The Use of the Verb Run in English Learner-Narratives

Abstract

The present paper investigates the use of the verb RUN in texts compiled in English by three groups of multilingual learners in the North of Italy. The participants spoke three different L1s: Ladin, Italian, and German. The main objective was to ascertain whether L1 imprints could be identified in the different groups, and whether the Ladin subjects behaved more similarly to their Italian or German counterparts. Despite considerable homogeneity found across all groups, the findings surprisingly suggested a stronger closeness between the texts of Ladin and German speakers, and not – as the typological relationship between Ladin and Italian would suggest – between Ladin and Italian speakers. The present data implicate that multilingual speakers bring to bear composite cognitive and typological systems when they construct texts in English as a third or further language, and text features are usually not easily attributable to a typologically clearly defined L1.

Keywords

• English as a third or fourth language. Ladin frog story. Learner-texts. Satellite-framed languages