Birutė Spraunienė, Vilnius University

The talk presents a study of how Lithuanian L1 university students use definiteness markers in their L3 Danish in comparison to their L2 English. 

Spraunienė & Slott (2024) has showed that the students' acquisition of the types of Danish nominals with (lexical as well as grammatical) (in)definiteness markers depends upon two main factors: the morphosyntactic complexity of the nominals and transfer from the informants̕ native language, which lacks articles. The latter manifests itself in the overall tendency to overuse bare nouns. The results of the study essentially confirm the findings of previous research of L2 Swedish (Eriksson & Wijk-Andersson 1994, Nyqvist 2013), albeit with some differences. 

According to Nyquist, in Finnish pupils' L2 Swedish, there are more deviations pertaining to the choice of the correct form of a nominal than the so-called speciesfel where the form of the nominal is correct, but it is used in an unappropriate context. Nyquist (2013: 190) assumes that this is because Finnish pupils can transfer the knowledge about the choice of definiteness from English.

Spraunienė & Slott (2024) have showed a different tendency: In the intermediate level, Lithuanians produce twice as many deviations in use (speciesfel) than deviations in form. In the higher level, the amount of deviations in use and deviations in form is nearly the same. 

Thus, the current study addresses the following research questions: How do Lithuanian learners mark definiteness in their L2 English in comparison to their L3 Danish? Which of the languages – L1 Lithuanian or L2 English has a greater effect on Lithuanians' acquisition of the category of definiteness in DFL?

The material comprises oral narratives produced with two picture books as stimuli. The preliminary results showed that, at least in the initial learning phase, L1 transfer plays a greater effect upon Lithuanians' marking of definiteness in DFL than English does.