In language acquisition, negative evidence is information concerning what is not possible in a language. Importantly, negative evidence does not show what is grammatical; that is positive evidence. In theory, negative evidence would help eliminate ungrammatical constructions by revealing what is not grammatical. Direct negative evidence refers to comments made by an adult language-user in response to a learner's ungrammatical utterance. Indirect negative evidence refers to the absence of ungrammatical sentences in the language that the child is exposed to. There is debate among linguists and psychologists about whether negative evidence can help children determine the grammar of their language. Negative evidence, if it is used, could help children rule out ungrammatical constructions in their language.
Direct negative evidence Direct negative evidence in language acquisition consists of utterances that indicate whether a construction in a language is ungrammatical. Direct negative evidence differs from indirect negative evidence because it is explicitly presented to a language learner (e.g. a child might be corrected by a parent). Direct negative evidence can be further divided into explicit and implicit forms. On the other hand, indirect negative evidence is used to determine ungrammatical constructions in a language by noticing the absence of such constructions.
Explicit direct negative evidence A corpus study found that explicit negative evidence was "very rare", and concluded that because parents do not reliably correct their children's grammatical errors, explicit negative evidence does not facilitate language learning. Psychologist David McNeill argues that when parents correct children explicitly, the correction is unlikely to be helpful in learning grammar because it is a single correction that will most likely not be repeated, and therefore a child might not remember or even notice the correction. This is demonstrated in the following exchange between a parent and child, which McNeill recorded: Child: Nobody don't like me. Mother: No, say, "nobody likes me." Child: Nobody don't like me. [This exchange is repeated several times] Mother: No, now listen carefully. Say, "Nobody likes me." Child: Oh! Nobody don't likes me.As this conversation reveals, children are seemingly unable to detect differences between their ungrammatical sentences and the grammatical sentences that their parents produce. Therefore, children typically cannot use explicit negative evidence to learn that an aspect of grammar, such as using double negatives in English, is ungrammatical. This example also shows that children can make incorrect generalizations about which grammatical principle a parent corrects, suggesting that there must be something other than explicit feedback which drives children to arrive at a correct grammar.
Implicit direct negative evidence
In the input Implicit direct negative evidence occurs when a parent responds to a child's ungrammatical utterance in a way that indicates that the utterance was not grammatical. This differs from explicit direct negative evidence because the parent merely implies that the child's utterance is ungrammatical, while explicit direct negative evidence involves a parent unambiguously telling a child that a sentence they produced is ungrammatical. There are several types of implicit direct negative evidence which parents utilize in responses to children's ungrammatical utterances. These forms include: repetitions, recasts, expansions, and requests for clarification. Repetitions occur when a parent repeats a child's utterance word for word, whereas recasts occur when a parent repeats a child's utterance while correcting the ungrammatical part of the sentence. Expansions are similar to recasts because they are potentially corrective utterances, but in expansions a parent also will lengthen the child's original utterance. Requests for clarification occur when a parent asks a question that can prompt a child to fix an ungrammatical sentence they previously said. Generally speaking, there is consensus that implicit direct negative evidence exists in the input, though there is debate about whether children can use implicit direct negative evidence to learn the grammar of their language. It is argued that parents frequently reformulate children's ungrammatical utterances.
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