Although verb-negation sequencing has been analyzed as a discrete parameter, this study reports on its variable manifestation in Moby Dick.1 Meanwhile, though contraction is an evidently optional phenomenon, it approaches near determinism in Huckleberry Finn. Thus, arguments from Zwicky and Pullum (1983)�s syntactic idiom analysis of auxiliary-negation contraction (ANcon) are used to emphasize non-modularized, a posteriori, probabilistic requirements of the acquisition process. While shortcomings of simple-minded string frequency acquisition are acknowledged (cf. Krug (1998)), proceeding from imitation to generalization would seem to require both compositional and decompositional capabilities, conditioned by phonological, lexical, syntactic class, and string frequency effects, in both ontogenic and phylogenic development.

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