Abstract
Whether for exchanging interpersonal needs -such as thoughts- or for business purposes -as in the case of the Lingua franca- in its specific form language has always been presumed to be the human species’ means for communication. With the concurrent rise in demand for multilingualism in the 20th century, studies examining language acquisition have garnered ever-greater interest. Research into German as a second language (L2) with different mother tongues (L1) began in the 1980’s (see Meisel 1975). In the beginning of the 19th century, the importance of morphotypological differences between languages was first examined (Schlegel 1818). This study investigates the correlation of similarity or non-similarity in linguistic systems (L1: Turkish, Spanish, Vietnamese, and L2: German) with respect to language transfer processes as inter-comprehension and interference errors. The ability of foreign speakers of German to maintain subject and predicate congruence, as well as to formulate grammatical articles, is examined. The results show that for both areas, there exists a correlation between structural similarity and differences which influences transfer processes between L1 and L2. The study shows that native speakers of Spanish demonstrate fewer interference errors than native speakers of Vietnamese, which have the highest number of interference errors.
Keywords:
language typology; second- language acquisition; language acquisition processes
