Die Negation in DaF-Übungsgrammatiken

Negation is a cognitive category and a complex linguistic operation, which can be found in every human language. Therefore it could be argued that the didactics of German as a foreign language does not need to focus particularly on this topic, thanks to the learner’s pre-existing knowledge. As a matter of fact a foreign language learner already knows, understands and uses negation efficiently, because he already experiences its potential in his mother tongue. Error analyses contradict this hypothesis, detecting misuse of negation even in students with an advanced level of the language competence. The aim of this paper is to give an inventory of how negation is handled in grammar books, determining whether and in what way they describe some typical negation strategies employed by the German language. The analysis is focused principally on grammars used in GFL-courses for Italian learners.