Morphology in transition: Plural inflection of Finnish nouns by Estonian and Russian learners

Abstract

The paper explores the nature of cross-linguistic influence in morphology. 30 Estonian (a closely related L1) and 30 Russian (a non-related L1) beginning and advanced learners of L2 Finnish were tested for their skills in nominal inflection in three different tasks: separate nouns of morphophonologically varying inflectional categories to be inflected in several plural case forms in writing, the same nouns to be used in a narrative writing task and in an oral inflection task. The nouns were selected to represent various degrees of inflectional and/or semantic similarity between Finnish and Estonian (for Russian no such similarity exists). The results indicate that—in opposition to what has been previously claimed—not only does cross-linguistic influence exist within the domain of morphology but it also varies systematically across inflectional categories and between groups at different levels of general skills in Finnish.