caa a22 4500 469052953 CHVBK 20180323132835.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170328e19920101xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/BF01068307 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/BF01068307 Weeks Lee de Réaumurstraat 25, 6533 JS, Nijmegen, The Netherlands aut Preschoolers' production of tag questions and adherence to the polarity-contrast principle [Elektronische Daten] [Lee Weeks] In this study childrens' ability to repeat either positive-or negative-polarity tag questions was examined. An elicited imitation task (Brown, Fraser, & Bellugi, 1963; Slobin & Welsh, 1973) was used to determine whether the patterns of repetition by children with lower-level language skills differ from the patterns of repetition by children with normal language skills. It was also asked whether children always adhere to the polarity-contrast principle in their production of tag questions, as suggested by Berninger and Garvey (1982). Adherence to the polarity-contrast principle was greater for the higher-level children than the lower-level children, but very few qualitative differences in the children's responses were found. Both sets of children violated the polarity-contrast principle at times and frequently repeated contrasting tag questions as matching tag questions. This finding clearly counters Berninger and Garvey's claim that preschool children always adhere to the polarity-contrast principle and corresponds to the spontaneous speech data of Richards (1988) and Todd (1982). Preschoold children, it appears, have more than has been assumed to learn about the structure and function of English tag questions. Plenum Publishing Corporation, 1992 Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers 21/1(1992-01-01), 31-40 0090-6905 21:1<31 1992 21 10936 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01068307 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01068307 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Weeks Lee de Réaumurstraat 25, 6533 JS, Nijmegen, The Netherlands aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers 21/1(1992-01-01), 31-40 0090-6905 21:1<31 1992 21 10936 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer