Additive particles and scope marking in child German

Abstract

Focus particles are rather complex linguistic items; despite their complexity focus particles appear very early in child German. This chapter investigates the use of the additive focus particles auch also and noch still, also in the natural child production data of a monolingual German girl in order to determine how children mark the relation between the particle and its domain of application. The results show that the child use of the two particles is very adult-like and that the child clearly distinguishes between the two particles. © 2006 Springer.