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oa Met zonder jas and other antonym errors in the spontaneous speech of Dutch children
- Source: Nota Bene, Volume 1, Issue 2, Dec 2024, p. 117 - 132
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- 14 Mar 2024
- 08 Jun 2024
- 24 Jan 2025
Abstract
Abstract
This paper focuses on antonym pairs in child Dutch. Children sometimes erroneously use the opposite word from what they intend to mean with <±polar> pairs. Psycholinguistic studies in the 1970ties suggest that the <−polar> member of dimensional adjectives, motion verbs and temporal adverbs is acquired before the <+polar> one.
Another error occurs with the expression of absence. Dutch and German children sometimes say met zonder/mit ohne (‘with without’) as the antonym expression of met/mit. Sauerland, Meyer & Yatsushiro (2024) argue that the <−polar> negative member ohne can be conceptually decomposed in the positive member plus negation (mit-neg), which children fail to see. They ‘undercompress’ negation. The decomposition also holds for the <±polar> member of dimensional adjectives (neg-Adj).
I will argue against both claims, the acquisition order and the undercompression idea. First, I discuss the met zonder/mit ohne errors and offer a new alternative analysis. Subsequently, other spontaneous speech errors with <±polar> pairs are considered.