Towards Finnish Standard Negation in Speech: A Longitudinal Case Study of a Russian L1 Child in an Introductory Class
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper explores the development of Finnish standard negation in an 11-year-old L1 Russian-speaking child during oral interaction in a primary school introductory class. Finnish standard negation is termed asymmetric because it differs from the affirmative clause in more than only the negative marker. Finnish standard negation consists of a negative auxiliary verb (e-), inflected for person and number (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät), and a lexical verb in a connegative form (a verb stem, tulla ‘to come’ > tule). Person is apparent in the negative auxiliary, not in the lexical verb (en tule, et tule, ei tule, emme tule, ette tule, eivät tule). Our main objective was to study how a child, whose first language expresses negation with a symmetric construction, learns an asymmetric negation in a second language. Our study was based on empirical video-recorded data from 16 lessons over a period of eight months. We analysed the emergence of Finnish standard negation from usage-based perspectives and used the analytical tools of Conversation Analysis. Our results show that, in the very beginning, the child used spontaneous translanguaging as a communication strategy. In the middle of the school year, the participant’s use of Finnish standard negation with the negative auxiliary developed and varied over several months. Towards the end of the school year, the child’s Finnish negation began to become conventionalised. This longitudinal process of learning negation revealed that the trajectory of change is gradual, individual and non-linear.
Source: Nordand
Institutions: University of Helsinki, Linnaeus University
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4411210960