Keelesüsteemide võrdlus teise keele omandamise uurimises eesti ja soome keele näitel [A comparison of linguistic structures in second language acquisition research: Estonian and Finnish]

This paper deals with the relevance of the comparison of linguistic structures of source and target languages in second language acquisition research, focusing on one of the key issues of the research area: cross-linguistic infl uence. The paper has two aims: 1) to describe the applications of the comparison of linguistic structures within a unifi ed methodological framework for investigating cross-linguistic infl uence, and 2) to discuss the advantages and restrictions of diff erent types of comparative data. The fi rst sections establish the background by providing a brief overview of the history of comparative research and by focusing on the research project The grammatical comparison of Finnish and Estonian and on its importance in the history of Estonian and Finnish linguistics. The applications of a comparison of linguistic structures as intralingual contrasts are exemplifi ed by the acquisition of Finnish infl ectional morphology by Estonian and Russian learners. The psycholinguistic reality of the comparison of linguistic structures is also discussed, as well as the relationships between the actual, perceived and assumed similarity of Estonian and Finnish.Keywordscontrastive linguistics, second language acquisition, cross-linguistic infl uence, Finnish, Estonian, Russian