THE ACQUISITION OF NEGATION IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE BY PERSIAN SPEAKERS

The Acquisition of Negation in English as a Foreign Language by Persian Speakers

In this article two accounts of the variable use of negation in English as a foreign language are examined. The Full access/Full transfer proposes that second language learners potentially have full access from their first exposure to a second language to all lexical and functional categories of first language. The Minimal Trees hypothesis claims that there will be an initial transfer from the first language into the second Language and lexical categories will be initially transferred into second language. On the contrary, there is no first language influence on functional categories. Functional categories develop in second language mental grammar on the basis of learners encountering positive input. Data from flash card task, grammatical judgment task, and oral interview task of three levels of proficiency are examined. All the tasks significantly rejected the Minimal Trees in favor of the Full Access/Full Transfer Hypothesis, as far as negation was concerned.