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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2024
Edited by Marco Bril and Kristel Doreleijers
[Nota Bene 1:2] 2024
► pp. 117–132

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

 | Utrecht University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Utrecht University.

Published online: 24 January 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nb.00008.van
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, Uli, Marie-Christine Meyer & Yatsushiro, Kazuko. 2024. The cum-sine pattern in German child language: An argument for antonym decomposition. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar 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.
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
  • References
References (18)
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