Cross-linguistic Influence

A Cross-sectional Study with

Particular Reference to Finnish-speaking
and English-speaking Learners of German
Anu Ilomaki
B.A. (Mod.) CSLL
Final Year Project, May 2005
Supervisor: Dr. David Singleton
Declaration

I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work and that it has not been
submitted as an exercise for a degree at any other university.

__________________________________ May 4, 2005

Anu Ilomaki

i
Acknowledgements

Firstly I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. David Singleton for his help with this
paper. I am very grateful for his support and feedback during the course of the project.

I would especially like to thank Dr. Carl Vogel, the course coordinator of CSLL. His
continuous encouragement and guidance during the four years of the course are greatly
appreciated.

I would also like to thank Katrin Eberbach, my German lecturer in Trinity College, and
Maria Lappalainen, my secondary school teacher in Vehkalahden lukio (Vehkalahti
Secondary School) in Finland. Without their help I would not have been able to find
suitable test groups for the present study.

Thank you to all the participants in the present study, both here in Trinity College as well
as in Vehkalahti Secondary School.

A special thank you to my family, friends and classmates for their on-going support and
advice. They have been an irreplaceable support group not only during this project but
during the whole four years of the course.

ii
The difference between learning a closely related language and a totally unrelated one
can be likened to the situation of two friends, a good tennis player and a good soccer
player, who both take up squash while still continuing to have tennis and soccer
respectively as their main games.

(Ringbom, 1987:130)

iii
Contents

1 General Introduction and Structure.1

1.1 Aims...1
1.2 Overview1
1.3 Motivation..2

2 Cross-linguistic Influence: General Introduction3

2.1 Introduction3
2.2 The Development of Cross-linguistic Influence Research........4
2.3 Types and Features of Error Analysis....8
2.4 Type and Extent of Cross-linguistic Influence: Factors9
2.4.1 Learner-based Factors...10
2.4.1.1 Proficiency and Stage of Learning.....10
2.4.1.2 Age.....11
2.4.1.3 Linguistic Awareness.....12
2.4.1.4 Social and Educational Background......13
2.4.2 Language-based Factors....14
2.4.2.1 Language Level......14
2.4.2.2 Markedness and Prototypicality.........14
2.4.2.3 Psychotypology..............15
2.4.2.4 Production..............16
2.5 Cross-linguistic Influence on the Lexicon...17
2.6 Cross-linguistic Influence on Grammar...22
2.7 Avoidance: Cleverly Hidden or Accidentally Left out?..................................24
2.8 Foreign Talk and Interlanguage Transfer.25
2.9 Concluding Summary......26
3 Five Languages......28
4 The Present Study: Background.....31
4.1 Aims.31
4.2 Methodology....31
4.3 Test Groups..32
4.4 Problems..33
4.5 Concluding Summary......34
5 Analysis of the Present Study: Results and Discussion.35
5.1 Overall Mistakes..35
5.2 Cross-linguistic Influence: Finnish-speaking Students....41
5.2.1 Lexicon.41
5.2.1.1 Borrowing..42
5.2.1.2 Relexification.44
5.2.1.3 Hybrid45
5.2.1.4 Translation.46
5.2.1.5 Phonetic Influence.46
5.2.2 Grammar...47

iv
 5.2.2.1 Morphology: Grammatical Gender47
5.2.2.2 Morphology: Word Formation...48
5.2.2.3 Morphology: Case and Case Endings49
5.2.2.4 Syntax: Articles..50
5.2.2.5 Syntax: Prepositions..51
5.2.2.6 Syntax: Word Order...51
5.2.3 Avoidance.....55
5.3 Cross-linguistic Influence: English-speaking Students...58
5.3.1 Lexicon.....58
5.3.1.1 Borrowing......58
5.3.1.2 Relexification.....59
5.3.1.3 Hybrids...59
5.3.1.4 Translation.60
5.3.2 Grammar...61
5.3.2.1 Morphology: Grammatical Gender....61
5.3.2.2 Morphology: Word Formation...61
5.3.2.3 Morphology: Case and Case Endings....62
5.3.2.4 Syntax: Articles..62
5.3.2.5 Syntax: Prepositions..63
5.3.2.6 Syntax: Word Order...63
5.3.3 Avoidance.67
5.4 Comparison of the Two Test Groups...70
5.5 Comparison of the Results with Previous Study..71
5.6 Concluding Summary..74
6 Conclusion.75
6.1 Achievements...75
6.2 Summary of Cross-linguistic Influence: General Introduction75
6.3 Summary of the Present Study Results....76
6.4 Concluding Remarks....76
Appendix...77
Bibliography.96

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List of Figures
5.1: During the summer holidays she is going to go to Spain and live by the sea.52
5.2: Their house will be sold next year..52
5.3: Their house will be sold next year..............................................................................53
5.4: Their house will be sold next year......53
5.5: , in which she lives with her friends....54
5.6: , because she loves swimming.54
5.7: , because she loves swimming.54
5.8: , which she shares with her friends.55
5.9: During the summer holidays she is going to go to Spain and live by the sea.64
5.10: Their house will be sold next year....64
5.11: Their house will be sold next year....65
5.12: She has been living in Munich for four years...65
5.13: , which she shares with her friends...66
5.14: , where she lives with her friends..66
5.15: , because she loves swimming...66
5.16: , because she loves swimming...67

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List of Tables

2.1 Lexical transfer errors: Form versus meaning.18

4.1 Participants in the present study..33
5.1: Overall mistakes made by the Finnish-speaking students in the
second part of the test (translation).37
5.2: Overall mistakes made by the English-speaking students in the
second part of the test (translation).38
5.3: Overall mistakes made by the Finnish-speaking students in the
second part of the test (translation).39
5.4: Overall mistakes made by the English-speaking students in the
second part of the test (translation).40
5.5: L1 Finnish students: words and phrases featuring cross-linguistic influence ..56-57
5.6: L1 English students: words and phrases featuring cross-linguistic influence...68-69
5.7: Types and amount of lexical transfer in the present study.....70

vii
 Abstract

Cross-linguistic influence is one of the widest areas of second language acquisition

research and while the main factors facilitating or preventing cross-linguistic influence
are discussed in this dissertation, it can only be considered a brief introduction into this
phenomenon. The first part of the dissertation concentrates on previous and on-going
work in the field of cross-linguistic influence and provides a base for the analysis of the
present study in the second part of the dissertation. In the present study, emphasis is on
Finnish-speaking and English-speaking learners of German. The analysis of the present
study aims to discuss and explain what triggered the cross-linguistic influence to appear
in individual cases. While the results of the present study give an insight into the
influence different languages may have on the acquisition process of an additional
language, these results cannot be fully trusted to represent an entire population of learners.

viii
Chapter 1
General Introduction and Structure

1.1 Aims

This paper will address some important issues in second language acquisition with
distinct interest in cross-linguistic influence. Second language acquisition is an everyday
phenomenon. There are some 6800 known languages in the 200 countries of the world.
Due to historical, social, economical and political factors, speakers of these different
languages have contact in everyday life - all over the world people are acquiring
languages other than their native language. Some of this learning is done consciously,
some unconsciously. Some of it is done in a classroom situation, some in a naturalistic
environment. There are varying factors which affect the acquisition process and while
this paper aims to discuss most of them, the main factor of interest is the learners native
language as well as other previously acquired languages and their effect on the
acquisition process and outcome.

1.2 Overview

This paper is divided into six main chapters. After an introductory part in chapter 1,
chapter 2 will give an overview on previous research in the field of cross-linguistic
influence. Some historical turning points are laid out and previous work and study results
are briefly discussed. With previous research work in mind, the next topics of discussion
are different types of error analyses and ways of studying learner errors and language
transfer. Bearing in mind that cross-linguistic influence is not the only factor affecting
second language acquisition process the main factors possibly affecting this phenomenon
are then discussed.

1
 Chapter 3 will explain some of the main differences between Finnish, English,
German, Swedish and Irish, the five languages involved in the present study, and chapter
4 will explain background information regarding the experiment.
Chapter 5 will present and discuss the results of my own experiment. This
experiment uses written learner output to analyse learner errors and is purely interested in
reasons why different errors may have resulted. My main aim was to study the role of
other previously acquired languages, both the native language as well as other foreign
languages, in second language acquisition. This experiment draws upon topics discussed
in chapter 2 and provides evidence on many ideas discussed in this paper.
The paper is completed with a final conclusion in chapter 6.

1.3 Motivation

I chose to write this paper because I am greatly interested in languages and the way
people learn them. One of my main motivations was the possibility to conduct an
experiment of my own in this field and the chance to compare the results of my study
with previous work done in this field.

2
Chapter 2
Cross-linguistic Influence:
General Introduction

2.1 Introduction

The phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence has long been of interest to second

language acquisition researchers. While the term cross-linguistic influence was first
proposed in the eighties, several expressions referring to this phenomenon can be found
in previous research publications in this area; language transfer, linguistic interference,
language mixing, native language influence and the role of the mother tongue all refer to
the same phenomenon, which shall be interchangeably referred to as cross-linguistic
influence and language transfer in this study. The term second language is not
restricted to mean the second language in order but is in general applied to any other
language acquired after the mother tongue and can therefore in some cases also be the
third, fourth or even the fifth language acquired. Although generally no distinction is
made between a second language and additional languages, according to Cenoz, Hufeisen
and Jessner (2002) some researchers have started to concentrate on aspects of third
language acquisition in order to point out the differences between the acquisition and
processing of two or more languages.
According to Odlin (1989) transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and
differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously,
and perhaps imperfectly, acquired. It is obvious that some transfer occurs in the process
of second language acquisition, however, the amount and type of transfer vary according
to several factors. Background factors, such as age, motivation, literacy and social class,
make the learning experience of all individuals unique (Odlin 1989). Arguably, the
amount of transfer is also related to the distance of the languages involved.

3
2.2 The Development of Cross-linguistic Influence
Research

Not all researchers have accepted the importance of the native language effect on second
language acquisition. In particular, those who hold an innatist view of language
acquisition do not believe in any significant influences that the first language might have
on the acquisition process of a second language. Some researchers go as far as saying that
the acquisition processes are the same for the first and any additional languages. Most
researchers have, however, by now accepted that cross-linguistic influence affects the
acquisition process of another language.
The assumption that most difficulties the second language learners face are due
to his or her first language was first proposed during the post-war years and continued
strongly until the 1960s. The need for contrastive analyses was justified early on through
claims such as:

The most efficient materials are those that are based upon a
scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully
compared with a parallel description of the native language
of the learner. (Fries, 1945: 9)

The first publication that identified cross-linguistic influence as an important

phenomenon was Language in Contact by Uriel Weinrich (1953). The field continued to
raise interest and was investigated in more detail by Robert Lado in his 1957 publication
Linguistics Across Cultures. Lados idea of transfer was that individuals tend to transfer
the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native
language and culture to the foreign language and culture (Lado, 1957: 2). This claim and
the work it came from proved to be one of the most influential in the field of second
language acquisition and it was the source of numerous empirical language contact
studies in contrastive analysis.

4
 The single paramount fact about language learning is that it
concerns, not problem solving, but the formation and
performance of habits. (Brooks, 1960: 49)

The behaviourist view, that learning was highly influenced by interference of

prior knowledge and took place inductively through analogy rather than analysis,
dominated the two decades following the Second World War. The notion of positive and
negative transfer was first acknowledged during this period. Where the first and the
second language were different, it was assumed that the learners first language
knowledge would interfere with the second language knowledge, functioning negatively,
and where the first and the second language were similar, the first language would aid the
second language learning process, functioning positively. In addition to negative and
positive transfer, Selinker has later used the term neutral language transfer. Researchers
(Brooks 1960, Lado 1964) believed that teachers should focus their teaching on the
predicted areas of difficulty, enforced by negative transfer. Due to pedagogic needs,
Contrastive Analysis was developed to enable the identifying of these problem areas. The
idea was to compare certain native languages and target languages and identify points of
similarity or difference. These points were believed to aid pedagogical development and
result in effective teaching. According to Lado, the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis was
based on the following assumption:

the student who comes into contact with a foreign

language will find some features of it quite easy and others
extremely difficult. Those elements that are similar to his
native language will be simple for him and those elements
that are different will be difficult. (Lado, 1957: 2)

Lado proposed a contrastive model, which step-by-step compared two systems, their
sound systems, grammatical structures, vocabulary systems and so on. The classical
contrastive analysis statements did not cater for careful descriptive and analytical studies
of learners under specified conditions (Ellis, 1994). However, Lado (1957) had evidently

5
realised that the list of problems obtained through the comparison of two languages was
to be seen as a list of hypothetical problems, which would have to be validated by
checking it against the actual speech of students. Through description and interlingual
comparison, lists of linguistic differences between the learners first language and the
target language, the presumed problem areas, were obtained. Lee (1968) even believed
the interference coming from the learners native language to be the sole cause of
difficulty and error in foreign language learning.
Contrastive Analysis was doubted by several researchers, in particular researchers
who supported Chomskys idea of Universal Grammar, but it was in the late 1960s and
early 1970s when the Contrastive Analysis hypothesis finally lost ground due to the
findings of such researchers as Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974), who doubted the influence
of the first language and the importance of negative transfer in the process of second
language acquisition. Dulay and Burt linked first and second language acquisition and set
up an alternative approach to contrastive analysis known as the Creative Construction
Hypothesis, also labelled as the L2=L1 Hypothesis, according to which the second
language learner makes the same errors as the first language leaner of the target language
does. Whereas the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis provides a transfer theory, the L2=L1
hypothesis suggests a process of active organization in the learners mind. Contrastive
Analysis has been criticised for inaccuracy in predicting learner errors, and cases where
cross-linguistic comparisons fail to predict difficulties or where difficulties predicted do
not occur have been emphasised. It is difficult to make precise predictions and
generalisations as every learning process is individual and therefore learners may pursue
different options. In the 1970s, Error Analysis gained more interest, eventually replacing
Contrastive Analysis. It was not a new development but largely thanks to the work of
Corder it became recognised as a part of applied linguistics. Corder (1974) suggested that
Error Analysis should start off by collecting samples of learner language and then
proceed to identify, describe, explain and evaluate the errors found.
In the last thirty years researchers have made considerable progress to establish
methods to study cross-linguistic influence and its occurrence in acquisition situations.
Selinker (1969) successfully compared the use of a particular structure in the native
language, the target language and the interlanguage. Interlanguage was defined as a

6
system intermediate between the mother tongue and the target language. Lately a new
approach, which is based on a comparison of how learners with two or more native
languages proceed with regard to target language structure present in one native language
but absent in other, has been dominant. Master (1987) and Mesthrie and Dunne (1990)
used this method while Jarvis (2000) argued both methods are needed for a
comprehensive study.
In the field of second language acquisition, language distance is only of interest if
the phenomenon of language transfer can be proved. When talking about language
distance, it is useful to refer to the traditional classification of language families.

Where the mother tongue is formally similar to the target

language, the learner will pass more rapidly along the
developmental continuum (or some parts of it) than where it
differs. (Corder, 1981: 101)

While some decades ago Corder (1967) still argued that there is no fundamental
difference in the acquisition processes for first and second languages, he did come up
with a language distance hypothesis (1981), which suggests that the mother tongue acts
differentially as a facilitating agent. He also proposes that not only the learners first
language, but all other previously learned languages have a facilitating effect. Odlin
(1989) maintains that language distance is a major determinant of the amount of time
learners need to become highly proficient in a language. He cites the time allocation to
the study of various foreign languages at the American Foreign Service Institute (FSI).
In 1980s Hkan Ringbom conducted interesting studies, where native speakers of
two different languages, Finnish and Swedish, were studied learning English as a second
language under same living and background conditions in Finland. His results showed
that especially during early days of second language acquisition, a native language, which
is related to the target language can be of great help. The four main findings Ringbom
states in his 1987 publication are: 1) language distance has an impact on cross-linguistic
influence, 2) the influence of the first language is greater at early stages of acquisition
than at later stages, 3) the influence of the first language is stronger at lower levels of

7
proficiency, and 4) the influence of the first language tends to be stronger in more
communicative tasks.
The studies discussed above seem to lead to one conclusion; it has been shown
that while the differences between the first and the second language may lead into
difficulties, they will not definitely do so.

2.3 Types and Features of Error Analysis

As discussed in the previous chapter, analysing learner errors is a common research

method used in studies of cross-linguistic influence. To represent an entire population, a
massive sample of several language use samples from a large number of learners must be
collected. This way it is possible to obtain comprehensive lists of possible errors common
to many learners of a particular population. Odlin (1989) names smaller samples of
learner language specific or incidental. A specific sample is one sample of language use,
collected from a limited number of learners, while an incidental sample is one sample
collected from one learner only. Samples can be collected cross-sectionally, at a single
point in time, or longitudinally, at successive points over a period of time.
Several factors have been identified, which influence the types of errors learners
make. Learners do not necessarily make the same errors in written and oral production,
due to different processing conditions, and learners with one native language do not
necessarily make the same errors as learners with another native language. Odlin (1989)
identifies three language factors and three learner factors. The language factors are:
medium (written or oral production), genre (form of production; a conversation, a lecture,
an essay, a letter etc) and content (topic of communication). As learner factors, he
identifies learners level of proficiency (elementary, intermediate, advanced), mother
tongue and language learning experience, relating to whether language learning is
classroom situated, naturalistic or a mixture of both.
Corder argues that error analysis should be restricted to the study of errors arising
as a result of lack of knowledge and should not cater for mistakes occurring when
learners fail to perform their competence, as mistakes are a performance phenomena also

8
found in native language production. Corder (1974) goes on to describe three types of
errors: presystematic errors occurring when the learner is unaware of the existence of a
particular rule in the target language, systematic errors occurring when the learner uses
the wrong rule and postsystematic errors occurring when the learner knows the correct
target language rule but uses it inconsistently making a mistake. As stated in Doughty
and Long (2003), a further division of errors was made by Lott (1983), who identified
transfer errors such as overextension of analogy, transfer of structure and interlingual or
intralingual errors. Lott considers overextension of analogy to occur when the learner
misuses an item because it shares similar features with an item in the learners native
language. Transfer of structure is what is generally meant by transfer and it occurs when
the learner makes use of an L1 feature instead of the target language one. When a
particular distinction does not exist in the first language, the error arising is likely to be
interlingual/intralingual and while it is not always easy to distinguish between
intralingual and transfer errors, previous research suggests that a large number of errors
are of intralingual origin rather than cross-linguistic.
Studying learner language by errors has been criticised for its interest on what the
learners do wrong and lack of acknowledgement for what the learners do right. Error
Analysis does not cover for avoidance of difficult structures and words and therefore is
not fully comprehensive.

2.4 Type and Extent of Cross-linguistic Influence:

Factors

Some researchers consider cross-linguistic influence deriving from the first language to
be more of a communication strategy than a learning strategy. Newmark and Reibel
(1968) stated that when a learner does not know how to use a certain rule in the target
language, he can only use the knowledge he already has to make up for what he does not
know. This description has later been named the Ignorance Hypothesis. A similar

9
reference was made by Krashen (1983), who sees transfer as the result of falling back on
old knowledge when new knowledge is lacking and calls this phenomenon padding.
Evidently, there are several factors, which influence the amount and type of
language transfer. In this chapter these factors are divided into learner-based factors and
language-based factors. Learner-based factors are more individual and greatly depend on
how and where the learner has acquired the second language. The way the learner views
the target language and how distant he/she perceives it from the native language is a
factor relating to both learner- and language-based factors. Language-based factors are
factors the learner cannot largely affect, features typical for each language and features
influencing the learners mental picture of the target language.
The most important factors Ringbom identifies are stage of learning, type of
utterance, level of linguistic analysis and the learners age and mode of learning, as adults
seem to make more use of their first language than children. Other researchers have come
up with conditions, which are seen to aid or prevent cross-linguistic influence. These
constraints 1 are language level, social factors, markedness, prototypicality, language
distance and psychotypology, and developmental factors.

2.4.1 Learner-based Factors

2.4.1.1 Proficiency and Stage of Learning

The extent of cross-linguistic influence or transfer load, as Ringbom calls it, is

related to several factors in second language learning. Ringbom (1987) considers the
stage of learning to be one of the major factors. At the early stages of learning the role of
the first language is evidently more important than it is at more advanced level. The
individual characteristics of the learner as well as the individual styles of learning and
learners knowledge of other languages including the learners mother tongue and other
foreign languages are seen to affect the appearance of cross-linguistic influence in learner

1
According to Ringbom (1987), a constraint could be anything that prevents the learner either from
noticing cross-linguistic similarity or from deciding that the similarity is a real and useful one.

10
production. Therefore, proficiency is one of the major factors determining the likelihood
of language transfer.
One way of looking at the role of developmental factors is to take the learners
first language as a starting point of second language acquisition, in a process where the
first language rules are gradually replaced by the target language rules when acquisition
proceeds. This would suggest transfer to be more evident in the early stages of
development. The second view on developmental factors is that through natural
principles of language acquisition, the first language works together with the
developmental factors and this way determines the course of interlanguage. This would
suggest transfer to be selective along the developmental axis. The amount of exposure to
the target language is, of course, a decisive factor in the learners proficiency.
In cases, where the learner is multilingual or has to some extent acquired
additional languages, the level of second language competence must be of certain degree
in order for that second language to provide material for transfer. Shanon (1991) goes as
far as stating that often the most recently acquired, and therefore the weakest, language is
the source of transfer. This hypothesis seems to hold, particularly with regard to lexical
borrowings, but it is, however, apparent that if the learner has previously acquired a
language more related to the target language than the weakest language, this related
language is more likely to be the source of transfer than the most recently acquired one.
The production factor is closely related to the stage of learning, since learners
often draw on their first language to fill a lexical or syntactic gap when they lack the
linguistic knowledge of the structure or feature in question. In such cases, transfer can be
seen as a strategy to overcome difficulties.

2.4.1.2 Age

The general idea behind the age factor and language transfer is that child learners are less
likely to draw on their first language than adult learners. Some researchers claim that
child second language acquisition is driven by Universal Grammar and therefore the
native language influence cannot be seen as an important factor. Odlin (1989), however,

11
claims adults to be in some ways more flexible than children and therefore the younger
is better principle should not be trusted blindly.
A research project on cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition in a
Basque school, where English was taught as a second language to native speakers of
Basque and Spanish showed that older learners tend to present more cross-linguistic
influence than younger learners. Possibly due to lower metalinguistic ability, the younger
learners did not perceive objective linguistic distance similarly as the older learners did,
but rather found both Spanish and Basque terms equally transferable (Cenoz, Hufeisen
and Jessner, 2001). More recent studies have proposed the age factor not to be a very
decisive factor in second language acquisition or in cross-linguistic influence.

2.4.1.3 Linguistic Awareness

The learners linguistic awareness plays a key role in his language performance and
acquisition process. Linguistic awareness can be acquired itself and is often related to
educational background. While linguistic awareness is mainly conscious, our mind can
and often does make linguistic identifications also on an unconscious level.
There have been two attempts to illustrate constraints on transfer. These attempts
have looked at interaction between linguistic and general cognitive capacities. The
Transfer to Somewhere Principle by Andersen (1983) focuses on conditions that will
cause learners to make interlingual identifications and states that a grammatical form or
structure will consistently occur in interlanguage as a result of transfer only if there is a
typological similarity between the two languages with regard to this feature. As a
complement to Andersens principle, Kellerman (1995) came up with Transfer to
Nowhere Principle, according to which cross-linguistic influence might occur even when
no basis for interlingual identification seems to exist.
Not all cross-linguistic influence is noticeable straight away. Ringbom (1987)
talks about covert cross-linguistic influence being relevant to the problem of avoidance
and occurring when first language based procedures are used to compensate for gaps of
target language knowledge. According to Ringbom, in early stages of second language

12
production the learner frequently assumes that linguistic redundancy works the same way
in the second language as it does in the first language. Therefore morphological or lexical
items perceived to be redundant from the point of view of the first language will
frequently be omitted or avoided. Covert cross-linguistic influence can be seen as entirely
negative transfer since no similarity between the first and the second language has been
perceived and the first language procedures have been used because no second language
procedures were available.

2.4.1.4 Social and Educational Background

As all language acquisition takes place in a social matrix, it is evident that some,
but not all social background factors make a difference in cross-linguistic influence.
Tarone (1982) examined sociolinguistic factors and came to the conclusion that cross-
linguistic influence from first language is more evident when learners are paying more
attention to how they speak as they are using all of their potential resources. This is a
rather surprising claim as it could be thought that the more careful the learner is in his or
her production, the more he or she is paying attention to the rules and lexicon of a
particular language and therefore the less cross-linguistic influence would arise.
Odlin (1989) includes educational background and literacy as a factor in positive
transfer. Learners who have highly developed language skills, such as reading, writing
and rich vocabulary in their native language will most likely find that these skills
facilitate second language acquisition. It could therefore be argued that less educated
learners in a naturalistic learning environment will show fever constraints regarding
language transfer.

13
2.4.2 Language-based Factors

2.4.2.1 Language Level

Language level relates to the common belief that cross-linguistic influence

appears more frequently and noticeably at the levels of phonology, lexis and discourse
than grammar. Ellis (1994) considers the above to be one of the main findings in
explaining learner errors. Learners more developed metalingual awareness of grammar
could be one of the main reasons why cross-linguistic influence does not seem to be as
frequent at grammatical level. In a classroom environment, learners are often exposed to
grammatical rules and it seems that grammar is the area of language learning, which is
given the most attention. Although Ringbom (1987) states that some errors in written
production occur due to different pronunciation in the two languages, he points out that
learners do not invariably transfer the phonological features of their first language.
Ringbom studied two groups, Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking Finns, who lived
in Finland and had the same social and cultural settings. He found that the majority of
lexical errors the two groups learning English made could be attributed to the transfer of
partial translation equivalents. The assumption that acquisition of lexis appears to be
facilitated if the target language is related to the learners first language is partly proved
by the fact that Swedish-speaking learners seem to acquire English vocabulary faster than
Finnish-speaking learners.

2.4.2.2 Markedness and Prototypicality

Markedness is defined by the terms marked and unmarked. In linguistic terms,

marked features are seen special in relation to the more basic unmarked ones. For
example, the present tense is unmarked for English verbs while the past tense is marked.
Also, German word order can be considered marked in relation to English word order, as

14
German permits two word orders, main clause SVO and subordinate clause SOV but
English word order is consistently SVO.
Kellerman (Kellerman and Sharwood Smith, 1986, Ellis, 1994) suggests that a
definition of markedness or prototypicality can be provided by investigating native
speakers judgements of similarity and taking into account that learners, irrespective of
their level of second language proficiency, see some features as being more transferable
than others. Idioms, for example, tend not to be transferred.

2.4.2.3 Psychotypology

Psychotypology (also known as typology) appears to be the most important factor

in determining the likelihood of language transfer. Kellerman (1978) refers to the
perception of the second language and distance from the first language as psychotypology.
According to him, transferability depends on the perceived distance between the first
language and the second language and the structural organisation of the learners first
language. Hence, the perception of linguistic distance and the perception of
transferability can prove to be more important than actual objective linguistic distance.
Language distance can be regarded as linguistic, meaning the actual degree of
difference between the languages, or as psycholinguistic, meaning the learners
assumption of the degree of difference (Ellis, 1994). Language distance is seen as the
main factor in positive (and negative) transfer; learners generally find it easier to learn a
second language similar to their first one. Ringboms study on the acquisition of English
by Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking Finns proved this to be true. Also, as stated
earlier, Odlin (1989) identified language distance as a factor that affects transfer, and
found it to be a major determinant of the amount of time students will need in order to
become highly proficient in the target language. Looking at the cumulative effects of
cross-linguistic similarities and differences on the acquisition process, the Foreign
Service Institute (1985) of the U.S. State Department came up with an interesting
classification of the length of time needed to achieve a high degree of mastery of a
foreign language. While English-speakers were considered to need 20 weeks of intensive

15
30 hours per week tuition to learn German, the time needed to learn Finnish was found to
be over twice as long, 44 weeks (figures from Ringbom, 1987).
Singleton (1987) came to the conclusion that psychotypological factors seem to
interact with a proficiency factor and an uncertainty factor. His case study of Philip, a
beginning adult learner of French, whose native language was English and who had
previously also acquired some Irish, Latin and Spanish, showed that Philip privileged
English and Spanish as sources of lexical borrowings into French. The association with
Spanish seemed to be stronger, which Singleton sees as proof of a strong
psychotypological dimension and of differentiation and selectivity in multilingual lexical
acquisition and processing.
As seen above, despite the arguably evident role of the mother tongue in second
language acquisition, it is not the only language affecting the outcome of the acquisition
process. It has been proved that several years of study of one foreign language can greatly
reduce the time needed to acquire a similar language.

2.4.2.4 Production

As stated earlier, researchers seem to agree on the existence of negative and

positive transfer. While positive transfer is seen to occur when the first language, or other
previously acquired languages to that matter, aid the acquisition of the target language, it
has not been given as much attention as negative transfer. Odlin (1989) identifies four
types of negative transfer, namely, underproduction, overproduction, production errors
and misinterpretation. Underproduction is what is often seen as avoidance due to
language distance and occurs when the learner produces very few or no examples of a
target language structure. Experiments by Schachter (1974) among Chinese and Japanese
students of English showed they systematically avoided using relative clauses in English,
largely due to this feature being absent or structurally very different in their native
language. Overproduction is what can often result from underproduction, namely relating
to our previous example the avoidance of relative clauses leads into the use of too many
simple sentences. As production errors Odlin (1989) names substitutions, calques and

16
alternations of structures. According to him, substitutions involve the use of native
language forms in the target language production, and are therefore what is often seen as
borrowing. Calques are errors that reflect a native language structure and often do so very
closely and alternations of structures are seen for example in hypercorrections, which can
be overreactions to a particular influence from the first language. Misinterpretation is
what Odlin (1989) sees as the influence of the first language structures in the
interpretation of target language messages. This may also occur when word order patterns
of the two languages differ.

2.5 Cross-linguistic Influence on the Lexicon

Cross-linguistic influence on the lexicon is often more obvious and easier to notice than
influence on grammar. It is obvious that the native language is a factor in learning target
language vocabulary, and that closely related languages often share much more cognate
vocabulary with one another than distant languages do. This is backed up by Sjholms
(1976) study, where he found Finnish-speakers to have more difficulty with English
vocabulary than Swedish-speakers.
Closely related languages do not, however, only show positive transfer in lexical
semantics but can also lead into difficulty. The most obvious difficulty being so called
false friends or false cognates, when a word form in one language is identical or very
similar to a word form in another language but the meanings differ. These false friends
can also be partial and share a meaning which is acceptable in some contexts but not in
others. An example of false friends is the word chef, which in English means a cook or
indeed a chef but in German a boss or a chief. Cognates are not necessarily identical in
form but there is a formal cross-linguistic similarity between items with varying semantic
relationship. Ringbom (1987) divides cognates into three groups according to their
semantic distance. He identifies cognates with a similar form but a wholly different
meaning, like for example the Swedish word fabrik meaning factory, which can be
falsely linked with the English word fabric. The second group of cognates are similar in
form but do not have an identical meaning in every context. As an example he gives the

17
sentence The next day we grounded a club, where grounded is derived from the
Swedish verb grunda, meaning to found. As a third example he gives cognates which
have an identical or near-identical meaning in some, but not all contexts, like for example
the Swedish word hund, which in general means dog but occasionally also hound.

Type of transfer Underlying causeTransfer of From which Example

form or language
meaning
A+B Language Insufficient Form L1 or L2 The hillow
switch & awareness of (results in (also from was hidden in
coinage intended linguistic non-existing languages the cupboard
form, instead of TL word) not very (Fin. hillo =
which (a modified well known jam)
form of) an L2 by learner)
word is used
C Totally or Awareness of an Form L1 or L2 We had a large
partially existing TL form, (results in number of
deceptive but confusion existing TL bulls and
cognate caused by formal word) several cups of
similarity to a tea (Swe. bulle
word in another = bun)
language
D Semantic Awareness of Meaning L1 or, He bit himself
extension of existing TL form, occasionally, in the language
single lexical but not of very (Fin. kieli =
units semantic advanced L2 both tongue
restrictions proficiency and
language)
E Calques of Awareness of Meaning L1 or My uncile
multi-word existing TL units possibly never married:
units but not of relevant very he remained a
(compounds, semantic/ advanced L2 youngman all
phrasal collocational proficiency his life (Swe.
verbs, restrictions ungkarl =
idioms) bachelor)

Table 2.1: Lexical transfer errors: Form versus meaning

(adapted from Ringbom (2001, Table 4.2, p. 64)).

18
 In addition to cognates different types of cross-linguistic influence on lexicon
have been identified. Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner (2002) describe words that differ from
a target word at only one letter position as neighbours and find them to be activated
relatively easy. Such words would are for example wind, bind, kind, wand, wild and wink.
Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner (2002) do, however, remark that even when languages are
relatively closely related and are represented by the same script 2 , words may contain
language specific cues, such as onset capitals for German nouns, which might reduce the
number of competitors of an item to those of the target language. Language distance
again plays a role in lexical distance and in the number of neighbour words, with the
amount decreasing as the distance increases.
Odlin (1989) defines borrowing transfer as referring to the influence a second
language has on a previously acquired language, which usually is the first language. A
common example of this is the French word croissant, commonly used by English-
speakers to describe a certain pastry. When talking about cross-linguistic influence
borrowing is, however, also commonly used for the reversed phenomena of using a first
language or another non-native language word in the target language production in an
unmodified form.
Odlin also mentions the notion of lexical universals, mainly in the form of
approximations. These are similar to overextension and often result from metaphoric
coinages that function instead of the accepted target language form, as for example the
approximation air ball, used by speakers of various native languages instead of the
correct English word balloon. Ringbom (1987) considers these approximations to occur
when semantic properties of one item are transferred in a combination of lexical items.
Ringbom (1987) distinguishes between borrowing and lexical transfer. According
to him, borrowing covers hybrids, blends and relexifications as well as complete
language shift, which is what is often meant by borrowing. Unlike in complete language
shift, where an item is taken to the target language production in an unmodified form,
hybrids, blends and relexifications occur when an item is modified morphologically or
phonologically to a target language-like norm. This phenomenon will be discussed in
more detail under the present study. Lexical transfer then again occurs when the learner

2
By scripts Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner (2002) mean orthographic, lexical and sublexical representations.

19
assumes an identity of semantic structure between his first language and the target
language word. According to Ringbom (1987) lexical transfer can occur in forms of loan
translations, semantic extensions and cognates, which are often also called false friends.
Sjholm (1976) and Ringbom (1987) point out an example utterance by a Finnish learner
of English, who said He bit himself in the language meaning to say He bit himself in the
tongue. This can be explained by the multiple meanings of the Finnish word kieli, which
is used both for tongue and language. This phenomenon is known as semantic extension
and occurs when semantic properties are extended to the target language word. Lexical
transfer can also occur when there is no morphological similarity between words that
appear to be semantically equivalent.
Ringbom (2001) identifies transfer of form to be more common across related
languages but transfer of semantic patterns and word combinations to nearly always be
based on the first language, even if there is no close relation between the languages. This
was backed up by the results of his experiments, where Finnish-speaking students
produced lexical transfer from their second language Swedish in their third language
production of English.
Murphy states that lexical transfer distinguishes between content and function
words3. Whereas transfer of content words is often seen as a strategy to fill a gap, highly
frequent lexical L1 items, usually function words, are often transferred unintentionally.
Odlin (1989) sees code-switching among bilinguals as intentional, augmentative and
focussed with complete syntactic structures for the language switches, but as Ringbom
(1986) puts it, lexical transfer during second language acquisition is normally
unintentional and involves short, complete, non-adapted L1 words, which are usually
function words. Ringbom (1986) also proposes that semantic transfer involving content
words tends to be more based on the first language, whereas second language lexical
transfer, especially in unmodified form, is limited to function words. Stedje (1977)
examined recordings of Finnish learners of German as a third language with Swedish as a
second language and similarly to Ringboms point of view found that function words
were predominantly transferred from the second language and not from the first language.

3
Content words include nouns, verbs, numerals, adjectives and adverbs. Function words include
prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and pronouns.

20
It is highly likely that psychotypology has played a key role in this as Swedish uses
function words in a similar manner to German. The idea that L2 function word transfer is
facilitated by typological closeness is also supported by Cenoz (2001), who found that
her subjects transfer nearly seven times as many function words from Spanish as from
Basque when speaking English. Hammarberg (1998) studied a native English speaker,
who also had advanced knowledge of German, acquiring Swedish in Sweden.
Hammarberg found his subject to consciously use her native English language in
metalinguistic comments to ask how something is expressed in Swedish when she
encountered difficulty and to intentionally incorporate L1 lexical items to fill a
knowledge gap in her L3 Swedish. Ringboms argument also held in this study, where the
subject was found to use unintended language switches, which usually occurred in the
form of L2 German prepositions.
Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994) focus particularly on content versus function
words in unintentional language switches. They interpret the amount of repair used both
during and after the utterance to show that content word transfer is much more monitored,
but that the unintended switches are usually function words. Furthermore, Poulisse and
Bongaerts state that the L1 function words are hardly ever morphologically or
phonologically adapted to the L2. They attribute this phenomenon not only to the
frequency effect but also to the relationship between proficiency and attention and reason
that when a learner has low L2 proficiency, he allocates most of his conscious attention to
meaning and focuses more on content words, which leads to more errors with function
words, whose short length requires less effort to encode and articulate.
Code-mixing, which is generally meant by the use of both the L1 and L2 in the
construction of the same sentence, and code-switching, which Odlin (1989) defines as the
alternative use of the L1 and L2 within a discourse, are examples of communication
transfer. Translation and borrowing can also be grouped under the same category, as they
are all strategies learners use mainly to overcome problems in communication.

21
2.6 Cross-linguistic Influence on Grammar

When learning a new language, despite some claims, we clearly do not start from scratch
and learn it the same way we acquired our first language. In the early days of acquisition,
the grammatical structures, such as sentence forms and the number, gender and case
patterns, of the native language tend to be transferred to the target language. The learner,
however, is unaware of the effect of cross-linguistic influence, and usually does not
realise the presence of transfer.
Distribution seems to be one of the features that are transferred from the first
language. When for example in English we say new houses, the plural does not show in
the adjective. German and Finnish then again handle this differently, both languages
adding the plural indication into the adjective as in this example neue Huser and uudet
talot respectively.
For learners of English as a second language one of the most common difficulties
seems to be the third person s and its behaviour in different contexts. Sentences like
She speaks English do not generally seem to cause major difficulty but the omission of
s in sentences like Can she speak English then again do (Ellis, 1985). German-speaking
learners occasionally have difficulty in using the equivalents of separable German verbs
in English. An example of such a verb is the German verb anrufen, the use of which can
be seen in example (i):

(i) Ich rufe dich an.

*I will call you on.
I will call you.

Grammatical features can be expressed through different media in different

languages. While English signals the indirect object by word order, Finnish does so by
inflection. For example, in the English sentence the man gave you the book, the position
of you tells the receiver of the book. By changing the word order of this sentence, we also
change the recipient. In the Finnish sentence mies antoi kirjan sinulle, the recipient is
signalled by an inflectional ending, and while a change of word order may bring

22
additional pragmatic emphasis to the sentence, it does not affect the basic meaning of the
sentence. While many researchers (Odlin 1989, Zoble 1986) argue that basic word order
does not seem to be influenced cross-linguistically, inflection is one area of grammar
where native speakers of languages, which regularly use inflection, seem to have an
advantage in learning a second language which also uses inflection, at least in the early
stages of acquisition.
Acquiring the grammatical gender of the target language can be greatly aided if
the learners first language features grammatical gender as well. Therefore, a French-
speaker would find it relatively easy to use Spanish gender, both languages employing a
similar gender division. Finnish-speaking learner can be seen slightly handicapped in this
area because Finnish does not generally feature grammatical gender. Similarly, if the
learners first language uses prepositions and articles, he will find it easier to understand
the possible corresponding features of the target language. Odlin (1989), however, argues
that errors such as omitting articles, copulas and other forms often seem to involve
simplification rather than transfer.
The transferability of word order has been argued with some researchers finding it
to be rigidly a transferable property and others doubting the cross-linguistic importance
of it. Granfors and Palmberg (1976, cf. Odlin 1989) found numerous word order errors in
the production of native Finnish-speakers learning English. The Finnish-speakers were
especially found to have some difficulty with relative clauses as they produced fewer
instances of resumptive pronouns as well as fewer positions of direct objects, indirect
objects and prepositional objects. This was seen to be due to Finnish not allowing
pronominal retention. Tarallo and Myhill (1983, cf. Odlin 1989) then again argue against
this and claim that the use of resumptive pronouns does not indicate transfer. They had
studied native English-speakers studying German, a language which doesnt use
resumptive pronouns, and found that the English-speakers often accepted ungrammatical
sentences with such pronouns to be correct.
Odlin among others believes that typological factors affect the likelihood of
transfer. This was previously seen in the use of resumptive pronouns but has also been
studied in great deal in preverbal negation. The use of preverbal and postverbal negation
is seen as an important clue to relations between transfer and universals in second

23
language acquisition. Different languages show fundamental differences between word
order and negation. The negator does not even have to be an independent word but can be
indicated in prefixes or suffixes. However, negation is not necessarily transferred or only
some forms of it may be transferred.
The general belief among researchers is that morphemes are more likely to be
transferred from the first language if they are free rather than bound (Kellerman 1983).
Jarvis and Odlin (2000) argue against this and suggest that bound morphemes can be
transferred not just by the means of negative transfer but can have a facilitative effect on
second language acquisition, especially between typologically close languages such as
Finnish and Estonian.

2.7 Avoidance:
Cleverly Hidden or Accidentally Left out?

The notion of avoidance was briefly mentioned in connection to underproduction.

Although this topic is often ignored, it is widely believed that avoidance is purely a
conscious way of bypassing problems. Learners develop strategic skills in order to
compensate for their lack of knowledge or availability. One of these strategies is to avoid
using words and constructions the learner does not know. Scovel (2000) describes
avoidance as the tendency for L2 learners not to use grammatical structures that native
speakers would normally use in that context because those L2 structures contrast
significantly with the grammar of their mother tongue. Avoidance is often also classified
as a communication strategy, where the use of structures which have not yet been
acquired is avoided.
Because avoidance results in fewer errors being made by learners in speech and
writing, it is obviously difficult for second language acquisition researchers to accurately
measure this phenomenon. Although it is somewhat possible to trace avoidance in
translation tasks, it can be extremely difficult to measure avoidance in free production.

24
 According to Odlin (1989), there is clear evidence that avoidance behaviours
sometimes arise from taboos in the native language. Pragmatic matters, such as politeness
and apologiness, may also lead into difficulties if the learner uses a routine acceptable in
the native language but not in the target language. As stated in Doughty and Long (2003),
as an alternative to avoidance, native language euphemisms and related speech acts may
sometimes be translated in order to get around taboos.

2.8 Foreign Talk and Interlanguage Transfer

The terms foreign talk and foreign language mode are used in connection to learners
who have previous non-native language knowledge and are acquiring an additional L3.
The so-called foreign talk mode can be described in the words of Williams and
Hammarberg (1998) as a desire to suppress L1 as being non-foreign and to rely rather
on a prior L2 as a strategy to approach L3. The learner perceives the L2 as a more
appropriate source of transfer due to its status as a foreign language, and therefore the
features of the native language are often seen as an incorrect choice.
Speakers of a native language do not suddenly become speakers of another
language. Acquiring a language is a process, which includes making hypotheses in
respect of the target language and adjusting these hypotheses according to the learners
general knowledge of languages. At any particular moment, the language student is
located on an interlanguage continuum between the native language and the target
language (Selinker, 1972). Truly successful students make the journey to a high level of
competency in the target language, while less successful students become fossilized
somewhere along the interlanguage continuum (Brown, 1993).
When a third language comes into the picture, the acquisition process becomes
more complex. It has been suggested that the acquisition mechanism for L2 is different
from that used for L1 acquisition and therefore that it is more likely that the L2-type
mechanism is reactivated in L3 production (Williams and Hammarberg, 1998). This is
closely related to what De Angelis and Selinker (2001) describe as interlanguage transfer;
the influence of a non-native language on the acquisition or use of another non-native

25
language. Therefore interlanguage transfer can only occur in third language acquisition,
when there are a minimum of three linguistic systems present.
Some researchers (De Angelis and Selinker, 2001) argue that whereas semantic
and pragmatic transfer tend to be from the native language, other type of transfer
generally favours interlanguage. Such division cannot, however, be blindly trusted. If the
learner is highly proficient in an additional foreign language, this language can also be
the source of some semantic and pragmatic transfer. Also, it is very likely that language
distance once again is a strong determinant of the source of transfer.

2.9 Concluding Summary

It has become clear that cross-linguistic influence plays a major role in second language
acquisition. There are numerous factors, which can determine the likelihood of language
transfer, and after carefully reviewing past literature, it can be said that language distance,
or psychotypology, seems to be one of the most influential factors. We live in a world
where learning two or more languages in no longer exceptional and therefore researchers
have in recent years become more and more interested in third language acquisition and
in the influence additional languages have on the acquisition of a new language.
When talking about psychotypology and cross-linguistic influence, it is important
not only to concentrate on the learners native language but to take any additional
languages the learner may have acquired into consideration as well as learners may be
more likely to borrow from a language they actively use than other languages they know
but do not use (Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner, 2001). Bearing in mind that proficiency and
psychotypology influence the choice of source language, it is often the most recently
acquired language from which borrowing occurs. Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner (2001)
regard recency as an important factor and state that an L2 is activated more easily if the
speaker has used it recently and thus maintained easy access to it.
It is commonly believed that cross-linguistic influence is more frequent in lexis,
phonology and discourse than grammar and although Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner (2001)

26
claim that L2 transfer does not occur in discourse, it has become obvious that language
transfer occurs at all linguistic levels.
Third language acquisition has experienced important development in recent
years with researchers like Cenoz, Hufeisen, Jessner and Singleton paying increasing
attention to this area. Cross-linguistic influence is a phenomenon linking second and third
language acquisition and should continue to be of interest and importance in the future
research.

27
Chapter 3

Five Languages

In order to shed light on the discussion of the sources of cross-linguistic influence in this
study and the relationship between the three main languages involved, namely English,
Finnish and German, and the two additional languages, Swedish and Irish, a brief account
of these languages will be given.
Finnish is a non-Indo-European language and is a member of the Finno-Ugric
language group. Other Finno-Ugrian languages are Estonian, Hungarian, Lapp and some
minority languages spoken in Russia. The one that is closest to Finnish is Estonian.
Finnish has a notorious reputation of being a very difficult language to learn. The reason
why adult learners often regard Finnish to be difficult is because it is relatively distant
from any other language. Distant, or structurally different should we say, languages are
often seen as more difficult than languages that are related to the learners native
language or other languages the learner might have acquired before.
The lexical and grammatical features of Finnish are relatively different from
English and German. The morphological difference between Finnish and English is
obvious. Whereas English has independent words like prepositions, pronouns, auxiliaries
and adverbs, Finnish makes use of case endings, verb endings, possessive suffixes or
enclitic particles. Therefore in Finnish, a word is a more important semantic and
grammatical unit than in Germanic languages. The absence of gender and articles is one
of the most striking differences. Even the third person singular has no gender, both the
English she and he and the German sie and er are expressed with the same word hn in
Finnish. Personal possession is expressed with suffixes and prepositions with
postpositions. Contemporary English has essentially only two cases, nominative and
genitive, and German has four, nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Finnish,
however, has fifteen grammatical cases, which have their own endings. Finnish is
typologically an agglutinative language in which grammatical markers and endings are
joined to a word stem. Due to the structure of the language words are often long. To give

28
an example of how Finnish endings work, consider the word autoissanikinko, which has
the root auto, meaning a car. The i is a plural marker and ssa an inessive case ending,
which in this example corresponds to the English preposition in. ni is a first person
singular possessive suffix, a counterpart for the English my. kin is an enclitic particle
meaning also or too and ko is a particle indicating that a question is being asked. So, the
combination auto+i+ssa+ni+kin+ko translates to [Do you mean] in my cars, too? The
German equivalent phrase is formed similarly with English Meinst du, in meinen Autos
auch? Morphologically Finnish and German have more in common. Both languages form
new words through composition, simply by joining already existing ones together or
through word derivation, by adding suffixes. Finnish is one of the few languages which
have a phonetic feature called vowel harmony; this means that in a non-compound word,
the back vowels a, o, u do not appear in a word which contains any of the front vowels ,
or y. It should also be pointed out that Finnish has no real equivalent to the verb have.
These three languages also differ in syntax. Word order is often said to be free in
Finnish. The word order of a sentence can usually be changed in several ways without
changing the basic meaning of the sentence, however, the emphasis on side meanings or
style typically changes. Because of the remarkable presence of inflectional grammar in
Finnish, a certain freedom of word order exists which is lacking in English. English
typically uses a strict subject-verb-object (SVO) order in simple sentences and does not
allow free changes in word order. There are also a number of English sentence structures
that reflect non-SVO word orders, like questions, sentences with relative clauses, and
sentences with infinitives, participles and gerunds, to name a few. German word order
rules can be placed somewhere between the Finnish and the English ones. In German
sentences, word order is both more variable and more flexible than in English, however,
German does not allow the order to be changed quite as freely as Finnish does. One of the
biggest differences in German compared to the other two languages is the word order in
subordinate clauses. A German subordinate clause always starts with a subordinating
conjunction and ends with the conjugated verb. If the subordinate clause comes before
the main clause, the very first word after the comma has to be the verb in the main clause.
Compound verbs, which are often split in two parts in German sentences, cause some

29
difficulty for the L2 German learners of both English and Finnish, as this kind of verbal
behaviour is not present in either one of these languages.
Swedish, like English and German, is also a Germanic language and can be
considered to be quite similar to both of these languages. Although Swedish and German
lexical features are often perceived far more similar to one another than English lexical
features to either one of these languages, they are all clearly closely related. Swedish uses
articles and inflects nouns in nominative and genitive case. Grammatical gender is also
present in Swedish. Similarly like German, a number of nouns form plural with umlaut;
the vowel of the syllable before the suffix is changed. Like in English, prepositions in
Swedish work as stand-alone words, but can interact somewhat more with verbs than they
usually can in English. Similarly like in German, prepositions can be attached as a prefix
to a verb, modifying the verb so that the noun phrase that would have been governed by
the preposition instead becomes a direct object of the verb. However, the meaning of the
verb can be altered as part of this process, so it is can reasonably be argued that this is not
an action of the preposition itself, but rather a derivation of a new compound word which
has a preposition and a verb as its components. Swedish syntax does not differ from
English syntax in great deal, however, Swedish sentences often use inverted word order,
placing the verb before the subject to indicate questions, conditionals and consecutives.
Inverted word order is also used when the sentence starts with an adverbial or when any
object of the verb is placed at the front of the sentence
Irish is also an Indo-European language and has the same inherited grammatical
categories as other languages of the same family, such as nouns, verbs and prepositions.
Nouns have masculine or feminine gender and are inflected in nominative/accusative,
genitive, dative and vocative cases. In addition to the usual parts of speech, Irish also uses
a sub-class of nouns called verbal nouns, which are used in prepositional phrases. Instead
of infinitive form, each verb has an associated verbal noun, generally based on the same
root, which is for example used to fill the functions of the infinitive. As a member of the
Celtic language family, Irish is not closely related to any of the other four languages
involved in this study.

30
Chapter 4

The Present Study: Background

4.1 Aims

The study I carried out was a quantitative cross-sectional study and the tests were done in
a classroom environment. My aim was to study cross-linguistic influence on native
English and native Finnish L2 learners of German. As both groups had previously
acquired additional languages, my interest was not restricted to only studying the
influence of the learners native language but also the influence of other previously
acquired languages and therefore it could be said that the students in both groups were
actually L3 learners of German. Because Finnish is a non-Indo-European language,
which is in no way related to German, I was expecting the Finnish students rather to use
their knowledge of English and Swedish, both of which are Indo-European languages and
also members of the Germanic language group, as their source of transfer. I wasnt
expecting the Irish students to use their knowledge of Irish in a significant way, but rather
to transfer from their native language English.

4.2 Methodology

The test was divided into two parts. The first part was an error-recognition test, where
students were given example sentences, some of which were correct and some incorrect.
The students were asked to mark the incorrect sentences and to underline the part of the
sentence, which they believed to be incorrect. They were also asked to suggest a
corrected version of the sentence. The second part was a translation from their native
language into the target language German. The translation was approximately 80 words

31
long. The time allowed for each of the two parts was ten minutes. I was first thinking of
replacing the translation test with a spontaneous writing test, asking the students to write
a short essay on a given topic. However, as the test time was only ten minutes, I
suspected the outcome of the essays might vary a great deal from student to student, as
some would require more time to think about the storyline than others. Previous research
has also shown that translation tasks tend to result in more cross-linguistic influence than
tasks that call for free composition (Ringbom, 1987). Therefore I came to the conclusion
it would be better to give both groups the same text to translate.

4.3 Test Groups

I studied two groups of students, a group of native English speakers and a group
of native Finnish speakers. The first of the two groups I studied was a group of 17
approximately 18 year-old first year university students in Ireland, all of whom were
native speakers of English and one bilingual speaker of English and German. They had
also been studying Irish in school. The second group was 18 approximately 18 year-old
final year secondary school students in Finland, all of whom were native speakers of
Finnish. The Finnish-speaking students had all previously learned English and Swedish.

32
 English-speaking students Finnish-speaking students
Sex Age No of years Sex Age No of years
studying studying
German German
F 18,5 6 M 18 4
M 20 4 M 18 5
F 18 7 M 18 2,5
M 18 6 F 18 5
F 19 6 F 18 5
F 18 6,5 F 18 5
M 18 6 F 18 5
M 20 8 F 18 5
F 19 8 F 18 5
F 20 6 F 18 5
M 19 7 F 18 5
M 19 5 F 18 3
M 20 20 F 18 5
F 18 6 F 18 5
M 18 6 F 18 5
F 18 6 F 18 5
F 18 4 F 18 2.5
M 19 3
Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean
9F=53% 18.7 6.9 14F=78% 18.1 4.4
8M =47% 4M=22%

Table 4.1: Participants in the present study

(sex, age and the number of years the subjects have been learning German)

4.4 Problems

With the limited time of ten minutes, some of the students were not able to fully complete
the translation task. The group of Finnish speakers seemed to have more difficulty to
complete the test in time and there are several factors which may have influenced this.
The test situation was timed rather unfavourably for the Finnish speakers. The students
took the test at 8am on a Monday morning, which might have had negative influence on
their motivation. Another motivational factor that played a role in this test was the level

33
of education. Whereas the English speakers were university students, the Finnish
speakers were secondary school students, who typically are not necessarily quite as
motivated to study as the third level students. These two factors may have had an
influence on the students motivation to succeed in the test.
Another problem I faced was my lack of knowledge of the Irish language. Irish is
also an Indo-European language, like English and German, but as it is a member of the
Celtic language group, I did not expect it to largely influence the English-speaking
students German production. Irish has very different lexical and grammatical features
compared to English and I expected it not to have influenced the production of the Irish
students very much.
One more factor to be taken into consideration before the test results can be
compared is the level of German the students have acquired up to now. The Irish students
had studied German for approximately 7 years but the Finnish students only about 4.5
years. For the Irish students, German was their L3, whereas for the Finnish students it
was their L4.

4.5 Concluding Summary

This chapter described the methodology used in the present study. Both error-recognition
and translation were used as methods for collecting data. All the data collected was
written data. Because the two groups had a slight difference in the level of their L2
knowledge, the amount of cross-linguistic influence could not be directly compared
without considering the factors affecting it, such as learners age, proficiency and
background. However, it was possible to make interesting hypotheses of the source
languages of transfer and the way in which the students were incorporating the influence
in their production of L2 German. The following section discusses the results of these
tests.

34
Chapter 5

Analysis of the Present Study:

Results and Discussion

In this section I will explain the outcome of the tests. First I will give an overview of all
the mistakes the students made and will then move onto analysing the possible cross-
linguistic influence on these mistakes. I will consider both lexical and grammatical
transfer and give some insight into why transfer might have happened in most cases.

5.1 Overall mistakes

The starting point for the analysis was to mark all the errors that occurred in the L2
production. These errors were categorised into ten different groups; wrong words,
missing words, wrong endings, wrong articles, wrong prepositions, wrong personal
pronouns, wrong verb forms, wrong word order, spelling mistakes and style errors. Style
errors were considered to include non-use of compound article-preposition combinations,
like in dem, which should combine into im, as well as use of words which are not entirely
wrong but the meaning of which is too strong in the target language compared to the
source language, like for example love and like relationship. Some interesting findings
can be done from the mistake tables. The overall length of the L2 production seemed to
be somewhat longer for the Irish students. This could be explained by the higher
proficiency in L2 German among the Irish students. The Irish students seemed to make
remarkably more style mistakes, most of them relating to a wrong choice of verb. The
percentage of overall mistakes made by the Finnish-speaking students seems rather high.
This is due to the high number of missing words in the Finnish-speaking students L2
German production. As can be seen from tables 4 and 5, if the missing words are ignored,

35
the error percentages of the English-speaking and the Finnish-speaking students are
closer to one another.

36
Student Total Wrong Missing Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Spelling Style Total
(L1 words words words endings articles prep. pers. verb word mistakes errors mistakes
Finnish) pron. forms order %
1 76 5 10 8 1 3 6 43.4%
2 10
3 81 9 5 9 5 4 2 2 3 6 3 58.0%
4 71 1 7 5 2 3 2 3 2 35.2%
5 77 3 11 3 1 1 4 2 2 3 39.0%
6 32 44 4 1 153.1%
7 36 1 41 4 1 3 3 3 155.6%
8 77 1 8 3 2 1 2 3 1 29.9%
9 53 5 32 8 2 2 3 2 7 115.1%
10 73 9 4 1 1 1 3 26.0%
11 73 5 2 1 1 2 2 17.8%
12 70 4 8 1 2 2 4 30.0%
13 65 4 14 4 2 2 1 1 1 10 1 61.5%
14 45 4 38 6 1 2 1 5 126.7%
15 18 51 1 1 2 1 311.1%
16 45 6 39 4 1 3 1 2 5 1 137.8%
17 75 5 11 8 3 5 1 3 48.0%
18 0
Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean
60.4 3.3 20.6 4.5 1.3 1.6 1.1 1.6 0.7 4.1 0.6 86.8%

Table 5.1: Overall mistakes made by the Finnish-speaking students in the second part of the test (translation). Total mistakes were
calculated as a percentage of mistakes per word. The mean figures were calculated as mistakes made in a particular area per student.
(Two students did not complete the translation test and therefore only 16 students results were considered meaningful.)

37
Student Total Wrong Missing Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Spelling Style Total
(L1 words words words endings articles prep. pers. verb word mistakes errors mistakes
English) pron. forms order %
1 93 1 1 2.0%
2 85 1 4 2 1 2 3 15.3%
3 80 4 1 2 1 1 1 12.5%
4 85 1 1 1 1 4.7%
5 93 5 4 2 2 4 4 2 24.7%
6 86 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 12.8%
7 87 3 3 1 3 1 2 14.9%
8 86 5 1 5 1 4 2 2 23.3%
9 87 4 1 1 2 1 2 12.6%
10 66 6 23 3 1 2 1 5 3 2 69.7%
11 85 3 1 4 1 1 7 1 21.2%
12 86 4 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 15.1%
13 92 4 3 1 2 2 15.2%
14 83 5 1 9 3 1 2 1 2 28.9%
15 83 2 3 6 1 2 4 2 4 28.9%
16 74 5 13 3 2 3 5 1 6 1 52.7%
17 83 5 6 3 2 1 2 6 1 31.3%
Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean Mean
84.4 3.5 3.2 2.7 1.2 1.4 0.9 1.9 0.5 2.1 0.9 22.8%

Table 5.2: Overall mistakes made by the English-speaking students in the second part of the test (translation). Total mistakes were
calculated as a percentage of mistakes per word. The mean figures were calculated as mistakes made in a particular area per student.

38
 Student (L1 Finnish) Total words Total Mistakes Total Mistakes %
1 76 23 30.3%
2* 10 0
3 81 43 53.1%
4 71 18 25.4%
5 77 19 24.7%
6 32 5 15.6%
7 36 15 41.7%
8 77 13 16.9%
9 53 29 54.7%
10 73 10 13.7%
11 73 11 15.1%
12 70 13 18.6%
13 65 26 40.0%
14 45 19 42.2%
15 18 5 27.8%
16 45 23 51.1%
17 75 25 33.3%
18* 0 0
Mean
60.4 18.6 31.5%

Table 5.3: Overall mistakes made by the Finnish-speaking students in the second part of
the test (translation). Missing words were not considered as mistakes in this table. Total
mistakes were calculated as a percentage of mistakes per word.
* Two students production was too short to be analysed and therefore their results from
the translation part were not considered in the total results.

39
 Student (L1 English) Total words Total Mistakes Total Mistakes %
1 93 2 2.2%
2 85 12 14.1%
3 80 9 11.3%
4 85 4 4.7%
5 93 23 24.7%
6 86 10 11.6%
7 87 10 11.5%
8 86 19 22.1%
9 87 11 12.6%
10 66 23 34.8%
11 85 17 20.0%
12 86 13 15.1%
13 92 12 13.0%
14 83 23 27.7%
15 83 21 25.3%
16 74 26 35.1%
17 83 20 24.1%
Mean
84.4 15 18.2%

Table 5.4: Overall mistakes made by the English-speaking students in the second part of
the test (translation). Missing words were not considered as mistakes in this table. Total
mistakes were calculated as a percentage of mistakes per word.

40
5.2 Cross-Linguistic Influence:
Finnish-speaking Students

While all the errors in the L2 learners production cannot be counted as transfer, a high
number of them do seem to imply that another language - the learners native language or
another L2 the learner has acquired has influenced the production process. In this study,
I was expecting some transfer but was surprised with the amount of lexical transfer in the
production of the Finnish-speaking students. I will first analyse the production of the
Finnish students and then go on to analyse that of the Irish. Finally I compare the results
with one another and also with some previous work in this field.
As already stated earlier, Finnish is not related to German and therefore I was
expecting the possible transfer in the production of the Finnish-speaking L2 German
learners to come from the two Germanic languages, Swedish and English, both of which
the students had previously acquired. With this in mind, I started to analyse the lexicon
and to my great surprise, found a large number of words, which I believed to have been
influenced by other languages.

5.2.1 Lexicon

Many studies have shown non-native language influence to be common and frequent in
lexical level. Psychotypology, the learners perceptual view on the distance between the
relevant languages seems to be important. Larger distances between unrelated languages
may cause learner to be unable to make use of his L1 and therefore to rely on his
knowledge of another L2 related to the target language.
In this section I will be using the terms relexification and hybrid as Ringbom
(1987) describes them and the term borrowing as he describes complete language shift.

41
5.2.1.1 Borrowing

Borrowing happens when the search for a lexical item activates a word in L1 or
previously acquired non-native language and this item is taken over into the L2 in an
unmodified form (Ringbom, 1987). This is the difference between lexical transfer and
borrowing, which is also called complete language shift. Transfer takes place primarily
from the learners first language, regardless of its distance to the target language, while
borrowing takes place from a language related to the target language. In this study, the
Finnish students did not seem to use their native language Finnish as the source of
borrowing, but rather to borrow from Swedish or English. Eight out of the 16 Finnish-
speaking students who completed the translation test used borrowing in their L2 German
production. Borrowing from English or Swedish occurred 15 times in 13 different words,
which were Mathematics, Ingenjr, Ocean, Rum, simmar, Espanja, near, grna, will,
Familj, University, landet and men. When the borrowed word was a noun, it was with
one exception changed to start with a capital letter; a feature, which German, unlike
Swedish, English or Finnish, requires. The word Universitet can be classified under two
categories; on one hand it clearly looks like it has been borrowed from Swedish but on
the other hand, it could be argued that it has been phonetically influenced by Finnish. I
will consider both possibilities below.
The words, which seemed as they had been borrowed from English were
Mathematics, Ocean, near, will, and University. The English words mathematics and
university are close to their German counterparts die Mathematik and die Universitt in
their written form and could have therefore caused the language shift to take place.
Ocean is similar to the German word der Ozean but in this case the search triggered a
slightly wrong meaning. The word which was expected to occur was das Meer or die See,
which both have the English meaning sea, not ocean. The semantic representations of an
ocean and a sea are, however, close to one another and it may have been the case that the
learner could not find the right word and therefore chose to use a word with a very
similar meaning. Instead of near the expression in der Nhe was expected to occur. The
spelling of Nhe is somewhat similar to that of near but interestingly the student did not
choose to use the Swedish word nra, which is not only phonologically but also

42
phonetically close to the German target word. The use of will instead of wird, the first
person singular form of werden, can be explained not only in terms of complete language
shift but also with its role in German. The word will does indeed also occur in German
but it has a different meaning to that of English will. German will is the third person
singular form of the verb wollen meaning to want.
Swedish seemed to be the source of borrowing for six words. These were Ingenjr,
Rum, simmar, grna, Familj, landet and men. The German word der Ingenieur, meaning
engineer, caused a lot of difficulty in this test and a number of students misspelled it.
Only one student borrowed the word ingenjr from Swedish. Other students were
influenced with Swedish or English forms of the same word but these cases will be
discussed later on. Rum is a borrowing from Swedish and is yet again very similar to that
of German der Raum meaning room. The verb simmar is relatively similar to German
schwimmen and English to swim and the high resemblance could have caused the
activation of a wrong language. To express willingness one student used the Swedish
word grna, an obvious mix up with the German word gern. Even more obvious is the
similarity between the German word die Familie meaning family and the Swedish word
familj, which was used by three students. On the look out for the expression auf dem
Land, in the country, one student used the mixed expression aus landet, which has a
German preposition but the word landet, with the right meaning countryside, is borrowed
from Swedish. All these borrowed words are spelled similarly in the target language as
they are in the source language. There was only one word borrowed from Swedish that
did not have phonetic or phonological similarities with the target word and this was the
conjunction men, meaning but in English, mutta in Finnish and aber in German.
As stated earlier, the analysis of the word Universitet caused controversy. It
would be relatively easy to say, it is a straight borrowing from Swedish, with a
capitalised onset. On the other hand, the amount of students using it, could be a sign of
something else leading the choice of words. It could well be, that the Swedish spelling
and the pronunciation of the German counterpart Universitt have led the students to
believe the in the German word should indeed be e, which is the phonetic equivalent in
Finnish. The possible phonetic influence on this word is discussed later on.

43
 Only one word was borrowed from the L1. This was the Finnish word Espanja
meaning Spain in English and Spanien in German and Swedish. Unlike most Finnish
words, this word shows some similarity with the target word and could have therefore
been activated in the translation process. It can be argued that Munchen, used by three
students, is a borrowing from Finnish since, because of the absence of the letter in the
Finnish alphabet, both Munchen and the correct form Mnchen are commonly used in
Finnish for Munich.

5.2.1.2 Relexification

Words, which have been phonologically modified to make them more target language
like are called relexifications. The words, which I considered to be relexifications in the
translating production of the Finnish-speaking students were Hause, Mathematicks,
Ingengr, Insinr, Insinr, Familje, Lhrerin, scheren, gesoltet and Legenhet. Hause,
Mathematicks and Familje are all very close to the target words das Haus, die
Mathematik and die Familie respectively, with only one letter difference to the required
word. Hause is a relexification generated from the English word house. The English word
mathematics has similarly been changed into the more German like word Mathematicks.
The student who used this form may have thought the common German ending ik
blended into the English word gives the required form but, however, failed to replace the
English ending with the German one and instead used both of them. The word Familje is
a borrowing from Swedish familj, which has been relexified using the ending e. The
correct German word would have been Familie.
As stated in the previous section, the word Ingenieur proved to be a tricky one.
The form Ingengr is most likely a relexification from the Swedish word ingenjr. The
words Insinr and Insinr have been influenced by the Finnish word insinri, which
has been changed more target like, not only phonetically but also with evident
phonological influence from the pronunciation of the German word Ingenieur. The word
Lhrerin has been influenced by the Swedish word lrare, meaning teacher. The first
vowel of the correct German form Lehrerin has been replaced with the corresponding

44
Swedish one. A similar change from the Swedish word lgenhet meaning apartment to
Legenhet was made, however, this change did not produce the correct target word die
Wohnung. Legenhet does not belong to the German lexicon but is similar to another
German word Gelegenheit, which, however, does not share the meaning with lgenhet.
Gelegenheit could be translated to mean an opportunity or an occasion.
The verb relexification scheren intended to mean teilen or in English to share
could have been influenced by English. The English word, which has the same meaning
as the target word, has been modified with a vowel change and some typical German
features, namely the sch consonant cluster and the en verb ending. Gesoltet could be
categorized under relexifications and hybrids. The consonant change from d to t in the
verb sold would support the theory behind relexifications. The construction also shows
significant signs of hybrid building. These features will be discussed below.

5.2.1.3 Hybrids

Hybrids are forms consisting of morphemes from different languages. Examples of

hybrids in the Finnish-speaking students production were Sommarferien, Swimmen,
nexten and gesoltet. Sommarferien, a replacement for the German word sommerferien
with the meaning summer holidays, is a compound consisting of the Swedish word
sommar and the German word Ferien. The compound is very close to the target form
Sommerferien. Swimmen derives from the English word swimming but the English ing
ending has been replaced by a German ending en. The student failed to replace the s in
the beginning of the word with the German sch. Similarly to the previous example, the
ending en has been added to the English word next to form nexten. The ending is correct,
but the word stem should have been nchst and therefore formed nchsten, an inflected
form of the German word for next. The verb verkaufen, to sell, was formed using the
English past form sold with the German verb-prefix ge- and an ending et. The et
ending may have been influenced by the common Swedish verb endings at and it as
well as the English past ending ed.

45
5.2.1.4 Translation

Translating native language expressions or using semantic extensions did not seem to be
a problem among the Finnish-speaking students. Only three cases of semantically
inappropriate translation were found. Two of these were uses of the verb gehen instead of
reisen or fahren to mean to go. Finnish uses the verb to go semantically quite similarly as
English does and I considered the use of the general but restricted verb gehen to result
from semantic extension of the meaning.
Only one student used the verb lieben to express fondness. German uses the verb
lieben similarly as Finnish uses rakastaa; only to express to love when the affection is
strong. In English it is, however, commonly used in expressions like I love swimming
or she loves chocolate. With this in mind, I came to the conclusion that this Finnish-
speaking student must have extended the semantic meaning of the German verb due to
being influenced how the English counterpart is used.

5.2.1.5 Phonetic influence

Some errors in written production occur due to different pronunciation in the two
languages. Ringbom (1987) stated that the learner may mispronounce the word, being too
greatly influenced by the way it is spelled, or misspell it being influenced by the way it is
pronounced. In a classroom situation, the foreign language learner often has very little
practice in speaking the target language. Learning the written and spoken forms
simultaneously can cause the learner to mix the two forms. A common way of learning
target language vocabulary for many learners in Finnish schools seems to be to learn the
word as it would be pronounced in Finnish, as if the L2 word were a corresponding string
of L1 phonemes. As Finnish has regular one-to-one correspondence between letters and
phonemes, this pronunciation often differs greatly from the target pronunciation and can
lead into difficulties mainly in spoken production but also in writing.
To my great surprise, 50 percent of the Finnish-speaking students misspelled the
German word die Universitt. The form these students used was die Universitet, which

46
only differs from the correct form by one vowel. As discussed earlier, this choice could
be purely borrowing, purely phonetic or as a matter of fact, both combined. If we
consider it to be purely phonetic, the reason why so many students made this mistake is
clear; German is in most cases pronounced like Finnish e. Finnish pronunciation is very
regular with very good correspondence between sound and symbol, everything is
pronounced the way it is spelled, and while Universitt, with the exception of the r and
the , is pronounced similarly as it would be if it was a Finnish word, the students may
have simply applied their native language pronunciation rules to the spelling of this word.
I would, however, suggest that the use of Universitet is the result of these two
possibilities acting together. The driving force may well be the Swedish word universitet,
which has been certified by the Finnish pronunciation rules.

5.2.2 Grammar

Previous research has shown errors arising due to cross-linguistic influence to be more
common at the phonological and lexical levels of language than at the grammatical level.
Many studies also suggest that non-native language influence is frequent in the area of
lexis but is much less significant or nonexistent in grammar and phonology (Ringbom,
1987). With regard to the present study, even though I found some grammatical features,
which had possibly been influenced by other languages, the influence was clearly not as
widespread and obvious as it was on lexical level.

5.2.2.1 Morphology: Grammatical Gender

Grammatical gender can be described to be a grammatical category in inflected languages

governing the agreement between nouns, adjectives and pronouns. Indo-European
languages typically have three genders, feminine, masculine and neuter, which are
usually based on sex or animateness. While German assigns every noun to one of the
categories above, English usually only exhibits gender in third person singular personal

47
pronouns he, she and it. German grammatical gender is a lexical feature; gender is based
idiosyncratically on individual lexemes. Gender is expressed with articles but often also
with endings like in for feminine occupations and chen for neuter. Therefore, quite
surprisingly, the word Mdchen, meaning little girl, is not a feminine word but neuter one.
A common mistake for both groups was to leave the feminine in ending out in
the words die Studentin and die Lehrerin, meaning female student and teacher
respectively. Instead, students used the words der Student and der Lehrer, the masculine
forms of these words. A simple explanation for this could be that this feature is not as
common in all the other languages involved in this study. Only German makes a strict
distinction between female and male occupational names. English uses gender marking
with a number of occupational names but not with all of them. In Finnish it is possible to
add an ending to some professional names to mark feminine gender but this feature is not
very commonly used. An interesting finding was that while six Finnish-speaking students
failed to add the feminine ending into the word Student, only three made this mistake
with the word Lehrer. This could be seen as a result of drilling, where the students have
been repeatedly told that occupational names for females differ from the male ones but
students have failed to apply this rule to similarly functioning words, like Student here.

5.2.2.2 Morphology: Word Formation

The Finnish-speaking group did not have difficulties with morphological features like
compounding. Finnish, in many ways, works similarly to German when forming new
words through compounding. Derivation then again caused some problems. The in
ending in female occupational names is actually a morphological feature. By the means
of derivation, the suffix in designates a female person and is added to the word meaning
the male counterpart.
Another feature, which can be counted as derivation is verbs with prefixes. These
are verbs with a fixed or a separable prefix, which often changes the meaning of the verb
used as a base of the new formation. In the first part of the experiment, the use of two
such verbs was tested. These were erklten and anrufen. Nearly all the students failed to

48
identify the form verklten as an ungrammatical form, only used in some German dialects.
The similar appearance of the words might have caused the confusion or then the students
simply were not aware of the correct form of the verb. The second verb employed a
separable prefix an-. Students in general did not recognize the separable prefix in the
sentence and often confused it with the preposition an. The right word order also proved
to be a difficult task and many students did not realize that in a main clause, the prefix is
placed at the end of the sentence. Problems with prefixes and especially separable
prefixes can partly occur due to language transfer and in this case, due to the fact that
Finnish does not use separable prefixes.

5.2.2.3 Morphology: Case and Case Endings

Many students made mistakes with case endings. This, however, is not necessarily
strongly bound up with language transfer. Finnish uses several endings and although they
are very different from the German ones, the students are used to this feature. The first
part of the test did, however, indicate that Finnish-speaking students had more difficulty
placing correct endings on articles and in many occasions, the students simply omitted
the endings. This was not necessarily due to language transfer but could instead indicate a
lack of knowledge in this area of grammar or as Odlin (1989) proposes, it could also
result due to simplification. Mistakes with case endings are common in second language
learning and simply feature a set of grammatical rules, the use of which improves with
practice and fluency.
The Finnish-speaking students also accepted the use of dich in connection with
the dative preposition mit more often than the English-speaking students. The failure to
acknowledge the fact that this preposition requires a dative case could, of course, be due
to the non-use of prepositions in Finnish and therefore the students may not have been
familiar enough with this feature. The prepositions requiring different cases are, however,
taught repeatedly in Finnish schools and therefore the students should have been familiar
with the functioning of this preposition and the fact that the dative case of dich is dir.

49
 The use of genitive in the expression University of Munich caused some
problems, which could have been influenced by Finnish. Some students used the
expression Mnchens Universitt, which is grammatically correct but not as widely used
as Universitt Mnchen is. Finnish constructs the genitive forms similarly, Mnchenin
yliopisto being the only widely accepted form to use. It is also possible and quite likely
that both Finnish and English have contributed to this case. In English, genitive
constructions are most often formed with s, which could have directed the students
choice to use Mnchens Universitt. Some students also used a mixture of the above
expressions, namely, Universitt Mnchens, which is incorrect. In this case it is possible
that the students have registered the correct order of the words in this expression but have
still felt the need to add the genitive s for clarification.

5.2.2.4 Syntax: Articles

Several studies, the most relevant one being Ringboms experiments with Finnish-
speaking and Swedish-speaking learners of English, have shown that speakers of
languages which use articles tend to use them more accurately than do speakers of
languages which do not use articles. While familiarity with the use of articles can greatly
aid acquiring the usage rules of a new language, it did not seem to be a major factor in
this study. It seems that once the learners advance from a beginner level to intermediate
level, they have more or less been used to the article system of the target language. It
should be stated that this does not mean the learners would not have difficulty choosing
the right article, especially when the target language features such a rich article system as
German does. Both groups were found to make mistakes with articles, most mistakes
being the use of a wrong gender article or using the right article but having trouble
finding the right inflected case form. In the present study, I did not consider the problems
with the use of articles to have mainly arisen due to cross-linguistic influence.
I did consider one area of article use to show signs of cross-linguistic influence.
This was the additional feature applying to German occupational names; they lose their
article in expressions like ich bin Lehrerin (I am a teacher) or er ist Ingenieur (he is an

50
engineer). The Finnish students, who failed to make use of this rule, may have been
influenced by their English and Swedish knowledge, languages both of which use an
article in front of occupational names, although in this case it could also simply be a
matter of habit formation with the use of articles.

5.2.2.5 Syntax: Prepositions

According to Ringbom (1992) Finnish-speaking students have more problems in using

English prepositions than the Swedish-speaking students. As English and German use
prepositions in a similar way, the same assumption more than likely also applies to
Finnish-speakers and English-speakers learning German. However, I did not find major
differences between the two test groups and therefore did not consider the problems some
students had with prepositions to have been greatly influenced by their native or
additional languages.

5.2.2.6 Syntax: Word order

The general word order in German independent clauses is SVO, subject first, predicate
second and other elements third. The conjugated verb is placed second in a sentence,
second meaning in a second place after the first element, which might be longer than just
one word. Before the independent clause there can be items like interjections,
exclamations, names or certain adverbial phrases. These items are usually set off by a
comma, but do not alter the verb second rule in the independent clause. There are, of
course, exceptions to this rule. Subordinate or dependent clauses, introduced by a
subordinate conjunction or a relative pronoun, place the conjugated verb into postposition,
at the end of the subordinate clause, resulting in SOV order. According to Odlin (1989,
1990), little negative transfer occurs where basic word order is concerned if the target
language only has one basic word order. However, German has two word order patterns
and therefore some cross-linguistic influence could be expected.

51
 Both study groups showed relatively good understanding of German word order
rules. However, some mistakes were found. In the first part of the test, some students
failed to apply the rule that if the main clause comes after the subordinate clause, the verb
in the main clause should be in the first position, straight after the comma. This could
have been influenced by Finnish but could also be a result of concentrating on the
subordinate word order and therefore failing to notice the word order change in the
following main clause. The translation part of the test brought up more problems with
word order and the four main clauses with wrong word order are analysed below. The
first sentence or phrase will always be the incorrect one produced by a student and the
second will be an example showing the correct word order.

Figure 5.1: During the summer holidays she is going to go to Spain and live by the sea.
Red colour indicates conjugated verb, blue colour indicates verb in base form.

The student has failed to apply the verb second rule for the conjugated verb. This could
have been affected by both Finnish and English, both of which in this case place the
subject ahead of the conjugated verb. Similarly if a conjunction links two phrases which
share the conjugated verb, the verb in base form should stand in the same position in both
of them. This student successfully placed the verb in base form in the end of the first part
of the sentence but failed to apply this rule after the conjunction.

Figure 5.2: Their house will be sold next year.

Red colour indicates conjugated passive auxiliary verb,
blue colour indicates past participle.

52
The German verbs werden or sein are used as an auxiliary in conjunction with the past
participle in passive constructions. The auxiliary is conjugated and placed in its correct
position, which in this case is the second position. The past participle is placed in the end
of the sentence, similarly as the base form in the previous example. This student failed to
place the past participle in the end position and instead placed it straight after the
conjugated verb. This again could have been influenced by either Finnish or English,
both of which approve the use of this order.

Figure 5.3: Their house will be sold next year.

Red colour indicates conjugated passive auxiliary verb,
blue colour indicates past participle.

This student did not know how to form the passive construction and simply used the base
form to express it. This could have been influenced by Finnish, as in Finnish the passive
voice is very similar to the base form of the verb and would be usually positioned after
the object as this student did.

Figure 5.4: Their house will be sold next year.

Red colour indicates conjugated passive auxiliary verb,
blue colour indicates past participle.

This student has used a subordinate clause word order in main clause. This word order
does not show signs of cross-linguistic influence, as neither Finnish4 nor English use such
order in passive voice.

4
In Finnish it is possible to use such word order if the speaker wants to emphasize the fact that it is next
year when their house will be sold; ensi vuonna heidn talonsa myydn. However, such emphasis was
not expected to be expressed in this sentence.

53
 The following figures show relative clauses and subordinate clauses, which
caused difficulty for the Finnish-speaking students.

Figure 5.5: , in which she lives with her friends.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

This phrase again could have been influenced by either Finnish or English as both
languages place conjugated verb after the subject in relative clauses.

Figure 5.6: , because she loves swimming.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

The vocabulary in this sentence is highly influenced by Swedish and this would suggest
that the word order could have also been affected by the similar Swedish construction
drfr att hon simmar grna. The word order could have also been influenced by the
Finnish word order, as in Finnish it is possible to use a similar construction; koska hn ui
mielelln, where mielelln expresses Swedish grna and German gern.

Figure 5.7: , because she loves swimming.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

54
This clause then again shows clear cross-linguistic influence from Finnish or English,
both of which place the verb after the subject and the object after the verb in this kind of
sentences.

Figure 5.8: , which she shares with her friends.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

This sentence does not show clear cross-linguistic influence. Finnish, Swedish or English
do not place the conjugated verb in front of the subject in such cases. One possibility is
that the student has incorrectly used the verb second rule in this construction.

5.2.3 Avoidance

The Finnish-speaking students did not try to avoid using relative clauses or other such
constructions. The only form of avoidance I found was lexical avoidance, or more so
incompleteness. Many students left gaps, some only missing words but some actually
also missing clauses. This may be due to these items missing in their lexicon or being
unavailable but it could also be seen as ignorance. These constructions may have been
viewed as too difficult and therefore left incomplete. Most students did start the clause
but left it incomplete after being unable to complete it, which would suggest lack of
motivation in trying to complete the task properly.

55
L1 Finnish students: Words and phrases featuring cross-linguistic influence
Mistake Occurred/Expected Source language Occurrences
(no of
students)
Fem in Student/Studentin Fin. Engl. 6
missing Lehrer/Lehrerin Fin. Engl. 3
Words with Hause/Haus Engl. House 7
features from Mathematics/Mathematik Engl. mathematics 1
other Mathematicks/Mathematik Engl. mathematics 1
languages Sommarferien/Sommerferien Swe. sommar 2
Ocean/Meer Engl. ocean 1
Swimmen/Schwimmen Engl. swimming 2
Ingengr/Ingenieur Swe. ingenjr 1
Insinr/Ingenieur Swe. ingenjr 2
Insinr/Ingenieur Swe. ingenjr 1
Ingenjr/Ingenieur Swe. ingenjr 1
Rum/Raum Swe. rum 3
Espanja/Spanien Fin. Espanja 1
near/in der Nhe Engl. near 1
simmar/schwimmt Swe. simma 1
grna/gern Swe. grna 1
der See/die See, das Meer Engl. See 3
will/wird Engl. will 1
Familj/Familie Swe. familj 3
Familje/Familie Swe. familj 1
Lhrerin/Lehrerin Swe. lrare 1
nexten/nchstes Engl. next 1
scheren/teilen Engl. share 1
Landesblaan/Bauernhaus Ger. runway 1
Munchen/Mnchen Fin? 3
University/Universitt Engl. university 1
landet/Land Swe. landet 1
men/aber Swe. men 1
gesoltet/verkauft Engl. sold 1
Legenhet/Wohnung Swe. lgenhet 1
Universitet/ Universitt Swe. universitet 8*
Translations gehen/fahren,reisen Fin. menn 2
Engl. go
(lieben/mgen, gern haben Engl. love 1)
Unwanted ein Ingenieur/Ingenieur Engl. uses articles 3
article in eine Lehrerin/Lehrerin 3
front of
professional
name
Phonetic Universitet/Universitt Ger. pronounced 8*
influence like Fin. e

56
Unwanted Universitt Mnchens Fin. 2
use of (Mnchens Universitt Fin. 3)
genitive
Verb ending Besuchtet/besucht Swe. at/it endings 1
Word order: welcher sie wohnt mit seinem Fin. SVO 1
Freund/ Engl. SVO
in dem sie mit ihren Freundinnen (Ger. SOV)
wohnt

In Sommerurlaub sie denkt nach Fin. SVO 1

Espanja gehen und wohn near der Engl. SVO
See, / (Ger. VSO)
Im Sommerurlaub wird sie nach
Spanien fahren und am Meer
wohnen,
Fin. SVO 1
, weil sie simmar grna/ Engl. SVO
, weil sie gern schwimmt (Ger. Verb end)

ihr Haus wird verkauft an nchstes Fin./Engl. All verb

Jahre/ forms together 1
ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft (Ger. Conjugated
verb second)
ihre hause kaufen Jahren/
ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft See above 1

ihren Hause im nchsten Jahre See above

gekauft wird/ 1
ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft
Fin. Passive form
kaufen nchstes Jahr/ expressed with one 2
wird nchstes Jahr verkauft verb

Mnchen Universitt/ Fin. Place name 4

Universitt Mnchen before the
institution name

, weil sie lieben Schwimmen/ Fin. Engl. SVO 1

, weil sie Schwimmen liebt (Ger. SOV)

, die teilt sie mit seiner Freunde/ slight Fin./ Engl. 1

, die sie mit ihren Freundinnen teilt SVO influence
(Ger. SOV)

Table 5.5: Errors, which could have occurred due to cross-linguistic influence in the
translation part. (* indicates a mistake which could be categorized under two categories)

57
5.3 Cross-linguistic Influence:
English-speaking Students

The English-speaking students did not seem to transfer as many lexical items as the
Finnish-speaking students did. This may simply be explained by the fact that the general
level of the English-speaking students language proficiency was higher than that of the
Finnish-speaking ones. The English-speaking students were third-level students and had
been studying German approximately 2.5 years longer than the Finnish-speaking senior
secondary school students. The larger number of errors arising due to cross-linguistic
influence in the Finnish students production is also supported by Taylors (1975) claim
that learners at an elementary level produced more transfer errors and less intralingual
errors than learners at an intermediate or advanced level.

5.3.1 Lexicon

5.3.1.1 Borrowing

Some say that borrowing is more likely to occur from a non-native language into the
target language than from the native language itself but Ringbom (1987) suggests
borrowing takes place from a related language, regardless of whether or not this language
is the mother tongue. While the Finnish-speaking students showed barely any indication
of lexical native language transfer, the English-speaking students transferred only from
their native English. This could also be seen as code-mixing, a form of communication
transfer where first language and target language are used in the same sentence in order
to overcome communication problems.
A small number of students borrowed words directly from their native English.
These borrowed words were Engineer, Munich, will, University. Like the Finnish-
speaking students, the English-speaking group made the same capitalization change with
nouns to make them more German like. Engineer and University are relatively close to

58
their German counterparts der Ingenieur and die Universitt. The verb form will is a
correct third person singular form of the German verb wollen, which, however, means to
want and does not imply to future actions like the verb werden and its third person
singular form wird do.
One student used the English verb form is instead of the German counter part ist.
The two forms are very similar in form and identical in meaning which could have
caused the language switch to take place. However, it is also possible that in this case it
purely is a spelling mistake due to lack of attention in search for the correct form.

5.3.1.2 Relexification

As seen in the previous study group of Finnish-speaking students, the word Ingenieur
caused greater difficulty. The relexifications Ingineer, Ingineur and Engineur were all
found to have influence from this groups native language English. One student only
changed the initial English e to i and considered this to be enough to form the German
counterpart from the English word engineer. The two other attempts seem somewhat
closer to the target word. Both of them missed the correct spelling of the target word. The
vowel combination ieu is not known to English and may have therefore caused confusion
or complete lack of acknowledgement. An attempt was also made to change Munich into
its German form only by adding an umlaut to u to form Mnich. The correct form would
have been Mnchen. The attempted word Farmhause also counts as a relexification from
English, which most likely was influenced by the English farmhouse. What was expected
was Bauernhaus or Farm.

5.3.1.3 Hybrids

Only one clear hybrid formation was found in the production of the English-speaking
students. This was the form nextes, which was intended to mean next. The ending es,
which is indeed an ending used for the neutral case in strong adjective inflexion, was

59
added to the English word next, but the correct German word would have been nchstes
in its inflected form. It can be argued that the words Sommer Urlaub and Sommer Ferien
count as hybrids as well. In these cases, the problem is morphological; the words
themselves are correct but they should have been in compound forms, written together, to
form the words Sommerurlaub and Sommerferien respectively. These students failed to
acknowledge the German style of word formation and used the English style instead.

5.3.1.4 Translation

The English-speaking students used translation much more than the Finnish-speaking
group did. The items translated were verbs, which have similar meaning in German but
are not considered correct or are found to be too strong in the expression. These verbs
were gehen, leben and lieben. In English it is acceptable to use the verb go in expressions
like Im going to Spain or she wants to go on a holiday. In German, however, the
equivalent verb gehen is only used when the going is done on foot. When the distance
is greater and the destination is farther apart, and it is clear that the moving will not be
done on foot, the equivalent of travel is used. Therefore, in such cases the verbs fahren or
reisen are acceptable.
Similar semantic difference in use can be found with the verb leben, to live. Again
in English, the same verb can be used to mean someone lives in a certain place as well as
to say someone is alive. German, however, has a more restricted use for leben, which in
general is only used to express the fact that someone is alive. The verb wohnen has to be
used in contexts expressing residence.
Many students used the verb lieben to express she loves swimming. While this
is not an error as such, in some contexts it would be considered too strong a verb in
German and a verb with the meaning to like would be considered more acceptable.
Therefore mgen or gern haben are more appropriate to use in such contexts.

60
5.3.2 Grammar

5.3.2.1 Morphology: Grammatical Gender

The English-speaking students did not make quite as many errors with the ending in,
denoting feminine occupational names, as the Finnish-speaking students. This could
simply be explained by the fact that feminine occupational names, such as stewardess or
waitress are no strangers to English. However, similarly to the previous study group, the
English-speaking students never missed the ending with the word Lehrerin but two
students did not include the ending to the word Student to form the feminine version
Studentin.

5.3.2.2 Morphology: Word Formation

English word formation rarely uses compounds, which then again are very common in
German. Two English-speaking students had difficulty adjusting to the German way of
word formation and instead of Sommerulaub and Sommerferien they used the more
English-like formations Sommer Urlaub and Sommer Ferien respectively. The students
are usually made familiar with this feature quite early, especially in classroom situations,
and therefore advanced learners rarely have problems with using compounds.
Error recognition in the first part of the test caused some difficulty in identifying
verbs with prefixes. Similarly to the Finnish group, students had major difficulty
identifying the wrong prefix in verklten. Although verklten is colloquially used in
southern Germany, the correct form that should have been used is erklten. Many
students also claimed that the sentence ich rufe dich morgen an is grammatically
incorrect. While the use of anrufen proved to be slightly more under control among the
English-speaking students, it was still a frequent error to confuse the prefix with the
preposition an. One possible reason for this is the more or less fixed expression am
Morgen being mixed up with the temporal word morgen. This may have been elaborated

61
by the possibility of using the verb rufen with a nearly identical meaning to anrufen. With
this in mind, it is not obvious that cross-linguistic influence would have played a
significant role in this case. However, as English does not use separable verb prefixes the
possibility of cross-linguistic influence cannot be strictly ruled out.

5.3.2.3 Morphology: Case and Case Endings

English case is mainly expressed by word order and therefore case endings are not used.
English-speaking students made mistakes with case endings but similarly to the Finnish
group, these mistakes cannot be seen as occurring purely due to cross-linguistic influence.
In this case, omitting endings could be seen as English having negative influence on the
learners production. While the English-speaking students performed better when it
comes to case endings in articles and inflected pronouns, the smaller number of errors in
their production could also be related to their slightly higher level of proficiency in
German.
The English-speaking students also had difficulty with the genitive construction
University of Munich. Interestingly enough, two students used the expression
Universitt von Mnchen, which is a straight translation of the English counterpart.

5.3.2.4 Syntax: Articles

As mentioned above, I did not consider problems with articles to have been greatly
influenced by the speakers previous knowledge of languages. The two groups were
found to make approximately the same amount of errors. Although the English speakers
are thought to have an advantage learning German articles, I would suggest that this
applies only to beginners level. The English article system is not as rich as the German
system, nor do English articles have inflectional forms in different cases. This would
imply that while English-speakers might find it easier to understand the basic use of

62
German articles, they are not greatly aided by their native language when acquiring the
more complex ways to use and inflect German articles.
The use, or rather the non-use, of articles in front of professional names then
again proved to cause more difficulties among the English-speaking students. While the
number of students incorrectly placing an article in front of the professional names
Ingenieur and Lehrerin in the Finnish-speaking group was three, it was significantly
higher rising up to 10 and 11 respectively in the English-speaking group. These errors
were more than likely due to English using articles in similar contexts.

5.3.2.5 Syntax: Prepositions

As stated earlier, the two groups performed relatively equally in the use of prepositions.
English uses prepositions similarly to German and I was not expecting the English-
speaking students to have major difficulty with them.

5.3.2.6 Syntax: Word Order

English word order is generally strictly SVO, which is also the common order in German
main clauses. However, the German subordinate clause word order SOV, caused some
difficulty for the English-speaking students, many of whom incorrectly used the SVO
order instead of placing the conjugated verb at the end of the clause. These errors were
likely to have been influenced by the English use of SVO order also in subordinate
clauses.
The first part of the test showed that similarly to the Finnish-speaking students,
some students had difficulty correcting the word order of a main clause if it follows a
subordinate clause. This could have been influenced by English, a language which does
not use a VSO order in the following main clause. As suggested previously, cross-
linguistic influence was more than likely not the main cause for these errors to occur.

63
 The following figures show the incorrect sentences or phrases in the translation
part of the test and propose a corrected version of the same clause. The main clauses
(figure 5.9 to figure 5.12) will be analysed before the subordinate and relative clauses.
The colours indicate the verbs and the forms they should be presented in.

Figure 5.9: During the summer holidays she is going to go to Spain and live by the sea.
Red colour indicates conjugated verb, blue colour indicates verb in base form.

This student has only used the base forms of the verbs. It seems as the student has dealt
with the sentence as if it was two separate sentences. If the second part of the clause, after
the conjunction und, would stand on its own as a main clause, and the verb werden was in
its conjugated form, the clause itself would be correct. The preposition whrend, however,
changes the word order so, that the conjugated verb has to be placed before the subject,
which in this case is sie. The future auxiliary werden should be placed before the subject
in its conjugated form wird and it should not be repeated in the coordinated clause. As
interesting as the word order in this sentence is, I do not consider it to have been greatly
influenced by English.

Figure 5.10: Their house will be sold next year.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb, blue colour indicates verb in base form.

This student has decided to start the sentence with a temporal construction and has
correctly placed the past participle at the end of the sentence. However, the verb second

64
rule been ignored and the passive auxiliary has been added to the string of verbs at the
end of the sentence. In addition, strangely enough, the form will, a conjugated form of the
verb wollen, has been added to the end. The student could have confused the English verb
will, which is used in future expressions, with the false cognate German form, which,
however, means to want. As seen in previous examples, German future uses the auxiliary
werden. This sentence shows signs of transfer from English; next year their house will be
sold. Also, the use of three verbs in the English counterpart could have caused the
unnecessary third German verb to have been inserted in the end.

Figure 5.11: Their house will be sold next year.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb, blue colour indicates verb in base form.

In this example, the passive auxiliary has been inserted in the end of the sentence,
although it should stand in the second position. The student has also failed to conjugate
the verb correctly and has instead left it in the base form. The word order does not
indicate language transfer from English and could instead just show lacking skills to form
passive constructions.

Figure 5.12: She has been living in Munich for four years.
Red colour indicates conjugated verb, blue colour indicates verb in base form.

In figure 5.12, a future expression has been used. Expressions with seit (Engl. since) are
usually formed with active constructions in German and in this example a simple use of
present tense was required as the preposition already shows the action has been going on

65
for a while. The conjugated verb is not in the verb second position and the choice to
place the prepositional phrase after the subject seems odd. In any case, it does not derive
from English word order.

Figure 5.13: , which she shares with her friends.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

This relative clause shows clear signs of cross-linguistic influence from English. The
verb has been placed after the subject although in German relative clauses it should be at
the end of the clause.

Figure 5.14: , where she lives with her friends.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

Similarly as in figure 5.13, the word order in this clause has been influenced by the
English word order.

Figure 5.15: , because she loves swimming.

Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

This subordinate clause shows signs of English influence. The conjugated verb should
have been placed at the end of the sentence but instead, it stands after the subject as it
would in the English counterpart.

66
 Figure 5.16: , because she loves swimimng.
Red colour indicates conjugated verb.

Similarly as above, the word order has more than likely been influenced by English.
Instead of placing the conjugated verb at the end of the subordinate clause, it has been
placed after the subject.

5.3.3 Avoidance

Avoidance was not a major cause of concern for the English-speaking students. Only a
few students tried splitting long sentences apart to avoid using subordinate constructions
or complicated expressions. Only a few students left gaps where they did not know the
correct word or clause. The first clear case of avoidance was the use of two sentences
instead of one when expressing Sabine is a 23 years old student from Germany. Instead
of saying Sabine ist eine 23-jhrige Studentin aus Deutschland one student decided to
use the expressions Sabine ist ein 23 jahre alt. Sie ist eine Studentin auf Deutschland,
where the underlined parts are grammatically incorrect. This could have been caused by
the lexical lack of the German word jhrige, or by just the will to form short simple
sentences. The second case was an avoidance of a subordinate construction. Instead of
saying whrend der Sommerferien wird sie nach Spanien fahren und am Meer wohnen,
weil sie Schwimmen liebt, the student split the sentence in two using the expressions
whrend die Sommerferien, wird sie nach Spanien gefahren und in der Nhe des Sees
gewohnt. Sie liebt schwimmen.

67
L1 English students: Words and phrases featuring cross-linguistic influence
Mistake Occurred/Expected Source language Occurrences
(no of
students)
Fem in Student/Studentin Engl. 2
missing

Words with Engineer/Ingenieur Engl. engineer 2

features from Ingineer/Ingenieur Engl. engineer 1
other Ingineur/Ingenieur Engl. engineer 1
languages Engineur/Ingenieur Engl. engineer 1
Munich/Mnchen Engl. Munich 1
Mnich/Mnchen Engl. Munich 1
der See/sie See, das Meer Engl. See 2
Apartment/Wohnung das Apartment Engl. apartment 1
Apartment/Wohnung Engl. apartment 1
will/wird Engl. will 1
University/Universitt Engl. university 1
Sommer Urlaub Engl. 1
Sommer Ferien Engl. 1
nextes/nchstes Engl. next 1
Farmhause/Bauernhaus Engl. farmhouse 1
is/ist Engl. is 1
Translations gehen/fahren Engl. go 6
leben/wohnen Engl. live 5
(lieben/ mgen, gern haben Engl. love 11)
Unwanted ein Ingenieur/Ingenieur Engl. uses articles 10
article in eine Lehrerin/Lehrerin Engl. uses articles 11
front of
professional
name
Unwanted Universitt von Mnchen/ Engl. university of 2
use of Universitt Mnchen Munich
genitive

68
Word order , die sie teilt mit ihren Freunden/ Engl. SVO 1
, die sie mit ihren Freunden teilt (Ger. SOV)

, da sie wohnt mit .../ Engl. SVO 1

, wo sie mit ihren Freunden wohnt (Ger. SOV)

, weil sie liebt die See/ Engl. SVO 1

, weil sie die See liebt (Ger. SOV)

denn sie liebt Schwimmen/ Engl. SVO 1

, weil sie Schwimmen liebt (Ger. SOV)

whrend die Sommer Urlaub sie

nach Spanien fahren werden und sie SOV 1
werden bei dem Meer leben/ Engl. SVO
whrend der Sommerferien wird sie (Ger. VSO)
nach Spanien fahren und am Meer
wohnen

nachst Jahr seinen Haus werden Engl. All verbs

verkaufen will/ together in a 1
ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft passive expression
(Ger. Conjugated
verb second)

seinen Haus nachsten Jahr verkauft

werden/ See above 1
ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft

Sie seit 4 Jahren wird in Mnchen

wohnen/ (Ger. SVO) 1
Sie wohnt in Mnchen seit vier
Jahren

Table 5.6: Errors, which could have occurred due to cross-linguistic influence in the
translation part.

69
5.4. Comparison of the Two Test Groups

As discussed above, with regard to cross-linguistic influence on the lexicon, the Finnish-
speaking students rarely made use of their native language Finnish. More than likely due
to psychotypological facts, they seemed to perceive Swedish and English as more
appropriate sources of transfer. The English-speaking students then again only used their
native language English as the source of transfer. This was a result I was also expecting,
largely due to their additional second language, Irish, being typologically rather distant
from German. The Finnish-speaking students also showed more cross-linguistic influence
on the lexicon than the English-speaking students. This could partly be explained by
typological features of Finnish and English and the fact that Finnish is more distant from
German than English. However, it should not be ignored that the English-speaking
students level of proficiency was higher than that of the Finnish-speaking students.

Finnish-speaking Students English-speaking

Students
Source Finnish Swedish English Total English/Total
Language
Type of
Transfer
Borrowing 1 + 3* 11 + 8*** 5 17 (+ 11) 6
Relexification 3 4 9 16 5
Hybrid 2 4 6 3
Translation 2** 1 + 2** 1 (+ 2) 22
Phonetic 8*** (+ 8)
influence

Table 5.7: Types and amount of lexical transfer in the present study.
* Munchen could be a borrowing from colloquial Finnish.
** gehen could be influenced by both English and Finnish.
*** Universitet could show borrowing from Swedish, phonetic influence from Finnish or
both.

70
 Expressing grammatical gender proved to be more difficult for the Finnish-
speaking students than the English-speaking students. The reason for this could simply be
the fact that Finnish uses grammatical gender very rarely. English does not use it as
widely as German does, but it is still a common feature of the language. Another
morphological feature, which caused minor difficulty for the English students was word
formation through compounding. This is a frequently used in Finnish and the Finnish-
speaking students did not have any difficulty using the same feature in German.
What I found to be extremely interesting was that despite the higher level of
proficiency, the English-speaking students seemed to have more difficulties with word
order. And while the relative and subordinate clauses showed clear transfer from English,
the word order mistakes in main clauses did not seem to have evolved due to cross-
linguistic influence. The Finnish-speaking students then again did show signs of language
transfer in their main clause production.
As discussed in chapter 2, avoidance is difficult to measure. The Finnish-speaking
students did leave more gaps, which was probably due to lack of lexical knowledge. This
cannot be purely classified as avoidance, as the students clearly did not know the words.
Occasionally some students did not complete sentences, which could be seen as
unwillingness to try difficult constructions. English speaking students did not leave as
many gaps in their production but on two occasions students tried to use simpler
constructions.

5.5 Comparison of the Results with Previous Study

As stated in Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner (2002), L3 speakers use a second language,
which is typologically closer to the L3 as the source language of transfer or default
supplier rather than the typologically distant first language. This is in close connection to
the idea that the less two languages have in common, the more they are represented
separately. This clearly seemed to be the case in lexical transfer occurring in the Finnish-
speaking students production. They did not use Finnish, a typologically distant language

71
from German, as their source of transfer but instead relied more on Swedish and English.
While language transfer and the use of source languages in this case might have mainly
occurred unconsciously, it is clear that the Finnish students perceived Swedish and
English to be more closely related to German than Finnish is. The possible conscious use
of Swedish and English vocabulary can be explained by the idea of talking foreign,
which learners sometimes use as a communication strategy if they are lacking correct
vocabulary. Meisel (1983) describes this as a factor that can predict cross-linguistic
influence and calls this phenomenon foreign language effect of L2 status, where
learners tend to use the L2 or languages other than L1 as the source language. English-
speaking students then again only used their native language as the source of transfer.
This could be explained by the closer relation English has with German but also with the
fact that the English students had only studied Irish before, which is a member of the
Celtic language family and, as expected, did not make use of it due to its distance from
German.
Ringbom (1992) concluded his experiments with Finnish-speaking and Swedish-
speaking learners of English to show that the Finnish-speakers had more problems in
using prepositions than the Swedish-speakers. According to him, the main problem was
not the use of wrong prepositions but the actual lack of using them. Swedish, English and
German are much more closely related than Finnish is to any of these three and therefore
Ringboms statement could very well hold for the present experiment as well. While I
found the Finnish-speaking learners to make more mistakes with prepositions than the
English-speaking learners, the marginal difference was not very high. The Finnish-
speaking learners only made 0.2 more prepositional errors per student compared to the
English-speaking learners. From this point of view I did not obtain similar findings to
Ringboms study as the Finnish-speakers did not seem to omit prepositions but simply
occasionally to use the wrong ones.
Several studies, the most relevant ones being Ringboms experiments with
Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking learners of English, have shown that speakers of
languages, which use articles, tend to use them more accurately than do speakers of
languages, which do not use articles. With regard to the present study, both groups had
equally difficulties with articles. The most common difficulties were the choice of a

72
wrong article or the use of a wrong inflected form of an article. It was sometimes difficult
to distinguish which of the above was the actual error as some inflected forms take on
identical forms with other articles. As an example of this would be the dative form of the
feminine article die, which is identical to the masculine article der.
Ringbom (2001) implies in his distinction between transfer of form and transfer of
meaning. He claims that while the L2 provides more material for transfer of form,
instances of transfer of meaning as well as semantically-based lexical transfer, which
require considerable fluency and automatization in the source language, show more
evidence of L1 influence on L3, even when L1 and L3 are typologically distant. With
regard to the present study, his idea of L2 being the source of transfer of form clearly
held among the Finnish-speaking students. They nearly always used Swedish or English
as a source language and very rarely transferred Finnish forms into their German
production.
Odlin (1989) refers to the universalist position that very little negative transfer
occurs where basic word order is concerned. Zoble (1986) similarly argues that learners
do not make use of their L1 knowledge where basic word order is concerned but states
that if the target language has more than one basic word order, transfer from L1 is
possible. German uses SVO patterns among others in main clauses and SOV in
subordinate clauses and if Zobles idea of word order transfer was to be trusted, I could
have expected some cross-linguistic influence on word order to occur in the present study.
As stated earlier, surprisingly enough, the English-speaking students production was
more prone to word order errors than the Finnish-speaking students production. While
the English-speaking students did not clearly transfer from English in their main clause
production, the cross-linguistic influence on subordinate clauses was clear. Some
evidence of cross-linguistic influence from the native language in main clause word order
could be found in the production of the Finnish-speaking students. While all three
languages use SVO word order in the most basic word orders, the German verb second
rule seemed to cause difficulty and therefore where Finnish normally uses SVO also if
the clause begins with a temporal construction, the change to VSO in German was not
mastered by all students. However, it was not always clear if the cross-linguistic

73
influence on word order originated from Finnish, Swedish, English or all of them at the
same time.

5.6 Concluding Summary

Before I embarked on my research I had certain speculations of what results I might find.
My main expectation that the Finnish-speaking students are more likely to draw on their
L2 knowledge of Swedish or English was proved a correct one. The general belief that L1
speakers of typologically close languages find it easier to learn related languages, at least
in the early stages of acquisition, was also partly confirmed. While the English-speaking
students were slightly more proficient in German, the smaller amount of errors in their
production could indicate that English is aiding their acquisition of German.
The main results in the present study, besides some slight differences mentioned
above, were comparable to previous research in the field of cross-linguistic influence.
Completing this project and especially having set up the tests and analysed the results
have given me great insight into how cross-linguistic influence occurs and what the main
factors facilitating or preventing it are.

74
Chapter 6
Conclusion

6.1 Achievements

This dissertation furthered my interest in second language acquisition and especially in

the field of cross-linguistic influence. I was especially delighted to have had the
opportunity to carry out an experiment in this area. The process of analysing the results of
the present study was a very interesting one and although the results were in general as
predicted, some unexpected and interesting findings were also made.

6.2 Summary of Cross-linguistic Influence:

General Introduction

Evidently, cross-linguistic influence is an important factor in the field of second language

acquisition and cannot be regarded as a minor phenomenon with slight side-effects on the
acquisition process. It is important not only to concentrate on the learners native language
as any additional languages the learner might have previously acquired are likely to play
a role in the acquisition process as well. The notion of cross-linguistic influence was first
proposed during the post-war years and has ever since been of interest to second language
researchers. It is clear that research in this area is on-going and the influence of the native
language as well as any possible additional languages continues to attract attention in the
field of second language acquisition.

75
6.3. Summary of the Present Study Results

The results of the present study were not largely surprising. As expected, the Finnish-
speaking learners were more likely to make use of their Swedish and English knowledge
rather than to transfer from their native Finnish. While in the production of the Finnish-
speaking students cross-linguistic influence on the lexicon nearly without exception came
from Swedish or English, some Finnish influence could be seen on grammar.
To no surprise, the production of the English-speaking students showed signs of
transfer from English on both the lexicon and grammar. Irish did not seem to have had
much influence on their German acquisition. The results largely confirmed the belief that
psychotypology plays a very important role in cross-linguistic influence.
While the results of the present study have given an insight into how different
languages affect the acquisition process of an additional language, the discussion can
only be considered as suggestive and the production of individual learners cannot
necessarily be regarded as representing an entire population.

6.4 Concluding Remarks

Ringboms (1987) idea to compare foreign language learning with learning of ball games
has been proved to be a somewhat accurate one. However, it cannot be considered to be
the sole reason for the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence. There are numerous
factors affecting the type and amount of language transfer and although what seem to be
the most important factors have been discovered and discussed in great detail, work in the
field of cross-linguistic influence is on-going and the research opportunities are obviously
vast. This paper has discussed some of the main findings in this field and compared these
with the findings in the present study. While the aim of this paper was to confirm or give
doubt to some of the previous research results, it is just a drop in the ocean in relation to
the on-going work in this field.

76
Appendix

Question 1
Test sentences
Students were asked to indicate incorrect sentences and explain why they thought the
sentence was ungrammatical.

1. Ich habe kein Geld mehr, weil ich so viele Weihnachtsgeschenke gekauft habe.
2. Vielen Dank fr deinen Brief.
3. Mir geht es schlecht, ich habe mich gestern verkltet.
4. Ich habe ein Bruder, er ist 20 Jahre alt.
5. Der Brief war von mir geschrieben worden.
6. Der alte Mann da spricht am Telefon.
7. Rufst du mich an morgen?
8. Ich habe gestern mit dem Auto nach Frankfurt gefahren.
9. Weil er sehr mde ist, er geht ins Bett.
10. Ich kann auf keinen Fall mit dich kommen.

Answers

Finnish-speaking students:

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 incorrect kein: inflection missing
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect er: should be wie
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect an: morgen is not feminine
8 incorrect
9 incorrect er geht: wrong word order
10 incorrect dich: should be in dative case

77
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: Swedish word
3 correct
4 incorrect ein: should be in accusative case (einen)
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect an morgen: should be am Morgen
8 incorrect habe: wrong auxiliary
9 incorrect er geht: wrong word order
10 incorrect dich: wrong pronoun (should be dir)

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: Swedish word, should be fr
3 incorrect verkltet: shold be without umlaut
4 correct
5 incorrect worden: word should be left out or put in another
position
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 correct
10 incorrect dich: should be in dative case (dir)

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 correct
5 incorrect worden: should be warden
6 correct
7 correct
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 correct

78
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: Swedish word, should be fr
3 incorrect wrong word order
4 incorrect Bruder: wrong word; ist: should be placed at the
end of the sentence
5 incorrect war, worden: incorrectly positioned
6 incorrect da: should be after spricht
7 correct
8 correct
9 correct
10 correct

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 incorrect Mir geht es schlecht: should be Es geht mir
schlecht
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 incorrect auf keinen Fall: should be nicht; dich: should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: misspelled
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect preposition missing in front of morgen
8 correct
9 correct
10 correct

79
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: Swedish word, should be fr
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect morgen: should be Morgen
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: wrong word order
10 correct

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: shold be fr
3 correct
4 correct
5 incorrect worden: wrong
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 correct

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 correct
5 incorrect worden: wrong
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: wrong word order, predicate should be first
10 incorrect dich: should be in dative case; dir

80
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect should be Ich habe ein Bruder. Er ist 20 Jahre alt.
5 correct
6 incorrect da spricht: should be spricht da
7 incorrect an morgen: should be am Morgen an
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 incorrect er geht: should be er geht
10 incorrect dich: should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect should be Ich habe ein Bruder. Er ist 20 Jahre alt.
5 correct
6 incorrect da spricht: should be spricht da
7 incorrect should be Rufst du mich am morgen an?
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 incorrect dich: should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect should be Ich habe ein Bruder. Er ist 20 Jahre alt.
5 correct
6 incorrect da spricht: should be spricht da
7 incorrect an morgen: should be am Morgen
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 incorrect dich: should be dir

81
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr deinen: should be fr deine
3 incorrect es: could be left out
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 correct
8 incorrect gestern: could be placed after Auto
9 correct
10 correct

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 correct
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: wrong word order
10 incorrect dich: wrong

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 incorrect
2 incorrect
3 correct
4 incorrect
5 incorrect
6 incorrect
7 incorrect
8 correct
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
gekauft habe: wrong word order
fr: Swedish word
ein: wrong inflection
mir: wrong form
spricht: wrong inflection
an: should be am
er geht: wrong word order
auf keinen Fall: wrong position

82
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: wrong preposition
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect an: should be am
8 correct
9 correct
10 incorrect mit: wrong preposition

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 incorrect gekauft habe: wrong
2 correct
3 incorrect ich: wrong
4 correct
5 incorrect worden: wrong
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: wrong
10 incorrect auf keinen Fall: wrong

English-speaking students:

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect ein: accusative, should be einen
5 correct
6 incorrect da spricht: should be spricht da
7 incorrect an: should be at the end of the sentence
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er (verb comma verb)
10 incorrect dich: should be dir (dative)

83
Sentence Marked sentence as
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 incorrect
4 incorrect
5 correct
6 incorrect
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
Sentence Marked sentence as
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 incorrect
4 incorrect should be Ich habe einen Bruder. Er ist 20 Jahre
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect
8 correct
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
Sentence Marked sentence as
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 correct
4 incorrect
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
fr: should be fr
should be Mir geht es schlecht. Ich habe mich
Gestern verkltet.
ein: accusative, should be einen
da spricht: should be spricht da
an: should be am
gestern: should be Gestern
er geht: should be geht er
mit dich kommen: should be dich mitkommen
Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
fr: should be fr
ich habe: should be habe ich
alt.
an: should be am
er geht: should be geht er
dich: should be dir
Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
fr: should be fr
ein: should be einen
Should be Rufst du mich morgen an?
habe: should be bin
er geht: should be geht er
dich: should be dir
84
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: wrong
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 correct
7 incorrect an: wrong
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: wrong
10 incorrect dich: wrong

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect ein: should be einen
5 correct
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 incorrect dich: dative, should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect ein: accusative, should be einen
5 correct
6 correct
7 correct
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 incorrect er geht: wrong word order, should be geht er
10 incorrect dich: dative, should be dir

85
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: misspelled
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 incorrect da: comma missing
7 incorrect an: should be at the end
8 correct
9 correct
10 incorrect dich: dative, should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 correct
4 incorrect
5 incorrect
6 correct
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
fr: should be fr
ein: accusative, should be einen
war: should be ist
should be Rufst du mir morgen an?
habe: should be bin
er geht: should be geht er
dich: dative, should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 incorrect
2 incorrect
3 incorrect
4 correct
5 correct
6 incorrect
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
mehr: should be left out
fr: should be fr
Mir geht es: should be Es geht mir
da: should be a conjunction
an: wrong preposition
gestern: should be at the start
er geht: should be at the start
dich: dative, should be dir

86
Sentence Marked sentence as
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 incorrect
4 incorrect
5 incorrect
6 incorrect da: should be at the start separated by a comma
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
Sentence Marked sentence as
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 correct
4 incorrect
5 incorrect should be Der Brief wurde von mir geschrieben.
6 correct
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
Sentence Marked sentence as
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 incorrect
4 incorrect
5 correct
6 incorrect
7 incorrect
8 incorrect
9 incorrect
10 incorrect
Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
fr: should be fr
Mir geht es schlecht: should be Es geht mir
schlecht
ein: accusative, should be einen
Der Brief: object, should be den Brief
an: preposition, should be im
habe: should be bin
er geht: should be geht er
dich: dative, should be dir
Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
fr: should be fr
ein: should be einen
an morgen: should be am Morgen
habe: should be bin
er geht: should be geht er
dich: should be dir
Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
fr: wrong
verkltet: wrong prefix
ein: wrong
da: wrong
an: wrong
habe: wrong
er geht: wrong
dich: wrong
87
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 incorrect ein: direct object in accusative case, should be
einen
5 incorrect worden: should be left out
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 correct
10 incorrect dich: dative, should be dir

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 incorrect kein Geld mehr: should be kein mehr Geld
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 correct
4 correct
5 correct
6 incorrect da spricht: verb not in second place, should be
spricht da
7 correct
8 incorrect habe: should be bin
9 correct
10 correct

Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence

correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect fr: should be fr
3 incorrect ich habe: should be habe ich
4 incorrect ein: should be einen
5 correct
6 correct
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect er geht: should be geht er
10 incorrect dich: should be dir

88
Sentence Marked sentence as Proposed correction of incorrect sentence
correct/incorrect
1 correct
2 incorrect
3 incorrect
4 incorrect
5 correct
6 incorrect
7 correct
8 correct
9 incorrect
10 correct

Question 2
Translation
Students were asked to translate the following text from their native language into
German.

Sabine is a 23 years old student from Germany. Her family has a farm house in the
country but their house will be sold next year. Her father is an engineer and her mother a
teacher. Sabine studies mathematics at the university in Munich. She has been living in
Munich for nearly four years. Sabine has a small room in an apartment, which she shares
with her friends. During the summer holidays she is going to go to Spain and live by the
sea because she loves swimming. She has never been to Spain before.

Answers

Finnish-speaking students:

Sabine ist ein 23 jhriges Student aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie haben ein aber ihres
Hause wird an nchsten Jahr verkaufen. Ihr Vater ist ein ingeniour und ihre Mutter eine
Lehrerin. Sie studiert Mathematics an der universitt Munchens. Sie hat in Munchen vier
Jahr gewohnt. Sabine hat ein kleines Raum in das sie mit ihrer Freunde teilt. In

89
Sommarferien plant sie nach Spanien fahren und an der Ocean wohnen, weil sie zu
swimmen Sie hat niemals Spanien besuchtet.

Sabine ist eine 23-jhrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat

Sabine ist 23-jahre Schlerinnen auf Deutschland. Ihrem Familie habe der Farm in der
land, aber Ihren Hause kaufen nchstes Jahr. Seinem Vater ist Ingenr und seinem Mutter
ist Lehrerinnen. Sie studiert Mathe in dem Hchschule in Mnchen. Sie hat vier Jahre in
Mnchen gewohnt. Sabine hat kleinem rum in dem Hause, welcher sie wohnt mit seinem
Freund. In Sommerurlaubt sie denkt nach Espanja gehen und wohn near der See weil sie
simmar grna. Sie hat nicht frher in dem Spanien besuchten.

Sabine ist 23-jahrige Schulerinnen von Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ein Farm aber
ihr Haus wird verkauft an nchstes Jahre. Ihr Vater ist und Mutter Lehrer. Sie studiert
Mathe in Mnchens Universitet. Sie hat in Mnchen vier Jahre gewohnt. Sabine hat ein
klein Zimmer in Wohnung, das sie mit ihren Freundinnen Sie will nach Spanien
fahren und bei den Seen leben weil swimmen macht ihr viel Spa. Sie hat nie Spanien
besucht.

Sabine ist en 23-jhriger Student aus Deutschland. Seiner Familj hat ein Bauenhaus
aber eure Haus wrde nchstes Jahr Sein Vater ist und Mutter Lehrerin. Sie studiert
Mathe in Mnchen Uni. Sie hat in Mnchen schon vier Jahre gewohnt. Sabine hat ein
kleines Zimmer in seine Wohnung, die sie mit seinen Freundinnen mitteilt. In Sommer
wrde sie nach Spanien fahren und an dem See wohnen, weil sie leben schwimmen. Sie
hat in Spanien besucht.

Sabine ist 23-jhrige Student aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie haben ein ...
Ihre Vater ist ... und ihre Mutter ist Lehrerin. Sie studieren Mathematik in Mnchen
Universitt. Sie hat in Mnchen ganz vier Jahren gewohnt ...

Sabine ist ein 23 jahrige Student aus Deutschland. Seine Familie haben ... auf der Land,
aber ihre Haus wurden am nchsten Jahre ...sein Vater ist ... und seine Mutter ist Lehrerin.
Sie studiert Mathematisch in Mnchens Universitt. Sie habt ...

Sabine ist eine 23 Jahre alt Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ... aber ihr Hause
wird nchstes Jahr verkaufen. Ihr Vater ist Insinr und ihre Mutter ist Lhrerin. Sie
studiert Mathematik in Mnchens Universitet. Sie hat in Mnchencirka vier Jahre
gewohnt. Sabine hat ein klein Raum in die Wohnung, der sie mit ihre Freundinnen ... In

90
dem Sommarferien wird sie in Spanien fahren und bei dem See wohnen, weil
Schwimmen sie gefllt. Sie hat niemals frher Spanien besuchen.

Sabine ist ein 23-jahrig Studenten von Deutschland. Ihren Familie haben ... aber ihren
Hause in nexten Jahren ... Sein Vater ist ein Insinr und sein Mutter ist ein Lehrerin. Sie
studentet Mathematicks in Universitet in Mnchen. Sie hat in Mnchen vier Jahren
gewohnt. Sabine hat ein kleine Rum in ... das sie mit dem Freundinnen scheren ...

Sabine ist ein 23 Jahre alt Student aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat eine Farm auf Land,
aber ihr Haus wird nchste Jahr verkauft. Ihr Vater ist Ingenier und ihre Mutter Lehrer.
Sie studiert Mathematik in Munchen Universitet. Sie hat in Munchen vier Jahre gewohnt.
Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in dem Wohnung das sie mit ihren Freunden ... Im
Sommer wird sie nach Spanien reisen und ... weil sie schwimmen mag. Sie hat nicht
Spanienbesucht.

Sabine ist 23 Jahre alt Stdentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat Landesblaan auf dem
Land. Ihr Vater ist Ingeniur und ihre Mutter ist Lehrerin. Sie studiert Mathematik in
Universitet in Mnchen. Sie ist in Munchen vier Jahre gelebt. Sabine hat ein kleines
Zimmer in Wohnung, die sie mit seiner Freundinnen teilen. Im Sommerferien wird sie
nach Spanien fahren und auf der Strand wohnen, weil die Schwimmen ihr gefllt. Sie hat
nie frher in Spanien besuchen.

Sabine ist 23 Jahre alt Stdentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ... Ihr Vater ist
Ingeniur und ihre Muter ist Lehrerin. Sie studiert Mathematik in Universitet in Mnchen.
Sie ist in Mnchen vier Jahre gelebt. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in Wohnung, die sie
mit seiner Freundinnen teilen. In Sommerferien wird sie nach Spanien fahren und auf der
Strand wohnen, weil die Schwimmen ihr gefllt. Sie hat nie frher nach Spanien gefhrt.

Sabine ist 23-jahre allt Studenten aus Deutschland. Ihre familj hat ein ... Ihr Vater ist ein
ingenjr und ihr Mutter ist ein Lehrer. Sie studiert Matematik in Universitet in Mnchen.
Sie hat in Mnchen vier jahre ... Sabine hat ein klein Zimmer in die Wohnung, die teilt
sie mit seiner Freunde ... will sie nach Spanien gehen und bei der Strande ... Sie hat nie
frher nach Spanien besuchen.

Sabine ist 23-Jahre alt Studenten aus Deutschland. Ihre Familje habe ein ... aber ihre
hause kaufen Jahren. Ihre Vater ist Insinr und ihre Mutter ist Lehrer. Sie studenten
mathematik in Mnchen University nach vier Jahre. Sabine hat eine kleine ... in
Wohnung und wochne zusammen seine Freundinen ...

91
Sabine ist 23 jahre alt Schlerin auf Deutschland. Seinen Familie hat ... Sie hat in
Mnchen ganz vier Jahre gewohnt.

Sabine ist 23-jhrig Studenten aus Deutschland. Ihren Familj haben ein Haus aus landet,
men ihres Hause nchstes Jahre gesoltet ... Sie hat Mathematik aus Mnchen studiert. Sie
hat aus Mnchen vieviel vier Jahre geleben. Sabine hat ein klein Rum ins Legenhet, dass
Sie mit seinem Freund ...

Sabine ist ein 23 Jahre alt Student und sie kommt aus Deutschland. Ihren Familie hat
ein ... aber ihren Hause im nchsten Jahre gekauft wird. Ihr Vater ist ... und ihre Mutter
Lehrerin. Sie studiert Mathematik in die Universitet Mnchens. Sie hat in Mnchen vier
Jahre gewohnt. Sabine hat ein kleines Raum in die Wohnung, die sie mit ihrer Freunde
zahlen. In die Sommerferien ... sie nach Spanien reisen und bei See wohnen weil sie ...
Sie hat ... in Spanien ...

... (one student did not make an attempt to translate the text)

English-speaking students:

Sabine ist eine dreiundzwanzigjhrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ein
Bauernhaus auf dem Land, aber ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft werden. Ihr Vater
ist Ingenieur und ihre Mutter ist Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathematik an der Universitt
in Mnchen. Sie wohnt seit fast vier Jahren in Mnchen. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer
in einer Wohnung, die sie mit ihren Freunden teilt. Whrend der Sommerferien wird sie
nach Spanien fahren und sie wird ganz in der Nhe von dem Meer wohnen da sie sehr
gern schwimmt. Sie ist noch nie in Spanien gewesen.

Sabine ist ein 23 jahrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ein Haus auf dem
Land, aber ihre Haus wird nchsten Jahr verkauft. Ihrer Vater ist Ingeniur und ihre Mutter
ist Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe an der Universitt Mnchen. Sie hat fast vier Jahre in
Mnchen gewohnt. Sabine hat eine kleines Zimmer in einer Wohnung, der sie mit ihren
Freundinnen verteilt. Whrend den Sommer Ferien, wird sie nach Spanien gehen und am
Meer wohnen weil sie schwimmen gehen mag. Sie ist noch nie nach Spanien gegangen.

Sabine ist eine Studentin aus Deutschland, die 23 Jahre alt ist. Ihre Familie hat ein Haus
auf dem Land aber es wird nchstes Jahr verkauft. Ihr Vater ist ein Engineer und ihre
Mutter ist eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe auf die Uni in Mnchen. Sie hat schon
seit vier Jahren in Mnchen gewohnen. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in einer Wohnung,
das mit ihren Freunden geteilt ist. Whrend der Sommerferien fhrt sie nach Spanien und
sie wird an die Kuste leben, weil sie Schwimmen liebt. Sie hat nie nach Spanien gefahren.

92
Sabine ist eine 23 jhrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ein Bauernhaus auf
dem Land, aber ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft werden. Ihr Vater ist Ingenuer und
ihre Mutter ist Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathematik an der Universitt in Mnchen. Sie
wohnte seit vier Jahren in Mnchen. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in einer Wohnung,
die sie mit ihren Freunden teilt. Whrend der Sommerferien wird sie nach Spanien reisen,
und neben des Meer leben, weil sie das Schwimmen liebt. Sie hat Spanien noch nicth
besucht.

Sabine ist eine 23 Jahrige Studentin und sie kommt aus Deutschland. Seine Familie hat
ein Bauerhaus in die Landschaft, aber ihre Haus wird nachstes Jahr verkauft worden.
Seinem Vater ist Ingineer und seiner Mutter ist Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe an der
Uni von Munich. Sie wohnt in Munich seit vier Jahren. Sabine hat eine kleine Zimmer in
einer Wohnung, der sie mit seinen freundinnen teilt. Whrend der Sommerferien wird sie
nach Spanien gehen und sie wird in der Nhe von dem See wohnen, weil sie Schwimmen
liebt. Sie ist niemals vorher nach Spanien gefahren.

Sabine ist eine dreiundswanzig jahrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ein
Bauernhaus auf dem Land aber es wrde nchsten Jahr verkauft. Ihr Vater ist ein ... und
ihre Mutti ist eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe auf der Uni in Mnchen. Sie wohnt in
Mnchen seit fast 4 Jahren. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in einer wohnung, die sie teilt
mit ihren freunden. Whrend die Sommerferien fhrt sie nach Spanien und sie wohnt in
der Nhe von der See, weil sie schwimmen liebt. Sie war noch nicht in Spanien.

Sabine ist eine dreiundzwanzigjahrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Seine Familie hat ein
Bauernhaus auf dem Land aber ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft. Sein Vater ist ein ...
und seine Mutter ist eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathematik an der Universitt in
Mnchen. Sie hat seit rund vier Jahren in Mnchen gewohnt. Sabine hat ein kleines
Zimmer in einer Wohnung, die sie mit Freunden teilt. Whrend der Sommerferien, wird
sie in Spanien ... in der Nhe von der See wohnen weil sie Schwimmen liebt. Sie war
schonmal nicht in Spanien gewesen.

Sabine, die von Deutschland kommt, ist 23 Jahre alt. Ihre Familie haben ein Bauhaus auf
dem Land, das im nchsten Jahr verkauft wird. Ihrer Vater ist ein Ingineur und Ihre
Mutter ist eine Lehrerin. Sie studiert Mathematik im Universitat in Mnchen. Seit vier
Jahren hat sie in Mnchen gewohnt. Sabine hat eine kleine Zimmer in einer Wohnung,
dass sie mit Ihre Freunden verteilt. Durch die Sommerferien wird sie nach Spanien fahren
und bei der See wohnen, weil sie Schwimmen mag. Frher war sie nie in Spanien.

93
Sabine ist eine dreiundzwanzig jhrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Seine Familie hat ein
Ackerhaus auf dem Land, aber es wird nchstes Jahr verkuft werden. Ihr Vater ist ein
Engineur und ihre Mutter ist eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathematik auf der
Universitt in Mnchen. Sie wohnt in Mnchen seit fast vier Jahren. Sabine hat ein
kleines Zimmer in einem Apartment, die sie mit seinen Freunden teilt. Whrend der
Sommerferien wird sie nach Spanien gehen und am Strand leben, weil sie Schwimmen
liebt. Sie ist noch nie naqch Spanien gefahren.

Sabine ist eine 23 Jahre alt Studenten aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie haben ein Haus auf
dem Land, aber seinen Haus werden verkaufen will. Ihr Vater ist einen ... und ihre Mutter
ist eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe an der Universitt Mnchen. Sie seit 4 Jahren
wird in Mnchen wohnen. Sabine hat ein kleines Raum in einem Appartment, da sie
wohnt mit ... In dem Sommerferien wird sie ...

Sabine ist eine dreizwanzige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familien hat ein Bauerhaus
auf dem Land, aber es wird nchste Jahr verkauft werden. Ihrer Vater ist Ingeniuer und
ihre Mutter ist Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathematik auf der Universitt in Mnich. Sie
hatte seit vier Jahren in Mnich gewohnt. Sie hat einen kleinen Schlafzimmer in einer
Wohnung, die sie mit ihren Freunden teilt. Wahrend der Sommerferien wird sie nach
Spanien fahren und sie wird am Meer leben weil sie Schwimmen lebt. Sie war noch nicht
im Spanien.

Sabine ist eine 23-jhrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat eine Bauerhaus in
der Landschaft, aber ihr Haus wird nchstes Jahr verkauft gewerden. Ihr Vater ist Hand
und seine Mutter Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe in der Uni in Mnchen. Sie wohnt vor
fast vier Jahre in Mnchen. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in ihrer Wohnung, die sie mit
ihren Freunden teilt. Whrend den Sommerferien, fhrt sie nach Spanien um in der Nhe
von dem See zu wohnen, weil sie gern schwimmt. Sie hatte Spanien niemals besucht.

Sabine is ein 23 Jahre alter Student aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat einen Bauernhof
auf dem Land, aber es wird im nchsten Jahr verkauft. Ihr Vater is ein Ingenieur un ihre
Mutter eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathematik an der Universitt von Mnchen. Sie
lebt jetzt schon fr fast vier Jahr in Mnchen. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in einer
Wohnung die sie mit ihre Freunden teilt. In den Sommerferien wird sie nach Spanien
gehen und am Meer leben da sie es liebt zu schwimmen. Ist ist bis jetzt noch nie in
Spanien gewesen.

Sabine ist eine 23 Jahre alt Student aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie haben einen Farmhouse
auf dem Land aber ihren Haus werden nachste Jahre verkauft. Ihre Vater ist einen ... und
ihre Mutter eine Lehrerin. Sabine lernt Mathe am University in Mnchen. Sie wohnt seit
fast vier Jahre in Mnchen. Sabine hat ein kleine Zimmer in ein Wohnung, dass sie mit

94
ihre Freundinnen teilt. Whrend die Sommerferien fhrt sie nach Spanien und wohnt bei
die See weil sie liebt sie See. Sie war nicht vor in Spanien.

Sabine ist eine dreiundzwanzig jahrige Studentin aus Deutschland. Ihre Familie haben
einen Haus auf dem Land, aber seinen Haus nachsten Jahr verkauft werden. Ihre Vater ist
ein ... und ihre Mutter eine Lehrerin. Sabine lernt Mathamatik an der Uni in Mnchen.
Sie wohnt seit vier Jahre in Mnchen. Sabine hat ein kleines Zimmer in einer Wohnung,
die sie mit seine Freunden teilt. Whrend die Sommerefrien fahren sie nach Spanien und
dort wohnen sie an der Kuste denn sie liebt Schwimmen. Sie geht nicht nach Spannien.

Sabine ist ein 23 jahre alt. Sie ist eine Studentinnen auf Deutschland. Ihre Familie hat ...
Ihre Mutter ist eine Lehrerinnen. Sabine studieren Mathe an die Universitt in Munchen.
Sie lebt in Munchen seit 4 Jahren. Sabine hat eine kleines Zimmer auf ihre ... und sie
musst mit ihrer Freundinnen teilt. Whrend die Sommer Urlaub sie nach Spannien fahren
werden und sie werden bei dem Meer leben, weil sie schwimmen liebt. Sie sind nicht im
Spannien vor ...

Sabine ist eine 23 Jahre Alt Studentin nach Deutschland. Seine Familie haben ein Haus
auf dem Land aber das Haus wird nextes Jahr verkaufen. Seine Vater ist ein Ingenieur
und seine Mutti ist eine Lehrerin. Sabine studiert Mathe an einer Universitt in Mnchen.
Sie hat eine kleine Zimmer in einer Wohnung ... Whrend die Sommerferien, wird sie
nach Spanien gefahren und in der Nhe des Sees gewohnt. Sie liebt schwimmen. Sie hat
auf keine Zeit Spanien besuchen.

95
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