Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of relative clauses by Norwegian learners of English

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory study of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of relative clauses by young Norwegian learners of English, comparing L1 Norwegian and L2 English material from the TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language) Corpus to L1 English material from the GiG (Growth in Grammar) Corpus. Previous reports of cross-linguistic influence in this domain have usually involved language pairs that have very different relativization strategies. This study investigates whether similarities between relative clause systems may lead to more subtle effects in the choice of relativizer, the type of head nominal, the syntactic function of the relativized item, the extent of relativization from embedded clauses and the use of relative clauses in special constructions such as existentials and clefts. Although the material is limited, the study found traces of the Norwegian system in the learners L2 English, signalling that this is an area worth further investigation. The learners struggled with the choice between who and which, but used that/zero in a very similar way to their L1 English peers. The L2 English group also had slightly higher frequencies of relative clauses belonging to existentials and clefts, and where the relativized item stemmed from a further embedded clause. These results are consistent with a usage-based theory of second language acquisition, where learners are assumed to transfer features of constructions from their L1 when they are similar enough for them to make a cross-linguistic identification.