Comparative Patterns in the Acquisition of English Negation by Native Speakers of French Creole and Creole English

This study of comparative patterns in the acquisition of standard English is part of a larger study on acquisition by St. Lucian native speakers of French Creole and Creole English in a formal setting. The study compares the developmental patterns in the acquisition of negation by French Creole and Creole English speakers, and presents the results of an error analysis of the learners’ interlanguage. The speech samples of 9 children—5 French Creole and 4 Creole English speakers—is the corpus used for the analysis. Similar patterns of development and error types were found for both groups, but the French Creole speakers remained at a less advanced stage than did the Creole English speakers throughout the study. The findings suggest that the target language for the French Creole speakers is a variety of Creole English, and not Standard English, which is the language of instruction. The Creole English speakers, on the other hand, appear to be moving toward Standard English as a target. After 2½ years of instruction in a formal setting, the French Creole speakers were not as advanced as were the Creole English speakers in the acquisition of Standard English. Overall, the French Creole speakers had a higher number of Creole English structures in their interlanguage. The findings raise questions about the efficacy of the methods used to instruct these learners.