Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning

occurred mainly "on grammatical categories absent in either the NL or TL" and not in word order.

LoCoco also found that second level Spanish students showed an increase in interference type errors that LoCoco calls "whole expression terms", or word-for-word translations of an L1 expression, which is similar to what Duskova reported.

2. First language influence is weaker in bound morphology.

Duskova (1969) notes that errors in bound morphology (e.g. omission of plurals on nouns, lack of subject-verb agreement, adjective-noun agreement) are not due to first language influence in her Czech students of EFL: Czech nouns do not distinguish singular and plural and in Czech "the finite verb agrees with its subject in person and number". These errors are, rather, "interference between the other terms of the English subsystem in question" (p. 21). Moreover, these errors "occur even in cases where the English form is quite analogous to the corresponding Czech form" (p. 21). Of 166 morphological errors, only nineteen were judged as due to Czech interference. (interestingly, of these nineteen, several were free morphemes; see discussion in Chapter 4.)

Also consistent is Kellerman's (forthcoming) suggestion that inflectional morphology ("except in very closely related languages") belongs to the category of structure that performers generally do not transfer in second language performance.

3. First language influence seems to be strongest in "acquisition poor" environments.

Dulay and Burt (1974b) and Gillis and Weber (1976) have demonstrated that first language influence is rare in child second language acquisition (but see below). On the other hand, studies that report a high amount of first language influence, such as those cited above, are mostly foreign and not second language studies, situations in which natural appropriate intake is scarce and where translation exercises are frequent. In this regard, it is interesting to note that we can find signs of first language influence in immersion bilingual programs where input is often primarily from the teacher and not from peers.