Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

26.2.2026 [zoom]
Eleanor Sand (Urbana-Champaign): Negative Concord in L2 Russian and English

This study examines second language (L2) acquisition of Negative Concord (NC) and Double Negation (DN). Recent experimental work has found native speakers of (Standard American) English – a DN language – to possess a latent Non-Strict NC grammar. Despite not producing such structures, native speakers are predisposed to interpret double negatives with negative objects as single negation (e.g., ‘He didn’t eat nothing’ = ‘He ate nothing’) and double negatives with negative subjects as double negation (e.g., ‘No one didn’t eat food’ = ‘Everyone ate food’) (Blanchette 2017; Blanchette & Lukyanenko 2019). Previous work has found first language (L1) transfer effects in L2 acquisition of Negative Concord Items, Polarity Items, and negation. However, no study has explored how a latent NC grammar may affect L2 acquisition of NC (Alexandrino 2010; Seaman et al. 2023; Yamada 2022). In addition, little is known about how a latent NC/DN grammar may be acquired by L2 learners. The present study addresses this gap by investigating L1 English L2 Russian acquisition of Strict NC as well as L1 Russian L2 English acquisition of DN. Data analysis is ongoing. The results promise to shed light on the bidirectional role a latent grammar plays in L2 acquisition.