This report describes the use of the English negative by three adult second language learners, and relates the findings to Schumann's "pidginization hypothesis." This hypothesis states that a particular subject's restricted English was the result of his social and possibly also his psychological distance from English speakers. In order to provide insight into the question, interlanguage is considered here as legitimate pidginization. Each subject in the present study participated in three to four hours of taped conversation with the experimenter. The negative utterances were taken from the transcriptions and glossed according to their syntactical form. The data are discussed and compared with two other second language learners who also appear to exhibit social and/or psychological distance from the target language group. In the concluding stage of the study, a comparison is made of the findings with Schummann's pidginization hypothesis. A discrepancy is found between the data in this study and the pidginization hypothesis. Rather than finding a similar negative pattern among all subjects, certain differences were found in the level of correct acquisition of the negative particle. (AMH)