Towards Finnish Standard Negation in Speech: A Longitudinal Case Study of a Russian L1 Child in an Introductory Class

This paper explores the development of Finnish standard negation in an 11-year-old L1 Russian-speaking childduring oral interaction in a primary school introductory class. Finnish standard negation is termed asymmetricbecause it differs from the affirmative clause in more than only the negative marker. Finnish standard negationconsists of a negative auxiliary verb (e-), inflected for person and number (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät), and a lexicalverb in a connegative form (a verb stem, tulla ‘to come’ > tule). Person is apparent in the negative auxiliary, notin the lexical verb (en tule, et tule, ei tule, emme tule, ette tule, eivät tule). Our main objective was to study how achild, whose first language expresses negation with a symmetric construction, learns an asymmetric negation ina second language. Our study was based on empirical video-recorded data from 16 lessons over a period of eightmonths. We analysed the emergence of Finnish standard negation from usage-based perspectives and used theanalytical tools of Conversation Analysis. Our results show that, in the very beginning, the child used spontaneoustranslanguaging as a communication strategy. In the middle of the school year, the participant’s use of Finnishstandard negation with the negative auxiliary developed and varied over several months. Towards the end of theschool year, the child’s Finnish negation began to become conventionalised. This longitudinal process of learningnegation revealed that the trajectory of change is gradual, individual and non-linear.