NEGATION AS A MARKER OF PROFICIENCY LEVEL IN L2 FINNISH Maisa Martin CEFLING-project University of Jyväskylä

NEGATION IN FINNISH (1) Negation expressed by an auxiliary verb with an incomplete paradigm: minä puhu/nminä e/n puhu sinä puhu/tsinä e/t puhu hän puhu/uhän ei puhu me puhu/mmeme e/mme puhu te puhu/ttete e/tte puhu he puhu/vathe ei/vät puhu ’I…they speak’’I…they do not speak’

NEGATION IN FINNISH (2) Past: minä puhui/n minä e/n puhunut Perfect: minä ole/n puhunut minä e/n ole puhunut Pluperfect: minä oli/n puhunut minä e/n ollut puhunut Konditional: minä puhuisi/n minä e/n puhuisi Imperative:puhu (sg.) älä puhu puhu/kaa (pl.) äl/kää puhu/ko Variable verb stems add to complexity: minä syö/n – e/n syö ’I eat – do not eat’ minä söi/n – en syö/nyt ’I ate – did not eat’ minä lennä/n – en lennä ’I fly – do not fly’ minä lensin – en lentänyt ’I flew – did not l fly’

DATA (1) Three writing tasks: –informal message –formal message –argumentative text Adult immigrants in Finland, many L1s Test situation (National Certificates of Proficiency) Rated by trained raters of the NCP system

TASKTEXTSWORDS LEVEL A1INFORMAL15569 FORMAL10450 ARGUM TOTAL LEVEL A2INFORMAL FORMAL ARGUM TOTAL LEVEL B1INFORMAL FORMAL ARGUM TOTAL LEVEL B2INFORMAL FORMAL ARGUM TOTAL LEVEL C1INFORMAL9486 FORMAL ARGUM TOTAL LEVEL C2INFORMAL4329 FORMAL ARGUM TOTAL TOTAL TASKTEXTSWORDS DATA (2)

DEMfad MODEL (Franceschina et al. 2006) D EM f a d D = Domain E = Emergence M = Mastery f = frequency a = accuracy d = distribution

APPLIED TO NEGATION… Domain: Negation Emergence: A1 Mastery: C2 frequency: per 1000 words accuracy: target like form distribution: by tense and mode by error type

FREQUENCY & ACCURACY

DISTRIBUTION BY TENSE AND MODE (CORRECT)

DISTRIBUTION OF ERRORS errors of the auxiliary or non-inflection: 25, nearly all at level A1 – B1 errors of the main verb inflection: 106, levels A1 – C1, concentrate on A2 ja B1. examples: –ei toimii (pro toimi) kunnolla ’does not function properly’ –he eivät teke (pro tee) ’they do not do’

CONCLUSIONS Results are in accordance with those found earlier in experimental data (Honkimäki & Kulta 2006): –error rate declines as communicative level increases –most common error type is the personal form instead of the stem form of the main verb –complexity of construction and morphophonological type of the verb reduce accuracy

REFERENCES Franceschina, F. & Alanen, R. & Huhta, A & Martin, M 2006: Presentation at SLATE Workshop, Amsterdam, 1 December 2006 Honkimäki, A. & Kulta, A. 2006: Suomi toisena ja vieraana kielenä – negaation oppimisesta (’Learning negation in L2 Finnish’). MA thesis. University of Jyväskylä.