An L2 perspective on possessives: Contrasts and their possible consequences

Abstract

The present paper presents the contrastive background and the basic objectives of a cross-linguistic research project (POSS) that takes an L2-oriented perspective on possessives in English, Norwegian, German, French and selected Slavic languages. Our paper focuses on L1/L2 pairs involving Norwegian as L2 or L1. Section outlines the rationale behind our project. The morphosyntactic (‘core’) systems of English, French, German, Norwegian and Russian third possessives are described and compared in section while section draws attention to dimensions of contrasts that fall outside the scope of our project. Section specifically addresses the L2 issue, presenting for selected L1/L2 pairs our basic assumptions concerning challenges to the acquisition of the L2 possessive core system. Section contains a concluding summary.