Children’s ‘Configurational’ Interpretation of Negative Sentences with Dake

Abstract

Whether or not child Japanese is configurational is still an important issue in acquisition research. This is a preliminary study to address the question by investigating how children interpret negative sentences with dake ‘only’ attached to a subject or an object. Data from 16 Japanese monolingual children (mean age: 5;11) and 20 adult controls showed a subject-object asymmetry in their interpretation, which suggests that children, essentially like adults, can assign different interpretations depending on whether the focus particle attaches to a subject or an object. The asymmetry thus concurs with the view that not only adults’ grammar but also children’s grammar builds hierarchical structures.