Norwegian L1 Speakers' Knowledge and Evaluation of English Nominal Phrases

Abstract

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the role of transfer in Norwegians’ use and evaluation of English nominal phrases. Twelve 16-year old Norwegian high school students and twelve Norwegian master-students perform an acceptability judgment test, evaluating 72 English sentences where 36 of them aim at investigating possible transfer elements of the different nominal systems. Most ratings seem to be within expectations and only certain elements seem to suggest any influence by negative transfer. The results show that proficiency does matter in the evaluation of the sentences and the master students show less trace of negative transfer than the high school students. The result also indicates that other factors influenced the ratings. These factors include the lexical and syntactical level of the sentences, and the naturalness or abnormality of the content of the sentences.