ON NEGATION AND DISJUNCTION IN L2 ENGLISH IN AN L1 ROMANIAN CONTEXT

Abstract

This experimental study investigates how Romanian-speaking learners of L2 English interpret disjunction in negative sentences, focusing on whether they exhibit L1 transfer effects from Romanian or successfully acquire the English pattern. While English and Romanian are traditionally considered to fall in the same category according to the Disjunction Parameter (Szabolcsi, 2002), favouring the conjunctive interpretation (-PPI value), recent research (Lungu et al., 2021) suggests that Romanian speakers prefer the disjunctive reading (+PPI value).
Through three experimental studies, I investigated: (i) how English speakers interpret disjunction in negative sentences, (ii) how Romanian speakers interpret disjunction, and (iii) because I found differences, how Romanian-speaking learners of L2 English interpret disjunction. The results of the first two studies showed that there are differences between the preferred interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences in English and Romanian. Based on these results, I conducted a third study to investigate how Romanian learners of L2 English interpret disjunction in English negative sentences. This study showed evidence of L1 transfer among L2 learners, supporting the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996), indicating that while L1 transfer initially influences L2 acquisition, learners can ultimately reset parameter values based on L2 input.