Journal of Child Language

Table of Contents - 2003 - Volume 30, Issue 01  


Note

The development of inversion in wh-questions: a reply to Van Valin 1

CAROLINE F. ROWLAND a1c1 and JULIAN M. PINE a2
a1 University of Liverpool
a2 University of Nottingham

Abstract

Van Valin (Journal of Child Language 29, 2002, 161–75) presents a critique of Rowland & Pine (Journal of Child Language 27, 2000, 157–81) and argues that the wh-question data from Adam (in Brown, A first language, Cambridge, MA, 1973) cannot be explained in terms of input frequencies as we suggest. Instead, he suggests that the data can be more successfully accounted for in terms of Role and Reference Grammar. In this note we re-examine the pattern of inversion and uninversion in Adam's wh-questions and argue that the RRG explanation cannot account for some of the developmental facts it was designed to explain.

(Received April 25 2002)
(Revised July 26 2002)


Correspondence:
c1 Address for correspondence: Caroline Rowland, Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Bedford Street South, Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK. tel: +44 (0)151 794 1120. e-mail: crowland@liverpool.ac.uk

Footnotes

1 We would like to thank Elena Lieven, Anna Theakston and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft.