Positive evidence for negative evidence

Abstract

The topic of 'negative evidence', i.e., of linguistic corrections, is focused upon. Its denial in the recent literature is briefly documented and various dimensions of this denial are specified. After a brief historical survey of research on adult corrections of children's speech, verbatim evidence of maternal corrective feedback is presented for the following categories of filial mistakes: Nouns and Labels, Verbs, Determiners, Prepositions, Bound Morphemes, and Syntax. It is also argued and demonstrated that most 'expansions' involve grammatical corrections and that expanding corrections predominate by far during the early developmental period. Finally, diverse aspects of corrections, their generality, and their effect upon language acquisition are discussed from epistemological and methodological perspectives.