J. Child Lang. (), –. # Cambridge University Press

DOI: .}S Printed in the United Kingdom

NOTE

The development of subject–auxiliary inversion in

English wh-questions: an alternative analysis*

ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR.

University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

(Received May . Revised May )

Rowland & Pine () present an analysis of the development of

subject–auxiliary inversion in wh-questions in the speech of Adam from

the Brown corpus. They show that there is an uninversion period in

which the child fails to invert the subject and auxiliary in wh-questions,

and they argue that this is a function of the frequency of wh-

word­auxiliary collocations in the input: the more frequent a particular

collocation is in the input, the more likely it is to be inverted in the

child’s speech. In this note an alternative analysis is proposed: the initial

position of the tensed auxiliary signals interrogative illocutionary force,

and the auxiliaries which are most reliably inverted are those that are

overtly tensed morphologically. This analysis not only accounts for

Rowland & Pine’s data but also extends to inversion in yes–no questions.

The analysis predicts three different patterns for the development of

inversion in both types of questions, and it is shown that all three are

attested.

Wh-questions have been a significant topic in syntactic theory and the study

of language acquisition since the advent of the generative era, and English-

style wh-questions with the wh-word displaced at the beginning of the clause

have been particularly important. An important feature of English wh-

questions is the inversion of the subject and auxiliary verb in non-subject

questions. When children learning English begin to produce wh-questions,

[*] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the th Annual Meeting of the Chicago

Linguistic Society. I would like to thank Jeri Jaeger, Jean-Pierre Koenig and two

anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft. Address for correspondence:

Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., Department of Linguistics, , Baldy Hall, University at

Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA. e-mail : vanvalin!acsu.buffalo.edu

the general pattern is the following. First, they produce auxiliary-less

questions with an initial wh-word, e.g. what you doing?, and then when

auxiliary elements start to occur, they appear in both inverted, e.g. what are

you doing?, and non-inverted forms, e.g. what he can do? Rowland & Pine

() present an analysis of the development of subject–auxiliary inversion

in one child, Adam from the Brown corpus. The data are summarized in

Figure , from Rowland & Pine ().

wh-questions uninverted (%)

wh-questions with missingauxiliaries (%)

wh-questions inverted (%)100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

1(1–

6)

2(7–

12)

3(13

–18)

4(19

–24)

5(25

–30)

6(31

–36)

7(37

–42)

8(43

–48)

9(49

–55)

Data point (transcript number)

Tota

l num

ber

wh–

ques

tion

s (%

)

Fig. . Data from Rowland & Pine ().

The data are from one-hour transcripts of Adam from age ;. (MLU

.) to ;. (MLU .). Each data point contains the data from six or

seven consecutive transcripts.

There are several interesting features of the data. When auxiliaries first

begin to occur, they are more likely to be inverted than not (data points and

). Beginning with data point , however, the percentage begins to decline,

and at data point , the percentage of non-inverted questions exceeds the

percentage of inverted questions. At data point , there is a dramatic rise in

inverted questions and a sharp decline in auxiliary-less questions, and from

data point on the percentage of inverted questions steadily increases while

the percentages of auxiliary-less and non-inverted questions declines. Row-

land & Pine characterize the interval summarized in data points – as the

‘uninversion period’, and it is the focus of their analysis. There are two major

shifts in the data between data points and : () the uninversion period

ends, and () the percentage of inverted questions is greater than that of

auxiliary-less questions for the first time. By the end of data point , Adam

is for the first time producing more wh-questions with auxiliaries than

without and is inverting them the vast majority of the time. Something major

has happened in his grammar concerning wh-questions: how can this be

described and explained theoretically? In this paper the analysis proposed in

Rowland & Pine will be reviewed, and then an alternative account in terms

of (Van Valin, , Van Valin & LaPolla,

) will be given; it will be argued that it provides a principled explanation

for the data in Figure .

Rowland & Pine’s account in terms of input frequencies

Rowland & Pine argue against the rule-based analyses of de Villiers ()

and Valian, Lasser & Mandelbaum () and propose that during the initial

phase of wh-question acquisition, the child’s grammar consists of a limited

number of simple construction-like lexical formulas consisting of a particular

wh-word and specific auxiliaries:

Correctly inverted wh-questions will be produced when the child has

learnt a wh-word­auxiliary marker around which to base his}her question

frame. Uninversion errors will only occur when the child has not learnt the

particular wh-word­auxiliary marker around which to base the question

s}he wishes to ask. (Rowland & Pine : ).

In other words, the child learns to invert an auxiliary only in combination

with a specific wh-word. No general rule of any kind has been learned. The

motivation for analysing the data in terms of wh-word­auxiliary collocations

is that during this period the distribution of wh-words and different

auxiliaries in inverted and non-inverted wh-questions is far from random:

some combinations, e.g. what are, always appear in inverted questions, while

others, e.g. why don’t, never appear inverted. Only three combinations occur

in both inverted and non-inverted forms (how can, what ’is and why is) ;

otherwise each of the other combinations occurs either consistently inverted

or consistently non-inverted. Except for who, which only occurs in inverted

questions, the wh-words occur in both types of question.

The main prediction Rowland & Pine make is that the wh-word­auxiliary

pairs that the child uses will be those for which there are sufficient examples

in the input. In other words, the child will learn and use those that are well

documented in the caregiver input. Those wh-word­auxiliary combinations

which are of low frequency in the input will not be inverted by the child. For

example, their explanation for the strong tendency for why questions to be

non-inverted is low frequency in the input.

An analysis in terms of input frequencies appears to be problematic. As

reported in Rowland & Pine’s Table , some non-inverted combinations

occur much more frequently in the input sample than many of the inverted

combinations. What is striking is that the combination why don’t occurs

times in the input sample, the same number as where did and more than all

of the others listed in the inverted wh­aux column in Table except for

what are and what do, and yet it occurs non-inverted % of the time, while

all of the combinations in the inverted wh­aux column occur inverted %

of the time. In addition, the top combinations of wh­auxiliary in the

inverted column are inverted % of the time in Table , but they have an

input frequency of %; that is, they are unattested in the input sample.

Similarly, the top combinations of wh­auxiliary in the uninverted

wh­aux column appear non-inverted % of the time in Table , but they

too have an input frequency of %; that is, they are unattested in the input

sample. While the input data are only a sample, if they are at all representative

of the overall pattern, then it is very difficult to see how the low input

frequency of the top combinations in the inverted wh­aux column

explains why they are consistently inverted, while the same low input

frequency of the top combinations in the uninverted wh­aux column

explains why they are consistently not inverted. Thus, Rowland & Pine’s

analysis can describe the pattern of inverted and non-inverted wh-questions,

but it leaves the pattern of data in Figure and Rowland & Pine’s Table

unexplained.

A Role and Reference Grammar account

Role and Reference Grammar [RRG] takes a rather different perspective on

these data, and an RRG analysis offers a principled account of the pattern of

inverted and non-inverted wh-questions in Figure . By way of background,

RRG is a monostratal syntactic theory that posits a direct linking between the

syntactic and semantic representations of a sentence, as summarized in

Figure .

Since each sentence is given only a single syntactic representation, there

are no syntactic rules of the traditional transformational type or the more

recent ‘move α ’ type allowed in the theory. The syntactic representation is

LinkingAlgorithm

Fig. . General organization of Role and Reference Grammar.

not based on X-bar principles; simplified representations of English clause

types relevant to this discussion are given in Figure .

The core of the clause contains the predicate, typically a verb, together

with its semantic arguments, as in (a) and (d). Operators like tense and

illocutionary force [IF] are represented in a separate projection, with linear

precedence statements governing the elements in the two projections. A wh-

element, regardless of whether it is semantically an argument of the predicate

or not, appears in the pre-core slot [PrCS] in wh-questions in languages like

English, as in (b) and (c). In the RRG analysis of English-style wh-questions,

the wh-word is mapped directly from the semantic representation to the

PrCS; note the lack of an empty NP position in the core corresponding to the

wh-word in (b) and (c).

The key to the RRG account of the data in Figure is its analysis of IF

marking in English, which is presented in ()."

() Illocutionary force in English is signalled by the position of the tense-

bearing morpheme:

a. In declarative utterances, tense appears core-internally.

b. In interrogative utterances, tense appears core-initially.

The placement of tense in declarative utterances is illustrated in (a) in Figure

, while its placement in interrogative utterances is exemplified in (b)–(d) in

Figure . In the subject wh-question in (c), the occurrence of the subject NP

in the PrCS has as an automatic consequence the occurrence of the tense-

bearing element in core-initial position; hence there is no inversion in subject

questions. In non-subject wh-questions and yes–no questions, on the other

hand, the tense-bearing morpheme must occur before the initial NP in the

core, in order to signal interrogative IF, as in (b) and (d). This is why the

[] While this formulation is unique to RRG, the idea of correlating the position of the tense

marker and the signalling of IF could be expressed in other syntactic theories as well.

(a) (b)

(c) (d )

Fig. . RRG syntactic representations (simplified).

tense morpheme in the sentence is linked to both the tense and IF operators

in the operator projection of these clauses.#

In terms of the acquisition issues we are concerned with, the child must

learn to place wh-words at the beginning of the clause in the PrCS,

[] For an RRG analysis of the English auxiliary system, see Foley & Van Valin (), §.,

also Van Valin & LaPolla (), §...

something for which there is plenty of evidence in the input, and must also

learn the correct placement of the tense-bearing element in order to signal

IF. A crucial precondition for getting this right is recognizing that a verbal

element carries tense. Auxiliaries like is, does, did, has and had, despite being

morphologically irregular, are clearly tensed, as they enter into clear-cut

tense oppositions, e.g. do}does vs. did, am}are}is vs. was}were, have}has vs.

had. Despite their irregularity, is, does and has all end in the present tense

-s, while did and had end in the past tense -d. But it is not so obvious to the

child that modals like can, could, shall, will, may and might are tensed. Based

on the RRG account of IF marking in English and the tense properties of the

auxiliaries, the following prediction can be made:

() In wh-questions, children will initially place only those auxiliaries

which are explicitly tensed in core-initial position.

This predicts that is, are, was, do, does, did, have, has and had should occur

in core-initial position, i.e. in inverted questions, while can, could, may,

might, shall, should and will should not appear core-initially, i.e. they should

occur non-inverted, during the initial phase of the development of inversion.

There is a further prediction regarding the negative auxiliaries can’t,

couldn’t, didn’t, don’t, doesn’t and won’t : because they end in -n’t, which does

not signal tense, the negative auxiliaries will be not be analysed as tensed;

recall Slobin’s () Operating Principle A: ‘Pay attention to the ends of

words’. Therefore they should not be inverted during this period. This is

stated in ().

() Negative auxiliaries will not be inverted during the initial phase of the

development of inversion.

The inversion pattern of all of the auxiliaries in the uninversion period are

given in Rowland & Pine’s Table , and the results are summarized in Table

.

. Summary of inversion patterns from Rowland & Pine (����),

Table �

Auxiliary types No. % inverted}total Percent % inverted

Tensed } Modals } Negative }

Auxiliary tokens No. inverted}total Percent inverted

Tensed } Modals } Negative }

These results bear out the predictions in () and (), which are based on

(l), to a striking degree. There are twelve types of wh­tensed auxiliary

combinations, and eight (%) occur inverted % of the time. There are

seven types of wh­modal combinations, and only one (%) appears

inverted % of the time. Finally, there are six types of wh­negative

combinations, and none (%) of them are inverted; this group includes all

auxiliary combinations with a negative element, regardless of whether the

other element is a tensed auxiliary or a modal. The results are even more

striking when the actual wh­auxiliary tokens are examined. There are

wh­auxiliary combinations, and the predictions derived from the RRG

principle in () are correct for (%) of them; there are only twelve

exceptions. When the two unambiguous groups, tensed vs. negative, are

contrasted, the prediction is strongly confirmed: % of the tensed auxi-

liaries occur inverted, while none of the negative auxiliaries (%) occur

inverted. The prediction regarding modal auxiliaries is also supported, as

% of these auxiliaries occur in non-inverted wh-questions.

The exceptions are very revealing. They are summarized in Table .

. Summary of exceptions to (�) in Table �

Modals : inverted Tensed: non-inverted

how can () what ’is ()

how could () why is ()

where could () why ’is ()

where shall () why did ()

why ’has ()

Let us look at the unexpected inversions first. The key factor in inversion

is being a tensed word, and obviously not all verbs in English carry -s and

-d to signal tense. One of the defining characteristics of modal verbs is that

they are not inflected the way non-modal verbs are, but nevertheless they

have a tense value. Since this is not indicated morphologically in the regular

way, it should take children some time to learn that they are in fact tensed.

Modals may be divided into two groups with respect to their tense value. The

first group consists of can and could, which can enter into a true tense

opposition when used deontically, i.e. I can do it now (¯ I am able) vs. I could

do it when I was younger (¯ I was able). They are the only modals with this

property. The second group would include will, shall, should, would, may and

might, which do not enter into the same kind of tense opposition. Given the

importance of tense marking for inversion, we may formulate the following

‘tensedness’ hierarchy for modals:

() can, could"will, would, shall, should, may, might

With respect to (), this hierarchy predicts that the first modals to appear

inverted will be can and could, with the members of the second group

appearing inverted later. The correctness of this prediction cannot be

determined from the data in Rowland & Pine, since they do not give the order

in which the individual wh­auxiliary combinations first appear in Adam’s

speech, but it is supported by the fact that four of the five examples of

unexpected inversion involve can and could, with the other one involving

shall.$ It appears that Adam has begun to analyse can and could as being

tensed during the uninversion period.

The other seven exceptions are all instances in which an explicitly tensed

auxiliary is not inverted, and in six of the seven cases the wh-word is why. It

has long been noted that why questions resist inversion more than those with

other wh-words (Brown, Cazden & Bellugi, , Bellugi, , Labov &

Labov, , Bloom, ). Of the why questions in the data, are non-

inverted, and all three of the inverted ones involve tensed auxiliaries. While

an in-depth analysis of why questions is beyond the scope of this paper, two

points deserve mention. First, there is another interrogative expression, how

come, which is semantically similar to why and which does not trigger

inversion, as illustrated in ().

() a. How come Sally left the party early?

b. Why did Sally leave the party early?

It is possible that children are exposed to questions asking for explanation in

which inversion does not occur. Second, and probably more important,

unlike other wh-words, why is adsentential in nature, rather than being either

a request for an argument like who or what or a verbal modifier like how. Why

by itself following a statement can constitute a felicitous questions with the

meaning ‘why [previous sentence]?’, as illustrated in ().

() Adult : Mommy went to the store.

Child: Why? (Interpretation¯why [Mommy went to the store]?)

Adult : Mommy went to the store, because she needs to get some food

for dinner.

Unlike who, what or how questions, the answers to which involve some

change in the original sentence, the answer to a why question would normally

be a because-clause which is added to the unchanged original sentence.

Hence, it is entirely plausible that children expand simple Why? utterances

by appending the sentence related to it, in particular the previous speaker’s

sentence as in (). Note that such a simple collocation would be impossible

[] It is perhaps not surprising that the other inverted modal is shall, since it, along with will,

can be used to express what is in effect a periphrastic future tense in English. They enter

into temporal oppositions, e.g. I shall}will play vs. I played, whereas the other modals in

their group do not. Hence even though they are not morphologically tensed, they do enter

into tense-like oppositions.

with argument wh-words and much more restricted with other adjunct wh-

words. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that it is not an accident that six of

the seven unpredicted non-inversions involve why and that it is the primary

factor in the lack of inversion with the tensed auxiliaries in Table .

Thus, of the twelve exceptions, four out of the five (if not all) of the

unexpected inversions can be explained in terms of the likelihood of a tense

interpretation for the modals in question, and six of the seven unexpected

non-inversions seem to be attributable to properties of the wh-word, why. It

appears, then, that RRG can provide a principled account of the inversions

and non-inversions in Table .

The Rowland & Pine analysis in terms of input frequencies entails the

claim that if the input frequencies had been different, then the inversion

pattern would be different. Furthermore, if different children are exposed to

different input frequencies, then the inversion pattern with each of them

should be correspondingly different. The RRG analysis makes a much

stronger prediction: regardless of input frequencies, the pattern in Table

should show up, because it follows from the analysis of the role of tense in

signalling IF in (). The RRG analysis invokes general principles from a

syntactic theory and does not tie the major claims to specific lexical items, as

in the Rowland & Pine account. From the RRG perspective, the child has

learned a general rule, namely (l), albeit one which is very different from the

movement rules posited by de Villiers () and Valian et al. ().

Another difference between the RRG proposal and Rowland & Pine’s is

that it readily makes predictions about inversion in yes–no questions. The

principle in () applies to both wh- and yes–no questions, and the predictions

in () regarding the priority of tensed auxiliaries for inversion and ()

regarding the non-inversion of negative auxiliaries can be extended naturally

to include yes–no questions. That is, as inversion develops in yes–no

questions, the first auxiliaries to be inverted should be those that are tensed,

negative auxiliaries should not invert, and among modal verbs, the first to be

inverted should be those highest on the tensedness hierarchy for modal verbs

in (). The summary of the development of auxiliaries in questions in the

children in the Brown corpus presented in Cazden () supports these

claims, but the data are not nearly as detailed as those presented in Rowland

& Pine for Adam. Another prediction is that children will not invert negative

auxiliaries, in either type of question, until they are able to analyse them

morphologically and recognize that there is a tensed verb before the negative

morpheme. Erreich () supports this prediction; in her study of inversion

in both yes–no and wh-questions, none of the questions with a negative

auxiliary of either type was inverted. However, it is not clear how one could

extend the Rowland & Pine account to inversion in yes–no questions, since

it is concerned specifically with wh­auxiliary combinations and not with

inversion as an independent phenomenon.

A fundamental issue which must be addressed regarding the data in Figure

is, why is there an uninversion period in the first place? And why, if the

child uses and inverts auxiliaries, is there a sudden dramatic increase in their

use seemingly all at once? The pattern in Figure is not like that of

overregularization; rather, it is the opposite. At data points and , most of

the child’s wh-questions with an auxiliary are inverted. Note, however, that

this is a small fraction of the total number of wh-questions. At data point

the percentage of inverted wh-questions has actually declined, and while it

increases again at data point , it is still smaller than the percentage of non-

inverted questions. Then at data point there is a dramatic increase in the

percentage of inverted wh-questions, with a corresponding decline in the

percentage of auxiliary-less questions. By data point and then from there

on wh-questions with inverted auxiliaries occur more often than the other

two types. The situation is rather curious: the child (Adam) begins to

produce wh-questions with inversion, and then goes through a period during

which he produces more questions without inversion than with inversion. A

comparison with the well-known cases of overregularization involving the

past tense and plural is instructive: in those cases, the child learns a rule and

overapplies it, whereas in this case the child seems to be learning some kind

of inversion rule and then applying it. What makes this pattern even

more puzzling is the fact that there was a period in Adam’s development

when he, along with the other children in the Brown corpus, was inverting

yes–no questions but not wh-questions (Cazden, ). Hence even at data

point he was capable of producing yes–no questions with auxiliary

inversion. What explanation could there be for this behaviour? Why would

he not invert the subject and auxiliary in wh-questions at a time he was

producing inverted yes–no questions and then, after starting to invert the

subject and auxiliary in wh-questions, why would he continue to do it but

only in a limited way?

To find an answer it is necessary to go back to () and its motivation. It

concerns the overt morphosyntactic marking of IF in English. In children’s

earliest yes–no questions, IF is signalled solely by prosody, and then later

core-initial tense develops as the morphosyntactic indicator of IF. The

situation is different for wh-questions; there are two possible morphosyntac-

tic signals of interrogative IF: inversion and the wh-word in the PrCS. It

would not be unreasonable for a child to conclude that the wh-word is the

morphosyntactic indicator of IF in wh-questions. Let us imagine three

hypothetical children and examine their possible developmental patterns

with respect to the application of the principles in () to wh- and yes–no

questions. The first one, Child A, treats (b) as applying to both types of

questions, which is a reasonable conjecture, given that core-initial tense is a

feature of both types of questions. The second one, Child B, treats (b) as

applying to yes–no questions only and treats the wh-word as the indicator of

IF in wh-questions. The third, Child C treats (b) as applying to wh-

questions only and treats prosody as the indicator of IF in yes–no questions.

The profiles of the three hypothetical children are summarized in Table .

. Profiles of hypothetical learners

(b) applies to: IF indicator for Y}N Qs IF indicator for wh-Qs

Child A Both types Inversion Inversion}wh-word

Child B Yes–no questions only Inversion wh-word}Inversion

Child C wh-questions only Prosody Inversion}wh-word

Child A should show inversion to some degree in both types of questions,

and development should follow the predictions in ()–(). In wh-questions in

which inversion does not occur, the wh-word serves to signal IF. Hence for

this child, inversion is the primary indicator, with the wh-word as a back-up.

Child B, on the other hand, should show inversion only in yes–no questions

and not in wh-questions initially; development should follow the predictions

in ()–(), as they apply to yes–no questions. Eventually, s}he would figure

out that inversion in wh-questions signals interrogative IF, but given the

child’s analysis of the wh-word as the interrogative IF indicator, inversion is

redundant. Because it is redundant, there is no strong motivation for

employing it. Indeed, because Child B has analysed inversion as redundant,

s}he may use it less, even as s}he learns more auxiliary verbs. As inversion

develops in wh-questions, it would follow the predictions in ()–(). At some

point, however, Child B will encounter evidence that an initial wh-word does

not signal interrogative IF; the evidence could come in the form of a sentence

like ().

() What Fido did on the rug was bad.

This sentence is a statement, not a question, and therefore the initial wh-

word in this sentence cannot be interpreted as an IF indicator. Now Child B

is forced to conclude that inversion is not a secondary feature of wh-

questions, but rather that it is, as in yes–no questions, the primary

morphosyntactic signal of interrogative IF. At this point the use of inversion

in wh-questions should increase dramatically, as Child B’s grammar is now

the same as Child A’s in this respect. Child C should show inversion only in

wh-questions and not in yes–no questions initially; development should

follow the predictions in (), () and (). Eventually, s}he would discover that

there is a morphosyntactic indicator of IF in yes–no questions, namely

inversion, and s}he would then begin to invert in yes–no questions as well.

How do the hypothetical Child A, Child B and Child C compare with real

children learning English? Child A shows the same general pattern as the

children discussed in Ingram & Tyack () : they showed inversion in both

yes–no and wh-questions from the start. Child B, on the other hand, restricts

inversion to yes–no questions only during the initial phase and shows the

same general pattern as the children discussed in Kuczaj & Maratsos ()

and Labov & Labov () and the children in the Brown corpus, one of

whom is of course Adam, whose wh-question production is summarized in

Figure and Table . The developmental sequence for Child B outlined

above matches very closely the pattern of Adam’s use of auxiliaries in Figure

: an initial period of no inversion in wh-questions in which the child takes

the wh-word as the morphosyntactic marker of interrogative IF (data point

l), followed by a period in which as more auxiliaries are used, the actual

percentage of inverted auxiliaries rises and then declines, as the child

analyses inversion as a redundant cue to IF (data points –), which is then

followed by a sudden and rapid increase in the occurrence of inversion, as the

child comes to realize that inversion does mark interrogative IF in both

yes–no and wh-questions (data points and ), leading quickly to a stage in

which inverted wh-questions constitute the majority of wh-questions (data

points and ).

Children like Child C do exist. Five of the subjects in the study reported

in Erreich () showed the Child C pattern: they used prosody to signal IF

in yes–no questions and had some degree of inversion in their wh-questions.%

It is impossible to tell from the data reported in the study whether the pattern

development of these children follow the predictions in ()–().

Thus, starting from (), the RRG analysis of morphosyntactic IF marking

in English, we have arrived at an explanatory account of not only the inverted

and non-inverted wh-word­auxiliary combinations in Table but also of

the general pattern of the acquisition of inversion in wh-questions in Figure

. Moreover, we have predicted possible patterns of the development of

inversion which are attested in the literature on the acquisition of both wh-

and yes–no questions.

In examining the pattern of development of auxiliary inversion in wh-

questions, we have seen how plausible but ultimately incorrect hypotheses on

the part of the language learner can lead to striking consequences. Because of

their assumption that (b) applies only to yes–no questions and that the wh-

word signals interrogative IF in a wh-question, children like Child B, e.g.

Adam and the other children in the Brown corpus, go through a period in

which they exhibit subject–auxiliary inversion with yes–no but not wh-

questions, and this also plausibly leads to the ‘uninversion period’ discussed

[] Anna, a child studied by J. Jaeger, also follows the Child C pattern (personal com-

munication).

by Rowland & Pine. Children who assume that (b) applies to both types of

questions from the start will exhibit inversion in both types of questions;

they are like Child A, e.g. the children discussed in Ingram & Tyack ().

Finally, children who assume that (b) applies only to wh-questions will use

prosody to indicate IF in yes–no questions and use inversion only in wh-

questions, e.g. some of the children discussed in Erreich (). It seems

implausible that these differences could be due solely to different input

frequencies of wh­auxiliary combinations in the language to which the

different groups of children were exposed, as Rowland & Pine maintain.

The study of complex phenomena like the acquisition of syntax requires a

well-defined linguistic theory to characterize the form and content of the

linguistic knowledge to be acquired. Rowland & Pine analyse Adam’s data

without reference to any linguistic theory, and attempt to account for the data

in terms of input frequencies alone. RRG has provided a lens which directs

attention to the crucial importance of the position of tense in signalling IF,

and this turns out, as we have seen, to provide the basis for an explanation

of the inversion data. One of the anonymous reviewers situated this

discussion in the context of the ‘grammar-based’ vs. ‘ input-based’ debate

regarding acquisition. RRG maintains that children construct a grammar on

the basis of their general cognitive endowment (not an autonomous LAD)

plus the data in the speech to which they are exposed.& Hence from this

perspective, the contributions of both the input and grammatical theory are

crucial to understanding language acquisition, since children start from the

input to create a grammar and a grammatical theory like RRG characterizes

what the child creates, thereby pointing to the relevant features of the input,

predicting the course of development, and ultimately providing an ex-

planatory framework for the analysis of the acquisition of syntax.

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