Language influence in the acquisition of English by two Italian-speaking children: a case study
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2014
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Abstract
Does the process of first language (Ll) acquisition differ from the process of second language (L2)
acquisition? It seems that the answer is 'yes,' since a L2 learner already has knowledge of
language, which is not the case in Ll acquisition. There is much research that Ll -- and other
existing linguistic knowledge -- does indeed affect L2 acquisition. This influence, called language
transfer, can work both positively and negatively on the acquisition ofL2 (Odlin 1989, Ellis 1994,
and others). In this paper, I analyze my own data of two Italian-speaking children at different
stages of acquiring English. I perform an error analysis to compare their development of English
to that of children acquiring English as their Ll and attempt to account for the differences in terms
of language transfer. I find that the subjects' development of English is noticeably influenced by
their previous linguistic knowledge, particularly in areas relating to syntax and lexical items, but
less so in areas relating to morphology and semantics.