Development of negation in bilingual Spanish/English and monolingual English speakers.

Abstract

The present study offers an analysis of bilingual acquisition with particular emphasis on the development of negation. Of specific interest was the analysis of errors under "forced conditions" that required the child to use negative syntactic structures. The study attempted to isolate qualitative differences in these constructions cross-sectionally across age (3, 4, 5, and 6 years), with comparisons between the English constructions of Spanish/English bilinguals and those of matched monolingual English-speaking children. The three dependent measures were (a) negative-agent-verb sequence, (b) do inclusion, and (c) subject omission. The present research allowed a comprehensive testing of two contrasting theoretical positions-contrastive analysis versus the mental organization hypothesis-related to multiple language acquisition. Results were that English monolinguals scored differently than bilinguals across the three dependent variables, in English. There also was evidence that Spanish negative constructions were used in English negative constructions. Support for a partial transfer hypothesis is suggested in view of transference from Spanish to English.