Differences in adult L2 grammars of Lithuanian: The case of gender agreement

Abstract

This article presents results obtained from an empirical investigation into the acquisition of gender agreement in Lithuanian as a second language (L2). A total of 59 L2 learners of Lithuanian and 10 Lithuanian native speakers, as controls, took part in this study. The participants came from diverse rst language (L1) backgrounds (i.e., Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Latvian, and English). The data were collected using a written translation task. The results of the study showed some statistically significant differences between English speaking learners of Lithuanian and non-native English speaking learners of Lithuanian. The findings support the Full Transfer Full Access hypothesis (Schwartz, Sprouse 1994, 1996) which argues for the interaction of L1 transfer and Universal Grammar in the development of adult L2 grammars.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5128/ERYa4.06

Keywords

• non-native language acquisition
• adult learner
• Universal Grammar
• initial state grammar
• Lithuanian