MEMORY FOR FRENCH NEGATION BY STUDENTS OF FRENCH

High school and college students of French recalled French sentences which varied two types of negation. Half the sentences used affirmative syntax and half negative syntax ne… pas; half used positive verbs (e.g., manger); and half used negative verbs (e.g., oublier). One to two weeks later students performed the same task with English translations. In French, sentences with affirmative syntax and positive verbs were remembered best; either form of negation depressed performance. In English, only verb negation depressed performance. In French, students sometimes inserted ne into affirmative sentences and omitted pas from negative sentences, an error a native speaker would not make. Amount of prior education in French affected how much students remembered but did not differentially affect the influence of syntactic and verb negation. The results suggest that there is an interaction during learning between the foreign language learner's native language and foreign language. Two suggestions about teaching syntactic negation in French are offered.