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Article In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2024
Edited by Marco Bril and Kristel Doreleijers
[Nota Bene 1:2] 2024
► pp. 119–135

Met zonder jas and other antonym errors in the spontaneous speech of Dutch children

| Utrecht University
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 (2023) 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.
Keywords: antonym errors acquisition, CHILDES, <±polar> antonym pairs, absolute met-construction, dimensional adjectives
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: <±polar> antonym pairs
  • 2.Evidence of antonym decomposition in child language?
    • 2.1The case of met zonder/mit ohne: The absolute construction
    • 2.2The case of dimensional adjectives
  • 3.Other antonym errors in child Dutch
    • 3.1Antonym errors with the motion verbs gaan/komen
    • 3.2Antonym errors with the temporal adverbs vorig(e)/volgend(e)
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • References
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References (18)
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