Chapter 5. Answers as a window into the interpretation of questions

In the previous chapter, I reported that children sometimes fail to give the right affrmative answer when the question has a cleft or the focus marker s only in preverbal position. Children give a verbal answer to these questions instead of the required sim yes or SER be answers. At that point, the discussion was left open as to whether the problem was children's comprehension of the structure of a verbal answer or their comprehension of the question. is chapter presents the results of a small experiment designed to obtain an answer to this particular question.