The Acquisition of English Negation ‘No ’ and ‘Not’: Evidences from an Indonesian Child in Non-Native Parents Bilingual Program

Every child is born with an innate endowment by which (a) language(s) acquisition is possible. This view emphasizes the role of universal properties every child is born with to acquire (a) language(s). This paper presents the acquisition of English negation ‘no ’ and ‘not ’ by an Indonesian child brought up in Indonesian – English Non-native Parents Bilingual Program (NPBP). The analysis is directed to reveal the pattern of ‘no ’ and ‘not ’ use as the evidence that a child still acquires a targeted language despite the poor targeted language input s/he is exposed to. The result of the analysis shows that the acquisition of English negation ‘no ’ and ‘not ’ by an Indonesian child in Indonesian – English NPBP also has a pattern which falls into syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cases. To some extent, it supports Universal Grammar frame, but there are some which provide new insights on this issue