title: Form and function of negation in early developmental Cantonese.
abstract: This study investigated the interface of form and function in the acquisition of negation in Cantonese-speaking children. The data, from the Hong Kong Cantonese Child Language Corpus, were longitudinal spontaneous samples of eight children aged 1;5 to 3;8. The main issues of the study were the sequence of emergence of negative markers mou5, m4 and mei6 and the acquisition trend of 11 semantic categories of negation in children's expressive language. The acquisition trend of the semantic categories matched Bloom's (1970, 1991a) finding that Non-existence preceded Rejection and Denial.
authors.affiliation: University of Hong Kong, 5/F, 34 Hospital Road, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Tam
authors.forename: S F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Stokes
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014706:Verbal Learning