Cross-Linguistic Influence at the Level of Word Order in L3 English by L1 Georgian/L2 Russian Speakers

Abstract

This study investigates L3 transfer effects at the level of word order focusing on the OV/VO parameter (Neeleman & Weerman, 1999) in main and embedded clauses in three typologically unrelated languages: Georgian (OV), Russian (VO) and English (VO). Data were collected from three groups of English learners: L1 Georgian children, L1 Georgian adults and L1 Georgian/L2 Russian bilingual children (n = 53), all of them with a proficiency level of A2. The instruments used involved a grammaticality judgment task (GJT) and a translation task (TT) with affirmative and negative stimuli. The results from between group analyses showed high accuracy rates in all learners and no statistically significant differences on either task between the groups. This result indicates that at A2 level neither the monolingual nor bilingual learners show signs of transfer from their L1 Georgian or L2 Russian in the case of the latter. This finding is relevant for EFL teachers since it shows that already at an A2 proficiency level monolingual and bilingual learners have acquired the word order pattern of the target language, indicating that word order is not a source of difficulty in this particular context. However, within group analyses revealed that in the GJT task the L1 Georgian learners were not as good at rejecting ungrammatical sentences as accepting grammatical sentences. The L1 Georgian/L2 Russian learners, on the other hand, were equally accurate. This result may suggest that the bilingual learners are benefiting from their multilingual knowledge, which could have important implications for classroom practices.