The Acquisition of Any- Type English Negative Polarity Item by Turkish L2 Learners of English

Abstract

The present study investigates the acquisition of any- type negative polarity items (NPIs) by advanced Turkish learners of English. It explores whether Turkish learners are aware of the ungrammaticality of using any- with a negative expression at the beginning of a sentence because of the violation of the c-commanding relationship and whether there is any significant difference between native speakers and advanced learners of English in their grammaticality judgments. Data were gathered through a grammaticality judgment test consisting of 14 any-type NPIs items and 14 distractor items. Data were collected from 32 advanced learners of English and 15 native English speakers. The findings showed that 62 % of the advanced English speakers interpreted ungrammatical any usage as grammatical, which may indicate overgeneralization of explicit instruction; however, when the NPIs were in the object position instead of the subject position, there was a noticeable difference in grammaticality judgments. Lastly, a significant difference existed between native speakers and advanced speakers in the judgment of grammaticality when any- is used in the subject position, which may be because they have not achieved native-like proficiency yet. In the end, the recommendations and pedagogical effects of this study are presented.