Errors with be, whether whether whether whether whether whether whether whether omission omission omission omission omission omission omission omission (e.g., John happy) or overuse (i.e., be-insertion; e.g., John is love Mary), have received particular attention in L2 acquisition studies exploring L1 transfer. This study investigates such errors in the context of L3 acquisition, focusing on L1 transfer. L1-Chinese (n = 34) and L1-Russian (n = 34) children with L2 Korean completed an elicitation production task designed to explore their use of English be. The study resulted in two main findings. First, L1-Russian children showed more omission errors than proficiency-matching L1-Chinese children, possibly due to an L1 transfer given that copula in Russian are dropped in the present tense. Second, L1-Chinese learners used be-insertion more frequently than proficiency-matching L1-Russian children, possibly due to using be for more functions (as a topic marker and an inflectional morpheme), as other research has shown for L2-English learners with topic-prominent L1s. Based on the findings, the study discusses some pedagogical implications.

This paper investigated the be-insertion phenomenon in L2 English. L2 learners often insert be-forms before thematic verbs, creating nontargetlike forms (e.g. She is love icecream). Based on L2 data from learners of topic-prominent L1s, a group of researchers have claimed that such be-forms are topic markers transferred from the L1s. As L1 transfer cannot be supported without comparing different L2 groups, however, this study examined the explanatory adequacy of the Topic Marker Hypothesis by comparing the Korean and Russian EFL learners at different proficiency levels. Their oral production and grammaticality judgment suggests that regardless of the L1, be-forms could mark topics in the early stages of interlanguage, supporting full access to UG. Due to L1 transfer, however, be-insertion by the Korean group was more relevant to topic marking while that of the Russian group was more relevant to encoding agreement. These findings show complicated interplay between L1 transfer and UG.