Home > Catalogue > EL.LE > 9 | 1 | 2020 > The Use of the Verb Run in English Learner-Narratives

EL.LE | Vol. 9 | Issue 1 | March 2020

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Research Article

The Use of the Verb Run in English Learner-Narratives

An Analysis of Verb Constructions Influenced by Different L1s

Martina Irsara    Libera Università di Bolzano, Italia    

Ulrike Domahs    Institute for German Linguistics, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Deutschland    

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abstract

The present paper investigates the use of the verb RUN in texts compiled in English by three groups of multilingual learners in the North of Italy. The participants spoke three different L1s: Ladin, Italian, and German. The main objective was to ascertain whether L1 imprints could be identified in the different groups, and whether the Ladin subjects behaved more similarly to their Italian or German counterparts. Despite considerable homogeneity found across all groups, the findings surprisingly suggested a stronger closeness between the texts of Ladin and German speakers, and not – as the typological relationship between Ladin and Italian would suggest – between Ladin and Italian speakers. The present data implicate that multilingual speakers bring to bear composite cognitive and typological systems when they construct texts in English as a third or further language, and text features are usually not easily attributable to a typologically clearly defined L1.

Published
July 30, 2020
Accepted
May 10, 2020
Submitted
March 8, 2019
Language
EN

Keywords: Satellite-framed languages • Ladin frog story • Learner-texts • English as a third or fourth language

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/ELLE/2280-6792/2020/01/004

Copyright: © 2020 Martina Irsara, Ulrike Domahs. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.