SYNTACTIC CROSSLINGUISTIC INFLUENCE IN SUBORDINATE CLAUSES

Abstract

This paper deals with syntactic crosslinguistic influence of the Serbian language on the word order in subordinate clauses, in the learning of English as a foreign language. The word order in Serbian is relatively free, whereas in English, given that it is an analytical language, the role of elements within a sentence depends on their order. In subortinate clauses in Serbian, which take the form of reported questions, there is an inverted word order, common in questions, while there is (usually) no inversion in corresponding clauses in English (subordinate Wh-interrogative clauses and subordinate Yes-no interrogative clauses). Through a contrastive analysis of subordinate clauses in the two languages, and error analysis, we have tried to determine whether errors student make in word order in subordinate clauses in English could be ascribed to the negative transfer from Serbian. The results have shown that syntactic crosslinguistic influence is the source of errors in all the examples we have singled out. In seventeen examples, syntactic crosslinguistic influence is recognised as the source of errors in Wh-interrogative clauses, while there are two examples where it is the source of errors in Yes-no interrogative clauses.