It must be pointed out that this very early example of NPI-meer is rather on its own. Although there are some more early examples with NPI-meer in the corpus, these are most probably echoic, since they are nearly exact copies of immediately preceding adult speech. This is in particular clear in example i, where deictic reference is not maintained. I in the adult's utterance is not appropriately replaced by you in the child's utterance.
| i | adult: |
nou, dat weet ik niet meer. well, I don't know anymore. |
| child: |
weet ik niet meer. (1;10.24) I don't know anymore. | |
| ii | adult: |
hij doet het niet meer. it doesn't work anymore. |
| child: |
doet niet meer. doet niet meer. (2;01.12) doesn't work anymore. doesn't work anymore. |
Independent child utterances with NPI-meer start to occur more regularly from the age of about 2;04.
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