INTERFERENCE PHENOMENA IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING- SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM ROMANIAN-ENGLISH CONTACT

Foreign language learning is the locus of varying degrees of interference from the learner’s first language (L1), the product of this influence being called interlanguage. As such, it is important to identify those areas of the L1 which could lead to negative transfers into the target language and thus result in imperfect learning. The present paper is concerned with English learning by speakers of Romanian, and analyses possible L1 retentions resulting from the use of English borrowings that diverge grammatically from their original counterparts. The particular cases described will be those of borrowed words which have undergone a process of conversion, and the use of bilingual verb phrases headed by the Romanian verb ‘a face’ and containing an English noun.