In this paper we analyze, how propositional denial develops in two primary school aged learners' communication, during their first school year in Finnish school. By propositional denial we refer to certain types of standard negation (see Miestamo 2005) where the denial is tightly contextual (see Kotilainen 2007), such as in the following example:

Teacher: se on kyllä koira se ei oo susi 'that is actually a dog it is not a wolf'

Anton: but this is not koira ‘but this is not a dog'The denied proposition ("dog not wolf"-view) precedes the denying utterance that includes an opposite view ("not dog"-view).

Our focus participants are two Russian speaking students (9 and 11 years) acquiring Finnish during their first school year in Finland. We study the acquisition through scrutinizing the longitudinal development of negatives over a period of eight months, from September to April. The recorded classroom data enable describing the linear development of each participating individual.

The results show three phases in acquiring propositional negation. 1) In the initial phase, September to December, the propositional denials are translingual, constructed of English/Finnish or Russian/Finnish. 2) In the intermediate phase, from December to February, the denial is expressed in learner Finnish, with e.g. unconventional person inflection. 3) The third phase is found from March to April, where the asymmetrical Finnish negation, especially the auxiliary e- conjugated in person and number, have mostly become conventionalized.

In this presentation, examples of the aforementioned phases are displayed and discussed in detail.

References

Kotilainen, Lari. 2007. Kiellon lumo. Kieltoverbitön kieltokonstruktio ja sen kiteytyminen. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Miestamo, Matti. 2005. Standard Negation. The Negation of Declarative Verbal Main Clauses in a Typological Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.