TRANSFER IN TWO TYPOLOGICALLY DISTINCT LANGUAGES

The comparison undertaken here is of findings of JARVIS and ODLIN (2000) which support Arabski’s analysis of the transferability of prepositions and cases. Before examining that support, however, it is necessary to consider some of the details of the investigation. The examples studied come from data col-lected and described in detail by JARVIS (1998). Two L1 groups participated, 140 native speakers of Finnish and 70 native speakers of Swedish, with all 210 be-ing pupils in schools in Finland with ages rangbe-ing from about 10 to 14. These participants all wrote descriptions in English of events in the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times. There were also three native-speaker control groups:

Finn-On the transferability of cases, prepositions, and constructions 165

ish (N=66), Swedish (N=44), and English (N=66) writing film descriptions in their native language. Having texts in Finnish and Swedish provided a method-ological advantage similar to that in Arabski’s study, which often compares L1 and L2 usage in an actual discourse context. One difference between the two studies is that the Finnish study involved, as noted, writing about scenes in a film whereas the Polish study involved writing on a common essay theme.

Like Arabski, Jarvis and Odlin found IL prepositional uses that showed in-fluence of the native language. One discourse context analyzed depicted Chap-lin with his female companion (played by Paulette Goddard) seated on a lawn.

Swedish speakers (“Swedes” hereafter) writing in their native language often used the preposition i (= English in), with på (= English on), a common alter-native. Similar proportions were evident in the choice of English prepositions by Swedes with slightly more preferring in and with others using on (both of which would be grammatical when the noun phrase after was the grass), and no other English prepositions were used for this scene by the Swedes. Because of the semantic possibilities of this particular discourse context (i.e., the lawn scene in the film), either choice could be considered primary counterparts, though in both the L1 and L2 the spatial meanings are slightly different, with in suggesting an interior space or movement to the space, whereas on indicates lo-cation on a surface or movement to the surface (any of these spatial relations would be possible for the student writers to envision in the specific discourse context). What is most significant is that no choices other than primary counter-parts occurred — and in this instance the choices were successful. In contrast, Finnish speakers (“Finns” hereafter) writing in English did not always choose targetlike prepositions even though the Swedes and Finns were evenly matched in years of English studied. Thus the Swedes were able to take advantage of the close similarities between their native language and English, whereas some Finns showed negative and others positive transfer, both outcomes largely at-tributable to characteristics of the native language, as will be described.

As indicated above, Arabski viewed the meanings of Polish cases as trans-ferable. However, he does not address the question of whether these cases also have primary counterparts that correspond (most of the time) to English prepo-sitions. The absence of discussion is not surprising, since Polish noun phrases marked in oblique cases (especially the locative and instrumental) are often ac-companied by a preposition. Finnish, however, has very few prepositions. In comparison with prepositions, postpositions play a more important role, but even so, the most common way of referring to certain locations is not with adpositions but rather with a noun inflected for case as in the following ex-ample from a student writer: tyttö ja Charlie istuvat nurmikolle (‘Girl and Chaplin sit grass — ALLATIVE’), where the allative case marker -lle indicates motion toward a destination. However, another choice of Finns was an adessive case form as in nurmikolla, which indicates a static location. The most common

choice for Finns writing about the lawn scene in English was the preposition on. The ambiguity of English on may lend itself to being a primary counterpart for both the adessive and allative in Finnish: as already suggested, sit on the grass can mean either a static seated location or motion toward the surface.

Which particular meanings individual Finns had in mind cannot be easily deter-mined, but the fact remains that on can express either the adessive or allative meanings.

Although Finns strongly preferred on over in in the lawn scene (by a ratio of over 4—1), two other choices were also evident: to (as in: sit to the grass) and zero (thus: sit the grass). In the case of the latter, zero prepositions occur only in the writing of the Finns and never in that of the Swedes. Emphasizing this difference between the two L1 groups, Jarvis and Odlin take a position like Arabski’s in viewing such evidence as support for the likelihood that transfer and simplification are not mutually exclusive categories even though they are not identical either. The use of zero prepositions by Finns as well as Poles seems due largely to ignoring the need to select an English free morpheme (a preposition) corresponding to the meaning of the L1 bound morpheme (the case inflection).

The choice of to is likewise language-dependent: that is, no Swedes wrote sat to the grass in the lawn scene, and the fact that several Finns did suggests a competing primary counterpart for the correspondence between the L1 allative case and the L2 preposition to be selected. Even so, on was used by many more Finns (by a ratio of over 3—1). The notion that different L2 forms may be competing in the IL of learners is somewhat different from Arabski’s conception. However, Jarvis and Odlin did not attempt to posit a developmental sequence for the evolution of primary counterparts, and it may be that any fu-ture attempt will show a progression similar to what Arabski posited for prepo-sitions such as w. A further complication that would have to be sorted out is the ambiguity of on and in in English, where either preposition can mean static lo-cation or movement toward a spot. While Jarvis and Odlin found a statistically significant difference between the choices of the Finns and the Swedes, they could not identify the specific meaning any particular learner had in mind when choosing either preposition.

Another scene in Modern Times shows Chaplin being taken by the police-man to a paddy wagon. Once again some Finns, but no Swedes, used zero prep-ositions: e.g., The policeman take Charlie policecar. However, in both groups many learners chose the prepositions to and in in roughly equal numbers (yet although to is targetlike in this context, only one of the native speakers of Eng-lish used it). While the frequent selection of to and in reflects L1 influence, one other choice of the Finns is especially noteworthy: into, which proved to be seven times more frequent in the Finns’ narrations as opposed to the Swedes’.

Jarvis and Odlin explain the popularity of into as due to its compatibility with

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another Finnish case, the illative. Like the allative, the illative indicates motion toward a goal. However, the illative is employed when the goal is an interior space (e.g., the inside of a paddy wagon) whereas the allative is used when the goal is a non-enclosed (exterior) space (e.g., a spot on a lawn). In the paddy wagon scene, into was a competitor with in and to, but it was never chosen for the lawn scene. More Finns did choose to over into in the paddy wagon scene (by a ratio of 2—1); nevertheless, the frequency of into suggests a competition among to, into, and in for the role of primary counterpart in this discourse con-text. Such a competition would not necessarily have any direct implications for Polish or for Arabski’s analysis, since the interior/exterior distinction does not seem applicable to the Slavic language. In any event, what is especially re-markable in the Finns’ performance is that many of them found it useful to construct IL spatial representations that preserve the L1 semantic distinction be-tween interior and exterior spaces. It is worth noting that the Finnish case sys-tem syssys-tematically distinguishes between internal and exterior spaces with other case endings as well, but space does not permit a discussion of other scenes an-alyzed by Jarvis and Odlin in this regard.