3;7.17. 20) Waar is mijn lucifers? 'where is my matches?' E 5;9.9. 21) Lien heeft altijd twee schoensmeren 'Lien (the servant-girl) always has two shoe-creams'. H 3;1.6. 22) Nu hebben we twee boters! 'now we have two butters!' H 4;3.20. 23) Twee ¡ammen hebben we 'two jams we have'. H 3;2.6. 24) Mamma, de fluitketel kookt 'Mamma, the whistling kettle is boiling'. H 3;3.9. 25) (putting her hand into the water:) Watej! 'water!' Y 1;7.17. 26) (taking up a big watering-can:) Wade 'water'. Y 1;8.3. 27) (pointing to a hot-water bottle:) Daar zit kruik in. Hanza krijgt een lepeltje kruik 'there is hot-water-bottle in it. Hanza gets a spoonful of hot-water-bottle'. E3;6.18.

Example

sentences

/ 2

( 28) Gisteren heb jij een blauw boek gelezen, h&? 'yesterday you read a blue book, didn't you?' (in reality the reading had taken place nearly a week ago). E 3;6.10. ( 29) Gister heb je ook corrigeerd, he? 'yesterday you corrected as well, didn't you?' (referring to correction in the afternoon of that day). E 3;6.19. ( 30) (Daddy: Je bent al buiten geweest ook, hb? 'you were already out, too, weren't you?'). Ja, gister 'yes, yesterday'. (Daddy: Gister?) Ja, morgen — vanmorgen 'yes, to-morrow — this morning' (the last word was the correct one). E 3;6.26. ( 31) Gisteren 'yesterday' (meaning: this morning). E 4;0.12. ( 32) Die ketting in de gang is nietzo hoog meerdan gisteren 'that chain in the corridor is no more as high than yesterday'. E 4;9.28. ( 33) (speaking of asmall bottle that E had upset two weeks ago:) Gisteren had Erik die omgegooid, gisteren 'yesterday E had upset that, yesterday'. H 3;2.26. ( 34) Gisteren — gisteren was vanmiddag 'yesterday — yesterday was this afternoon'. H 4;0.30. ( 35) Pappa, over drie weken is het mei, h&? 'Daddy, in three weeks it will be May, isn't it?' (spoken 28th April). E 4;10.5. ( 36) Nog twee weekjes duurt het, en dan komen ze 'it is still two weeks ahead, and then they come' (they = the grandparents; in reality it was two days ahead). H 3;11.4. ( 37) En Pappa, het duurt nog een week, en dan komen Opa en Oma 'and, Daddy, it is still one week ahead, and then Grand-dad and Granny come' (spoken one day after the preceding example). H 3;11.5. ( 38) Dat Butje morgen ook geten 'that (has) Butje eaten to-morrow as well' (referring to yesterday). E 2;10.10. Note: Butje is E's pet-name (see p. 71). ( 39) Butje morgen ook joghurt had 'to-morrow Butje had yogurt as well' (referring to yesterday). E 2;10.18. ( 40) Morgen met tram naar bootjes geweest 'to-morrow been to little boats by tram' (it had happened three or four days earlier). E 2;11.9. ( 41) Net ais bij morgen 'just like with to-morrow' (meaning: just like yesterday). E 3;0.21. ( 42) Mamma, moet je morgen Hansje uitkleden? 'Mamma, must you undress little H to-morrow?' (meaning: in a little while). E 3;6.15. ( 43) Morgen zondag is het Pasen 'to-morrow Sunday is Easter' (meaning: next Sunday, for he said it on Thursday). E 3;8.27. ( 44) Dat deden we morgen wei eens 'that's what we did to-morrow now and then'. H 3;2.26. ( 45) (after his afternoon nap:) Pappa, dat po'tje moet eronder biijven staan. Want als ik morgen weer ga siapen en heel iang, dan moet ik teikens een plasje 'Daddy, that potty must remain standing under it (i.e., under the bed). For when to-morrow I go to bed again and for a long time, I must (make) peepee again and again'. H 3;10.21.

Example

sentences

/ 3

( 46) Morgan, weetje wat 'k toen gedaan heb? Toen heb ikme handen met zeep gewassen 'to-morrow, do you know what I did at that time? At that time I washed my hands with soap'. ( M a m m a : Heb je je handen met zeep gewassen? 'did you wash your hands with soap?') Ja, vanmiddag 'yes, this afternoon'. H 4;0.20. ( 47) (speaking of something said by him yesterday:) Datzei ik vanmorgen ook 'that's what I also said this morning'. H 3;2.22. ( 48) (speaking of yesterday noon:) Pappa, vanmorgen — toen ging ik warm eten 'Daddy, this morning — then I had a hot meal'. H 3;7.4. ( 49) (in the morning, having breakfast:) Mamma, nu met kunsthoning, want dat had ik vanmdrgen nog niet gehad ' M a m m a , now with synthetic honey, because I didn't yet have that this morning' (referring to yesterday evening). H 3;9.25. ( 50) Pappa, vanmorgen, toen 'k op deze grond ging, toen had ik schoenen aan en nu heb ikze weeruit 'Daddy, this morning, when I went on this floor (i.e., the floor of the bathroom, which was cold that morning), then I had shoes on, and now I have them off again'. H3;10.21. ( 51) Eerst dee ¡e't nog wel; heel vanmorgen. En toen dee je't nog wet. Weetje watJaap gedaan heeft he& vanmorgen? 'first you still did do it; very this morning. An then you still did do it. Do you know what Jaap did very this morning?' (according to Jaap himself he did it a week ago). H 3;11.0. ( 52) Ik heb het vanmorgen gedaan — gisteren! 'I did it this morning — yesterday!' H 3;11.25. ( 53) (on Monday morning, having breakfast, speaking about a girl at his school:) Vanmorgen was ie d'r niet 'this morning he wasn't there' H 4;0.17. ( 54) (spoken at 6 p.m.:) Peter Brans komt vanmorgen weer, heeft ie gezegd! 'Peter Brans will be coming again this morning, he said!' H 4;1.23. ( 55) Er is nog een klein beetje over— voor vanmorgen 'there is still a little bit left — for this morning' (spoken at about 2 p.m.). H 4;1.26. ( 56) (after E had said Hans krijgt niks 'H doesn't get anything':) Anders zou er vanmorgen ook niks in't schoentje zitten (instead of: gezeten hebben), he Pappa? 'if not (meaning: in that case) also this morning there would be (instead of: would have been) nothing in the shoe, isn't it, Daddy?' H 5;3.14. ( 57) Pappa, ik ben vanmiddag al in het bad geweest 'Daddy, this afternoon I have been bathed already' (referring to yesterday afternoon). H 3;7.29. ( 58) (Mamma: En Hans, ga je nu vandaag je andere schoen poetsen? 'and, H, will you now shine up your other shoe to-day?' Doe 'k altijd vanmiddag! '(that's what) I always do this afternoon!' (he wanted to do it that morning). H 4;1.19. ( 59) En vanmiddag een zuurkoolprak, met twee boterhammen 'and this afternoon a sauerkraut stew, with two slices of bread and butter' (referring to yesterday afternoon). H 5;3.25.

Example

sentences

/4

( 60) Ik eet geen kalk meer, alleen vroeger 'I don't eat calcium any more, only in the past'. E 5;3.14. ( 61) Wat deed Erik vroeger? 'what did E do in the past?' (it turned out to be something that E did five days ago). H 3;3.19. ( 62) Pappa, vroeger was altijd de kachel uit 'Daddy, in the past the stove was always out' (for about two days up to yesterday the stove had not been burning). H 3;7.1. ( 63) Vroeger weles'once in the past'. (E: Dat is natuurlijk gisteren'lhat, of course, is yesterday'). Vroeger dat is gisteren 'in the past that Is yesterday'. H 3;10.16. ( 64) Vroeger als ik op school ben dan komen ze nooit 'in the past, when I am at school, they never come' (meaning: when I was at school they never came). H 4;7.3. ( 65) Aanstonds was Pappa er niet; aanstonds was Pappa bij Overschie 'in a little while Daddy was not there; in a little while Daddy was near Overschie' (in reality Daddy was in the village Overschie about ten minutes ago). E 3;1.6. ( 66) Dat hadden we aanstonds nog ultgedaan, hd? 'that (i.e., a jacket) we had put off in a little while, hadn't we?' E 3;7.4. ( 67) Bumpje heeft het aanstonds al gedaan 'Bumpje did it already in a little while' (meaning: a few moments ago). E 3;9.15. ( 68) (speaking about the coming winter E said:) Aanstonds gaan we de kachel aanmaken 'in a little while we will light the stove'. (H asked: Aanstonds, na het eten? 'in a little while, after dinner?'). Nee, aanstonds op de d&gen; niet z6 aanstonds! 'no, in a little while on the days; not in a little while like that!' E 6;2.29. ( 69) (in the morning, getting up while his brother is still sleeping:) Ejik s(l)aapt al! 'E is already asleep!' H 2;2.24 and 2;3.13. ( 70) Pappa geeft het al, Mamma! 'Daddy gives it already, Mamma!' (spoken after Daddy had given something). H 2;6.8. ( 71) De eitjes kookt al 'the eggs is boiling already'. H 2;8.6. ( 72) Jullle moeten eerst licht maken, dan zle ik jullie al pas 'you must first switch on the light, only then I see you already'. H 3;3.16. ( 73) Nou begint ie het al pas te doen 'only now already it (i.e., the radio) begins to work'. H 3;4.5. ( 74) Ejik is nog uit! 'E has still (meaning: already) got up!' H 2;4.17. ( 75) Weet je nog, dat we limonade bij de Bijenkorf gedrinken heeft? 'do you remember (literally: do you still know) that we has drunk lemonade with (instead of: in) the Beehive ( a department store)?' H2;9.2. (the person addressed could not possibly know anything about it). ( 76) Weef je nog, we naar de Bijenkorf geweest is? 'do you remember we have been to the Beehive?' H 2;9.5. ( 77) Hans, weet je nog van chocolahagelslagjes? 'H, do you remember chocolate strands?' E 4;11.8. ( 78) Dat was heel lang geleden — toen Tante Mien en Oom Wim niet meer kwamen 'that was very long ago — when Aunt Mien and Uncle Wim didn't come any more' (meaning: did not yet come to us). H 3;3.22.

Example

sentences

/ 5

( 79) En Pappa, hoe lang duurt het nog dat het September is? 'and, Daddy, how long a time will it still take that (meaning: till) it is September? 1 E 6;2.0.

( 80) Moet je's kijken hoe lang )k van de divan ben. — Ik tot zolang 'look how long I am from (meaning: in relation to) the couch. — ' I up to so long'. E 6;2.28. ( 81 ) Pappa, hoe gauw is Mamma klaar? Het duurt zo lang 'Daddy, how soon is M a m m a ready? It takes so long a time', (a moment after:) Pappa, hoe lang duurt dat Mamma klaar is? 'Daddy, how long takes that M a m m a is ready?' (meaning: how long does it take until M a m m a is ready?). H 3;11.4. ( 82) En Mamma we zijn, tòt de bloemenkoopman, met de tram gekomen 'and, M a m m a , up to the flower-seller (meaning: from the florist's), we came by tram'. H 4;0.1. ( 83) Erik heeft mij tot de Molenlaan gebronge 'E took me to the Molenlaan (a street)'. H 4;0.5. ( 84) Ik ben zó groot, ik kan al tot de rand van het bad. Van dit rand — tot dàt rand 'I am so tall, I can already (reach up) to the border of the bath. From this border — to thàt border'. H 4;0.30. ( 85) (reply to Mamma's question Hans, kom je eten? 'H, will you c o m e and eat?':) Bijna 'nearly'. H 4;9.7.

Example

sentences

/ 6

86) 't Is veel anders 'it's much different'. E 5;8.6. 87) Die's nog veel anders 'that one is even much (more) different'. H 3;10.20. 88) 'k Kan èrge leukeautootjes tekenen:doktertjes-autootjes'i can draw very nice little cars: doctors' cars'. H 3;10.22. 89) (singing a Christmas carol:) Wij knielen heel biedig (instead of: eerbiedig) en buigen het hoofd 'we kneel devoutly and bend our heads'. E 7;5.26. 90) (speaking of the candles on the Christmas tree:) Als je 'r eentje aansteekt dan is't al stìklicht 'when you light one of them then it's already inky light', (because Mamma starts laughing:) Alpìklicht, hè Pappa? 'already pitch-light, isn't it, Daddy?' H 5;4.4. 91) (after E has said 't Is makkelijk 'it's easy':) Stikmakkelijk, hè Erik? 'inky easy, isn't it, Erik?' H 5;1.5. 92) (speaking of St. Nicholas' servant Black Peter:) Z'n lippen waren pikrood 'his lips were pitch-red'. H 5;3.13. 93) (speaking of a tea-cup:) Dan moet hetpikschoon zijn 'then it must be pitch-clean'. H 5;4.16. 94) O, maar het is nog stiklicht! 'oh, but it is still inky light!' E 4;5.0. 95) (speaking of the porridge:) 't Is stikheet langs de kantjes 'it's inky hot on the edges'. H 4;1.3. 96) (intending to make a joke:) Pappa heb stikvuil haarl' 'Daddy have inky dirty hair!' E 4;1.13. 97) Erik ging zó keihard de trap op! 'E went só stonefast upstairs!' H 5;8.12. 98) Het is nog keiheet; ik lust die melk niet. 't Is nog ¡¡sheet 'it is still stone-hot; I don't like that milk. It is still icy-hot' (the latter intensive form probably meant as a joke). H 5;1.11. 99) De lepel is nog keiheet 'the spoon is still stone-hot'. E 5;0.19. 100) (Moet ik mij wassen) met dat ijswarme water? '(must I wash myself) with that icy-warm water?' E 7;2.9. 101) Zo is het ¡¡swarm 'so it is icy-warm'. E 5;3.16. 102) En Piet heeft het allerveelste 'and Piet has the muchest of all'. E 6;11.11.

103) Mamma heeft het allerweinigste, en Pappa heeft het allerveelste 'Mamma has the fewest of all, and Daddy has the muchest of all'. E 7;6.1. 104) Dat rooie dingetje doet het àllerpijnste 'that little red thing hurts most of all'. H 4;8.8. 105) (repeatedly when speaking of apples:) Ik moet de allerrooiste hebben! 'I must have the reddest of all'. H 5;1.14, and (twice:) H 5;1.15. 106) Nou die àllervolgendste halte 'now that most next (tram-)stop of all'. H 4;6.21. 107) Nou begin ik al aan mijn allerderde 'now I am already beginning (to eat) my third of all'. H 4;1.20. 108) Dan zie je de brug al lévensgoed 'then you see the bridge already as well as life'. E 7;2.23.

Example sentences

/7

109) Toen kwam ie al dichterbij en toen zag ikhem al¡¿vensgoed'then he came nearer and nearer (?) and then I saw him already as well as life'. E 7;3.13. 110) (in reply to H's assertion that E has demolished his railway-station:) Niet waar; het staat er nog levensgoed 'not true, it is still standing there as well as life'. E 7;3.20. 111) (speaking of the number on the ration-card:) Hans had vroeger 400, toen ie hi kleiner was 'H once had 400, when he was smaller and smaller (meaning: much smaller?)'. E 6;4.7. 112) Mamma, 't Is hier veel te stikdonker, Ik kan niks zien! 'Mamma, it is much too pitch-dark here, I can't see anything!' E 7;5.5. 113) En Pappa, als het heel donker stik is, dan kan ik toch nog wat zien 'and, Daddy, when it is very, very dark pitch, then I can still see something anyhow'. H 4;0.4. 114) Die was ook weer stik door de war geraak, hoor! 'that was also pitch(ly) thrown into disorder again!' E 6;11.3. 115) Het steekt er allemaal kldts uit 'they all (referring to the edges of the cardboard of which histramcaris made) jutoutsoaking(ly)'. E7;2.8. 116) In bed, daarligt ie dddd te huilen 'in bed, there he is crying deadly'. E 5;0.21. 117) Ik ga erg iets leuks bouwen 'I will build very something nice', (a moment after:) 7c Ga heGI iets leuks bouwen, h§6l iets leuks 'I will build quite something nice, quite something nice'. H 3;10.21. 118) Verschrikkelijk iets leuks heb ik gebouwd 'terribly something nice I have built'. H 3;10.21. 119) Die hele paar die liggen daar 'those very some are lying there' (speaking of a very small quantity of prune-stones). E 6;1.30. 120) Wanneer is het zondag? 'when is Sunday?' (Mother: Morgen niet, maar dan 'not to-morrow, but then'). Is dat eermorgen? 'is that the day before to-morrow?' E 4;7.8. 121) Overgisteren wou Pappa niet spek hebben 'the day after yesterday Daddy didn't want to have bacon'. J 5;9.17.

Example sentences / 8

(122) Waarom gaat Lien veel erger laat naar huis? 'why does Lien (the servant-girl) go home much more very late?' E 4;8.19. (123) Hot ergste veel rails 'the most very much rails'. E 5;9.11. (124) 55 Is nog erger dan 29 '55 is even worse than 29'. E 5;0.17. (125) Erik doet het nog veel erger. Die doet het met zQIke tranen d'r aan 'E does it even much worse. He does it with tears like these on it' (viz. washing his arm with a dripping washrag). E 4;8.7. (126) Pappa, ¡ij doet het nog vlugger hard! 'Daddy, you do it even quicker fasti' H 3;0.10. (127) Mamma weet je wat vlUg lopen is? Hkrd lopen dat is vlug lopen 'Mamma, do you know what walking fast is? Walking quickly, that is walking fast'. H 3;10.20. (128) Ik doe het nog veel goeier 'I do it even much weller'. E 5;10.16. (129) Dlt kan je goeier zlen 'this is what you can see weller'. H 4;5.30. (130) (cutting out pictures from a newspaper:) Goeier kan ik niet knippe 'weller I can't cut'. Y 5;2.11. (131) Mamma, kan 'k het goeter dan Hans? 'Mamma, can I (do) it weller than H?' E6;8.13. (132) Vaders weten het altijd het goedst 'fathers always know it wellest'. E 5;10.19. (133) Bij mij staat veel veler 'with me is (written) much mucher'. E 5;6.24. (134) (studying the time-table of his father's school, and observing that only the first class has six parallel forms (A up to F), whereas the other classes have four or five forms at the most:) Pappa, 66n dat heeft de veelste van allemaal; alleen maar F 'Daddy, one that has the muchest of all; only F'. E 5;7.16. (135) Dat is het veelste van allemaal 'that's the muchest of all'. E 5;8.4. (136) (turning over the leaves of the Bible:) Pappa, Psalmen heeft het veelste van allemaal 'Daddy, Psalms has the muchest of all' (viz. the most pages). E 5;8.20. (137) Hans, waarom zeg ¡ij toch altijd weiniger aplaats (instead of: in plaats) van minder? 'H, why do you always say 'weiniger' instead of 'minder'?' E 7;6.7. (138) Nou heb ik ndg weiniger wantnou heb 'kd'rvan geslurft (instead of: geslurpt) 'now I have even less, because now I have sipped from it' (viz. from his cup of tea). H 4;8.24. (139) 'k Ga't nu ndg netjezer maken 'I'll make it even more tidy now'. H 4:2.28. (140) Pappa, ik kan veel netjezer op het schoolbord tekenen 'Daddy, I can draw much more neatly on the blackboard' H 4;9.13. (141) Daar komt het span! De deur nog een beetje wijter open — 'there the couple comes (viz. H with achair)! The door a little wider open again — E 7;5.20. (142) Dat is ndg wijter 'that's even wider', (a moment after:) En nou ndg wijter 'and now even wider again'. H 4;1.26. (143) Ik heb nog nooiteen Pietgezien diezo'n wijte mond opdeed'l never saw a Piet opening so wide a mouth'. H 4;2.3.

Example

sentences

/ 9

(144) Gewarmte beukenootjes mag Piet pollen 'warmed beechnuts Piet may shell'. H 4;4.3. (145) Twee kleete 'two plaids'. H 4;5.26. (H often said kleed Instead of 'plaid'; the usual meaning of kleed is 'carpet'). (146) Wie zou er nou het meerste hebben! 'who has morest, I wonder!' E 6;5.29. (147) Toegedekt is veel warmerder — toegedekt Is veel warm 'covered up is much more warmer — covered up is much warm'. H 3;3.24. (148) Die wou Ikjuist het graagste hebben 'just I would most like to have this (these?). E 6;6.2. (149) Waarom staat hier hetzelfde dan hier? 'why is (written) here the same than here?' E4;11.21. (150) (speaking of the porridge:) Hans heeft het gelilk dan mlj (instead of: met mij) gekregen 'H has got it at the same time than me'. E 5;3.15. (151) De bijwagen Is niet zo moeilijk dan de motorwagen 'the trailer is not as difficult than the motor-car' (viz. to build It with toy blocks). H 4;5.27.

Example

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152) Ze kam uit z'n bedje 'she came out of his cot'. E 4;2.3. 153) Erik, ik heb het ook verlängeret 'E, I have also made it longer'. H5;0.8. 154) Die Schürze ist verkürzert'the apron has been shortened'. Hilde 4;8.6 (Stern 1928:408). 155) Hettrottoir wordt niet verhogerd 'the sidewalk is not being raised'. H 5;9.27. 156) Mamma, 'k wil maar zö'n klein stukkeltje 'Mamma, I only want s6 small a piece'. H 3;8.0. 157) Maar d'r is zoveel tijmstroop niet meer te kopen! 'but so much thyme-syrup is no longer on sale!' H 5;5.0. 158) Ik heb nog nooit een Piert gezien die zo'n wijte mond opdeed'I never saw a Piet opening so wide a mouth' (meaning: I never saw Piet (Peter) opening his mouth as wide as that). H 4;2.3. 159) Hot lijkt net Jopie van Wijk hoe Piet zit 'it just looks like Jopie v.W. how Piet is sitting'. E 7;5.5. 160) Ik zeg het zo toch niet hoe Erik het daarnet zei 'yet I don't say it so how E said it just now', H 5;4.20. 161) Do it how I do it. Children around 2;6 or before that, quoted by Limber (1973:180). 162) Hoeveel uur is het? 'how much o'clock is it?' (meaning: what time is it?). E 4;0.28. 163) Waarom gaan we nou niet boven't bruggentje? 'why don't we go above the little bridge?' H 2;10.29. 164) Mag ik mee op de zolder? 'may I with you in the loft?' H 3;2.8. 165) Mag ik met Pappa in de zolder?'may I with Daddy in the loft?' H 2;6.4. 166) Hij was gedragen geworden 'he had been carried'. H 3;11.17. 167) Hanza is Stil geworden 'H has fallen silent'. E 3;7.20. 168) Dit is Nel zijn kamertje geworden 'this has become Nel's little room'. E 3;9.0. 169) Ik hoef nog niet naar bed; ik hoef nog eten'] need not yet (go) to bed; I still need to eat'. E 3:6.3. 170) Je hoeft hem toch wel te hebben? 'you need to have it after all?' (meaning: you do want it - i.e., the toy block - don't you?). E 5;7.30. 171) Pappa, moet jij nog zoveel te doen?' Daddy, m ust you sti 11 so m uch to do?' (meaning: have you still so much to do?). E 4;4.25. 172) Hij heeft een baard, hier 'he has got a beard, here' (pointing to Mamma's upper lip). E 7;4.27. 173) Hou jij je snor dicht, Piet! 'keep yöu your moustache shut, Piet!' E 6;3.24.

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(174) Wat heet jij? 'what is your name?' (more literally: 'what are you called?'). E 3;5.10. (175) Wat heet dat? 'what is it called?' E 3;6.21. (176) Wat noemen jullie dat? 'what do you call that?' E 6;2.14. (177) Pappa! Weet je wat Hans die wagens noemt? Rails 'Daddy! Do you know what H calls those carriages? Rails'. E 5;1.4. (178) Ja, dat heet het 'yes, that's what it is called'. E 3;7.6. (179) Kijk eens wat ie hard gaat! 'look what fast it goes!' E 4;10.24. (180) Kijkes watiker nog v66l heb! 'look what much I have left!, E5;10.21. (181) Wat is die spek voor? 'for what is that bacon?' E 3;6.19. (182) Wat is dit van? 'from what is this?' E 3;6.29. (183) Waar is die korstjes voor? 'for what is those crusts?' E 3;6.11. (184) IVaar is die schaar vddr? 'for what are those scissors?' H 3;1.28. (185) Papp' hoe kom je hierdoor? 'Daddy, how do you come through here?' (meaning; where do you come when you pass through here?). H 3;8.11. (186) Hoe gaat dat (i.e., kipkarretje) voor dag? 'on how day does that (dumping-cart) go?' E 4;1.5. (187) En hoe is het dan morgen voor dag? 'and how day is to-morrow?' E 4;6.8. (188) Mamma, welke pap is dit? 'Mamma, which (instead of: what) pap is this?' H 4;1.19. (189) Hoeveel dag is het volgende week? 'how much day (meaning: what day) is it next week?' E 4;6.6. (190) Hoe heb ik deze schoenen gekocht? 'how have I bought these boots?' (Mother replies: In een winkel bij de Kleiweg 'in a shop near Clay Street'). Hoe dan? Hoe wanneer?'but how? how when?' E4;6.6. (191) Dijdes (instead of: kijk es), Mamma, wat mooi! 'look, Mamma, how beautiful!'E ±3;1.13. Previously, he used to say zo mooi 'so beautiful', e.g., E 2;11.30. (192) Wat zo mooie houtjes, zeg! 'what so nice bits of wood, I say!' E 3;5.24. (193) Mamma, kijk es wat zo'n mooi lange! 'Mamma, look what such a nice long one!' H 2;10.21. (194) Kijk es, wat zo'n mooi trapjes! 'look what such a nice little stairs!' H 2;10.21. (195) Hoe uit ging ie? 'how (for: what) way did it (i.e., the bus) go?' E 6;7.0. (196) Nou gaat ie z6 uit 'now it goes so (for: that) way'. H 3;11.17. (197) (pointing to file cards:) Wie is dit nou? 'who is this?' H 2;6.14. (198) Jij bent stout 'you are naughty'. (Father: Jij bent stout'H'syou who is naughty'). Ik ben niet stout; jij alleen 'not I am naughty; only you'. (Father: Wat ben jij dan? 'but what are you?'). Hans. H 3;2.8. (Translated more freely: 'but what about you?' - 'I am Hans').

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(199) Heet! 'hot' (pointing to a dish with 'nasigoreng' and in doing so touching it; the dish was cold. T h e pronunciation was rather indistinct). Y 1 ;7.17. (200) 'k Ga in de andere doos kijken - ofik daar watzoek 'I will havea look into the other box - (to see) if I look for something there'. E 4;1.16. (201) G a a n we haar zoeken?'sha\\ we go and look for her?' (meaning: shall we meet auntie at the railway station?'). E 4;1.25. (202) Wat moet je vinden? 'what do you want to find?' E 4;5.28. (203) Zal ik hem vinden? 'shall I find it?' (viz., the file card). E 4;9.21. (204) Soll ich's mal finden? 'shall I find it?' Hdg 5;3.11 (Leopold 1949b:107) (205) Find mir den Ball! 'find the ball for me!' (after being corrected for using find instead of such:) Nein, finden, vom bloßen Suchen habe ich nichts 'no, find, only looking for is of no use to me'. Child cited by Kainz (1943:62); no age. (206) Geh, find mal mein Bilderbuch, ich kann's nich gar nich suchen! 'go and find my picture-book, I cannot look for it not at all!' Bubi Scupin ± 2;7 (Scupin 1907:148). (207) Even kijken, ofikhetkan opvinden'(I will) just look if I can find it up' (i.e., a place in a book of maps, by means of the index). E 8;2.21. (208) Proberen parailellen in de taal der volwassenen te zoeken 'try to look for parallels in adult language'. Note of the father. (209) (quotation from the explanatory m e m o r a n d u m to a bill dated August 1 5 , 1 9 6 2 , published in the newspapers:) Het volstrekt ontbreken van enig Nederlands eigenbelang naast het opkomen voor de rechten van de bevolking deden de regering besluiten te trachten een krachtiger steun voor de bevolking te zoeken in de volkerengemeenschap 'the complete lack of any Dutch self-interest, along with standing up for the population's rights decided the government to attempt to look for a more vigorous support of the population in the community of nations'. (210) Waar kan'k 'em zoeken? 'where can I look for it?'(i.e., f o r t h e spectacles, Dutch bril, which is singular). Question asked by the father. (211) Nel stoel halen - gang 'Nel fetch chair - corridor' (meaning: Nel - the servant-girl - is taking the chair to the corridor). H 1 ;11.6. (212) Hlj is veel te lief om een pak slaag te geven 'he is much too sweet to give a thrashing'. Vivie ± 1 0 . Nee, om een pak slaag te krijgen 'no, to get a thrashing'. Bartke ± 10, correcting, (pers. communication). (213) O, wantje is uitgekomen! 'oh, little mitten has come off!' H 2;4.28. (214) Pappa, hoe laat was je opgegaan? 'Daddy, at what time did you rise (literally: had you gone up)?' E 6;2.29. (215) Wat ben jij laat opgegaan! 'how late you got up (literally: how late you have gone up)!' H 4;1.0. (216) Had je'm horen opgaan, Piet? 'had you heard him going up, Piet?' (meaning: had you heard Piet rising?). H 4;1.7. (217) Ik kwam laat op! 'I got (lit.: came) up late!' H 4;1.21.

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(218) IVai komt d/e Erik/aaf op/'how late that E is rising (lit.: is coming up)!' H 5;1.4. (219) Pappa, nu komt de zon ndt op 'Daddy, just now the sun Is rising' (spoken at midday, when the sun broke through; at about the same time:) Mamma, voor is de zon al dnder en achter nog n/'ef'Mamma, in front (of the house) the sun is already down, and at the back not yet'. H 4;3.1. (220) (in reply to the mother's question whether he had knocked up H.:) Ja, maar of dat wil zeggen dat hij opgekomen is — (correcting himself) opgegaan is — 'yes, but whether that is to say that he has come up — gone up —'. Father. (221) Dan moet je wachten tot de jdngens opkomen — (correcting himself:) — de jdngens opgaan 'then you must wait till the b6ys come up — the bdys go up'. Father. (222) Is Erik nou al op — gegaan? 'has E already — gone up now? Father, hesitating because he could not find the right word immediately; speaking -gegaan he was conscious of his being wrong. (223) Ik wil nergens zitten 'I want to sit nowhere' (meaning: I want to sit somewhere). E 3;4.22. (224) Ik wil nergens opzitten 'I want to sit down on nothing' (meaning: I want to sit down on something). E 3;5.24. (225) 't Wordt o zo'n leuke auto, die je nog ooit van je leven gezien had' It's going to be oh so nice a car that you had ever seen in your life' (speaking of a drawing which he was about to make; meaning: a car that you never saw in your life). H 3;10.17. (226) Pappa, als ik klein ben — dan kan ik ndg beugels tekenen 'Daddy, when I shall be small — then I still can draw contact-bows'. H 3;10.22. (227) Papp' als 'k groot ben, dan word Ik jou zelf (a moment after:) net zo groot als ¡11 'Dad, when I am grown-up I become yourself — Just as tall as you'. H 3;11.2. (228) Ze hebben een b66tje heleboel meer gekregen 'they (I.e., the bunnies) have got a little bit quite a lot more'. H 4;0.0. (229) Klein oortje hi? Maar da's een biitje grooi'little little ear, Isn't it? But it is a little bit big'. H 3;7.14. (230) (after the father had said: Nou mag Papa zeker wel een tijdje lezen, he? 'I suppose Daddy may now read a little while, may not he?':) Ja, h66l tijdje 'yes, very long little while'. E 6;2.6. (231) Zulke brede poppetjes 'such broad figures' (marking a very small size). H 5;10.5.

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(232) Ach, nat! 'ah, wet!' H ± 1;10.9. (233) Ook kamelk (for: karnemelk)! '(I), too, (want) buttermilk!' H 1;10.19. (234) Mamma, nog een bonsbons (instead of: bonbon) 'Mamma, another bonbon'. H 2;10.24. (235) Paadje kege Sin-taas kege 'got horsie got St. Nicholas'. E ± 2;6.8. (236) Kop thee opdronken 'drunk cup of tea'. E ± 2;9.9. (237) Grote trommel uit de keuken haald 'fetched big bin from the kitchen'. E 2;9.12. (238) Morgen met tram naar booties geweest 'been to-morrow by tram to little boats' (in reality it had happened three or four days earlier). E 2;11.9. (239) Kussen opstaan 'cushion on-stand' (meaning: I am standing on the cushion). E 2; 6.11. (240) Boodje rooie jam ete nee 'eat slice of bread with red jam no'. E 2;6.11. (241) Beertje laten Mamma zien? 'show teddy bear Mamma?' E 2;11.6. (242) Even de Statendam lezen 'just read the Statendam' (he wanted to look at a picture postcard representing the ocean-going steamer "Statendam". E 3;4.20. (243) Zust (for: lust) niet botam met ba-naan niet 'don't like slice of bread with banana'. E 2;6.19. (244) Los maakt! 'unbuckled!' H ± 1;10.9. (245) Bah daan! 'done number two!' H 1;10.19. (246) Pas naast daan 'made pee beside (the potty)'. H 1;10.20. (247) Doos koek in daan 'box put cake in'. H 1;10.22. (248) Doze kege! 'got boxes!' (it was only one box; the father asked: Van wie heb je die doos gekregen? 'who did you get that box from?', H replied:) Mamma kege! 'got Mamma!' H 2;0.8. (249) E6n keer een plasje gedaan, twee keer een plasje gedaan, drie keer een plasje gedaan — vijf keer een plasje gedaan 'once made pee, twice made pee, three times made pee — five times nade pee'. H 3;8.1. (250) Bah doen! 'do number two!' H ± 1;10.9, and 1;10.19. (251) Mas habbeni'have knife!' (meaning: I want to have another spoonful of food). H ± 1 ;10.9. (252) Vojk habben! 'have fork!' (same meaning as in 251). H 1;10.22. (253) Powet (for: potlood) hebben, powet! 'have pencil, pencil!' H 1 ;11.22. (254) Boeke kome, Mamma? Boeke kome, Pappa? Boeke kome, Nel? Boeke kome, fles? etc. 'touch books, Mamma? . . . Daddy? . . . Nel? ... bottle?' etc. H ± 2;0.3. (255) Deze boek hebben, Mamma! 'have this book, Mamma!' H 2;3.3. (256) Dat doos hebbe! 'have that box!' H 2;4.2. (257) Speerzeep (for: scheerzeep) hebben! 'have shaving-soap!' H 2;4.26. (258) Die pijpje hebben! 'have that little tube!' H 2;6.5. (259) Kan hijskaan niet bij! Kan hijskaan niet pakken! 'can't reach crane! can't take crane!' H 2;4.20.

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Butje ook een kopje thee 'Butje, too, a cup of tea'. E 2;9.14. Butje af Oma toeI (instead of: stoel) 'Butje down Granny chair'. E 2;9.23. Butje een kopje thee! 'Butje a cup of tea!' E 2;10.8. Dat Butje morgen ook geten (for: gegeten) 'that Butje also eaten to-morrow' (meaning: that's what Butje also ate yesterday). E 2;10.10.

Butje morgen ook yoghurt had (for: gehad) 'Butje to-morrow also had yogurt' (meaning: B had yogurt also yesterday). E 2;10.18. Butje huilen eendje pot (for: kapot) is 'Butje cry (because) little duck is broken'. E 2;9.10. Butje huilen autobus nat wordt 'Butje cry (because) bus is getting wet'. E 2;9.10. Butje beetje water dronken (for: gedronken) heeft 'Butje has drunk a little water'. E 2;9.27. Butje N&-N& ook zwarte handjes heeft 'Butje Ne-Ne, too, has dirty little hands' (meaning: Nel - the servant-girl - , too, says that B has dirty hands). E 2;10.3. Butje heb een eigen jampotten 'Butje has an own jam-jars'. E 2;10.29. Daar hoest Bumtje in 'in that Bumtje is coughing' (meaning: that makes B cough). E ± 3;5.26. Butje wil niet naar bed; Butje wil vaag (for: graag) niet 'Butje doesn't want (to go) to bed; Butje does like not'. E 3;6.17. Bumtje heb geen zakdoek meer 'Bumtje has no handkerchief any more'. E 3;6.17. Bumtje wilzo vaag niet (scil. naar bed) 'Bumtje so much doesn't like to (go to bed)'. E 3;7.18. Bumpje heeft het aanstonds al gedaan 'Bumpje has done it already presently (meaning: a moment ago)'. E 3;9.15. Bumpje gaat ook altijd met zeep gewassen 'Bumpje, too, goes (instead of: is) always washed with soap'. E 4;0.24. Bumpje heb gespringt - bij Nel 'Bumpje has springed - with Nel'. E 4;1.20. Bumpje moet me zaag halen 'Bumpje must fetch my saw'. E 4;2.6. Mamma denkt, dat Erik een huis maakt, maar ik maak een kerk 'Mamma thinks that Erik is making a house, but I am making a church'. E 4;5.17. Beertje Bumptje bad (for: blad) zitte T e d d y bear sit Bumptje tray'. E 2;6.18.

Dat Butje, Mamma 'that Butje, Mamma'. E 2;6.19. Doet ik? Doet Hans? 'does I? does Hans?' (several times in succession, alternating; meaning: what am I doing?). H 2;4.11. (282) Zegt Hans: een warme happie 'says Hans: a hot snack'. H 2;4.26.

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Mamma, ik mee buiten ' M a m m a , I with you out'. E 2;9.26. Ik lekker dokter 'I nicely doctor' (said of his brother). E 2;9.27. Ik wag 'i o f f . (in the evening of the same day:) Ikka weg; Butje naar beesten toe 'i off; Butje to animals'. E 2;10.4. Ik Hanza 'I (am) Hanza'. E 2;10.6. Ik met water weest 'I (have) been (playing) with water'. E 2;10.27. Ik is met flessen 'I is with bottles' (meaning: I am playing with bottles). E 2;11.28. Ik heeft een ties karnemelk 'I has a bottle of buttermilk'. E 3;0.27. Ik Is er nlet; ik ben niet Erik 'I is not here; I am not Erik' (spoken In succession). Ik ben nog niet Erik meer 'I am not yet E any more'. E 3;5.25. Ik niest 'I is sneezing'. E ± 3;6.3. Ik hebt ook zo'n doosje 'I, too, has such a little box'. E 3;6.4. Ik hebt ook nog kranten 'I has newspapers, too'. E 3;6.4. Ik valtl 'I falls!' E 3;6.4. Is dat omdat ik vier jaar Is? 'is that because I is four years old?' E 4;1.21. Ik za (instead of: ga) niet naar de kleuterschool, ik za wat anders naartoe 'I don't go to the kindergarten, I go something else to (meaning: elsewhere)'. E 3;4.10. Ik wil nergens zitten 'I want to sit nowhere (meaning: somewhere)'. E 3;4.22. (after Daddy has said Zle zol 'that's itl'; word for word translated: see sol) Nee, ik zie niks 'No, I don't see anything'. E 3;5.22. Ik wll nergens opzltten 'I want to sit on nothing (meaning: on something)'. E 3;5.24. (repeatedly when sneezing or coughing:) Ik ben zo hardl 'I am so hard!' (probably meaning: my throat aches). E ± 3;5.26. Ik hoef nog nlet naar bed; Ik hoefnog eten 'I need not yet (go) to bed; I still need (to) eat'. E 3;6.3. Ik wll mijn overschoenen nlet aan meer 'I don't want (to have) my galoshes on any more'. E 3;6.4. (returning numb with cold from a walk on snow:) Ik benzodunl Mijn schoenen zijn zo dunl 'I am so thin! my shoes are so thin!' E 3;6.6. Ik ga altijd niet huilen, ais jij de deur dichtdoet bij mij ' l a m always not going to cry when you shut the door with me'. E 3;11.11. Ik dacht, dat het een paardje is 'I thought it is a horsie'. E 3;11.24. Ik geloof ik het wel 'I do I believe it'. E 4;0.0. Pappa zegt, dat ik ook nog niet naar bed moet' Daddy says that I, too, must not yet (go) to bed' (meaning: Daddy, too, says that I don't yet need to go to bed). E 4;0.27. Ik mag toch wel bij het dichte raam hangen? 'I may lean out with the closed window, I hope?' E 4;1.4. Ik dacht, dat Swing maar es kwam 'I thought (meaning: I wish?) Swing (a horse) would come'. E 4;1.10.

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(310) (speaking of lacing up his shoes:) Die andere kan ik wel, maar die andere niet 'the other one (meaning: one of the two) I can (lace up), but the other one I can't'. E 4;1.14. (311) Ik moat toch da banda opmaken (instead of: opruimen)?'l must clear away the mess, mustn't I?' E 4;1.15. (312) (shading his eyes with his hand while looking at a plane, and commenting upon this gesture:) Ja, anders krijg ikglas in mijn oog. Ja, da zon haaft glas 'Yes, otherwise I get glass into my eye. yes, the sun has glass'. E 4;1.17. (313) Ik galoof dattia niet is vade (instead of: vader), hij is tar niet in gloof ik; ik gloof dattet waar is, ¡a, dat gloof ik'\ believe it is not, Daddy, it is not in it, I believe; I believe it is true, yes that's what I believe'. Luuk 2;7. (314) Ikook thaa!'\, too, teal' (after this, replying to the question Wiemoet er thee? 'who wants (to have) tea?':) Ik! 'I!' H 2;3.22. (315) (replying to the question Wie doet dat, Hans? 'who is doing that, H?':) Ik'V. H 2;4.11. (316) Ikhelpt, Pappa!'\ is helping, Daddy!'(spoken more than once rolling up a scrap of paper in the same way as when helping to wind a canvas tablecloth round a stick). H 2;4.14. (317) Doet ik, Pappa? 'does I, Daddy?' (meaning: what am I doing?). H 2;4.26. (318) Ik heeft hat, Pappa! 'I has it, Daddy!' H 2;5.15. (319) Erik hebt een auto; ik hebt ook een auto 'E has a car; I, too, has a car'. H 2;5.20. (320) Pappa, kom as kijken ik het openmaakt! 'Daddy, just come and see (how) I opens it!' H 2;6.8. (321) Krijgt ik nog meer pudding? 'does I get more pudding?' H 2;7.23. (322) Vind je Moortje wel lief? En ik, is die ook lief? 'do you like Moortje (literally: do you think Moortje (a toy dog) nice)? and I, is he (literally: that one) also nice?' H 2;7.24. (323) Toen is ik in Erik zijn bed geslapen! 'then I is slept in E's bed!' H 2;8.18.

(324) Pappa, is je d'r weer? Ga ¡a lopen? 'Daddy, is you back again? Are you going for a walk (meaning: have you been out for a walk)?' H 2;6.16.

(325) Ben jij ook koud? Pappa, is je ook koud? 'are you also cold? Daddy, is you also cold?' H 2;7.24. (326) Pappa, is je gezwemme? 'Daddy, is you swum?' (meaning: have you had a swim?). H 2;8.27. (327) Is je hier? — (looking around:) Waar ben je dkn, Mamma? 'Is you here? — Then where are you, Mamma?' H 2;10.24. (328) Als jij uit je bed is, dan kan Mamma jouw bed ook weer ophalen (instead of: opmaken), als jij eruit is 'when you is out of your bed, then Mamma can also make your bed again, when you is out of it'. H 3;4.26. (329) Ik heeft een borstel, kijk! 'I has a brush, look!' H 3;1.5.

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(330) (pointing to his wounded chin:) Hier heeft ik gevallen — in het grind en al 'here I has fallen — into the very gravel'. H 3;2.12. (331) Pappa, hier heeft je gemorsen (instead of: gemorst) 'Daddy, here you has spilled'. H 3;1.5. (332) Je heeft het vergist (instead of: verkeerd) gedaan 'you has done it wrong'. H 3;2.7. (333) Jij heeft er lekker e6n 'you nicely has (only?) one'. H 3;7.1. (334) Ik tekent eerst voeten 'first I draw feet' (drawing the legs of a figure). H 3;10.17. (335) Pappa, nu tekent ik nog, ik token nog 'Daddy, now I is still drawing, I am still drawing'. H 3;10.22. (336) En Nel, tekent jij es een beugel hierop! 'and, Nel, just draws you (intended as an imperative) a contact-bow on this!' H 3;10.17. (337) (after his brother has said Ik ben Lien' I am Lien':) Ejik ben Jien! 'Ejik am Jien!' (Lien is the name of the servant-girl at that time). H 2;5.5. (338) (after his brother has said Ik ben de meester'I am the (schoolmaster':) Pappa, Erik ben de meester 'Daddy, Erik am the (schoolmaster'. H 2;10.22. (339) Ejik wilt er uit 'Ejik wants (to get) out'. H 2;5.10. (340) Mag ik met Pappa in (instead of: naar) de zolder? 'may I with Daddy in the loft?' H 2;6.4. (341) Ik heb Eriks potlood 'I have E's pencil'. H 2;7.16. (342) (speaking of the train:) Hebt ie niet geen wielen? 'does it not have no wheels?' H 2;7.26. (343) Erik heb mij helemaal niet geplagen (instead of: geplaagd) 'E have not teased me at all'. H 2;9.12. (344) Jan hebt een grote horloos (for: een groot horloge) 'Jan has a big watch'. H 2;11.20. (345) Mag ik ook kraks (instead of: straks) uit? 'may I, too, out in a little while?' H 2;7.22. (346) Ik heb nog niet geen slabbetje voor! 'I have not yet no bib on!' H 2;7.23. (347) Ik kan niet aan de klok bij (instead of: bij de klok)/ 'I can't reach the clock!' H 2;8.0. (348) Krijg ik toen nog een broteram (for: boterham)? 'do I get another slice of bread then?' H 2;8.7. (349) (after father has said Ikdenk van wel'\ think, yes':) Ikdenk vanook'l think, too'. H 2;8.17. (350) Pappa, mag ik jij tiktak hebben? 'Daddy, may I have you tick-tick?' H 2;9.0. (351) Mag ik bij jou? 'may I (come) to you?' (father: Ja 'yes'). Mamma, Pappa zegtikbij — (hesitation) — ik bij Pappa mag!' Mamma, Daddy says I may to — I may to Daddy!' H 2;9.25. (352) Ik heb mijn bed afgemaakt (instead of: afgehaald) 'I have stripped my bed'. H 2;10.4. (353) Pappa, mag ik toen kraks (instead of: straks) op jouw fiets? 'Daddy, may I then in a little while on your cycle?' H 2;10.22.

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(354) Erik, mag ik stoel vandaan? 'E, may I off chair?' H 2;10.23. (355) Ik ga naar "t zolder. Deze zolder 'I go to the loft. This loft'. H 2;10.24. (356) En toen had ik zulke h6el kouwe voeten en toen zit ik in de deken en de kachel aan 'and then I had such very, very cold feet and then I sit in the blanket and the stove burning'. H 3;2.8. (357) In het grind heb ik gevallen 'into the gravel I have fallen'. H 3;2.9. (358) Lepel hebben van ik! Van Hanza hebben! 'have spoon of I! have of Hanza (meaning: Hanza's spoon)!' H 2;5.4. (359) Ik ga schoenen aandoen 'I'll put on shoes'. Y 2;2.14. (360) Ik ben aan't spelen 'I am playing'. Y 2;4.18. (361) Ik wou niet appeltje 'I wanted not little apple' (meaning: I won't have an apple). Y 2;9.15 (said twice). (362) Ik ga niet een trein make 'I will not make a train'. Y 2;9.15. (363) Ik kan niet drage 'I can't carry'. Y 2;9.15. (364) (speaking about a detergent or something like it:) Maar ik gebruik het steeds, hoor! 'but I always use It, you know!' Y 3;10.2.

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(365) Is dat van ik? 'is that of I?' (meaning: is that mine?). E 3;4.5. (366) Waar zijn de grote boeken van ik? 'where are the big books of I?' E 3;5.6. (367) Houtjes voor Ik 'bits of wood for I'. E 3;5.24. (368) Wie is die zakdoek van? 'whose is that handkerchief?' (literally: who is that handkerchief of? - Somebody replied, grammatically correct, Van Hans 'Hans's'; literally: of H. E objected:) Nee, van ik 'no, of I'. E 3;6.4. (369) Voor ik ook? 'for I, too?' E 3;7.0. (370) We hebben het over jou en niet over ik 'we are talking about you and not about I'. E 6;10.21. (371) Hanza kijkt naar mij 'Hanza is looking at me'. E 2;10.28. (372) Ja, die heeft Mamma weggehaald voor mij 'yes, that (i.e., the soap) has Mamma taken away for me'. E 3;10.7. (373) Hansje zegt "dag" tegen mij 'little H says "hallo" to me'. E 3;11.20. (374) Voor jij niet; voor mij is het! 'not for you; it is for me!' E 4;0.17. (375) Dat doe ik toch ook niet; je moet net als mij doen 'I don't do that either, do I? you must do just like me'. E 5;2.25. (376) (because H was complaining of some pain:) Misschien krijg je wel net als mij 'perhaps you will have just like me (meaning: have a headache)'. E 7;3.19. (377) Die is van jij 'that's of you (meaning: that's yours)'. E 3;2.25. (378) Dat groene (i.e., broekje) is aitijd van jij 'that green one (i.e., shorts; singular in Dutch) is always of you'. E 3;5.24. (379) Dat lepeltje is van jou 'that spoon is yours (lit.: of you)'. E 3;5.27. (380) Pappa met ik 'Daddy with I'. H 3;11.26. (381) Pappa met ik is er nu 'Daddy with I is now here'. H 4;1.25. (382) Pappa, zal (for: wil) jij ik losmaken? 'Daddy, will you unbuckle I?' H 2;6.6.

(383) Tegen mij ook snijden, Mamma! 'cut also to me, Mamma!' H 2;6.8. (384) Mamma die heeft het blocnote aan mijgegeven 'Mamma she (literally: that one) has given the writing-pad to me'. H 4;1.7. (385) Ikheb het niet bijzich (instead of: bij me) 'I don't have it with me (lit.: I have it not with him/herself)'. Y 3;4.10 (repeatedly spoken this day). (386) Nou hebben we ieder een jampot bij me 'now we have each a jamjar with me'. E 5;7.24. (387) (speaking of a Moroccan ch\\&.) Zepraat gewoon Hollandszoals ons 'she simply talks Dutch like us'. Y 8;5.22.

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(388) (speaking of a book:) Dit gelooft ie 'this he believes' (meaning: this is the book I mean). E 3;9.15. (389) Hij wil niet 'he will not' (meaning: I won't). E 3;10.12. (390) Hij dacht, dat deze dingetjes een dekseltje is 'he thought (meaning: I thought) that these little things is a little lid'. E 3;10.19. (391) Hij dacht dat ie wat doet 'he (for: I) thought that he (i.e., a dog) does harm'. E 4;0.14. (392) Hij dacht, dat het hondje d'r niet was 'he (for: I) thought that the little dog wasn't there'. E 4;0.16. (393) Mamma bij je pape '(instead of: slapen) 'Mamma sleep by you' (meaning: Mamma (must) sleep by my side). E ± 2;6.8. (394) Mamma bij me 'Mamma (must be?) by me'. E 2;9.10. (395) Mamma bijje komen 'Mamma (must) c o m e t o y o u (meaning: to me)'. E 2;10.6. (396) Hier zitten, Mamma! Op me schoot '(I will) sit here, Mamma, on my (for: your) lap'. E 3;6.26. (397) Kijk es naar die grote waf-waf, Pappa! Hij zitnaastje 'just look at that big bow-wow, Daddy! He is sitting beside you (meaning: me)'. H 2;6.5. (398) Moortje is naast je zitten 'Moortje (a toy dog) is sit beside you' (meaning: Moortje is sitting beside me). H 2;8.3. (399) Net zo'n trein als wij heeft 'just such a train as we has (meaning: as the one in which we are sitting now)'. E ± 3;2.0. (400) Pappa, net zo'n fas als jij heeft 'Daddy, just such a brief-case as you has'. E 3;3.13. (401) Pappa, heeft jij ook een tas? 'Daddy, has you, too, a brief-case?' E 3;6.4. (402) Wat heeft je daar? 'What has you got there?' E 3;6.22. (403) Zijn we nu met zijn negentjes? 'are we nine now?' E 4;9.27. (404) Ik ga even op Pappa en Mamma zijn bed 'I just go on Daddy and Mamma's bed'. E 5;1.28. (405) Pappa en Mamma doen z'n ogen dicht 'Daddy and Mamma close his eyes'. E 6;2.3. (406) Ik wil het wel, maar dan moeten we met onze tweeen op een stoel zitten 'I will do it (i.e., listen to Daddy's reading to him from a book), but then we must sit two on a chair'. E 7;6.30. (407) Jullie heb een glaasje kwast gehad, Pappa! 'you (plural form) have had a lemon squash, Daddy!' (meaning: we had a lemon squash). H 2;6.0.

(408) Nou zijn we allemaal een jasje uit 'now we all are a jacket o f f (meaning: now we all have taken off our jackets). H 2;7.26. (409) Me heefte twee brote 'we has two loaves'. H 3;2.11.

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(410) Ja, Pappa, wij zitten op me knieen 'yes, Daddy, we are sitting on my knees'. H 3;7.7. (411) Mamma, wij zitten op me knieen 'Mamma, we are sitting on my knees'. H 3;7.7. (412) Dat is jij pannetje en datis mijpannetje 'that's you little pan and that's me little pan'. E ± 3;3.9. (413) Gaje af, mij toel (instead of: stoel)/'goyoudown, me chair!' H 2;4.17. (414) Mijn boek is op de tafei 'my book is on the table' H 2;5.5. (415) Op ¡0 hoofd - op je hoofd 'on you head - on your head'. H 2;7.28. (416) Erik schoptaan (instead of: tegen) me benen 'E is kicking (me) on my legs'. H 3;1.6. (417) 'k Heeft me jasje uitgetrokken 'I has taken off my jacket'. H 3;1.20. (418) Pappa, van me groene jasje is een knoop van af Daddy, my green jacket has a button missing' (literally: from my green little jacket is a button off from). H 3;3.2. (419) (speaking of a bonbon:) Kijk's, hoesappigmijne was!'look howjuicy mine was!' H 3;9.7.

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