Abstract

Important to understanding bilingualism and second language (L2) learning are L2 morphological processing and acquisition of tense and aspect. This study used narrative elicitation to examine the expression of boundedness and definiteness in Finnish and English by first language (L1) Finnish speakers who speak English as an L2 and L1 English speakers who speak Finnish as an L2. In Finnish, boundedness and definiteness were largely portrayed by using partitive and accusative cases, though tense and aspect conjugation also played a role. In English, boundedness was largely conveyed through tense and aspect conjugation and definiteness through article usage. Both L1 speaker groups appeared to demonstrate first language transfer as well as form following meaning in acquisition, meaning that a given form will be acquired first in contexts where the meaning of the form is inherent. There was also evidence pointing to avoidance by L2 speakers. Notably, varying interpretations of what the images used portrayed also seemed to play a role in some of the differences in responses across groups. The narrative elicitation methodology was useful in producing meaningful and easily comparable results.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics and English Language

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/