Interlanguage Grammar in English: Produced by Indonesian students learning French

Abstract

The society around the world is becoming more and more multilingual. This paper reports research on the interlanguage grammar (ILG) in English finite clauses produced by multilingual students who speak Indonesian (L1), French (L3), and English (L2). The paper will describe the variations and the causes of the emergence of the variation of ILG in English finite clauses structures. The research used the Minimalist Program, which is the syntactic theory of Generative Grammar to explain finite clause in English. To examine the variation of interlanguage grammar in the multilingual students, the research adopted a qualitative approach, employing grammaticality judgment technique with multiple choice test type. The participants consisted of 25 students who had reached A2 level in French. The results showed that variations in ILG have been caused by lack of knowledge or lack of mastery of functional category Infl(ection) with its relevant features as the head element in English finite clauses. Keywords—English; second language acquisition; finite clauses; interlanguage grammar