Second language acquisition of any-type negative polarity items (npis) in English by Turkish adult learners

A Negative Polarity Item is a word or phrase that can appear in a context which includes a negative. The English any-type Negative Polarity Items are the ones upon which the present study is concentrated. Its main purpose was to investigate the second laguage acquisition of the items in concern by Turkish adult learners. Two groups of students attending the English Language Teaching Department of Çukurova University, Adana were the participants of our study. They were given an oral sentence-completion task and their responses were transcribed. The data obtained from the task in question have been analyzed with respect to the frequencies of correct responses, NPIs as well as errors occurred through the experiment. The outcomes of the study have indicated that the more proficient the learners, the more frequently they produced NPIs. In addition, it is noteworthy that both groups produced incorrect responses to approximately two third of the items which involved them to use NPIs in embedded clauses when the matrix clauses contained a negative while they showed an impressive success in their performance of responding the items when no negative appeared in the matrix clause.Key Words : Second Language Acquisition, Any-type Negative Polarity Item,Matrix Clause, Embedded Clause