It is generally accepted by both theoreticians and language teachers that when attempting to communicate in a second language, learners often “transfer” elements of their native language onto the speech patterns of the target language. Despite the wide recognition of this phenomenon and the important role it has had in language learning and pedagogical search, true nature has not been adequately established. In owner to better determine the nature of language transfer, a study investigating the acquisition of relative clauses by adult second language learners was conducted. The purposes of this study were to determine what language transfer consists of, what language phenomena are and are not transferred, what constitutes evidence for the existence of transfer and what the role in language transfer of language universals is. It was found that an adequate description of language transfer cannot be given without a consideration of target language facts and language universals. On the basis of these results a model of language transfer is proposed that predicts under which conditions transfer is most likely to occur. The model suggested herein includes notions of language universals, language distance and surface language phenomena.
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