ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the very simple question of whether young English-speaking children produce any ungrammatical yes/no-question for building on recent minimalist analysis of subject-auxiliary inversion in simple interrogatives. If structure dependence in the formation of simple and complex yes/no questions in English reflect the properties of genetic endowment associated with our language faculty, it is expected that English-speaking children adhere to structure dependence from the earliest observable stages. In order to determine whether this expectation can indeed be borne out, Crain and Nakayama conducted an experiment on children's knowledge of the subject-auxiliary inversion involved in complex yes/no questions. If this analysis of subject-auxiliary inversion in simple yes/no questions is on the right track, then the data from child English reported in this study provide support for the view that the subject noun phrase originates and comes from inside the verb phrase even in the earliest observable stages of syntactic development.
