Negation Children learn the functions of negation very early. That is, they learn to comment on the disappearance of objects, to refuse a suggestion, or to reject an assertion, even at the single word stage. However, as Lois Bloom's(1991) longitudinal studies show, even though children understand these func- tions and express them with single words and gestures, it takes some time before they can express them in sentences, using the appropriate words and word order. The following stages in the development of negation have been observed in the acquisition of English. Similar stages have been observed in other languages as well(Wode 1981).