Learning Complex Features: A Morphological Account of L2 Learnability

Certain first languages (L1) seem to impede the acquisition of a specific L2 more than other L1s do. This study investigates to what extent different L1s have an impact on the proficiency levelsattainedinL2Dutch(DutchL2learnability).Ourhypothesisisthatthevaryingeffects across the L1s are explainable by morphological similarity patterns between the L1s and L2 Dutch.Correlationalanalysesontypologicallydefinedmorphologicaldifferencesbetween49 L1s and L2 Dutch show that L2 learnability co-varies systematically with similarities in morphologicalfeatures.Weinvestigateasetof28morphologicalfeatures,lookingbothatindividual features and the total set of features. We then divide the differences in features into a class of increasing and a class of decreasing morphological complexity .I t turns out that observed Dutch L2 proficiency correlates more strongly with features based on increasing morphological complexity (r= -.67, p ⟨ .0001) than with features based on decreasing morphological complexity (r= -.45, p ⟨ .005). Degree of similarity matters (r = -.77, p ⟨ .0001), but increasing complexity seems to be the decisive property in establishing L2 learnability. Our findings mayofferabetterunderstandingofL2learnabilityandofthedifferentproficiencylevelsofL2 speakers. L2 learnability and L2 proficiency co-vary in terms of the morphological make-up of the mother tongue and the second language to be learned.

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