Variation in the spoken French of immersion students:: To ne or not to ne, that is the sociolinguistic question.

This paper investigates a case of linguistic variation observable in the spoken French of students from French immersion programs in Ontario, namely alternation between negative constructions with and without the negative particle ne (e.g., II ne comprend pas vs. Il (o) comprend pas, 'he does not understand.') Our students' use of ne is markedly more frequent than that documented in previous studies of both Canadian francophones and Irish FSL speakers. Our students clearly favour the standard variant (ne usage). We also found that our students vary their frequency of ne usage/non-usage to reflect their own socioeconomic background and gender, but that they do not shift their level of ne non-usage in accordance with topic formality. Our findings suggest that the learning of even a mildly marked non-standard variant, like ne non-usage, requires a minimum of interactions with francophones, especially if such a variant is not explicitly taught by immersion educators.