On the origins of denial negation.

These are the principal questions of this study: are the early functions of negation, such as REJECTION, and the later emerging DENIAL no developmentally related? And when do children start to deny? So far, evidence for the questions at hand has been almost exclusively observational. We decided on a simple elicitation procedure instead, asking 48 children (ages between 1;1 and 2;7) easy yes/no-questions. The most likely age range for the appearance of denial no was 1;8-2;1. Its error-free acquisition supports the continuity theory of negation development, which holds that essentials of denial no carry over from the earlier functions of no. Finally an attempt is made to account for the beginnings of denial in terms of semantics and the representational theory of child cognition.