Swedish noun-phrase structure in Russian-speaking learners: An explorative study of L1 influence and input-frequency effects. Issue 1 (25th March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Agebjörn, Anders
• Is Part Of: Journal of the European Second Language Association. Volume 5: Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 16
• Page End: 29
• Publication Date: 2021-03-25
• Subjects: second language acquisition -- adjectival modification -- functional morphology -- articles -- the Competition Model; Second language acquisition -- Periodicals; Interlanguage (Language learning) -- Periodicals; 401.93
• DOI: 10.22599/jesla.70
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2399-9101

Abstract

Articles pose a particular challenge to second-language learners whose first language does not have them. Variability in article production in these learners is often explained in terms of first-language influence, but there are also suggestions that frequency-biased regularities in the target language itself might play a role. While most second-language research on articles has focused on English, a language with a relatively simple article system, the present study explores first-language influence and input-frequency effects by focusing on Swedish. Swedish expresses definiteness using a complex noun-phrase structure including several free-standing and bound morphemes, some relatively frequent in input, others less frequent. An oral-production task elicited adjectivally modified and non-modified noun phrases in indefinite and definite contexts from 23 foreign-language learners of Swedish who were native speakers of Russian, an inflectional language without articles. The analysis revealed that the learners were more likely to supply high-frequency morphemes than low-frequency ones. Furthermore, while the learners were equally likely to supply bound and free-standing morphemes, only their suppliance of free-standing morphemes was negatively affected by adjectival modification; their suppliance of bound morphemes was not. While the role of cross-linguistic influence should not be neglected, these findings suggest that probabilistic regularities in the linguistic input are a key factor in second-language acquisition of functional morphology.