The role of frequency in Lithuanian object marking: a case of pupils attending Russian high schools

This paper investigates the role of frequency in object marking in Lithuanian as L2. 28 “verb + object” constructions with 4 types of case government were tested. The data were collected in 4 high schools in Vilnius where the language of instruction is Russian. In total, 78 pupils (16–18 years old) participated in the study. With reference to the Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition (Tomasello, 2005; Bybee, 2008), this paper aims to answer the question if frequency of verbs and grammatical cases in “verb + object” constructions affect how correctly young Russian speakers mark the object in Lithuanian as L2. The study was based on a written form of Elicited Oral Imitation Test (Erlam, 2006). The data were analysed with R (R Core Team, 2013). A one-sample t test revealed that the object marking in constructions with frequent verbs was significantly more correct than object marking in constructions with infrequent verbs. The analysis also shows that participants of the study performed better while providing constructions with verbs governing grammatical cases that are more used in Lithuanian than less frequent cases. A relatively small group of participants and a single experimental task limit the results of the study