The Acquisition of Tag Questions

Abstract

DENNIS, MAUREEN; SUGAR, JUDITH; and WHITAKER, HARRY A. The Acquisition of Tag Questions. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 1254-1257. A tag is a question added to a declarative statement to indicate uncertainty or to request confirmation (e.g., Sally likes candy, doesn't she?; He is not going home, is he?). 50 normal children (10 each at 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 years of age) were tested for the ability to produce tag questions. Overall tag production improved from 6 to 8 years but not thereafter. The various tag rules-pronoun, verb, polarity, and inversion-were acquired at different ages: pronoun and verb manipulations improved over the age-range tested, but the polarity rule was mastered by only half the oldest subjects and the inversion rule was well established in half the youngest group. The data suggest that linguistic skills involving simultaneous manipulation of various surface-structure syntactic features are acquired late in language development.