The acquisition of negation in French L2: a longitudinal study

The study investigates the acquisition of negative particles in French L2 by two Spanish learners. The data come from the “Second Language Acquisition by Adult Immigrants Project” financed by the European Science Foundation (1982/1988; cf. C. Perdue, 1993, Adult Language Acquisition: Crosslinguistic Perspectives, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). In particular, the work shall argue against some current views on the acquisition of verbal negation by Spanish learners of French L2 (cf. J. Meisel, 1996, “The acquisition of the syntax of negation in French and German: contrasting first and second language development”, Second Language Research 13(3): 374-385) showing that the informants tend to acquire French verbal negation as a preverbal continuous negation. The study will also show that, in the prebasic phase, Spanish learners alternate non-anaphoric structures of the type Neg+X / X+Neg, thereby confirming the path of acquisition put forward by G. Bernini 1996 (“Stadi di sviluppo della sintassi e della morfologia della negazione in italiano L2”, Linguistica e Filologia 3: 7-33).