Reflexive and reciprocal forms in L2 Serbian

This paper investigates the acquisition of Serbian reflexive and reciprocal forms by native speakers of Italian. Both Serbian and Italian have reflexive and reciprocal clitics and pronouns. However, the use of clitic forms is somewhat freer in Italian than in Serbian; moreover, unlike Serbian, Italian has obligatory clitic doubling for the reciprocal pronominal forms. The results of a picture judgement task show that despite being rather subtle, these differences between the two languages do lead to transfer-driven divergences between the Italian learners and the native speakers of Serbian. It is therefore argued that in instructional settings attention should be given to the specific L1-L2 differences, on top of the general properties of the area.