Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives 9781853595509

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age on Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition
Chapter 2. Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition
Chapter 3. Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems in the Multilingual Mind
Chapter 4. Lexical Transfer in L3 Production
Chapter 5. Activation or Inhibition? The Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum
Chapter 6. Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language: Evidence from Errors and Tip-of-the-Tongue States
Chapter 7. Plurilingual Lexical Organisation: Evidence from Lexical Processing in L1–L2–L3–L4 Translation
Chapter 8. Learners of German as an L3 and their Production of German Prepositional Verbs
Chapter 9. Too Close for Comfort? Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L>_3
Chapter 10. New Uses for Old Language: Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in the Narratives of Non-Native Speakers
Index

Citation preview

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM Series Editors: Professor Colin Baker, University of Wales, Bangor, Wales, UK and Professor Nancy H. Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA Other Books in the Series At War With Diversity: US Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety James Crawford Bilingual Education and Social Change Rebecca Freeman Curriculum Related Assessment, Cummins and Bilingual Children Tony Cline and Norah Frederickson (eds) Dual Language Education Kathryn J. Lindholm-Leary English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language Jasone Cenoz and Ulrike Jessner (eds) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Colin Baker An Introductory Reader to the Writings of Jim Cummins Colin Baker and Nancy Hornberger (eds) Japanese Children Abroad: Cultural, Educational and Language Issues Asako Yamada-Yamamoto and Brian Richards (eds) Language Minority Students in the Mainstream Classroom Angela L. Carrasquillo and Vivian Rodriguez Languages in America: A Pluralist View Susan J. Dicker Learning English at School: Identity, Social Relations and Classroom Practice Kelleen Toohey Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire Jim Cummins Language Revitalization Processes and Prospects Kendall A. King Language Use in Interlingual Families: A Japanese-English Sociolinguistic Study Masayo Yamamoto The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice Bernard Spolsky and Elana Shohamy Reflections on Multiliterate Lives Diane Belcher and Ulla Connor (eds) The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching Joan Kelly Hall and William G. Eggington (eds) Studies in Japanese Bilingualism Mary Goebel Noguchi and Sandra Fotos (eds) Teaching and Learning in Multicultural Schools Elizabeth Coelho

Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 31 Series Editors: Colin Baker and Nancy H. Hornberger

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition Psycholinguistic Perspectives

Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen and Ulrike Jessner

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto • Sydney

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives/Edited by Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen and Ulrike Jessner. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism: 31. Includes bibliographical referenecs and index. 1. Language acquisition. 2. Language transfer (Language learning). 3. Psycholinguistics. I. Cenoz, Jasone. II. Hufeisen, Britta. III. Jessner, Ulrike. IV. Series. P118.C6894 2001 401’.93–dc21 2001031573 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-549-7 (hbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Australia: Footprint Books, Unit 4/92a Mona Vale Road, Mona Vale, NSW 2103, Australia. Copyright © 2001 Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen, Ulrike Jessner and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Wordworks Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd.

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Contents Introduction Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen and Ulrike Jessner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age on Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition Jasone Cenoz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2 Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition Björn Hammarberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3 Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems in the Multilingual Mind Gessica De Angelis and Larry Selinker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 4 Lexical Transfer in L3 Production Håkan Ringbom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 5 Activation or Inhibition? The Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum Jean-Marc Dewaele . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 6 Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language: Evidence from Errors and Tip-of-the-Tongue States Peter Ecke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 7 Plurilingual Lexical Organisation: Evidence from Lexical Processing in L1-L2-L3-L4 Translation Anna Herwig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 8 Learners of German as an L3 and their Production of German Prepositional Verbs Martha Gibson, Britta Hufeisen and Gary Libben . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 9 Too Close for Comfort? Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L≥3 Robert J. Fouser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 10 New Uses for Old Language: Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in the Narratives of Non-Native Speakers Eric Kellerman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

v 1 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:55

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:55

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Introduction JASONE CENOZ, BRITTA HUFEISEN and ULRIKE JESSNER ‘Cross-linguistic influence’ is a term proposed in the eighties to include ‘such phenomena as “transfer”, “interference”, “avoidance”, “borrowing” and L2-related aspects of language loss’ (Sharwood Smith & Kellerman, 1986: 1). The study of transfer phenomena in second language acquisition has a long tradition and is considered a central area (Odlin, 1989; Kellerman & Sharwood Smith, 1986; Gass & Selinker, 1983). This volume focuses on cross-linguistic influence but goes beyond second language acquisition (SLA) and explores this phenomenon when a third language is being acquired. Third language acquisition (TLA) research has experienced important developments in recent years (see for example Cenoz & Genesee, 1998; Cenoz & Jessner, 2000; Edwards, 1994; Hufeisen & Lindemann 1998; Cenoz et al., 2000, 2001, in press; Dentler et al., 2000). The interest in third language acquisition has sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic foundations. From a sociolinguistic perspective, the spread of English in the world, the increasing mobility of the world population and the recognition of minority languages have resulted in social and educational situations in which learning more than two languages is not exceptional. On the other hand, from a psycholinguistic perspective, third language acquisition research presents specific characteristics derived from the fact that third language learners are experienced learners and also because bilingual and multilingual individuals present a different type of competence as compared to that of monolinguals (Grosjean, 1992; Cook, 1995; Jessner, 1999). Third language acquisition research has focused on different areas of the complex phenomenon of language acquisition. Among the areas that have received more attention, we could mention the influence of bilingualism on third language acquisition (Bild & Swain, 1989; Thomas, 1988; Cenoz & Valencia, 1994; Lasagabaster, 1997), early trilingualism (Hoffmann, 1985; Quay, in press), cross-linguistic influence and interaction (Clyne, 1997; Hufeisen 2000; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998) or L3 acquisition in educational settings (Hoffmann, 1998; Genesee, 1998). This volume focuses on a specific aspect of third language acquisition, that of cross-linguistic influ-

1 2 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:55

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

2

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

ence, and adopts a psycholinguistic perspective for its analysis. Kellerman (this volume) points out that cross-linguistic influence is one of the areas in which first and second language acquisition are clearly differentiated, and this statement can be applied to the distinction between second and third language acquisition. Second language learners have two systems that can potentially influence each other (L1↔L2), and second language acquisition research has mainly focused on transfer phenomena from the L1 to the L2 without paying enough attention to the other possible relationship (but see Kecskes & Papp, 2000). Two other bi-directional relationships can take place in third language acquisition: the L3 can influence the L1 and be influenced by the L1 (L1↔L3) and cross-linguistic influence can also take place between the L2 and the L3 (L2↔L3). The differences between SLA and TLA regarding cross-linguistic influence and the important implications of this research for theories of language acquisition in general, and second and third language acquisition in particular, have motivated research in this area. Even though the area of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition is still in its infancy, several important contributions have been made in the last decade. One of the first contributions was the research conducted by Ringbom (1987), who analysed the influence of Finnish and Swedish on the acquisition of English as a third language. More recent contributions have extended the range of languages, including different combinations of languages (see for example Hufeisen, 1991, 1993; Clyne, 1997; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Dewaele, 1998). Research on cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition is grounded on psycholinguistic theories of speech processing and production in monolinguals (Levelt, 1989) and bilinguals (Green, 1986; De Bot, 1992; Grosjean, 1997), as well as on specific proposals of cross-linguistic influence in second language acquisition (Kellerman, 1983). The main areas of investigation include the effect of different factors such as typological distance, L2 status, recency, context or proficiency on cross-linguistic influence from the L1 and the L2 on the L3 but other areas such as the acquisition of additional languages (L4, L5) or the effect of the L3 on the L2 and L1 are receiving increasing attention, as can be seen in some of the chapters included in this volume. This volume provides a unique collection of papers on the psycholinguistic aspects of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition. It is the first thematic volume devoted to this topic, and its aim is to explore the interaction between third language acquisition and the other languages known by the learner and to discuss the implications of these relationships. The chapters cover cross-linguistic influence at different levels, but most chapters focus on the lexical level. The chapters in this

3 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:55

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Introduction

3

volume include combinations of more than 30 languages including IndoEuropean languages (for example Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish) and non-IndoEuropean languages (for example Basque, Chinese, Finnish, Korean, Japanese). The research methodologies combine different elicitation techniques and controlled experiments, and the results and discussions prove that empirical studies in this area are crucial in the general study of language acquisition. The different research questions and methodologies used to explore cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition, and the insights reported in this volume, can be extremely useful for third language acquisition studies and they also have implications for studies in second language acquisition, bilingualism and multilingualism. This volume will be of interest to researchers in language acquisition because it has important implications for theory construction in first, second and third language acquisition. It will also be of interest to researchers in the fields of bilingualism and multilingualism, because research on third language acquisition brings the fields of bilingualism (or multilingualism) and second language acquisition together. Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition will also be extremely useful for language policy makers, teacher educators, teachers and students interested in language acquisition and bilingualism because it provides information that can be useful for curriculum development and offers insights into the processes of acquiring and using several languages. The book comprises ten chapters that report the results of original studies on cross-linguistic influence. The first three chapters analyse cross-linguistic influence by focusing on the factors that affect the relative role of the first and second languages in third language oral production. Jasone Cenoz begins the opening chapter, The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age on Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition, by giving an overview of the study of cross-linguistic interaction in third language acquisition. She presents the results of a study carried out in the Basque Country where the third language, English, is learnt by bilingual (Spanish/Basque) school children. She investigated the effect of age and language typology in the language learning process of a third language by using the well known ‘Frog Story’ to elicit the data. In the second chapter, Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition, Björn Hammarberg presents further results of his work with polyglot Sarah Williams. He describes the different roles that L1 (English) and L2 (German) occupy in the activation process of L3 (Swedish) by drawing attention to pragmatic functions of language shifts in oral production. In the third chapter, Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems in the Multilingual Mind, Gessica De Angelis and Larry Selinker

4 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:55

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

4

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

describe interlanguage transfer, i.e. the influence from one non-native language on another non-native language, in the language production of two adult multilinguals. They claim that language transfer theory cannot be comprehensive if its principles are based on two languages only. These three chapters highlight the role of typology, recency, L2 status and proficiency as the main factors affecting the preference for the first or the second language as the source language of cross-linguistic influence in L3 production. Nevertheless, taking into account individual differences and the limited number of subjects and languages involved in these three research studies, it is still too early to establish the relative importance of each of these factors across different L3 acquisition settings. Chapters 4 and 5 also deal with production data and discuss some of the factors analysed in the previous chapters, but they focus on different issues. In the fourth chapter, Lexical Transfer in L3 Production, Håkan Ringbom analyses translations of English words by learners in Swedish language schools and Finnish language schools who acquire English as a third language. He distinguishes between transfer of form and transfer of meaning, and his data indicate that the first and the second language play a different role in these two types of transfer. Ringbom relates these cross-linguistic phenomena to psychotypology and to other variables such as proficiency and activation of the second language. Ringbom’s data confirm the important influence of typology, but also show that typology plays a minor role when transfer of meaning is analysed. The different roles of the L1 and the L2 are therefore affected by the type of transfer and, as Hammarberg points out in Chapter 2, by the purpose of the switches. In the next chapter, Activation or Inhibition? The Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum, Jean-Marc Dewaele makes an attempt to apply Grosjean’s model of language modes to L3 production. For this purpose he studies the language of trilingual (Dutch/French/English) university students by studying factors like the amount of formal instruction, the status of the interlanguage (L2 or L3), and the frequency of use outside the classroom to explain interindividual variation. According to Dewaele’s study, the degree of formality of the situation is closely related to the monolingual/bilingual mode continuum. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss different aspects of the mental lexicon. Both chapters use translation tasks to obtain information about the organisation of the multilingual mental lexicon. The sixth chapter, Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language: Evidence from Errors and Tip-of-the-Tongue States, by Peter Ecke provides the reader with information on the mental lexicon, i.e. the acquisition and processing of L3 words, their organisation and relation to other words. In his study of new

5 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:56

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Introduction

5

learners of German as L3, he focuses on incomplete and incorrect word recalls. Ecke reports different patterns of lexical retrieval, and highlights the role of psychotypology and L2 status in cross-linguistic influence. Anne Herwig in Chapter 7, Plurilingual Lexical Organisation, Evidence from Lexical Processing in L1–L2–L3–L4 Translation, proposes to integrate neuro- and psycholinguistic perspectives on lexical organisation in a unifying model. She draws on a translation study from a native language into several second languages where the focus is on the non-accessibility of required lexical items. Herwig proves the complexity of the way in which lexical items are linked to one another and the need to integrate neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. She also underlines the role of psychotypology and proficiency. In Chapter 8, Learners of German as an L3 and Their Production of German Prepositional Verbs, Martha Gibson, Britta Hufeisen and Gary Libben present the results of an investigation into the knowledge of German prepositional verbs by adult learners of German as a foreign language, and try to answer some crucial questions of L3 research by comparing learners with different first and second languages. The results of this study indicate that a second language does not help in this specific task on German prepositional verbs, and also indicates that having an L1 or L2 that is closer to the L3 does not confer advantages. These results are very interesting, because they do not confirm the results obtained in most L3 studies on general proficiency (see for example Bild & Swain, 1989; Thomas, 1988; Cenoz & Valencia, 1994; Lasagabaster, 1997) and imply that the study of specific areas of language acquisition can present different patterns. This study also suggests the possibility of avoidance as a communication strategy when the languages are very close. In Chapters 9 and 10, Fouser and Kellerman go beyond the lexical level and explore other areas of cross-linguistic influence. In Chapter 9, Too Close for Comfort? Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3, Robert Fouser analyses the relationship between Japanese and Korean as L2 and L3 languages by focusing on the pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of communicative competence. The results of the study reported here indicate that learners consider that Japanese helps them to acquire Korean because these two languages are closer to each other than their first language. In the final chapter, New Uses for Old Language: Cross-linguistic Influence in Depiction of Motion and Emotion, Eric Kellerman points to new directions for studies on cross-linguistic aspects of language learning. He proposes to study different aspects of the narrative, non-verbal communication and metaphors as new areas of research. The study of these areas necessarily

6 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:56

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

6

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

implies the use of different research methodologies, but can certainly contribute to the study of acquisition of different aspects of the communicative competence in third language acquisition. In sum, this volume is a contribution to the study of language acquisition, and particularly to third language acquisition studies. Third language acquisition is a relatively new field and, as such, faces important challenges regarding its terminology, scope and research methodology. This volume provides interesting insights on the processing of three languages and opens new perspectives for future research in third language acquisition and multilingualism. References Bild, E.R and Swain, M. (1989) Minority language students in a French immersion programme: Their French proficiency. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 10, 255–74. Cenoz, J. and Valencia, J.F. (1994) Additive trilingualism: Evidence from the Basque Country. Applied Psycholinguistics 15, 195–207. Cenoz, J. and Genesee, F. (eds) (1998) Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and Jessner, U. (2000) (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J., Hufeisen, B. and Jessner, U. (eds) (2000) Trilingualism – tertiary languages – German in a multilingual world. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht (special issue) 5:1. http://www.ualberta.ca/~german/ ejournal/ejournal.html Cenoz, J., Hufeisen, B. and Jessner, U. (eds) (2001) Third language acquisition in the school context. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (special issue). Cenoz, J., Hufeisen, B. and Jessner, U. (eds) (in press) Looking Beyond Second Language Acquisition: Studies in Tri- and Multilingualism. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Cook, V. (1995) Multi-competence and the learning of many languages. Language, Culture and Curriculum 8, 93–8. Clyne, M. (1997) Some of the things trilinguals do. The International Journal of Bilingualism 1, 95–116. De Bot, K. (1992). A bilingual production model: Levelt’s ‘Speaking’ model adapted. Applied Linguistics 13, 1–24. Dentler, S., Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (2000) Tertiärsprachen: Projekte und Empirische Untersuchungen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Dewaele, J-M. (1998) Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3. Applied Linguistics 19, 471–90. Edwards, J. (1994) Multilingualism. London: Routledge. Gass, S. and Selinker, L. (eds) (1983) Language Transfer in Language Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Genesee, F. (1998) A case study of multilingual education in Canada. In J. Cenoz and F. Genesee (eds) Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education (pp. 243–58). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

7 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:56

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Introduction

7

Green, D.W. (1986) Control, activation and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language 27, 210–23. Grosjean, F. (1992) Another view of bilingualism. In R.J. Harris (ed.) Cognitive Processing in Bilinguals (pp. 51–62). Amsterdam: North Holland. Grosjean, F. (1997) Processing mixed languages: Issues, findings, and models. In A.M.B. De Groot and J.F. Kroll (eds) Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspectives (pp. 225–54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hoffmann, C. (1985) Language acquisition in two trilingual children. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 6, 479–95. Hoffmann, C. (1998) Luxembourg and the European schools. In J. Cenoz and F. Genesee (eds) Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education (pp. 143–74). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hufeisen, B. (1991) Englisch als erste und Deutsch as zweite Fremdsprache. Empirische Untersuchung zur fremdsprachlichen Interaktion. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hufeisen, B. (1993) Fehleranalyse: English als L2 und Deutsch als L3. International Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 242–56. Hufeisen, B. (2000) How do foreign language learners evaluate various aspects of their multilingualism? In S. Dentler, B. Hufeisen and B. Lindemann (eds) Tertiärund Drittsprachen (pp. 23–39). Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (1998) Tertiärsprachen. Theorien, Modelle, Methoden. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Jessner, U. (1999) Metalinguistic awareness in multilinguals: Cognitive aspects of third language learning. Language Awareness 8: 3 & 4: 201–9. Kecskes, I. and Papp, T. (2000) Foreign Language and Mother Tongue. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Kellerman, E. (1983) Now you see it, now you don’t. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 112–34). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Kellerman, E. and Sharwood Smith, M. (eds) (1986) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Pergamon Press. Lasagabaster, D. (1997) Creatividad y conciencia metalingüística: Incidencia en el aprendizaje del inglés como L3. Leioa: University of the Basque Country. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989) Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Odlin, T. (1989) Language Transfer: Crosslinguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quay, S. (in press) Managing linguistic boundaries in early trilingual development. In J. Cenoz. and F. Genesee (eds) Trends in Bilingual Development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sharwood Smith, M. and Kellerman, E. (1986) Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition: An introduction. In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 1–9). New York: Pergamon Press. Thomas, J. (1988) The role played by metalinguistic awareness in second and third language learning. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 9, 235– 46. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333.

8 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:56

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 1

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age on Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition JASONE CENOZ

Introduction The study of cross-linguistic influence in third language (L3) acquisition is potentially more complex than the study of cross-linguistic influence in second language (L2) acquisition because it implicates all the processes associated with second language acquisition as well as unique and potentially more complex relationships that can take place among the languages known or being acquired by the learner. The processes used in third language acquisition may be very similar to those used by L2 learners but, as Clyne points out ‘the additional language complicates the operations of the processes’ (Clyne, 1997: 113). The study of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition can contribute to the analysis of these operations by examining the conditions in which speakers transfer terms from the other languages they know. In fact, this specific area of research is relevant not only for L3 acquisition, because the analysis of the processes involved in L3 production can be the basis for the study of bilingual and monolingual production (see also Hammarberg, this volume). The conditions in which cross-linguistic influence takes place are determined by several factors that can potentially predict the relative weight of cross-linguistic influence in the speakers’ production and the source language of the elements that are transferred. Among these factors linguistic typology has proved to be influential in the choice of the source language. Speakers borrow more terms from the language that is typologically closer to the target language, or using Kellerman’s (1983) concept of psychotypology, the language that is perceived as typologically closer. The effect of psychotypology has been confirmed in several studies (see

8 9 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:56

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age

9

Bild & Swain, 1989; Möhle, 1989; Singleton, 1987). For example, learners of French and English who are native speakers of a non-IndoEuropean language tend to transfer vocabulary and structures from other IndoEuropean languages they know rather than from their first language (Ahukanna et al., 1981; Bartelt, 1989; Ringbom, 1987; Singh & Carroll, 1979). Cross-linguistic influence in second language acquisition has been related to the level of proficiency in the target language, and less proficient learners have been reported to transfer more elements from their first language than learners who present higher levels of proficiency (Ringbom, 1987; Möhle, 1989; Poulisse, 1990). In the case of third language acquisition it is important to consider proficiency not only in the target language but also in the other two languages known by the speaker. This fact adds complexity to the study, taking into account that multicompetence is not the sum of monolingual competences (Cook, 1992; Grosjean, 1992; Cenoz & Genesee, 1998; Herdina & Jessner, 2000). Other factors that can determine the presence of cross-linguistic influence are related to the specific context in which communication takes place, including the interlocutors, the setting and the topic of the conversation. Grosjean (1998) considers that these factors determine whether the speaker is in a bilingual or a monolingual mode. The influence of these contextual factors that determine the speaker’s mode has been confirmed in some L3 studies. For example, Dewaele (this volume) found that the level of formality affects the total number of terms transferred from the L2 in L3 production. Hammarberg (this volume) also attributes the use of English for editing functions to the specific context of the interaction because Sarah, a learner of Swedish, knew that her interlocutor was proficient in English and she frequently used English with him in other situations. Another factor that can predict cross-linguistic influence is the so called ‘foreign language effect’ (Meisel, 1983) of L2 status (Hammarberg, this volume). Several studies have reported that learners tend to use the L2 or languages other than the L1 as the source language of cross-linguistic influence (Clyne, 1997; Williams & Hammarberg, 1997, 1998; De Angelis & Selinker, this volume). Cross-linguistic influence could also be related to age. Even though there is a large number of research studies on the highly controversial ‘age factor’ in second language acquisition (Harley, 1986; Singleton, 1989; Singleton & Lengyel, 1995), research on the relationship between age and cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition has received very limited attention (see Cenoz, 2000). In the case of young learners, age is associated with cognitive and metalinguistic development, and older children have been reported to advance more quickly in the first stages of

10 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:57

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

10

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

second language acquisition. Cognitive and metalinguistic development could also be related to cross-linguistic influence, and particularly, to psychotypology, because older children can have a more accurate perception of linguistic distance that could influence the source language they use when transferring terms from one of the languages they know. Another factor that can potentially affect cross-linguistic influence is ‘recency’ (see Hammarberg, this volume). It could be hypothesised that learners are more likely to borrow from a language they actively use than from other languages they may know but do not use. Hammarberg’s results (this volume) seem to confirm the influence of recency because the learner uses the most recently acquired language, German, as a base language, although this use of German could also be due to the subject’s higher proficiency in German or to psychotypology. The study of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition is complex because of the number of potential factors that are associated with it and their possible interactions, and also because third language acquisition presents more diversity than second language acquisition (Cenoz, 2000). Third language acquisition can take place in natural and formal contexts and the number of specific situations derived from typology, proficiency, mode, age and recency is extremely high. The study of cross-linguistic influence is affected not only by the knowledge of other languages but also by the process of acquiring those languages, and the strategies the learner used to acquire them. Taking into account the great complexity and diversity of third language acquisition, the study of cross-linguistic influence is still in its infancy, although the field has attracted increasing attention in the last years (see for example Clyne, 1997; Williams & Hammarberg, 1997, 1998; Dewaele, 1998; Hufeisen & Lindemann, 1998; Cenoz & Jessner, 2000; Dentler et al., 2000). This chapter reports the results of a research project on cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition that was conducted in a Basque school where English is taught as a third language to native speakers of Basque and Spanish. Specifically, it analyses the influence of Basque and Spanish on English. Basque is a non-IndoEuropean highly inflected language with sixteen morphological cases and, typologically, it has been defined as ergative and agglutinative (Saltarelli, 1988). The Basque language has been in contact with Latin and Romance languages for centuries and has been influenced by them mainly at the phonological and lexical levels. Although Spanish is a Romance language, and English a Germanic language they are typologically closer to each other than to Basque. This research study focuses on the lexical level and tries to answer the following research questions:

11 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:57

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

11

Is cross-linguistic influence in English as L3 affected by age? Which is the source language of transfer in English oral production? Does cross-linguistic influence affect content and function words? How is cross-linguistic influence related to the subjects’ first language? How are terms taken from Basque and Spanish adapted into English?

Method Subjects Participants were 90 elementary and secondary school students (48% male, 52% female) who had Basque and/or Spanish as their first language and lived in the Basque Country (Spain). Basque was the first language for 44% of the students, Spanish was the first language for 23%, and the rest (32%) had both Basque and Spanish as their first languages. All the participants had Basque as the language of instruction, and they also studied Spanish and English as school subjects. Although Basque is becoming the preferred language of instruction in some areas of the Basque Country, Spanish is the majority language at the community level and the use of Basque as the language of instruction does not prevent students from acquiring levels of proficiency in Spanish similar to that of students who learn through the medium of Spanish (Cenoz, 1998). English is taught as a third language at school, and the recent increased interest in English has led to its early introduction in kindergarten to four year olds. Traditionally, English was not taught until grade 6 (11–12 year olds), but the early introduction of English in grade 3 became compulsory in 1993. The early introduction of English in kindergarten was initiated on an experimental basis in several private Basque schools in 1991 and has spawned similar initiatives in a large number of public schools. All the participants in this study (n = 90) attended the same school and had been learning English for 4 years, but they had started learning English at different ages. Participants in grades 6 and 91 had received instruction in English for four years, but they had received 80 hours more of instruction than had participants in grade 2. The distribution of participants in the three groups can be seen in Table 1.1. Instruments All the students were asked to tell the wordless picture story ‘Frog, where are you?’(Mayer, 1969) in English. This story consists of 24 pictures and has been used in a large number of contexts with different languages, both with children and with adults (Berman & Slobin, 1994; see also

12 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:57

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

12

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Table 1.1 Participants in the study

Grade 2 (n=30) Grade 6 (n=30) Grade 9 (n=30)

Age

Male

Female

7.35 11.3 14.2

16 13 14

14 17 16

Years/Hours of English 4 / 310 4 / 390 4 / 390

Kellerman, this volume). Several corpora of oral productions based on this story are also part of the Childes project database (MacWhinney, 2000). Participants completed a background questionnaire that included questions on the knowledge and use of Basque in their social networks. The stories were told individually to a native speaker of English, and the questionnaires were completed in groups in one of the class sessions. Procedure All the stories were audio- and videotaped. They were also transcribed, and all cases of cross-linguistic influence at the lexical level were identified. Three types of cross-linguistic influence were distinguished: Interactional strategies

This category refers to direct or indirect appeals to the interlocutor in order to get help to produce a specific term in English. It includes four of the categories included in the seven types of switches identified by Hammarberg (this volume): ‘metaframe’ ‘insert: explicit elicit’, ‘insert: implicit elicit’ and ‘insert: non elicit’. (1) and (2) are examples of interactional strategies: (1) Nola esaten da aurkitzen? (How do you say ‘find’?) (2) Caer nola da? (How do you say ‘fall’?) In both examples, the learners produce utterances in languages other than English to ask the interlocutor for help to produce a verb in English. The first speaker uses Basque, and the second speaker mixes Basque and Spanish. Code-switching

This category includes whole sentences produced in Basque or Spanish when the speaker is not appealing to the interlocutor for help. We can see some examples in (3) and (4). The speaker in (3) switches into Basque, and the speaker in (4) produces two clauses in Spanish. (3) Eta gero joan egin zien (And then they left) (4) Es que primero está allí y luego va de nuevo a su sitio (At first it is there and then it goes back to its place)

13 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:57

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age

13

Transfer

This category refers to the use of one or more terms (but not whole sentences) in Basque or Spanish as part of an utterance produced in English. This category will be the only one analysed in this chapter, and includes borrowings and foreignisings. Borrowings refer to ‘the use of an L1 (or Ln) word without any phonological and/or morphological adaptation’ (Poulisse 1990: 111) as we can see in examples (5) and (6). In example (5) the speaker uses Basque as the source language in the middle of the sentence, while the speaker in (6) uses Spanish in the same position. (5) Erik see ez dagoela the frog (Erik sees that the frog is not there) (6) The boy is poniéndose jacket (The boy is putting on his jacket) Foreignising refers to ‘the use of an L1 (or Ln) word with phonological and morphological adaptation’ (Poulisse 1990: 111) as can be seen in examples (7) and (8). In both cases, the source language is Spanish. In example (7) the learner adapts the Spanish word siguiente (next) and produces ‘siguient’. In example (8) a different learner also drops the final vowel when foreignising the Spanish word bosque (wood). (7) Siguient morning (Spanish ‘siguiente’) The next morning (8) Nick is in the bosqu (Spanish ‘bosque’) Nick is in the wood.

Results In order to answer the first research question and examine whether cross-linguistic influence is affected by age, the number of terms transferred by the three age groups from Basque and Spanish into English was compared. The number of subjects of each of the age groups who used this compensatory strategy was also compared. The results in Table 1.2 indicate that the total number of linguistic terms transferred from Basque and Spanish into English is 198. It can be observed that half of the participants (n = 45) use this compensatory strategy, and the rest do not. Grade 9 students use a slightly greater number of transferred Table 1.2 Cross-linguistic influence and age

Grade 2 (n=30) Grade 6 (n=30) Grade 9 (n=30) Total

Number of transferred terms 62 66 70 198

14 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:58

Number of subjects who transfer 12 15 18 45

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

14

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

terms than the other two groups, and a slightly greater number of subjects in grade 9 use this strategy. In order to answer the second research question, the source language of transfer used by the three age groups was considered: Table 1.3 Source language of transfer and age Grade 2 Grade 6 Grade 9 Total

Basque 21 (34%) 25 (38%) 9 (13%) 55

Spanish 41 (66%) 41 (62%) 61 (87%) 143

Total 62 66 70 198

The results in Table 1.3 indicate that Spanish is the most important source language for the three groups, and that cross-linguistic influence from Spanish is even more common for older students. The next research question refers to the type of words transferred from Basque and Spanish by the three age groups. In order to answer this research question, all the terms transferred were divided into two groups: content words and function words. Content words include nouns, verbs, numerals, adjectives and adverbs. Function words include prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and pronouns. The results of the comparisons are presented in Table 1.4. Table 1.4 Content and function words

Grade 2 Grade 6 Grade 9 Total

Basque 18 (43%) 20 (62%) 6 (14%) 44

Content Spanish 24 (57%) 12 (38%) 37 (86%) 73

Total 42 32 43 117

Basque 3 (15%) 5 (15%) 3 (11%) 11

Function Spanish 17 (85%) 29 (85%) 24 (89%) 70

Total 20 34 27 81

The results indicate that participants borrow more content (117) than function words (81) and they also indicate that they borrow more content and function words from Spanish than from Basque. It can be observed that the number of function words (11) borrowed from Basque is lower than the number of content words (44) borrowed from Basque, while the figures for content (73) and function words (70) borrowed from Spanish are very similar. The results also indicate that there are more differences among the three groups in the case of content words than in the case of function words.

15 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:58

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age

15

The following research question aims at examining the relationship between the subjects’ first language and the source language of crosslinguistic influence. In order to answer this question, the number of subjects who use Basque, Spanish and both Basque and Spanish as the source language of cross-linguistic influence was related to the subjects’ first language. The results are presented in Table 1.5. Table 1.5 Source language and subjects’ first language

Basque L1 (n=55) Basque & Spanish L1 (n=17) Spanish L1 (n=22)

Basque

Spanish

Basque & Spanish

Total

3 (12%)

16 (64%)

6 (24%)

25

0 (0%)

5 (56%)

4 (44%)

9

3 (27%)

5 (45%)

3 (27%)

11

The data indicate that approximately half of the subjects of the three groups classified according to their first language present cross-linguistic influence. This indicates that there is no bias that associates cross-linguistic influence with a specific linguistic group. The results also indicate that the subjects who have Basque as the first language do not use Basque more often than Spanish as their source language, and that they do not use Basque as the source language more often than the other two groups. Subjects with Spanish as L1 tend to use Basque as the source language more often than the rest of the subjects, but their main source language is Spanish. In order to answer the fifth research question, the use of the strategy that Poulisse (1990) called ‘foreignising’ was considered. This strategy is not common in our data. Only 11 subjects (3 from grade 2, 6 from grade 6, and 2 from grade 9) out of the 45 who use transfer ‘foreignise’ the terms transferred into English, and there are only 16 examples of foreignised words from a total of 198. All these examples have Spanish as the source language, as seen in examples (7) and (8).

Discussion The results of this study indicate that the patterns observed in cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition are related not only to linguistic distance but also to other factors. Regarding the first research question, that is, the relationship between

16 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:58

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

16

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

cross-linguistic influence and age, the results indicate that older learners present more cross-linguistic influence than younger learners; the total number of transferred terms and the number of subjects who transferred terms from Basque and/or Spanish is higher in grade 9 than in the other grades. According to a study on proficiency conducted with the participants in this study (Cenoz, 1998), grade 6 and grade 9 students are more proficient than the youngest group, but the data of the present study indicate that grade 2 students do not present more cross-linguistic influence than the other two groups. This finding seems to contradict previous studies on transfer (Möhle, 1989; Ringbom 1987, Poulisse, 1990) that report that students who are less proficient present more cross-linguistic influence. A possible explanation could be that all the students in our sample present a similar degree of cross-linguistic influence because their proficiency is still quite limited, and it is possible that they will be less influenced by their knowledge of other languages when their proficiency is higher. The longitudinal data that are being collected will provide information about this issue. The higher number of terms transferred by grade 9 students could also be related to the fact that their productions are longer (Cenoz, 1998), but this explanation does not account for the fact that there are more learners in grade 9 who transferred than in the other two grades. The results in Table 1.2 also confirm that there are individual differences in the use of transfer (Odlin, 1989: 130). In fact 50% of the students use this communication strategy and 50% of the students do not. This finding highlights the importance of individual differences in the study of cross-linguistic influence, particularly if the results of cross-linguistic research are used to hypothesise different processes in third language production. Our data indicate that linguistic distance plays an important role in cross-linguistic transfer. In fact, all students present a stronger influence from Spanish, an IndoEuropean language, than from Basque, a non-IndoEuropean language. These results confirm previous studies on language distance and cross-linguistic influence in multilingual acquisition (Möhle, 1989; Ahukanna et al., 1981; Bartelt, 1989; Ringbom, 1987; Singh & Carroll, 1979). Our results are also compatible with the idea that the perception of linguistic distance and the perception of ‘transferability’ can be more important than objective linguistic distance (Kellerman, 1978, 1986; Odlin, 1989; Ringbom, 1986). The higher metalinguistic awareness developed by older students could make them more aware of the linguistic distance between Basque and English, and explain the fact that they transfer fewer terms from Basque than students in the other groups. Older students are able to perceive that Basque and English are typologically more distant than Spanish and

17 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:58

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age

17

English, and that they could use Spanish rather than Basque as a base language when acquiring English. Younger learners’ lower metalinguistic ability does not allow them to perceive objective linguistic distance, and they find both Spanish and Basque terms as transferable. Our data indicate that cross-linguistic influence is more common in the case of content words than in the case of function words, and also indicate that students borrow very few function words from Basque. These results are different from those reported by Poulisse & Bongaerts (1994), who found that learners of English transferred more function words than content words from their first language, Dutch. Poulisse (1997) relates these findings to the principles of clarity and economy because function words are very frequent, and learners tend to focus on content words. Nevertheless, our results indicate that the type of word transferred is strongly affected by linguistic distance. When two non-Germanic languages are used as the possible source languages, students may perceive function words in the target language to be more distant than when the source and the target language are Germanic. The fact that cross-linguistic influence from Basque is very weak in the case of function words confirms the importance of language distance. It seems that learners perceive the great difficulty of transferring from a highly inflected language. The results also indicate that different age groups consistently use Spanish as the source language for function words. Nevertheless, in the case of content words, learners in grades 2 and 6 often use Basque as the source language. These results confirm that the relationship between age and crosslinguistic influence discussed above is limited to content words. One possible explanation of these findings is that, when speaking Basque, Basque–Spanish bilinguals tend to borrow more content words than function words from Spanish. Learners in this study could be transferring this communication strategy to third language production. Therefore, the different structure of Basque as compared to Spanish and English would explain the limited transfer of function words, but the influence of linguistic distance could be direct when learners are aware of linguistic distance or indirect when learners are applying a communicative strategy used when speaking Basque to a third language. All the subjects in this study prefer to use Spanish as a source language, and subjects with Basque as L1 seem to present a stronger preference for Spanish than do subjects with Spanish as L1. These findings are compatible with other studies on the use of a second language as the base language for the acquisition of an additional language (Clyne, 1997; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Dewaele, 1998). Basque L1 speakers seem to use Spanish as the base language for the acquisition of English, and Spanish L1

18 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:59

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

18

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

speakers transfer more terms from Basque than do native speakers of Basque, but they still use Spanish as their main source language. The use of Spanish as the base language can be explained in the case of Basque L1 speakers because Spanish has an L2 status and at the same time is typologically closer to English. Spanish L1 speakers face a different situation determined by two opposite forces. Basque could be the preferred language because of its L2 status but their L1, Spanish, is typologically closer to English than Basque is. These opposing forces could explain the fact that Spanish L1 speakers use Basque more often as a source language than Basque L1 speakers. The data also indicate that the influence of linguistic distance is stronger than that of L2 status. Finally, students’ awareness of linguistic distance in cross-linguistic influence is confirmed by the fact that they foreignise only terms from Spanish, and not from Basque. This study confirms previous studies on typological distance in multilingual acquisition and proves that linguistic distance is a stronger predictor of cross-linguistic influence than L2 status, but it also indicates that language proficiency and metalinguistic development related to age affect cross-linguistic influence. This study also confirms the complexity of the study of cross-linguistic influence in L3 acquisition, and its relationship to a large number of factors. All the participants in this study were in the same position regarding bilingual/monolingual mode because they had the same interlocutor, and completed the same task in the same context. Therefore the internal comparisons between the groups are not likely to be affected by context. Nevertheless, it is important to take into account that these results were obtained in a specific situation along the bilingual/ monolingual mode continuum, and cannot be generalised without taking into account the contextual variables that determine the position along this continuum.

Acknowledgement This study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education grant DGES PB97–061 and the Basque Government grant PI-1998–96. Note 1. ‘Grade 9’ is used in this paper to address the grade called ‘B.B.B. 1/1º B.U.P’ before the Reform, and nowadays called ‘DBH 3/3º ESO’.

19 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:59

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age

19

References Ahukanna, J.G.W., Lund, N.J. and Gentile, J.R. (1981) Inter- and intra-lingual interference effects in learning a third language. Modern Language Journal 65, 281–7. Bartelt, G. (1989) The interaction of multilingual constraints. In H.W. Dechert and M. Raupach (eds) Interlingual Processes (pp. 151–77). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Berman, R.A. and Slobin, D.I. (1994) Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bild, E.R and Swain, M. (1989) Minority language students in a French immersion programme: Their French proficiency. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 10, 255–74. Cenoz, J. and Genesee, F. (1998) Psycholinguistic perspectives on multilingualism and multilingual education. In J. Cenoz and F. Genesee (eds) Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education (pp. 16–32). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. (1998) Immersion in a minority language and third language acquisition. Paper read at the 4th European Conference on Immersion programs. Camarthen, Wales. September 1998. Cenoz, J. (2000) Research on multilingual acquisition. In J. Cenoz and U. Jessner (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language (pp. 39–53). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and Jessner, U. (2000) (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Clyne, M. (1997) Some of the things trilinguals do. The International Journal of Bilingualism 1, 95–116. Cook, V. (1992) Evidence for multi-competence. Language Learning 42, 557–91. Dentler, S., Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (2000) Tertiärsprachen: Projekte und Empirische Untersuchungen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Dewaele, J-M. (1998) Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3. Applied Linguistics 19, 471–90. Grosjean, F. (1992) Another view of bilingualism. In R.J. Harris (ed.) Cognitive Processing in Bilinguals (pp. 51–62). Amsterdam: North Holland. Grosjean, F. (1998) Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptual issues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 131–49. Harley, B. (1986) Age in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Herdina, P. and Jessner, U. (2000) The dynamics of third language acquisition. In J. Cenoz and U. Jessner (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language (pp. 84–98). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (1998) Tertiärsprachen. Theorien, Modelle, Methoden. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Kellerman, E. (1978) Transfer and non-transfer: Where we are now. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 2, 37–57. Kellerman, E. (1983) Now you see it, now you don’t. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 112–34). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

20 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:59

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

20

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Kellerman, E. (1986) An eye for an eye: Crosslinguistic constraints on the development of the L2 lexicon. In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 35–48). New York: Pergamon. MacWhinney, B. (2000) The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, Third Edition. Volume II: The Database. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mayer, M. (1969) Frog, Where Are You? New York: Dial Press. Meisel, J. (1983) Transfer as a second language strategy. Language and Communication 3, 11–46. Möhle, D. (1989) Multilingual interaction in foreign language production. In H.W. Dechert and M. Raupach (eds) Interlingual Processes (pp. 179–94). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Odlin, T. (1989) Language Transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poulisse, N. (1990) The Use of Compensatory Strategies by Dutch Learners of English. Dordrecht: Foris. Poulisse, N. (1997) Compensatory strategies and the principles of clarity and economy. In G. Kasper and E. Kellerman (eds) Communication Strategies: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 51–64). Longman: London. Poulisse, N. and Bongaerts, T. (1994) First language use in second language production. Applied Linguistics 15, 36–57. Ringbom, H. (1986) Crosslinguistic influence and the foreign language learning process. In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 150–62). New York: Pergamon. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Saltarelli, M. (1988) Basque. London: Routledge. Singh, R. and Carroll, S. (1979) L1, L2 and L3. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 5, 51–63. Singleton, D. (1987) Mother and other tongue influence on learner French. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 9, 327–46. Singleton, D. (1989) Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Singleton, D. and Lengyel, Z. (1995) The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1997) L1 and L2 Influence in L3 Production Stockholm: Stockholm University, Centre for Research on Bilingualism. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333.

21 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:59

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 2

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition BJÖRN HAMMARBERG

Introduction There are good reasons to study the language behaviour of polyglots. For the present purposes, we will define a polyglot as a person with knowledge of three or more languages. It has been assumed that bi- or multilingualism is at least as frequent in the population of the world as pure monolingualism, perhaps even more frequent. Several authors make this claim in the literature on bilingualism even if it is, of course, difficult to document with any precision (see for example: Grosjean, 1982: vii; Hakuta, 1986: 4–6; Cook, 1992: 578; De Bot, 1992: 2). Mackey (1967) gives some relevant support for such an assumption by discussing the reasons why individual bilingualism is bound to be a common situation in the world. He points to the multitude of small linguistic communities, the wide currency and usefulness of the national and international languages, and people’s increasing mobility across language borders. It is also obvious that all humans possess the capacity to learn several languages.1 Persons with knowledge of four, five or more languages are, as we all know, by no means exceptional. Consequently, the prevalent term bilingualism is usually taken to cover bi- or multilingualism in principle, although researchers in actual practice have mostly dealt with constellations of two languages. In a similar way, the notion of second language acquisition is usually understood in a wide sense where ‘second’ may refer to any language that the learner has added after infancy. Here again, most research in the field has restricted the scope of investigation to considering just one L2 (the language currently being acquired) and one background L1, irrespective of the number of languages that are actually familiar to the learner. Assuming that humans are potentially polyglot by nature, an adequate theory of language competence, use and acquisition should be able to account for polyglot cases, and preferably take these as the norm, treating

21 22 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:58:59

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

22

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

pure bi- or monolingualism as special cases. The theory will have to take into account that the (linguistically mature) individual may normally have two or more languages to handle, and that: (a) the speaker is able to choose according to intention which language to use, (b) the speaker’s languages can regularly be kept apart, but also get mixed or influence each other, and furthermore (c) that the person’s competence in the various languages will normally not be at equal levels. In view of this, the language acquisition process in polyglots offers itself as an interesting field of study, particularly the ways in which the individual’s languages interact in such complex cases. What I will discuss in the following sections are some aspects of third language acquisition, in particular the ways in which the first and second languages interact in the acquisitional process. I will draw on data and findings from a project in which Sarah Williams and I conducted a longitudinal case study of one adult polyglot learner of Swedish.

Third Language The notion of third language (L3) is used here in a sense that relates to the established notions of first and second language (L1, L2). Languages that are acquired after the first language (or first languages, in the case of infant bilingualism) are commonly termed second languages; a person may acquire one or more L2s. In order to obtain a basis for discussing the situation of the polyglot, we will here use the term L3 for the language that is currently being acquired, and L2 for any other language that the person has acquired after L1. It should be noted that L3 in this technical sense is not necessarily equal to language number three in order of acquisition. There have been different standpoints on the question of whether prior L2 knowledge makes any difference in language learning and use. A common assumption (expressed or tacit) has been that the role of prior L2s is negligible. But studies that have directly focused on L3 acquisition provide ample evidence that prior L2s actually have a greater role to play than has usually been assumed (see e.g. Stedje, 1977; Chandrasekhar, 1978; Chumbow, 1981; Ringbom, 1987; Singleton, 1987; Möhle, 1989; Vogel, 1992; Hufeisen, 1991, 1993; Hammarberg & Williams, 1993; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Dewaele, 1998; several contributions in Hufeisen & Lindemann, 1998; and in the present volume). Various factors that condition L2’s influence on L3 have been proposed. Thus many studies provide evidence for a factor of typological similarity: influence from L2 is favoured if L2 is typologically close to L3, especially if L1 is more distant. Clear cases are found with non-Europeans who acquire their second European language, e.g. a Hindi or Chinese

23 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:00

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

23

speaker with knowledge of English who acquires German (Chandrasekhar, 1978; Vogel, 1992). The similarity may also concern cultural factors connected with the languages and linguistic communities involved (Chumbow, 1981). Other factors include proficiency (i.e. L2 influence is favoured if the learner has a high level of competence in the L2, and if the L2 has been acquired and used in natural situations), and recency (i.e. an L2 is activated more easily if the speaker has used it recently and thus maintained easy access to it). A further conditioning factor, which is supported in our current project (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998) and which is discussed more below, is that of L2 status: there appears to be a general tendency to activate an earlier secondary language in L3 performance rather than L1.

The Speaking Process and the Languages In natural language acquisition, the acquisitional process takes place during language use, in the learner’s reception and production of utterances. In recent years several researchers have discussed the speaking process in bilinguals and language learners, trying to clarify the roles of the languages in this process in the framework of Levelt’s (1989, 1993) model of the monolingual mature speaker. Levelt models human speaking as a process in which utterances are produced in successive steps in three main subsystems: a conceptualiser, a formulator and an articulator. In addition there is an auditory and a speech-comprehension system with decoding components and mechanisms for self-monitoring. The conceptualiser has access to stored extralinguistic knowledge about the world, the situation and the current discourse, and turns communicative intentions into pre-verbal messages. These are received by the formulator, which has access to the lexicon of the language. The words of the lexicon consist of two parts: a lemma part, which contains the word’s semantic and syntactic information, and a lexeme part, which specifies the possible forms of the word. The formulator consists of a subcomponent for grammatical encoding which accesses lemmas from the lexicon and produces a surface structure, as well as a subcomponent for phonological encoding which uses the surface structure and pertinent lexeme forms to produce a phonetic plan for the utterance. This plan is fed into the articulator, which produces a spoken utterance. De Bot (1992) discusses how Levelt’s model can be applied to a bilingual speaker, and how the speaker will then be able to control and handle his languages. A part of the conceptualiser, the formulator and the lexicon are thought to be differentiated for the speaker’s various languages. Following

24 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:00

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

24

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Green (1986), De Bot assumes that the bilingual speaker’s languages may be activated to varying degrees in a speech situation: a certain language may either be selected, i.e. chosen as the language in which to speak, active, i.e. taking part in the speech process, or dormant, i.e. stored in long-term memory but without interacting in the speech process. The selected language is determined in the conceptualiser on the basis of intention and extralinguistic information. But another language that is accessible to the speaker may be activated at the same time, e.g. because the speaker lacks sufficient (or sufficiently automatised) knowledge in the selected language. According to Green (and De Bot), the utterances are thought to be produced in parallel in the active language in all the steps of formulation: the choice of lemmas, the production of surface structures, and the forming of phonetic plans. However, these planned utterances will not be passed on to the articulator. In the parallel steps, the active language may interact with the selected one. Various aspects of such a bilingual model still need to be clarified, and alternative solutions on some points have been proposed by other researchers; Poulisse (1997) presents a survey of various problems and suggested solutions. In the present context, a couple of further points are worth attention. Firstly, if a speaker possesses more than two languages, how does this affect the speaking process? Secondly, an active language may conceivably cause switches from the selected to the active language, or it may cause transfer from the active to the selected language – how does a model of the speaker account for these phenomena?

The Study of a Third Language Learner The case study that will be presented here is based on a longitudinal corpus of audiotaped conversations that has been collected in the project ‘Processes in third language acquisition’ by Sarah Williams (SW) and the present author (BH).2 SW herself was to act as the subject of our investigation. Her linguistic background was as follows: she was born and raised in England, had studied French and German at university and also taken a short course in Italian, and had thereafter spent six years in Germany with research and other work and acquired nearnative competence in German before moving in 1990 to Sweden, where she was faced with the need to learn Swedish. Thus English was her L1, German her principal L2, with French and Italian as ‘additional L2s’, and Swedish in this situation became her current L3. She did not take part in any organised language course, but relied on exposure to Swedish in her work and daily life.

25 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:00

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

25

In order to document her successive development in Swedish the two of us – SW and BH – began a few days after her arrival in Sweden to record conversations between us at about two week intervals on average. We continued with this for about two years. This resulted in a text corpus of interviews, discussions and picture story narrations. It comprises about 55,000 word tokens in total, of which 37,000 make up the utterances of the learner (SW) and 18,000 those of the native interlocutor (BH). As a complement to the text corpus we also taped introspective comments regularly, mainly in the form of SW’s retrospective comments on episodes of the conversations that we played back. The analysis of the material began when the entire corpus had been collected. The corpus is designed in such a way as to yield ‘all-round’ material without a preconceived focus on any particular aspect of language development. It was compiled without preconceived notions as to what we were going to find. But it gradually became apparent that the third language situation, which was not our initial focus, and especially the roles of L1 and L2 in the acquisitional process, constituted a prominent aspect of SW’s handling of Swedish. A characteristic division of roles between the various background languages can be seen in a number of areas we examined: the learner’s language switches during conversations, attempts at lexical formulation, pronunciation, and to some extent morphology. In the following I will demonstrate this by discussing some findings from different parts of our case study.

Language Switches At the start of the project, SW was a beginner in Swedish, and the task of carrying on conversations in Swedish naturally presented her with considerable difficulties, especially during the first months. One way for SW to handle this was to resort to language switches. This was an available option, since both speakers had access to English, German and French. In a recent corpus study (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998) we have examined 844 instances of non-adapted language switches, i.e. expressions in languages other than L3 that were not phonologically or morphologically adapted to L3. Seven types of switches were identified, depending on which function the switch appeared to have in the conversational context. Below are examples of the seven types, followed by commentary. (A key to the transcription is given in Appendix 2.1. Non-adapted expressions in languages other than Swedish are put in angle brackets < >, and the crucial parts of the examples are rendered here in italics.)

26 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:01

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

26

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

(1) EDIT i ett engelskttal-+ / -talastelande+ ‘in an English-speak- / / -speaking country’ här finns de en kvinna som städer ‘ here is a woman who is cleaning’ (2) META COMMENT

[refers to the tape recorder] (3) META FRAME

(4) INSERT: EXPLICIT ELICIT

(5) INSERT: IMPLICIT ELICIT han skulle kunna kanske % / ‘he could perhaps’ % / (6) INSERT: NON-ELICIT ja hade m- månge ‘I had m- many’ (7) WIPP men alle personer / % va va mycke hjälpfull ‘but all persons % were were very helpful’ en tjuv % / med en nyckel ‘a thief % / with a key’ den / den den lite pojken ‘the / the the little boy’ The category EDIT comprises switches, which constitute editing elements in self-repairs or in managing the interaction. The META group includes added metalinguistic elements of two kinds: META COMMENT, consisting of comments on the communicative situation or on the text itself, and META FRAME, which refers to the frame, usually a question, which sometimes accompanies those words or longer strings that the learner asks about. The INSERT categories comprise elements that belong to the primary contents of the conversation (i.e. not editing or metalinguistic elements), and that occur as language switches. They are categorised as EXPLICIT ELICIT if they occur together with a META FRAME, and

27 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:01

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

27

IMPLICIT ELICIT if they lack a frame, but are pronounced instead with a metalinguistic rising intonation (which we interpret as an eliciting signal, ‘how do you say this?’). In both these latter cases, we thus assume that the switch occurs in order to elicit the Swedish expression from the interlocutor. If INSERTS occur without a frame or questioning intonation, they are categorised as NON-ELICIT. This category accommodates frequent cases of non-eliciting switches that may be conditioned by various factors such as missing vocabulary, occasional access blockings, the nature of the topic or context and the attitudes of the speaker. The last category, WIPP, is especially interesting in the present context. ‘WIPP’ stands for ‘Without Identified Pragmatic Purpose’. While the six first categories may all be interpreted as having a pragmatic purpose of some kind or other in the conversation, that is not the case with the WIPPs. They correspond in part to the switches that Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994) have labelled ‘non-intentional language switches’ (which also include our EDIT category). The reasons why we have chosen a separate label are that we: (a) want to avoid using the somewhat problematic criterion of intentionality, (b) consequently do not want to imply that the other types of switches must be intentional, and (c) want to distinguish WIPP from EDIT. It seems obvious that, whereas the first six types are ‘genuine’ language switches, which do not constitute any attempt by the learner to formulate herself in L3, the WIPP elements occur merely as a part of the utterance formulation in L3, and the switch itself appears to have no particular function. The WIPP elements are short and in most cases consist of grammatical function words such as pronouns, prepositions, connective adverbs and conjunctions, rather than content words. They are typically followed directly by a self-repair, or else earlier instances in the longitudinal corpus show that the target L3 expressions are known to the learner. If we consider which languages the speaker switches to, some characteristic differences between the categories appear. Table 2.1 shows the frequency of the categories and their distribution over the languages. We may first note that switches mainly involve L1 English or L2 German; switches into other L2s are rare. In the first six categories, the learner switches mostly into English; the META switches are always English. By contrast, the WIPP switches are English in only 4% of the instances, and German in 92%. Interpreted in general terms, it seems that L1 is most likely to be activated for a language switch in those cases where the switch occurs for some pragmatic purpose, whereas an L2 tends to be activated in the formulation process in L3. We will return to this point below. The longitudinal corpus shows that the language switches successively decrease in frequency as the learner becomes more proficient in Swedish.

28 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:01

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

28

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Table 2.1 Frequency and frequency distribution (%) of switches into L1 & L2 Category

n

L1 English

L2 German

(%)

(%)

L2 French/ Italian (%)

70

29

1

EDIT

82

META COMMENT

73

100

0

0

META FRAME

92

100

0

0

INSERT EXPLICIT ELICIT

150

89

11

0

INSERT IMPLICIT ELICIT

103

73

24

3

INSERT NON-ELICIT

273

68

29

3

WIPP

71

4

92

4

Total

844

Adapted from Williams & Hammarberg (1998)

The switches into English generally start to occur less often after about eight months, and the switches into German after about four months. Switches into English continue to occur more sparsely during the entire period of recording, whereas the German switches cease entirely after one and a half year. Switches into other L2s mainly occur during the first two and a half months.

Word Search and Word Construction A characteristic feature of the conversations is exchanges where the learner elicits specific words from the native interlocutor. (Although the learner sometimes elicits grammatical forms and constructions or phonological forms, vocabulary items predominate, and we will focus on these here.) We will use the term word elicitation unit (WEU) to refer to a sequence in which the learner (SW) attempts to acquire a word (a target word) from the interlocutor and secure the reception. In (8) and (9) examples of word elicitation units are given. Here the target word as given by the native interlocutor (BH) is printed in bold, and the learner’s versions are italicised. (8) SW: men alle personer / % va va mycke hjälpfull¿ = / ? BH: ja ‘dom va hjälpsamma’. SW: ‘hjälpsam’.

29 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:01

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

29

BH: jaha. SW: ‘hjälpsam’. och % gaf / gav mej allti nya adresser English gloss: SW: but all persons / % were were very hjälpfull¿ = / ? BH: well ‘they were helpful’. SW: ‘helpful’. BH: yes. SW: ‘helpful’. and % gafe / gave me always new addresses (9) SW: ja är mycke lat. (BH: Mmm) % därför att ja har % ja har inte gjört gjört en % ans- ansträngung¿ / anstränging¿ / BH: ja. ‘ansträngning’. SW: ‘ansträngning’. English gloss: SW: I am very lazy. (BH: Mmm) % because I have % I haven’t made made an % ans- ansträngung¿ / anstränging¿ / [German gloss: Anstrengung] BH: yes. ‘effort’. SW: ‘effort’. The sequences that count as WEUs have a certain structure, which is illustrated by these examples. Three successive parts can regularly be identified: Pre-reception phase. The learner attempts to elicit a word that she needs in the conversation. Here language switches and hypothetical word constructions by the learner will occur, often in combination. Various means will serve as appeals to the interlocutor: eliciting language switches, selfrepairs, metalinguistic questioning intonation, interrupted turns, etc. Reception point. The interlocutor supplies the target word, or confirms an attempt made by the learner. Post-reception phase. The learner attempts to secure the acquisition of the target word by various means (such as ‘copying’, clarification questions and use of the word in a self-formulated communicative context) before resuming her topic of conversation. A total of 374 word elicitation units with 301 different target words were observed in the corpus. Not unexpectedly, most of these occur during the first months and then decrease with the learner’s increasing proficiency in L3. Our focus of interest here is the learner’s attempts in the pre-reception phase to construct hypothetical target words in L3, whereby L1 and L2 may also interact

30 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:01

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

30

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

in the process. (For a full description of the WEUs and the learner’s strategic behaviour from the point of view of acquisition, see Hammarberg, 1998.) The examples show that the learner may form sequences of repeated word construction attempts, and also that word constructions may occur in combination with language switches. Eliciting language switches also often occur in WEUs without any accompanying construction attempts. From the way the word constructions are formed, we can see that they contain material from L1, L2 and/or L3. In Williams & Hammarberg (1998) we refer to a language that supplies material for the learner’s expressions in L3 as a supplier language. The primary supplier language is, of course, L3 itself, which can be referred to as internal supplier language. An example of this is (10), where the hypothetical form lörsda is purely Swedish-based: (10) SW: hon kommer på % på % lörsda¿ lörsda¿. BH: ‘på lörda’. SW: ‘på lörda’. mhm. % inte inte de här % lörda men % en en veckan / en vecka % för- försent. English gloss: SW: she’ll come on % on % lörsda¿ lörsda¿. BH: ‘on Saturday’. SW: ‘on Saturday’. mmm. % not not this % Saturday but % one one week / one week % la- later. But very often influence from background languages is visible in SW’s word constructions (in which case we speak of external supplier languages). Different supplier languages may be combined in the same word construction, usually L3 and one background language. We will focus here on such cases within WEUs where there is clear influence from L1 or L2. In example (8) above, the influence from L1 English on the form hjälpfull is obvious. In (9) it is clear that L2 German Anstrengung forms the lexical basis, but also that the learner works her way successively towards a more Swedish word form. (The form ansträngung has a Swedish-oriented pronunciation, and is therefore not interpreted as a language switch.) Some further examples of L1 as supplier language are briba ‘bribe’ (S: ‘muta’), kjuenar ‘the cues’ (S: ‘köerna’), utor ‘otherwise’ (S: ‘annars’), and äggtider ‘egg timer’ (S: ‘äggklocka’; S: tid = ‘time’). L2 German underlies examples like hintergrund ‘background’ (G: ‘Hintergrund’, S: ‘bakgrund’), hänger från ‘depends on’ (G: ‘hängt von ... ab’, S: ‘beror på’), alejne ‘alone’ (G: ‘allein’, S: ‘ensam’), förglikt ‘compared’ (G: ‘verglichen’, S: ‘jämfört’), kloppar ‘knocks’ (G: ‘klopft’, S: ‘knackar’).3

31 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:02

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

31

Table 2.2 (a) Language switches and (b) word constructions in word elicitation units (E = English; G = German; F = French; I = Italian) (a) Language switches Switch into

(b) Word constructions External supplier language

Number of WEUs

Number of WEUs

E

159

E

15

G

35

G

122

E, G

18

E, G

6

E, F

1

F

2

E, G, F

1

I

1

G, F

1

F

1

E, I

2 Subtotal

146

I

1

Subtotal

219

No switch Total

No external supplier language

155 374

Total

228 374

The frequency distribution between L1 English and L2 German as supplier languages for SW’s word constructions shows a pattern that contrasts characteristically with the corresponding pattern for L1 and L2 in language switches. In Table 2.2, the frequency values for switches and constructions are compared. (What are counted here for each observed type are the WEUs in which they occur; note that different switches and/or word constructions may occur together within a WEU.) Switches and word constructions are often combined in the same elicitation sequence, with the switch either after the corresponding construction, as in example (8) above, or before it, as in example (11): (11) SW: % ja ja va % mycke ‘’ / ‘’ / öv- överöverräscht /över- överraschade. BW: ‘du va mycke överraskad’. SW: överraskad (BH: Ja) att han har fö- förstått (BH: Mmm) % att han fer- ferstått vad ja % hade % hade säjat.

32 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:02

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

32

English gloss: SW: % I I was % very ‘’ / ‘’ / öv- över- överräscht /över- överraschade. [German gloss: überrascht] BH: ‘you were very surprised’. SW: surprised (BH: yes) that he has un- understood (BH: Mmm) % that he has und- understood what I % had % had said. In cases where switches and constructions are combined in a WEU, a systematic pattern emerges in the corpus: whereas English-based constructions occur only in the company of English switches, German-based constructions freely occur together with either English or German switches. The choice of English as a supplier language here seems to occur only when SW has an English switch on her mind, whereas the activation of German as supplier does not need the corresponding support. Thus in the process of formulating in Swedish there appears to be a clear tendency for SW to activate L2 German rather than L1 English.

Morphology In general, the corpus contains rather few instances of influence from background languages on the inflectional morphology of L3. One example is (12). (12) SW: S å sen % ska ja % t- tälten¿ / BH: % ‘du ska tälta’. English gloss: SW: and then % I will % t- tälten¿ / BH: % ‘you will camp’. [German gloss: zelten] The appearance of a German infinitive ending suggests that the verb lexeme is formed on a German basis. Thus, cross-linguistic influence on bound morphology may well be a side effect of cross-linguistic influence on word search. At the earliest proficiency stage, when the Swedish inflectional system is still largely unfamiliar to the learner, some cases of morphological influence from a prior L2 occur, but these are short-lived in the corpus. The examples in (13) were produced during the first month. (13) ja tycker inte om skriv- skrivare mycke Target form: ‘att skriva’ ‘I don’t like to write much’ ja tycker om att lärare Target form: ‘att lära (= att undervisa)’ ‘I like to teach’

33 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:02

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

33

i grannarna Target form: ‘grannarna’ ‘the neighbours’ i personer Target form: ‘personerna’ ‘the persons’ Example (13) shows a hypothetical infinitive suffix -are and a definite plural marker i. SW herself identified these forms retrospectively as based on Italian.

Phonology and Phonetic Settings Pronunciation is affected in somewhat different ways than morphosyntax and lexicon because pronunciation integrates conceptual structures and specific neuro-motor routines. What identifies a phonetic variety, such as the native pronunciation of a language, a dialect or sociolect, or a particular foreign accent, is made up partly of phonologically distinctive prosodic and segmental features and partly of the characteristic, more subtle ‘settings’ that regulate the shape of articulatory gestures in the particular language variety in question. These latter phenomena are the articulatory or phonetic settings (Laver, 1980, 1994), also known as Artikulationsbasis. Laver (1980: 5) describes the relationship between phonological features and phonetic settings as a figure–ground relation: the phonological features occur in speech against a ground formed by the phonetic settings that are characteristic of the particular language. The successive acquisition of a new language or a new language variety hence requires learners to restructure their phonetic settings in addition to acquiring a new phonological system. In her pronunciation of Swedish in the initial stages, SW had a prominent German accent. This then gradually vanished and was replaced by a slight English colouring that had not surfaced at the beginning. I will here briefly discuss some findings that are accounted for in greater detail in Hammarberg and Hammarberg (1993) and Hammarberg and Williams (1993). In order to obtain expert judgements of SW’s German speech, a taped passage of an interview in German from her first month in Sweden was played to three native teachers of German at Stockholm University. They did not know who the speaker was, and their task was to determine where she came from. Two of the listeners judged her to be a Northern German without a particular local dialect, and the third one suggested ‘an American with excellent knowledge of German, or a German who has lived in America’. Being asked, this listener stated that she based her impression on some

34 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:02

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

34

particular local points on the tape, and not on the general colouring of the subject’s speech. Considering the differences in articulatory character between the languages that are pointed out in the literature (Kelz, 1971, regarding English and German; Korlén & Malmberg, 1985, regarding German and Swedish), we may conclude that SW was able to switch successively between L1 English and L2 German phonetic settings in her speech. Among the recorded picture story narrations was one that SW did right at the start of the project and then repeated a year later. The transcripts of the two versions, Hunden 1 and Hunden 2, are given in Appendix 2. The two recordings were played afterwards to groups of uninitiated Swedish listeners with the task of deciding in each case which was the speaker’s native language. The listeners did not notice that it was the same speaker. In the first version the speaker was generally believed to be German. The second version gave rise to some variation, but the majority voted for English as L1. Careful listening to the tapes by two phonetically trained Swedish listeners identified a number of crucial phonetic details that can be related to SW’s background languages, including the following: Hunden 1 • German-type vowel rounding (e.g. huset) • Voicing of intervocalic /s/ (e.g. huset, läser) • Postvocalic /r/ realised as a uvular approximant (e.g. är, går, framför, springer) • Syllabic /n/ in unstressed final syllables (e.g. hunden, tidningen) • A generally more tense (‘energetic’) quality in the prosodic shape of stressed words (e.g. hunden, huset, tidning, framför) Hunden 2 Tendency to reduce unstressed vowels to schwa (e.g. kastar, fortfarande) Relatively retracted alveolar articulation of /t, d/ (e.g. till, de) Slight velarization of postvocalic /l/ (e.g. till, bilden, själv) English-type approximant /r/ used postvocalically (e.g. här, ser, framför) • The above-mentioned tense word-prosodic quality no longer occurring

• • • •

Thus, in the phonetic as well as in the lexical domain, we can observe a conspicuous influence from L2 German in the early stage, which then gradually disappears. But in contrast to the lexical area, a slight but constant influence from L1 English becomes noticeable when the L2 influence has

35 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:02

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

35

disappeared. To explain why L1 persists in the phonetic domain in a way that is not the case in the lexical domain, we believe that one should consider the fact that articulatory patterns have a basis in neuro-motor routines that have been established according to L1 requirements, and are evidently difficult to control at will or to modify. We suggest that the dependence on L1 phonetic settings functions as a basic constraint on articulation which tends to be highly persistent. By contrast, the reliance on L2 settings is used as a strategy to which the learner resorts at an initial stage in order to cope with the still too unfamiliar phonetic form of L3, and abandons when her proficiency in L3 increases. Obviously, the neuro-motor routines of L1 have survived to exert an influence on the acquisition of the L3, despite the fact that the speaker has already succeeded in mastering the articulations of a prior L2 quite well. There is also an aspect of attitude involved here. SW declared spontaneously in the early stages of the project that she did not want to ‘sound English’ when speaking Swedish. Her proficiency in L2 German enabled her to adopt a German mode of speaking and activate German articulations, thus suppressing the L1 articulations for a period of initial contact with L3. A reading test carried out at the project start, on the same occasion as Hunden 1, suggests that the phonetic reliance on L2 is capacity-related, and has to do with the demands of the speaking task. SW was asked to read out two passages from a beginner’s textbook in Swedish as a second language. In the first case the text was read to SW by a native Swede in short chunks with pauses for SW to repeat (the read-after-me task). SW read the second text without a model (the read-on-your-own task). The results differed markedly. The first reading displayed various, more or less successful, imitative pronunciations with fewer traces of German than of English. In the second reading, with no support from a model, conspicuous German features of pronunciation appeared which gradually spread to produce a German-like articulatory quality throughout.

The Roles of the Background Languages We have seen that SW tends to activate L1 and L2 knowledge to a considerable degree in her handling of L3. Moreover, this happens in characteristically different ways. The languages are seen to occupy different roles in the process. This division of roles is not established in a categorical way, but nonetheless constitutes a strong tendency. L1 dominates in various pragmatically functional language shifts that occur during the conversations and support the interaction or the acquisition of words and other expressions. We have called this an instrumental role (Williams & Hammarberg,

36 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:03

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

36

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

1998). L1 thus functions as an external instrumental language in SW’s early conversations in Swedish. In addition, L1 has a long-term influence on her articulation in L3. L2, as we saw earlier, has a prominent supplier role in the learner’s construction of new words in L3, and also in her attempts to cope with new articulatory patterns in L3. It is mainly German that takes on the role of external supplier language, a role that decreases with increasing L3 proficiency. Gradually, L3 itself takes over more and more of both instrumental and supplier functions. Bilingualism research indicates a number of factors that may condition the choice of an external instrumental language in a polyglot speech situation. These include: the speaker’s personal identification with a certain language, the speaker’s knowledge of which languages are known to the interlocutor, and the interlocutor’s response and shown attitude to choice of language. On the whole, the inclination to use an external instrumental language is strengthened if the situation is such that it is appropriate for the speaker to adopt what Grosjean (1995) has called a bilingual mode. English was the language that SW and BH used outside the project sessions during the initial stage. Considering these factors, it appears natural that English should take on the role of instrumental language in our case. But why then German as supplier language? Why not the same language in both roles? What is clear is that these roles are different in nature. While the instrumental verbalisations are supplementary to the utterances in L3, a supplier language contributes to and influences these utterances in the formulation and articulation process. Some suggested conditioning factors were mentioned above, namely those of typology, proficiency, recency and L2 status. In Williams and Hammarberg (1998) we proposed that the language that reaches the highest overall value for these factors will best qualify to serve as supplier. In SW’s case, both English and German score high in terms of typological similarity to L3, level of proficiency, and recency of use – actually much higher values than for SW’s other languages, French and Italian. It could be suggested that German is typologically even closer than English is to Swedish; this may be true for lexical constructions, but it can hardly be claimed for other areas of the language, such as phonetic settings. The factor that seems to be decisive in favouring German as external supplier in SW’s case is its L2 status, the fact that German, like Swedish, is a ‘foreign’ language. This would render it more likely to be activated than L1 in early L3. Williams and Hammarberg (1998) suggest two possible reasons for this: • A different acquisition mechanism for L2s as opposed to L1s, and hence a reactivation of the L2 type mechanism in L3 acquisition.

37 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:03

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

37

• A desire to suppress L1 as being ‘non-foreign’ and to rely rather on an orientation towards a prior L2 as a strategy to approach the L3. German outranks French and Italian on the basis of the criteria of typology, proficiency and recency, and thus becomes established as the standard alternative in the role of external supplier.

Conclusions Our case study of a polyglot speaker and learner of the currently selected language sheds light on some aspects of the speaking process that are not visible in a monolingual or purely bilingual speaker with achieved stable language competence, or in an L2 learner with L1 as the only background language. On the whole, this study confirms findings from other L3 research: knowledge of prior L2s can exert considerable influence on the learner’s L3. The striking role division between the background languages, where L1 dominates in an instrumental role and L2 in a supplier role, indicates two fundamentally different ways in which a speaker’s languages can interact with one another. They are traceable to different stages of the speaking process and, as the study of a polyglot speaker is able to reveal, they do not necessarily involve the same background language. The pragmatically functional language switches do not, as we have argued, constitute an attempt to speak in L3. Rather, they are a matter of language choice locally in the speech sequence, a temporary selection of another language, intentional or not. In the bilingual-speaking model of De Bot (1992), this choice is determined in the conceptualiser. External influence on word constructions and morphology arises in the attempts to produce formulations in L3. The central process here is located in the lexicon. The learner sets out with a preconceived lemma content, and tries to construct a corresponding lexeme. The model for the lemma is usually taken from L1 or L2, which is revealed by the language switch or word construction by which the learner attempts to elicit the target word; see for example, the examples (8) and (9) above. In SW’s case the construction of the lexeme is often influenced by an external supplier language, mostly L2 German. The resulting lexical item is fed into the formulator’s production of a surface structure and a phonetic plan. The fact that it is not necessarily the same background language that influences the production of the lemma and the lexeme shows that these two processes make up separate steps in the utterance production. This is seen in example (11) above, where SW first indicates an intended lemma by a switch to English and then attempts to construct the lexeme on a German basis.

38 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:03

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

38

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

The WIPP switches appear to have a special status, different from the pragmatically functional switches, and related to the constructions in L3. There is no indication that they are caused by a language choice. Rather, they seem to be lapses in the formulation in L3. Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994), in their study of such switches, have interpreted them as unintentional results of language interference. It is noteworthy that in SW’s speech they resemble the word constructions in that they are most commonly influenced by L2 German. The fact that WIPP switches mostly involve function words suggests that the L2 is continuously co-activated in the process during these utterances. The influence from L2 on phonology and phonetic settings takes place in the phonological coding in the formulator and in the articulator. Phonologically regulated structural phenomena such as the voicing of intervocalic /s/ (huset) or a uvular variant of postvocalic /r/ belong to the phonological coding, while phonetic setting characteristics are taken care of in the articulator.4 Finally, a remarkable result from the present case study is that we find such a strong tendency for one language to predominate in the role of external supplier. Different possible reasons for this are conceivable. In one scenario, all SW’s languages are potentially active during formulation (in accordance with De Bot’s (1992) version of the model), but one language (L2 German in this case) tends to win out each time in the competition for activation because it scores higher in conditioning factors. In another scenario, this ‘strong’ language is assigned a more constant role of favoured supplier, which makes it tend to be active on a more regular basis during the utterance production. The latter view receives some support from (a) instances of more extensive German-like formulations in SW’s utterances, (b) the frequent occurrence of German WIPP switches which evidence L2 activation during sentence planning, and (c) the adopting of a German mode of phonetic settings, which likewise affects coherent stretches of speech. If De Bot is right in his assumption that utterance formulation proceeds in parallel in co-activated languages, then it will be economical for the polyglot speaker to minimise the number of co-activated languages. In Williams and Hammarberg (1998) we have argued for a model in which one of the polyglot’s background languages assumes the role of default external supplier language. It would be interesting to see if this can be further illuminated in studies of other polyglot language learners. Notes 1. Mackey (1968: 555) provides a representative interpretation of the notion of individual bilingualism, based on the use of the languages: ‘We must moreover

39 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:03

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

39

include the use not only of two languages, but of any number of languages. We shall therefore consider bilingualism as the alternate use of two or more languages by the same individual.’ 2. For more information about the project, see Hammarberg and Williams (1993, 1996) and Williams and Hammarberg (1998). Sarah Williams died in December 1996, when some parts of the work referred to here had been carried out, and others were in preparation. The cross-section of our case study that I present here is essentially based on our mutual research, plans and exchange of ideas. 3. S = Swedish, G = German [in this and other chapters]. 4. Incidentally, the fact that languages differ in phonetic settings shows that even the articulator must contain a language-differentiated part, contrary to what De Bot (1992) assumes in his bilingual version of Levelt’s model.

Appendix 1 Key to Transcription = % + / ? . ¿ ‘’

()

empty pause pause filler interrupted word morphologically unclear ending interruption, reformulation completion of question sentence completed sentence other than question questioned expression (indication by intonation that feedback is required pertaining to this item) used when the speaker quotes an expression used around a non-adapted switch into a language other than Swedish around capitalised text within speaker’s turn: interlocutor’s feedback insertions

Appendix 2 SW’s Narration of the Picture Story Hunden (The Dog) Hunden 1 det är en gammal huset. (BH: Ja) % en man % e framför huset. % e tid- tidningstidningsman (BH: MHM) % % sj- sjettar la sjet- % sj- sjettar tidning . = % hunden % / % de där hunden = hunden % vill ha den = tidning. % hunden == hunden har = tidningen. % / ah. hunden springer / mhm. / ha- / hunden springer framfor = å tar = tidningen. (BH: MHM) % går % går till huset. % hunden läser tidningen = framf- framför huset. (BH: MHM) % de- den gammal / det gammal man röker. ja. English gloss: There is an old house. (BH: Yes) A man is in front of the house. Is newspaperman. (BH: Mmm) Throws newspaper . Yes it is the dog. The dog wants the paper. The dog has the paper. (BH: Mmm) Aah, the dog runs in front and takes the paper. Goes to the house. The dog reads the paper in front of the house. (BH: Mmm) The old man smokes. Yes.

40 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:04

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

40

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Hunden 2 Mhm. % här e de så att en man % sitter å somnar lite % framför huset / framframför ett hus. % de finns också en hund. (BH: Mhm) % sen kommer en % pojke % som kastar tidningen in i garden. å hund tittar på. men man- mannen sova. (BH: Mhm) % sen % springar % s- springer hunden efter tidning. % och mannen märker ingenting. % hunden hämtar tidningen och går tillbaka till huset. kanske % tänker han ger tidningen till mannen. men % i alla fall i sist- / i den sista bilden så ser vi att % mannen har fortfarande ingen intresse. och hunden börja att+ läsa tidningen själv. English gloss: Mmm. Here it is so that a man sits and falls asleep a little in front of a house. There is also a dog. (BH: Mmm) Then comes a boy who throws the newspaper into the garden. And dog looks at a man the man sleep. (BH: Mmm) Then the dog runs after the paper. And the man notices nothing. The dog fetches the paper and goes back to the house. Perhaps he intends to give the paper to the man. But after all in the last picture we see that the man has still no interest. And the dog begins to read the paper himself.

References Chandrasekhar, A. (1978) Base language. International Review of Applied Linguistics 16, 62–5. Chumbow, B.S. (1981) The mother tongue hypothesis in a multilingual setting. In J.G. Savard and L. Laforge (eds) Proceedings of the 5th Congress of l’Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée, Montréal August 1978 (pp. 41–55). Québec: Les Presses de L’Université Laval. Cook, V.J. (1992) Evidence for multicompetence. Language Learning 42, 557–91. De Bot, K. (1992). A bilingual production model: Levelt’s ‘speaking’ model adapted. Applied Linguistics 13, 1–24. Dewaele, J-M. (1998) Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3. Applied Linguistics 19, 471–90. Green, D.W. (1986) Control, activation and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language 27, 210–23. Grosjean, F. (1982) Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grosjean, F. (1995). A psycholinguistic approach to code-switching: The recognition of guest words by bilinguals. In L. Milroy and P. Muysken (eds) One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching (pp. 259–75). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hakuta, K. (1986) Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism. New York: Basic Books. Hammarberg, B. (1998) The learner’s word acquisition attempts in conversation. In D. Albrechtsen, B. Henriksen, I.M. Mees and E. Poulsen (eds) Perspectives on Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy (pp. 177–90). Odense: Odense University Press. Hammarberg, B. and Hammarberg, B. (1993) Articulatory re-setting in the acquisition of new languages. Reports from the Department of Phonetics, University of Umeå, PHONUM 2, 61–7.

41 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:04

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 Production and Acquisition

41

Hammarberg, B. and Williams, S. (1993) A study of third language acquisition. In B. Hammarberg (ed.) Problem, Process, Product in Language Learning (pp. 60–70). Stockholm University, Dept. of Linguistics. Hammarberg, B. and Williams, S. (1996) Processer i tredjespråksinlärning. ASLA Information 22, 51–4. Hufeisen, B. (1991) Englisch als erste und Deutsch as zweite Fremdsprache. Empirische Untersuchung zur fremdsprachlichen Interaktion. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hufeisen, B. (1993) Fehleranalyse: Englisch als L2 und Deutsch als L3. International Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 242–56. Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (1998) Tertiärsprachen. Theorien, Modelle, Methoden. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Kelz, H.P. (1971) Articulatory basis and second language teaching. Phonetica 24, 193–211. Korlén, G. and Malmberg, B. (1985) Tysk fonetik (edn 5:3). Lund: Liber Förlag. Laver, J. (1980) The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laver, J. (1994) Principles of Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989) Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Levelt, W.J.M. (1993). The architecture of normal spoken language use. In G. Blanken, J. Dittmann, H. Grimm, J.C. Marschall and C-W. Wallesch (eds) Linguistic Disorders and Pathologies: An International Handbook (pp. 1–15). Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Mackey, W.F. (1967) Bilingualism as a World Problem. Montreal: Harvest House. Mackey, W.F. (1968) The description of bilingualism. In J. Fishman (ed.) Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague: Mouton. Möhle, D. (1989) Multilingual interaction in foreign language production. In H.W. Dechert and M. Raupach (eds) Interlingual Processes (pp. 179–94). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Poulisse, N. (1997) Language production in bilinguals. In A.M.B. de Groot and J.F. Kroll (eds) Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspective (pp. 201–24). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Poulisse, N. and Bongaerts, T. (1994) First language use in second language production. Applied Linguistics 15, 36–57. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Singleton, D. (1987) Mother and other tongue influence on learner French: A case study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 9, 327–46. Stedje, A. (1977) Tredjespråksinterferens i fritt tal – en jämförande studie. In R. Palmberg and H. Ringbom (eds) Papers from the Conference on Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis. Stockhom and Åbo, 7–8 February, 1977 (pp. 141–58). Åbo: Åbo Akademi. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333. Vogel, T. (1992) ‘Englisch und Deutsch gibt es immer Krieg’. Sprachverarbeitungsprozesse beim Erwerb des Deutschen als Drittsprache. Zielsprache Deutsch 23, 95–9.

42 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:04

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 3

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems in the Multilingual Mind GESSICA DE ANGELIS and LARRY SELINKER

Introduction Most studies on language transfer in the last three decades have focused primarily on the influence of the native language on a second language or interlanguage. Despite many years of intense discussion on the phenomenon of language transfer, researchers have rarely focused their attention on instances of transfer from languages other than the native language. This is quite surprising, as the potential influence of an interlanguage on an additional interlanguage appears to be widely acknowledged in the field. This fact is clearly reflected in the various definitions of language transfer or ‘cross-linguistic influence’ (Sharwood Smith & Kellerman, 1986) that appear in the literature. The term cross-linguistic influence is generally used as a super-ordinate term, thus including instances of native language transfer, interlanguage transfer, avoidance due to influence of another system, and even ‘reverse transfer’ from an interlanguage back into a native language. In terms of ‘transfer’ itself, Odlin, in the most general book on the subject, describes it as: ... the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired. (Odlin, 1989: 27) Gass and Selinker, in their introductory textbook, provide a glossary of key terms based on the most common use, concluding that: ... for most researchers, language transfer is the use of native language (or other language) knowledge – in some as yet unclear way – in the acquisition of a second (or additional) language. (Gass & Selinker, 1983: 372)

42 43 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:04

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

43

Along the same lines, Sharwood Smith describes his view of ‘crosslinguistic influence’ as: ...the influence of the mother tongue on the learner’s performance in and /or development of a given target language; by extension, it also means the influence of any ‘other tongue’ known to the learner on that target language. (Sharwood Smith, 1994: 198, italics in the original) What these definitions have in common is the inclusion of a non-native language as a potential source of language transfer. In other words, they imply the transferability of both native and non-native knowledge in interlanguage production. But it turns out that there is at present hardly any evidence in the language transfer literature for such a claim. In fact, taking language transfer in its most general sense, we still do not really know what in principle can and cannot be transferred from a non-native language into an interlanguage. In this paper, we first review what is currently known about the influence of a non-native language on the acquisition of an additional language. We then outline a study we have conducted whose goal is to begin to explore the detail of interlanguage transfer, setting the stage for more comprehensive and detailed empirical work. Here, we show that both lexical and morphological transfer must be handled in any general theory of cross-linguistic influence in terms of some cognitive constraints on interlanguage production.

Interlanguage Transfer As a preliminary, the influence of a non-native language on another non-native language – i.e. the documented transfer from one interlanguage to another – is here referred to as interlanguage transfer. Two subtypes of interlanguage transfer will be discussed: lexical interlanguage transfer and morphological interlanguage transfer. • Lexical interlanguage transfer refers to the use of an entire non-target word in the production of the target language. • Morphological interlanguage transfer refers to the production of interlanguage forms in which a free or bound non-target morpheme is mixed with a different free or bound target morpheme to form an approximated target language word. In order to understand the nature of interlanguage transfer and its relationship to current evidence of cross-linguistic influence, it is our working assumption that all linguistic systems present in the speaker’s mind may be

44 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:05

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

44

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

simultaneously interacting and competing in interlanguage production. As implied above, current language transfer theories are highly restricted, being primarily based on the interaction between two systems, which are usually the native and one non-native system. Such a framework is clearly insufficient in the study of interlanguage transfer, as more than two linguistic systems must be present in the speaker’s mind for interlanguage transfer to occur. Technically, interlanguage transfer cannot occur without a minimum of three linguistic systems. Viewing interlanguage transfer as involving at least three linguistic systems would allow us to capture the simultaneous interaction, and importantly the possible competition, between more than two linguistic systems at a single point in time. Our objective is to establish why and under what circumstances transfer from the native language system, or from any other language system, is blocked (or permitted) in favour of a particular interlanguage when other options may be available to the speaker. For example, if we imagine a hypothetical speaker of six languages, it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to assume that transfer could occur between only two of the speaker’s languages. What about the remaining four? How do they influence interlanguage production? To come to an understanding of how three or more linguistic systems may overlap, differ, interact and compete in interlanguage production, the potential influence of each system must be acknowledged without the assumption that one linguistic system may be a stronger or weaker influence on the target language than another linguistic system. Given current theory, it is of course tempting to assume that the native language system will be most dominant and play a stronger role. But it is important to emphasise that, as far as we can see, we do not have the evidence to claim that native language transfer is always dominant in interlanguage production. At this stage our approach remains neutral as to the primacy or non-primacy of native language transfer in all cases of interlanguage production. This stance allows us to re-evaluate some well established language transfer principles in the light of a third or additional linguistic system, and thus either confirm existing theoretical claims, or challenge or, as we suspect, extend some of them. Thus, in sum, language transfer theory cannot be comprehensive if its principles are based on two languages only. The study of interlanguage transfer will allow us to extend our theoretical perspective to a more realistic conceptual framework, as multilingualism nowadays, and perhaps always, is not an exception but the reality in many parts of the world.

45 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:05

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

45

Review of Relevant Literature We begin with a brief overview of what is known about non-native language or interlanguage influence. The relevant literature has focused on several key variables, primarily the parallel activation of languages in multilingual speakers, the frequency of language use, and the role of language similarity. To date, although there are few studies that focus directly on interlanguage influence, it is clear that research interest has steadily increased throughout the years. We are here focusing on the literature published in English; literature published in other languages will be mentioned by other authors in this volume. Third or additional language acquisition was previously seen as a mere ‘extension’ of fields such as second language acquisition or bilingualism. The field of third (or additional) language acquisition is becoming more and more a recognised field in its own right. There is an important theoretical issue here, where it is open to question whether one views multilinguals as bilinguals or as monolinguals learning a second language. The issue is made clear by Grosjean who argued that a: ...bilingual is not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather, he or she has a unique and a specific linguistic configuration. (Grosjean, 1985: 467) By extension, it should be said that a multilingual is neither the sum of three or more monolinguals, nor a bilingual with an additional language. Rather, in our view a multilingual is a speaker of three or more languages with unique linguistic configurations, often depending on individual history, and as such, the study of third or additional language acquisition cannot be regarded as an extension of second language acquisition or bilingualism. In this view, the possibility of interlanguage transfer may be said to be proportionate to the number of languages known to the speaker. Technically, a speaker of three languages (one native and two non-native languages) may potentially mix the components of all his/her language systems, and is faced with the task of keeping his/her languages apart in production. But when one language is selected for production, what happens to the remaining languages in the speaker’s mind? Green (1986) suggests that more than one language can be simultaneously activated during speaking. One language is selected, but other languages can be active or latent. Words are chosen from the selected language or from the active language and, as a last resort, from the dormant language. Parallel activation of languages in multilingual speakers has been discussed at length in De Angelis and Selinker (1998), Dewaele (1998), and

46 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:05

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

46

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Williams and Hammarberg (1998). Material from De Angelis and Selinker (1998) is reported in this paper below. Dewaele (1998) examines the 218 ‘lexical inventions’ in the production of 39 Dutch L1 speakers. Thirty-two subjects had French as a second language and seven had it as a third language. Dewaele also compares the performance of French L2 and L3 speakers in formal and informal situations. He finds that French L3 speakers tend to draw more from their second-language lemmas than French L2 speakers do from their native language. He suggests that: ...the active language with the highest level of activation is the preferred source of lexical information. Access to lemmas of languages that have a lower level of activation is partially blocked. It appears that the L1 is not necessarily always the dominant active language and that access to its lemmas could accordingly be limited. (Dewaele, 1998: 488) Williams and Hammarberg (1998) examine instances of ‘non-adapted language switches’ in a two-year longitudinal study of a learner of Swedish as a third language, and discuss their implications in a polyglot-speaking model. The subject’s native language was English, and her second language was German. The authors define the term ‘non-adapted language switch’ as being a type of switch that is ‘neither morphologically or phonologically adapted to the target language’ (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998: 305). They propose that the German second language is activated in parallel to the third language, thus having a ‘default supplier role’. Both studies suggest that an interlanguage may become the preferred source of linguistic information. One of the many possible reasons for activation of the interlanguage system may be found in the frequency of language use. Mägiste (1986) reports on the acquisition of a third language by bilingual immigrants. Her discussion suggests a strong relationship between frequency of use and language performance. She compares the performance of trilingual and bilingual subjects and finds that trilinguals ‘needed more time to perform the tasks in their second and third language than bilingual subjects did in their first and second language’ (Mägiste, 1986: 116). Her overall results suggest that, the more languages a speaker knows, the slower he/she may become. This is not surprising, especially if activation spreads to more than one language at a single point in time. In a developmental study of encoding and decoding processes, Mägiste (1979) also proposes the notion of competing language systems, an idea that is further developed in the present study. One of the most frequently discussed issues in the multilingual literature is perhaps the role of language similarity, which has been repeatedly

47 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:05

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

47

observed in multilinguals’ interlanguage production (Vildomec, 1963; Ringbom, 1986, 1987; Selinker & Baumgartner-Cohen, 1995; De Angelis & Selinker, 1998; Dewaele, 1998; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). Vildomec’s work (1963, as reported in Williams & Hammarberg, 1998) in particular can be regarded as one of the first studies in multilingualism. As reported, in a non-empirical study, he examined the language production of a large number of subjects. He noticed that, in early L3 production, certain function words such as prepositions, articles and conjunctions do not come from the first language, but tend to come from the second language. This may occur even if the two languages are not phonetically similar. The use of function words from a second language rather than the native language has been investigated ever since (Stedje, 1977, as reported in Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Ringbom, 1987; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). Stedje (1977) examined recordings of Finnish learners of German as a third language with Swedish as a second language and found that function words were predominantly transferred from the second language and not from the native language. Ringbom (1987) studied 11,000 essays written in English by Finnish students. Swedish was their second language, and English their third language. He found that function words were predominantly from Swedish and not from Finnish. Williams and Hammarberg (1998) divided their corpus of non-adapted language switches into four categories: EDIT, META, INSERT and WIPP. The EDIT category groups instances of switches that mark self-repair or turn-taking; the META category groups comments on performance or requests for help; the INSERT category groups instances in which the third language was used to overcome lexical problems; the WIPP category groups instances Without an Identified Pragmatic Purpose. The authors found that most of the WIPP switches were function words, and that 92% of the WIPP switches were from the German L2. They also observed that WIPP switches are not always similar to the target items, as Vildomec (1963) also pointed out in his initial study.

The Present Study Subjects The participants in the present study are two adult multilinguals who were both living in England at the time of the data collection. Subject 1 (S1) is a 50-year-old French-Canadian woman with three interlanguages: English, Spanish and Italian. The interlanguages are listed here in order of acquisition and not of fluency. S1 is a highly fluent speaker of English. She lived in English-speaking countries for approximately 35

48 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:06

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

48

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

years and also studied in English-speaking schools as a teenager. She received formal instruction in Spanish for about five years in the 1960s, and spent one summer in Mexico and one in Spain, also in the 1960s. She lived in Italy from 1990 to 1992, where she received formal instruction during the entire duration of her stay. Subject 2 (S2) is a 45-year-old British man with two interlanguages: Spanish and Italian. He lived and worked in Chile for three and a half years, from 1995 to 1998, and received five months intensive formal instruction in Spanish before going to work in Chile. He studied Italian in high school for two years and, at the time of the data collection, he had been learning Italian for a week. Procedure S1 was interviewed in Italian at the University of London for approximately an hour. The interviewer was a native speaker of Italian. S1 was asked very general questions, ranging from her own interests to her experiences in London or in other foreign countries. The choice of asking general questions was made in order to gather spontaneous data and to avoid forcing the subject to discuss topics beyond her level of competence. Six months after the first data collection, secondary data was gathered. S1 was asked further questions by the same interviewer. During this period of time, the subject had not practiced or learned Italian and had not travelled to Italy. The ‘secondary data’ (Selinker & Douglas, 1989) collection was carried out in order to establish the subject’s lexical knowledge in English and in Italian of some specific pre-selected items that had been produced during the first data collection. The subject’s knowledge of French was assumed and not tested as French was her native language. The words on which further information was needed were either in Spanish or very close to Spanish. It was thus felt best not to request further translations into Spanish, as this may have had a potential effect on the subject’s Italian interlanguage production. The secondary data were collected as follows: (1) The subject was asked whether she was familiar with a list of English words which were read aloud to her one at the time. She was asked to answer either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. (2) The subject was asked to translate the same English words into Italian. The words were read aloud to her in English one by one. A translation was requested after hearing each word. (3) The subject was asked whether she had ever heard the Italian target words. The correct target words were read aloud to her one at the time. She was asked to answer either ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’

49 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:06

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

49

S2 was tape-recorded over five weeks by his instructor, a native speaker of Italian, who also carried out the interviews with the previous participant. S2 was asked to watch the Italian evening news on RaiUno almost on a daily basis and prepare an oral report on the latest events for the following day. He was tape-recorded as he summarised the news to the instructor. A total of 22 recordings was made over five weeks, from the second to the sixth week of instruction. A week of instruction consisted of two hours a day of individual tuition. The task chosen for this data collection may seem fairly advanced for a beginner but, as the subject was a fluent Spanish speaker, his previous knowledge of Spanish was fully exploited from the beginning of the training. Although positive interlanguage transfer is not the focus of the present paper, it is common sense to assume that the subject’s listening comprehension in Italian would be facilitated by his previous knowledge of Spanish. Pedagogically, it wouldn’t have been possible to exploit such positive interlanguage influence if the subject had been fluent in a language typologically distant from the target language.

Sample Results and Discussion Two types of interlanguage influences were found in both subjects’ Italian interlanguage production: (1) the use of an entire non-target interlanguage word (lexical interlanguage transfer), and (2) the use of nontarget interlanguage free or bound morphemes (morphological interlanguage transfer) in the formation of a target word, as defined above. Lexical and morphological interlanguage transfer are thus terms employed to describe the ‘use’ of a non-target word or morpheme in the production of a target language. Such use can be the result of either transfer of form or of transfer of meaning (or both). Consequently, in this chapter we have treated form and meaning as distinct. Formal similarity between languages, whether native or non-native, has been repeatedly reported as one of the key factors in the amount of influence likely to occur in interlanguage production (Vildomec, 1963; Stedje, 1977; Ringbom, 1987; Selinker & Baumgartner-Cohen, 1995; Clyne, 1997; De Angelis & Selinker, 1998; Dewaele, 1998; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998, Clyne & Cassia, 1999). Less frequently discussed in the literature are instances of transfer of meaning between non-native languages. According to Ringbom (1986: 158), transfer of meaning may be restricted to the native language, as this type of influence requires ‘considerable fluency and automatisation in the language from which transfer takes place’. He further observes (Ringbom, present volume) that transfer of meaning could also

50 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:06

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

50

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

occur from a second language, provided the learner’s proficiency level is sufficiently advanced. The evidence we have gathered provides additional support for the above observations. A number of instances of interlanguage transfer of form were in fact identified, but no clear evidence of interlanguage transfer of meaning emerged. One reason for the absence of instances of transfer of meaning in our data probably lies in the subjects’ combination of languages. As Spanish (an interlanguage for both subjects) and Italian (the target language) are typologically close languages, evidence of transfer of form is more likely to surface than evidence of transfer of meaning. Since transfer of form is the focus of our present discussion, from here onwards, lexical and morphological interlanguage transfer are intended to refer to transfer of form, unless otherwise specified. The overall convergence of observations on formal similarity between languages calls for a more thorough investigation of the principles that may govern such influence during on-line processing. In current production models, it is proposed that instances of native language transfer may be a compensatory strategy (Poulisse, 1997), as the L2 system is incomplete. In order to integrate the above observation into a more general theory of language transfer, an initial distinction needs to be made between how a gap or opening may come to be created during on-line processing, and how such gap or opening may be filled. It is reasonable to assume that some sort of information deficiency may lead to the opening of a potential gap. For example, when a speaker does not know a lexical item (lack of knowledge) or has a vague idea of what a word may be or may sound like (weak knowledge), the speaker’s lack of or weak interlanguage knowledge creates the condition or need to compensate with other linguistic information that may be available. We still need to ask: what are the principles which govern the selection of a non-target component? Why is an interlanguage item preferred over a native language one? Why is transfer from the native language (or an additional interlanguage) blocked? To begin answering these questions, a further distinction needs to be made. In some cases, a speaker may consciously compensate for his/her lack or weak knowledge by using lexical items from other languages. For example, an interlanguage speaker of Italian needs to buy a train ticket in Italy, but does not know how to ask for a ‘single ticket’. As the speaker does not have the time to consult a dictionary and hold up the queue/line for too long, in order to satisfy the communicative need s/he may consciously try to use what s/he thinks may be a similar word in another foreign language or in the native language, or s/he may resort to paraphrasing. Most language learners are

51 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:06

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

51

familiar with such compensatory strategies, which are an efficient and often (but not always!) successful way to deal with information deficiency. Although such strategies are often employed to deal with information deficiency, they do not allow us to understand the underlying principles that may govern transfer of form. As our efforts are directed towards identifying principles and constraints that may govern the selection of a non-target item when the condition for compensation arises, we shall focus on instances of interlanguage transfer that do not appear to be the result of a conscious or intentional compensatory strategy. One of the possible constraints that may govern the selection of non-target lexical items or morphemes in interlanguage production is the simultaneous activation of phonologically similar items across language systems. Such activation creates the necessary condition for a non-target component to compete for selection during on-line processing. The notion of activation spreading to non-target words is a fairly common assumption in the language processing literature. It was first proposed in Dell (1986) in relation to monolingual processing. Dell’s general view (1995) is that words that are phonologically and semantically similar may be activated in the lexical retrieval process. By extension, we believe that phonologically (and semantically) similar words may also be activated across language systems. If this is the case, when the condition for compensation arises (i.e. when the target language knowledge is absent or weak), activation across systems places at least two items, but possibly more, into competition with one another for selection. The notion of phonologically similar items competing with each other may begin to explain why formal similarity across language systems appears to be such a constant factor in interlanguage influence. The following examples of lexical interlanguage (IL) transfer illustrate the possible extent of the role of formal similarity across linguistic systems: Subject 1 (1) IL form: Target form: (2) IL form: Target form: (3) IL form: Target form: (4) IL form: Target form:

basico (French NL: de base, Sp: básico, Eng: basic) di base pintura (French NL: peinture, Sp: pintura, Eng: paint) vernice/pittura mismo (French NL: même, Sp: mismo, Eng: same) medesimo/stesso nieve (French NL: neige, Sp: nieve, Eng: snow) neve

52 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:07

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

52

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Subject 2 (1) IL form: Target form: (2) IL form: Target form: (3) IL form: Target form: (4) IL form: Target form:

en (Eng NL: in; Sp: en) in niega (Eng NL: (it) denies, Sp: niega) nega cree (Eng NL: (it) believes, Sp: cree) crede cuarenta (Eng NL: forty, Sp: cuarenta) quaranta

In these examples, an entire Spanish word was used in the production of the Italian target language. The pattern of similarity across languages suggests that these items may have been selected as a result of simultaneous phonological activation across language systems. If this were not the case, no pattern of similarity would be found. In other words, if no activation across systems occurs, it would be reasonable to expect a random mixture of words without any obvious pattern of similarity across languages. Although at this stage we cannot pin down with more precision the actual process of activation across systems (i.e. which phoneme was activated and when), this type of evidence suggests that activation across systems may govern the selection of non-target items when the need for compensation arises. Furthermore, from the secondary data gathered with S1, it emerged that the participant believed the above words to be Italian words, and not Spanish words. This further suggests that the Spanish non-target items were not selected in the random attempt to fill a knowledge gap in the Italian target language (i.e. as a compensatory strategy) because, as secondary data seemed to show, the subject was not even aware of not knowing those items in the target language in the first place. Additional evidence of interlanguage transfer further suggests that transfer of form does not appear to be limited to entire lexical items: Subject 1 (1) IL form: minas (French NL: mines, Sp: minas, Eng: mines) Target form: mine (2) IL form: serpiente (French NL: serpent, Sp: serpiente, Eng: serpent) Target form: serpente

53 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:07

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

Subject 2 (1) IL form: Target form: (2) IL form: Target form: (3) IL form: Target form: (4) IL form: Target form:

53

personas mafiosas (Eng NL: mafia (men) persons; Sp: personas mafiosas) persone mafiose (sing. persona mafiosa) dormir (Eng NL: to sleep, Sp: dormir) dormire bombas (Eng NL: bombs, Sp: bombas) bombe (sing. bomba) autos (Eng NL: cars, automobile; Sp: autos) auto

These examples can be considered to be instances of lexical interlanguage transfer as well as of morphological interlanguage transfer, both subject to phonological activation across systems as described above. As an entire non-target Spanish word was used in the Italian interlanguage production, these examples can be regarded as instances of lexical interlanguage transfer. However, they can also be regarded as instances of morphological interlanguage transfer, since the bound morphemes used are clearly Spanish-bound morphemes and not Italian-bound morphemes. In the language-transfer literature, it is claimed (Odlin, 1989) that bound morphemes seem to be less susceptible to transfer. In the above instances, no morphological transfer of meaning can be claimed. As both Spanishbound and Italian-bound morphemes mark for plurality, for example, it cannot be claimed that the meaning of plurality was transferred to the Italian interlanguage. However, if a distinction is made between form and meaning, these are clear instances of transfer of form. The pattern of similarity between the Spanish non-target-bound morphemes and the Italian target-bound morphemes suggest that activation may also spread to bound morphemes across language systems. These can be further illustrated in the following examples of morphological interlanguage transfer, which involve the activation of stems and bound morphemes: Subject 2 (1) IL form: Target form: (2) IL form: Target form: (3) IL form:

aiudarono (Eng NL: helped; Sp: ayudaron) aiutarono isolada (Eng NL: isolated, Sp: aislada) isolata accertamienti (Eng NL: verification, Sp: verificación; bound morpheme -mienti) Target form: accertamenti

54 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:07

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

54

(4) IL form: (5) IL form: (6) IL form: (7) IL form:

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

riunion (Eng NL: reunion, meeting; Sp: reunión) Target form: riunione desarmato (Eng NL: disarmed; Sp: desarmado) Target form: disarmato gagna (Eng NL: (it) earns; Sp: gana) Target form: guadagna (è) uccido (English NL: is killed; SP: -ido; past. part. bound morpheme) Target form: è ucciso

These items do not exist in the Italian target language. In other words, they are lexical inventions (Dewaele, 1998). In all these cases, the activation of stems and bound morphemes in one language seems to have spread to target or non-target morphemes of other linguistic systems. Two further examples are particularly revealing, as the same lexical inventions were produced by both subjects: Subject 1 (1) IL form:

abbastante (French NL: assez, Sp: bastante, Eng: enough) Target form: abbastanza (2) IL form: calefazione (French NL: chauffage, Sp: calefacción, Eng: heating) Target form: riscaldamento (-zione is also an Italian bound morpheme) Subject 2 (1) IL form: Target form: (2) IL form: Target form:

abbastante (Eng NL: enough, Sp: bastante) abbastanza calefazione (Eng NL: heating; Sp: calefacción) riscaldamento (-zione is also an Italian bound morpheme)

Item 2, for example, clearly shows how the word may have been created. The Italian interlanguage word ‘calefazione’ (heating) was created by adding the Italian-bound morpheme -zione to the Spanish stem calef-. The Italian-bound morpheme -zione was not the target-bound morpheme, as the Italian target word is ‘riscaldamento’. The activation of the Spanishbound morpheme -ción seems to have spread to the non-target Italianbound morpheme -zione, which was then retrieved and added to the Spanish stem calef-.

55 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:07

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

55

In all the examples of morphological interlanguage transfer listed above, it can also be further observed that bound morphemes appear to be retrieved as chunks, which is also in agreement with the general findings in the language processing literature (Garrett, 1975; Bock, 1995). The notion of activation discussed so far can only partially explain how and why interlanguage transfer may occur. Furthermore, the above evidence illustrates only transfer of form and not of meaning, which may also exist. Activation provides an initial explanation of how items may come into competition with each other for selection. Further research in multilingual language processing would be needed in order to isolate how competition among items may be resolved across linguistic systems. Our current concern is to integrate the role of formal similarity and activation into a more general theory of language transfer, and thus establish how processing principles may interact with other factors that are also known to affect language transfer. Some factors that we believe would need to be integrated into a more general framework are related to the learners’ perception of language distance, correctness and interlanguage competence. Building on Kellerman’s notion of psychotypology, language closeness is probably a privileged factor in interlanguage transfer. Kellerman (1983) proposed that learners’ perception of language distance, which may trigger or constrain language transfer, may not necessarily correspond to the actual distance between languages. This notion can be further extended by including learners’ perception of correctness of a target word. Subject 1, for example, a native speaker of French, relied more on her Spanish interlanguage than on her French native language in her Italian interlanguage production. If S1 hadn’t had any other language available besides her French native language, we can assume that she would have relied more on her native language. However, as she had some knowledge of an additional language typologically close to the Italian language, she relied more on her Spanish than on her native language. This is particularly poignant since she had last studied Spanish 30 years before. In agreement with Kellerman’s claim, she probably perceived Spanish and Italian to be close languages and thus felt reasonably confident in incorporating Spanish words into her Italian. The secondary data, as we indicated above, seemed to show that, at times when she used Spanish elements in her Italian, she perceived them to be Italian and not Spanish. She may also have opted for Spanish rather than her French native language for two additional reasons: (1) she may have instinctively perceived words in the native language as an incorrect choice; (2) she may have perceived Spanish and Italian not only as close languages, but also as ‘foreign’ languages. The following example may illustrate such interaction. When S1 chose the

56 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:07

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

56

word ‘pintura’ (paint), she instinctively knew that the French word ‘peinture’ was not an Italian word (perception of correctness), and so resisted incorporating it in her Italian production. At the same time, the Spanish word ‘pintura’ may have also been perceived as closer to the Italian target language, not only because of actual or perceived language distance, but also because ‘pintura’ was being perceived as a foreign word, thus closer to the Italian target language. Similar observations can also be found in Williams and Hammarberg (1998). The participant in their study commented on her: ...desire to suppress L1 in the belief that this is inherently ‘non-foreign’ and thus that using a non-L1 and hence ‘foreign’ language would be a better strategy in acquiring another ‘foreign’ language’. (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998: 323)

Conclusion The possible association in the multilingual mind of the ‘foreign-ness’ of words, and the impact of such association in interlanguage production, may be a plausible explanation for some sorts of interlanguage transfer. It is reasonable to assume that, in normal circumstances (i.e. where issues of cultural identity are not of concern), learners do not want to sound as if they are speaking their native language. The use of an interlanguage, perceived by the speaker as ‘foreign’, may well be preferred over the use of the native language because it ‘sounds’ more foreign than the native language does. Thus, we believe that there is a potential cognitive mode called ‘talk foreign’ or ‘foreign language mode’ (Selinker & Baumgartner-Cohen, 1995; De Angelis & Selinker, 1998) that eases the path of interlanguage transfer. A further additional factor related to the perceptive factors discussed above may be the learners’ perception of interlanguage competence. How does the learner’s belief in her/his own interlanguage competence interact with perception of distance and correctness? At the initial stages of third or additional language acquisition, a learner may perceive his/her own competence to be too low to be willing to risk incorporating previous linguistic knowledge in the target language, regardless of language distance. Does the learner’s perception of interlanguage competence need to reach a certain threshold before he/she start to apply his/her own judgement about language distance and correctness? How do learners’ perception of distance, correctness and interlanguage competence interact with each other? To what extent do they govern interlanguage transfer? Futhermore, how and when do they begin to interact with the processing principle of activation spreading across language systems? These are some

57 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:08

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interlanguage Transfer and Competing Linguistic Systems

57

of the initial questions that need to be addressed in research on interlanguage transfer and its role in a general theory of language transfer. The present study provided some evidence of the existence of lexical and morphological transfer, although restricted to transfer of form. Further research in language processing may clarify how activation across language systems may lead to the selection of interlanguage items, and why the retrieval of components from other languages (native and non-native) is blocked. At this stage, we can only conclude that the selection of non-native words and bound morphemes seems to be subject to activation constraints. Transfer of meaning is also in need of further investigation with language combinations that are distant enough to allow us to isolate meaning alone. As the study of interlanguage transfer is still in its infancy, many directions are open to be further explored, from multilingual language processing, to transfer of meaning and form, to the influence of perceptive factors and their interaction with each other. The present study, integrating third or additional linguistic systems, is intended to provide an initial introduction to some of the issues that we believe need to be addressed in order that a theory of language transfer can properly take its place in the literature of well-founded scientific theories.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Diplomatic Service Language Centre, for permission to collect data, and for financial support for this research. References Bock, K. (1995) Sentence production: From mind to mouth. In J.L.Miller and P.D. Eimas (eds) Speech, Language, and Communication (pp. 181–216). San Diego: Academic Press. Clyne, M. (1997) Some of the things trilinguals do. The International Journal of Bilingualism 1: 95–116. Clyne, M. and Cassia, P. (1999) Trilingualism, immigration and relatedness of languages. I.T.L. Review of Applied Linguistics 123–4, 57–77. De Angelis, G. and Selinker, L. (1998) Interlanguage transfer and multiple language acquisition: A case study. Paper presented at TESOL 1999, New York City. Dell, G. (1986) A spreading activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 283–321. Dell, G. (1995) Speaking and mispeaking. In L.R. Gleitman and M. Liberman (eds) Language. An Invitation to Cognitive Science Vol. 1 (pp. 183–208). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Dewaele, J-M. (1998) Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3. Applied Linguistics 19, 471–90.

58 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:08

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

58

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Garrett, M.F. (1975) The analysis of sentence production. In G. Bower (ed.) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation (pp. 133–77). New York: Academic Press. Gass, S. and Selinker, L. (eds) (1983) Language Transfer in Language Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Green, D.W. (1986) Control, activation and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language 27, 210–23. Grosjean, F. (1985) The bilingual as a competent but specific speaker–hearer. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 6, 467–77. Kellerman, E. (1983) Now you see it, now you don’t. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 112–34). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Mägiste, E. (1979) The competing language systems of the multilingual: A developmental study of decoding and encoding processes. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18, 79–89. Mägiste, E. (1986) Selected issues in second and third language learning. In J. Vaid (ed.) Language Processing in Bilinguals: Psycholinguistic and Neuropsychological Perspectives (pp. 97–122). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Odlin, T. (1989) Language Transfer. Cross-Linguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poulisse, N. (1997) Language production in bilinguals. In A.M.B. de Groot and J.F. Kroll (eds) Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspectives (pp. 201–24). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Ringbom, H. (1986) Crosslinguistic influence and the foreign language learning process. In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 150–62). New York: Pergamon Press. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Selinker, L. and Baumgartner-Cohen, B. (1995) Multiple language acquisition: ‘Damn it, why can’t I keep these two languages apart?’ Language, Culture and Curriculum 8, 115–21. Selinker, L. and Douglas, D. (1989) Research methodology in contextually-based second language research. Second Language Research 5, 93–126. Sharwood Smith, M. (1994) Second Language Learning. Theoretical Foundations. London: Longman. Sharwood Smith, M. and Kellerman, E. (1986) Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition: An introduction. In E. Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 1–9). New York: Pergamon Press. Stedje, A. (1977) Tredjespråksinterferens i fritt tal-en jämförande studie. In R. Palmberg and H. Ringbom (eds) Papers from the Conference on Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis (pp. 141–58). Stockholm and Åbo, 7–8 February 1977. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. Vildomec, V. (1963) Multilingualism. Leyden: Sythoff. William, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333.

59 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:08

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 4

Lexical Transfer in L3 Production HÅKAN RINGBOM

Introduction In comprehension and production of an L3, the transfer strategy operates from L1, or from some other language that the learner knows, L2. L1-transfer and L2-transfer are not, however, manifested in quite the same way nor to quite the same extent. In the area of phonology it appears that, while all or practically all learners, even at an advanced stage of learning, retain a foreign, L1-based accent in their speech, at least in their intonation, L2-transfer here appears to be relatively rare. But if the learner is exposed, or has recently been exposed for a long time, to an L2-environment, occasional phonological L2-features can occur – at least for some time (Stedje, 1977; Voorwinde, 1981; Hammarberg & Williams, 1993). Discourse is an area where L2-transfer does not seem to occur. In general, transfer in discourse, whether L1- or L2-based, has scarcely been investigated, partly no doubt because the artificial concept of ‘error’ does not easily lend itself to investigation of discourse patterns. Transfer is also manifested in ways other than errors. Even advanced learners make use of L1-based discourse patterns, and they will overuse or underuse certain constructions (see also Kellerman, this volume). L1-based discourse features are, however, present in learners’ writing: learners obviously assume that discourse patterns will be more or less the same in the foreign language as in the L1, until differences are pointed out to them, which happens rarely, if ever. In grammar, the extent of L2-transfer varies, depending above all on the extent of exposure to L2 and on L2-proficiency. In simplified terms, more extensive exposure and better L2-proficiency mean more transfer (Stedje, 1977; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). The extent of L2-transfer in phonology and grammar largely depends on the psychotypological relation between L2 and L3. When Kellerman in the 1970s (1977, see also Kellerman, 1995) stressed the importance of perceived

59 60 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:08

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

60

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

language distance for learners, this applies not only to the L1–L2 relation, but also to the relation between the target language and any other language the learner knows. Several studies have been carried out, particularly of Asian learners of English or French who already know the other European language. In many respects they rely much more on the other, related foreign language than on their L1 (see for example Singh & Carroll, 1979; Ulijn et al., 1981; Sikogukira, 1993 and the survey in Cenoz, 2000). In no other area, however, is the importance of psychotypological factors, perceived similarities, more in the foreground than lexis. L3learners at an early stage of learning will frequently make use of L2-words in their L3-production if the L2 and L3 are related and have a number of common cognates. Lexical L2-transfer across related foreign languages is found also in learners who have had little exposure to, or have a limited proficiency in, the L2. But there are different types of lexical transfer. It can be manifested as transfer of form or transfer of meaning, and in the following pages I shall discuss the distributional differences between these. First, transfer of form. Two of the most obvious manifestations of transfer of lexical form occur in complete language switches and in the use of deceptive cognates. The learner’s code-switching can also be modified in that the form of the code-switched word may be altered according to assumed L3-principles, producing hybrids or blends that do not exist in L3. The deceptive cognates may be partially or totally deceptive – Eng: fabri, S: fabrik (= ‘factory’), Eng: affair, S: affär (= both ‘business’ and ‘affair’). What happens here is that the linguistic form of the word is very much in the foreground: the learner activates, or is influenced by, a formally similar L1-word or L2-word instead of the intended one. Language switches and deceptive cognates are, however, not the only types of transfer-based errors. We can also find examples of lexical transfer in calques, i.e. loan translations of multi-word units, and in semantic extension on the basis of the pattern of another language. The distribution of these procedural or meaning-based errors, if compared with the formbased errors, can be seen from Table 4.1. This table comes from an earlier study (Ringbom, 1987), where 577 students from Finnish-language schools and as many from Swedish-language schools in Finland were asked to translate 63 selected L1-words, given in otherwise English sentences, into English their L3. The subjects were 16–17-year olds from grammar schools (before the Finnish school system went comprehensive), who had read English for at least seven years at school, and who also knew Swedish and Finnish respectively as their L2. Most of the errors here are L1-based. But, when we look at the L2-based errors in Table 4.1 we find, not surprisingly, that in an FL learning context

61 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:09

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Transfer in L3 Production

61

Table 4.1 Lexical transfer errors in translations Finns (n=577)

Swedish-speaking Finns (n=577)

Influence from Fi

S

Fi

S

A Language switches

0

33

0

20

B Hybrids & blends

16

68

1

87

9

61

6

208

D Calques

404

2

14

199

E Semantic extensions

153

0

0

135

Total

582

164

21

649

C Deceptive cognates

L2-transfer from Swedish, a language perceived to be similar to the target language English, is much more frequent than L2-transfer from Finnish, a psychotypologically different language. But what is especially interesting here is the distribution of transfer errors: the three top categories A, B and C are the ones that show frequent transfer from L2-Swedish in Finnish learners, whereas this is practically absent from the two bottom ones, D and E. What the three top categories have in common is that they are single lexical items that show transfer of form, not meaning1. When the learner has tried to produce an English L3-word, a formally similar Swedish word has been activated instead. This type of transfer is particularly common across related languages where there are many cognates, some deceptive, but many helpful. The first encounter with cognates often leads to approximate understanding, and does not require much mental effort by the learner, who needs only to make a mental note that the words arm, hand and finger in their core meanings are identical in English and Swedish. More effort will be required by the Swedish learner later on to realise that hands can also be used about a clock, that to head a queue means to stand in front of it and that when you hear about an unarmed man beating up two robbers this does not mean that the man had neither a left arm nor a right arm. To sum up, whenever we have L2-influence on L3, it will be the full form of the L2-word that is transferred, either in its entirety or in a slightly modified form. Transfer errors of types D and E, on the other hand, tend to occur only from L1 and hardly ever from L2, not even from a related L2. The underlying process here seems to be more complex than substitution of a formally similar lexical unit for an intended one. In calques, i.e. loan translations of compounds, in phrasal verbs and in idioms, we have to deal with

62 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:09

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

62

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

two (or more) lexical units and these are combined to form a third unit with an L1-based pattern of meaning relationships that differs from the corresponding L3-word. In semantic extension errors, the learner assumes that what is a homonym or a polysemous word in the L3 has a meaning corresponding to what is most commonly the core meaning of the equivalent L1 word. If the words are formally similar, this would make them deceptive cognates, but frequently there is no formal similarity. Though errors of types D and E tend to originate from the L1, not from the L2, it is dangerous to maintain that a certain type of error, in this case L2-based calques or semantic extension errors, does not generally occur. Any teacher knows that it is impossible to predict details of individual learner production. Here a parallel might be furnished by grammatical errors. In L3learning, L2-based grammatical errors have been found to be relatively rare, but the frequency depends on factors such as the learner’s exposure to L2. This was shown more than 20 years ago by Stedje (1977), who found a clear developmental pattern. She noticed with Finnish university students reading German in Sweden that grammatical influence from Swedish was non-existent in students who had spent only a short time in Sweden but, the longer they had stayed in the country, the stronger was the grammatical influence from Swedish. Thus there was a clear development in the learner’s dependence on L2: when the L2 was extensively used in the learner’s environment, the L2-influence was also much more extensive. Psychotypology is not the only relevant factor for determining the relative strength of L2- versus L3-influence. On the basis of a longitudinal case study, Williams and Hammarberg (1998) have argued that other variables also enter the picture, and this is clearly the case. Among other factors we have to consider are the degree of activation of the L2, and the stage of L3-learning. Williams and Hammarberg have shown that the influence of L2 on the learning of a related L3 is strong at the earliest stages of learning, but diminishes as learning progresses. The learner’s L2-proficiency is a factor of vital importance here: a near-native speaker or even a very advanced learner of L2 will be prone to make use of such L2-based strategies as are normally borrowed only from L1. To what extent and in what contexts a fluent L2-proficiency is more naturally activated than the L1 in L3-learning is still a question that needs much research. That Swedishspeaking, but not Finnish-speaking, learners of English in Finland at a fairly advanced stage of learning occasionally make lexical errors of a type usually occurring only on the basis of the L1 reflects the fact that they generally know Finnish much better than the Finnish students know Swedish. This is what normally happens in a situation of a small language minority: a

63 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:09

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Transfer in L3 Production

63

6 % minority must learn the majority language, whereas a large part of the 93 % Finnish majority feel that they need not learn Swedish.

Transfer of Form and Transfer of Meaning In this chapter some further points will be developed concerning the lack of L2-transfer in calques and semantic extension errors, even though it may be frequent in the other group of lexical transfer errors, at least when the languages involved are psychotypically similar. In a situation where a learner who is very proficient in his L2 starts learning an L3 and hears the L2 around him, we can expect to find not only formally based L2-transfer, but also a few calques or semantic extension errors. From the processing point of view, this means that transfer affects not only the linguistic forms, but also the semantic pattern. Here the important difference is between errors based on form and errors based on meaning. The data underlying Table 4.2 are cross-sectional, coming from the same test as provided the basis for Table 4.1, but prompt questions concerning the development of the language learner’s mental lexicon and suggest links with recent work in this area. In principle, the same distinction between form and meaning, but using slightly different terminology, is made by Nemser (1998), who discusses this in terms of lexical development and is especially concerned with the strategies used for L2-comprehension. Nemser’s first stage of lexical development is the pre-developmental one, where the learner makes an oversimplified assumption of L1 = L2, carrying over the semantic grid of the L1-lexicon into the L2. The next stage is the assimilatory one, represented by calques and semantic extension errors, which are ‘the implied results of receptive strategies of the first developmental stage in which L2 words are assimilated to L1 analogues’ (Nemser, 1998: 116). At Nemser’s last stage, the ‘approximative’ one, transfer does not have a direct role. It is illustrated by words for which the learner can find no L1 analogues as a starting point, but uses contextual cues and general linguistic knowledge as a source for constructing an appropriate representation of an unfamiliar word. In several studies, Nick Ellis (e.g. 1994, 1997) has made the point that learning the semantic aspects of words is more demanding of intellectual capacity than learning the forms of words. According to Ellis, the acquisition of semantic aspects of words, both in L1 and L2, necessarily involves conscious, explicit learning, whereas the formal aspects require only an essentially implicit and unconscious kind of learning. Singleton (1999: 152) adds the important point that the formal aspects of learning a new word may be in the fore at the early stages of L2-learning but that, after an initial

64 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:09

Insufficient awareness of intended linguistic form, instead of which (a modified form of) an L2 word is used Awareness of an existing TL form, but confusion caused by formal similarity to a word in another language

A+B Language switch & coinage

C

Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:10

65

Calques of multi-word units (compounds, phrasal verbs, idioms)

E Awareness of existing TL units but not of relevant semantic/ collocational restrictions

Semantic extension of Awareness of single lexical units existing TL form, but not of semantic restrictions

D

L1 or, occasionally, very advanced L2 proficiency L1 or possibly very advanced L2 proficiency

Meaning

L1 or L2

Form (results in existing TL word)

Meaning

The hillow was hidden in the cupboard (Fi. hillo = ‘jam’)

L1 or L2 (also from languages not very well known by learner)

Form (results in non-existing TL word)

My uncle never married: he remained a youngman all his life (S. ungkarl = ‘bachelor’)

He bit himself in the language (Fi. kieli = both ‘tongue’ and ‘language’)

We had a large number of bulls and several cups of tea (S. bulle = ‘bun’)

Example

From which language

Transfer of form or meaning

64

Totally or partially deceptive cognate

Underlying cause

Type of transfer

Table 4.2 Lexical transfer errors: Form versus meaning

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Transfer in L3 Production

65

concentration on form, the longer-term and more challenging task of the learner is to come to grips with the word’s meaning and use. Word association studies by Meara (1978) and Söderman (1993) form part of the evidence for Singleton’s view. The approaches by Nemser, Ellis and Singleton find support in the different distribution of L1-based and L2-based transfer errors in L3-production.

Factors Affecting Transfer What the frequency difference between L1-based and L2-based lexical transfer errors suggests is that it is psychotypology that determines the extent of L2-transfer based on formal similarity. Languages perceived to be similar (roughly = related) to the target language naturally provide many more reference points for the learner than do wholly unrelated languages. There are, however, other important factors determining the extent of L2-based semantic influence, above all, as Williams and Hammarberg (1998) have shown, the learner’s L2-proficiency and the extent of L2-input in the learner’s environment. It seems that the differences in error frequency are linked with a gradual progress from organisation by form to organisation by meaning as the learner’s L3-proficiency develops. Both dimensions of lexical competence, vocabulary size and vocabulary organisation (Meara, 1996) develop as the learner’s proficiency improves. Improved lexical proficiency comprises not only a larger vocabulary but also a more structured organisation of the lexicon with a larger number of associative links, predominantly semantic, for each word. We have, it seems, additional evidence of the progress from form to meaning as the driving principle in the learner’s mental lexicon. The more learners progress in their learning of another language, the better able they are to organise their mental lexicon on the basis of semantic network associations. When cross-linguistic similarities in word forms can be perceived, as they frequently can across related languages, they will provide a platform for early stages of learning, which is mainly essential and useful, though it sometimes also causes errors in use. This general reliance on word form, L1-, L2- and L3-forms, will, however, gradually decrease, and be replaced by a network more organised on a semantic basis, as learning progresses. The details of such a development are, however, still far from clear, and more work to provide evidence for it will certainly be needed. In my material, where the languages involved are all Western European languages using the same alphabet, psychotypology does not seem to play a decisive role for L2-based semantic errors. Meaning-based or procedure-based transfer is always or nearly always L1-based, even when L2

66 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:10

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

66

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

and L3 are closely related languages. Where the L1 is totally different, however, as in Chinese or Arabic learners of English or French, other studies may well find that the Western-related L2 is more important than the unrelated L1 in this respect also.

Final Remarks So far, my concern has been with L3-production, since there has been hardly any research on L3-comprehension. Yet L3-comprehension needs to be studied at least as much as L3-production. The importance of formal similarities is even more apparent in foreign language comprehension than it is in production. Wherever learners are able to perceive cross-linguistic similarities (and learners with the same L1 vary very greatly in this ability) they will make use of them. Comprehension has a different direction from foreign language production in that it starts out from a linguistic lexical form, to which the listener/reader assigns a meaning by mapping it on to relevant existing knowledge, while in production the speaker starts out from a pre-verbal intention that he gives linguistic form. In comprehension, therefore, form, and also any formal cross- or intra-linguistic similarity the learner can associate with this form, provides a starting point for the process. In production, on the other hand, form comes in at a later stage in the process, and form here involves not only semantics, but also morphology and syntax, which have relevance for the formal accuracy of what is produced. These are of less importance in comprehension, which is very often only approximate. For successful comprehension of texts with many unfamiliar words, an inferencing procedure is used, based on inter-lingual, intra-lingual and/or contextual cues. In L3-comprehension, the inter-lingual lexical cues producing transfer can be either L1-based or L2-based. The main factor affecting the use of L2-based cues is no doubt psychotypological: what similarities the learner has perceived between L2 and L3, especially cognates in related languages. But other factors are also important, such as the input and the degree of L2-proficiency. Also, considerable individual variation exists in learners’ ability to look at the target language in a wider perspective by making relevant associations with other languages. But the importance of formal cross-linguistic similarity between L2- and L3-words can hardly be overestimated, especially not when the beginning or intermediate learner is confronted with the task of making sense of a text. Occasionally, of course, the existence of faux amis between L2 and L3 may lead the learner astray, but the number of good cognates between English and, say, Swedish or French far exceeds the number of false friends. And in

67 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:10

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Transfer in L3 Production

67

comprehension words always occur in a specific context where, in contrast to production, contextual cues frequently prevent the learner from being led astray by chance similarities. Comprehension precedes learning while production normally follows it and Nemser’s model of lexical development is attractive not least because it emphasises the fundamental importance of receptive strategies in the learning process. To conclude, then, L2-transfer in L3-production is manifested especially clearly in lexis. This primarily seems to be the result of cross-linguistic identification of similar single word forms, whereas the procedures involved in transferring semantic patterns and word combinations, like grammatical transfer, are nearly always L1-based, or at least presuppose L2-input or L2-proficiency closely approaching that of the L1. Notes 1. There is an apparent exception to formal similarity being present in L2–L3 language switches. Particularly in speech, some highly frequent function words, such as and, but and although, may be shifted even though there is no formal L2– L3 resemblance (Vildomec, 1963: 170; Ringbom, 1987: 122). This appears to show a lack in concentration: links between major clause elements may easily receive less attention than those that are used to express the speaker’s main ideas.

References Cenoz, J. (2000) Research on multilingual acquisition. In J. Cenoz and U. Jessner (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language (pp. 39–53). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ellis, N. (1994) Psychological perspectives on the role of conscious processes in vocabulary acquisition. AILA Review 11, 37–56. Ellis, N. (1997) Vocabulary acquisition: Word structure, collocation, word-class, and meaning. In N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (eds) Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp. 122–39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hammarberg, B. and Williams, S. (1993) A study of third language acquisition. In B. Hammarberg (ed.) Problem, Process, Product in Language Learning. Papers from the Stockholm-Åbo Conference, 21–22 October, 1992, (pp. 60–69). Stockholm University: Department of Linguistics. Kellerman, E. (1977) Towards a characterization of the strategy of transfer in second language learning. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin – Utrecht 2, 58–145. Kellerman, E. (1995) Cross-linguistic influence: Transfer to nowhere? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 15, 125–50. Meara, P.M. (1978) Learners’ word associations in French. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin – Utrecht 3, 192–211. Meara, P.M. (1996) The dimensions of lexical competence. In G. Brown, K. Malmkjaer and J. Williams (eds) Performance and Competence in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 35–50). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

68 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:10

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

68

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Nemser, W. (1998) Variations on a theme by Haastrup. In D. Albrechtsen, B. Henriksen, I.M. Mees and E. Poulsen (eds) Perspectives on Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy. Essays Presented to Kirsten Haastrup on the Occasion of her Sixtieth Birthday (pp. 107–18). Odense: Odense University Press. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sikogukira, M. (1993) Influence of languages other than the L1 on a foreign language: A case of transfer from L2 to L3. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 4, 110–32. Singh, R. and Carroll, S. (1979) L1, L2 and L3. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 5, 51–63. Singleton, D. (1999) Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stedje, A. (1977) Tredjespråksinterferens i fritt tal – en jämförande studie. In R. Palmberg and H. Ringbom (eds) Papers from the Conference on Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis. Stockholm and Åbo, 7–8 February 1977 (pp. 141–58). Meddelanden från Stiftelsens för Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut 19. Söderman, T. (1993) Word associations of foreign language learners and native speakers. The phenomenon of a shift in response type and its relevance for lexical development. In H. Ringbom (ed.) Near-native Proficiency in English. English Department Publications 2, 91–182. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University. Ulijn, J.M., Wolfe, S.J. and Donn, A. (1981) The Lexical Transfer Effect of French Knowledge in the Acquisition of English by Native Vietnamese Speakers. Report No 6, Foreign Language Acquisition Research THE, Eindhoven University of Technology. Vildomec, V. (1963) Multilingualism. Leyden: Sythoff. Voorwinde, S. (1981) A lexical and grammatical study in Dutch-English-German trilingualism. ITL. Review of Applied Linguistics 52, 3–30. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19(3), 295–333.

69 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:11

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 5

Activation or Inhibition? The Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum JEAN-MARC DEWAELE

Introduction In the plenary paper ‘The status of trilingualism in bilingualism studies’, Charlotte Hoffmann (1999) pointed to a number of largely unexplored areas in L3 research. Language processing and code-switching in three languages figured prominently in this list. She also underlined the need for expanding trilingualism research to adolescents and adults. Hoffmann thinks that the differences between bilingualism and trilingualism are mainly of a quantitative nature, as the same processing mechanisms operate. She thus echoed Voorwinde’s (1981: 25) conclusion that ‘phenomena related to trilingualism (are) more complex than, rather than basically different from, those related to bilingualism’. Hoffmann also points out that Grosjean’s (1997) model of language modes could easily cover trilingual speech production. Grosjean himself presents a sketch to account for the speech production of trilinguals or quadrilinguals, and observes that ‘the language mode concept will have to be extended and its various manifestations in these kinds of multilinguals will have to be investigated’ (Grosjean, 2001: 13). We will attempt to do just that in the present paper, and more specifically to address the crucial question of how one language – which is not the first language – can be selected while the other two generally remain in the background. According to Grosjean’s model, selection and de-selection correspond to proactive activation and deactivation of languages in the mind of the bilingual. However, in another recent model (Green, 1998) an alternative approach is presented, based on the principle of inhibition of lemmas, i.e. a combination of proactive and retroactive regulation of the output of the bilingual’s lexico-semantic system. We will look for evidence supporting either proactive or reactive models and, based on our findings, we will present a tentative solution.

69 70 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:11

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

70

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Theoretical Background Adapting existing models for L2 production to account for L3 production need not necessarily be particularly extensive, as was shown in Dewaele (1998b) where the spreading activation model for bilingual speech production based on Green (1986) and Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994) was easily extended to account for trilingual speech production. Green (1986) concluded that bilinguals do not switch a particular language on or off, but that their languages have different levels of activation. The highest level of activation occurs when a language is ‘selected’ and controls the speech output; a language is ‘active’ when it plays a role in the on-going processing, when it works in parallel to the selected language but has no access to the out-going speech channel; a language can also be ‘dormant’, this being the lowest level of activation. Green (1986) argues that different languages can be selected, resulting in code-switching. The activation levels are controlled by what Green calls the resources. They are described as the fuel without which no verbal activity is possible. If these resources are insufficient, control will be loosened and errors will result. Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994) combined this model with Levelt (1989) to explain the use of first language (L1) Dutch in second language (L2) English production, and Dewaele (1998b) expanded this to explain the origin of lexical inventions in French interlanguage (IL) with traces of three languages (Dutch first language, French and English ILs). One of the key points in this approach is the assumption that the choice of a specific language is part of the conceptual representation that contacts the lemmas with the corresponding language tag. What lemma will be selected for output (by virtue of being activated the most) is determined by the degree of overlap between the information specified in the lemma and the set of activated conceptual features that include the language clue. Activation levels of the relevant first, second or third language memory nodes are proactively adapted to the task. The analysis of the role of transfer in the creation of lexical inventions in Dewaele (1998b) revealed that the proportions of lexical inventions resulting from intralingual and interlingual sources differed significantly in the speech extracts of French L2 and the French L3 speakers. The French L2 speakers were found ‘to produce more lexical inventions based on intralingual strategies whereas the French L3 learners produce a higher proportion of lexical inventions based on interlingual strategies’ (Dewaele, 1998b: 486). This is an example of the stronger language(s) ‘seeping through despite the fact that it has been deactivated’ (Grosjean, 2001). A

71 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:11

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

71

closer analysis of the lexical inventions resulting from transfer of diacritical information from interlingual sources revealed that: The French L2 speakers have a higher proportion of lexical inventions resulting from transfer from their L1 (15.2% of the cases versus 9.2% for the French L3 speakers) whereas the French L3 speakers seem to produce more forms that can be traced to their L2 – English – (21.8% of the cases versus 6.9% for the French L2 speakers). (Dewaele, 1998b: 486) The idea of overall proactive language activation is also central in the Bilingual Model of Lexical Access, BIMOLA, which dealt exclusively with perception and was first proposed in Grosjean (1988). It is based on the idea of shared phonetic features between the languages, language-independent, yet with parallel processing at higher levels (phonemes and words), settings for a base language (a discrete value), and a language mode defined as ‘the state of activation of the bilingual’s languages and language processing mechanisms at a certain point in time’ (Grosjean, 2001: 3). Indeed: At any given point in time and based on numerous psychosocial and linguistic factors, the bilingual has to decide, usually quite unconsciously, which language to use and how much of the other language is needed – from not at all to a lot. (Grosjean, 2001: 2). A speaker thus chooses a base language, which means the most highly activated language, while the other languages remain slightly less activated depending on their position on the language mode continuum. Grosjean (2001: 4) notes that these two factors are usually independent of one another and that ‘there can be a change in one without a change in the other’. A French–Dutch bilingual speaking Dutch to a Dutch monolingual is in ‘Dutch monolingual mode’, whereas the same person speaking Dutch to another French–Dutch bilingual, and regularly code-switching to French, will be in ‘Dutch bilingual mode’. They could even choose French as base language and continue their conversation in ‘French bilingual mode’. Grosjean lists a number of factors that influence language mode. These include: The participant(s) (including such factors as language proficiency, language mixing habits and attitudes, usual mode of interaction, kinship relation, socio-economic status), the situation (physical location, presence of monolinguals, degree of formality and of intimacy), the form and content of the message being uttered or listened to (language used, type of vocabulary needed, amount of mixed language),

72 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:11

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

72

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

the function of the language act ( ... ) and specific research factors (the aims of the study taking place) ( ... ), the type and organisation of the stimuli, the task used, etc. (Grosjean, 2001: 4–5) Grosjean observes that: Future research will have to isolate these factors, and ascertain how they interact with one another to activate or deactivate the bilingual’s languages to varying degrees and hence change the bilingual’s position on the language mode continuum. (Grosjean, 2001: 13). Some research has already been carried out in this area. Grosjean refers to a study by Treffers-Daller (1997) who showed that her subject, a Turkish–German bilingual, varied his position on the continuum according to context and interlocutors. Code-switches were more fluent, more numerous, more diverse (both intra- and intersentential) in a conversation with a bilingual friend than in an interview with a person less well known. Grosjean (2001: 17) concludes that interindividual and intra-individual variation in activation levels also needs to be investigated. It has for example been reported that ‘bilinguals who are highly dominant in one language may simply not be able to control language mode in the same way as less dominant or balanced bilinguals’ and ‘the stronger language can seep through despite the fact that it has been deactivated’. This is a crucial point for any model dealing with multilingual speech production: how is the influence from the other languages kept at bay? Green (1998) developed a model of both proactive and retroactive regulation of the output of the bilingual lexico-semantic systems. A word from a chosen language is output by suppressing lemmas from the other language(s). This inhibitory control (IC) model thus ‘embodies the principle that there are multiple levels of control. In the model a language task schema (modulated by a higher level of control) ‘reactively’ inhibits potential competitors for production at the lemma level by virtue of their language tags’ (Green, 1998: 67). The schemas are established and monitored by a supervisory attentional system (SAS). The model is proactive in the sense that individuals can set up a schema to perform a particular task in advance of performing it. This can require execution suppression of an alternative competing schema (e.g. speaking the L1). Apart from schema level inhibition, there is also tag inhibition in the bilingual lexico-semantic system. The IC model ‘predicts a cost in switching between languages in certain word production tasks such as numeral naming’ (Green, 1998: 74). Green gives two reasons for this cost: first because inhibition must be overcome by the system, and second because inhibition is reactive – ‘more

73 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:11

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

73

active lemma will be more inhibited’. Green therefore predicts that the cost of switching is asymmetric: ‘It will take longer to switch into a language which was more suppressed – for unbalanced bilinguals this will be L1, their dominant language’ (Green, 1998: 74). In his critical analysis of the IC model, Dijkstra (1998) approves of this solution to the paradox in the relation between automaticity of processing and cognitive control. A higher L2 proficiency is the result of a more automatic production process (faster execution with less demand on working memory capacity), but it also entails ‘more control over the relative contribution of the mother tongue and second language ( ... )’ (Dijkstra, 1998: 88). The IC model solves this paradox, according to Dijkstra (1998: 88), ‘because cognitive flexibility in terms of the SAS can be distinguished from automaticity in terms of the lexico-semantic system’. While no researchers seem to question the idea of language tags attached to lemmas, both Grosjean (2001), De Groot (1998), Roelofs (1998) and Costa and Caramazza (1999) question the idea of selection by inhibition. Grosjean (in press: 18) observes that the inhibition of lemmas with the incorrect language tags ‘can account for the production in the monolingual mode but is problematic when the mode is bilingual. In this case it is the most active word that is output, irrespective of language’. Roelofs (1998: 95) is equally critical of the basic idea of Green’s IC because ‘competition effects at the behavioural level do not necessarily point to an underlying inhibition mechanism’. He argues furthermore that: Inhibition does not seem to be the appropriate underlying mechanism for separating languages in monolingual conversation and integrating languages in bilingual conversation. Like monolingual production, bilingual conversation can be fluent. (Roelofs, 1998: 94) Roelofs proposes an extension of his monolingual theory of lexical access WEAVER++, proposed by Levelt et al. (1999). His bilingual model is based on the idea of conceptually driven access, with parallel planning of lemmas in mixed-language sentences and selection achieved not by inhibition but by a parallel system of production rules (i.e. condition–action pairs) that make reference to the target language. For example: ‘, where HOUSE(X) is the message concept, French the target language, and ‘maison’ the corresponding lemma’ (Roelofs, 1998: 95). These rules marked for language would not only allow the speaker to separate the languages in monolingual conversations but would also allow rapid code-switching. Lemmas in the appropriate language are selected ‘while keeping the lemmas of both languages active, which allows for parallel retrieval’

74 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:12

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

74

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

according to Roelofs (1998: 95), who advances a competition-sensitive response time mechanism to explain production costs in tasks that require filtering: ‘a selection ratio is proposed that weighs the activation of the target-lemma against the activation of all other lemmas in the lexicon’. With these sometimes contradictory concepts and observations in mind, we devised an experiment in order to answer the following research questions: (1) To what extent can a shift in the formality of a situation influence language mode (all other factors being kept constant)? (2) How much interindividual variation on the language mode continuum and on a range of linguistic variables (reflecting fluency, speech style, sociolinguistic competence, lexical richness, morpholexical accuracy and certain error types) can be linked to factors like the amount of formal instruction in the target-language (L2 versus L3) and regular functional use of the target language (TL)? (3) Which model is best able to account for the code-switching and transfer phenomena in our data?

Methodology Participants Twenty-five university students, 7 female and 18 male, aged between 18 and 21, participated in the experiment. Both the subjects and the researcher were trilinguals (Dutch–French–English) although the subjects’ French was weaker. Their French could be described as an ‘pre-advanced to advanced interlanguage’ (Bartning, 1997). Teacher and students communicated usually in French but the students knew that the teacher had native competence in Dutch. The subjects were given a sociobiographical questionnaire that included questions about the type and frequency of contact with the target language (TL). This revealed that 19 subjects had chosen French as L2 and English as L3 at secondary school, while the remaining six had chosen English as L2 and French as L3. The L2 was taught for five hours a week over six years in the secondary schools, instruction in the L3 was more limited with three hours a week over four years. All participants had been following intensive French courses (150 hours) for five months with the researcher as their teacher. Sixteen subjects declared that they had a regular functional use of French, nine subjects declared not to use French regularly outside the classroom. The overlap between both groups (L2/L3 and frequency of use of the TL) was quite balanced. Three French L3 speakers and 12 French L2 speakers had a regular functional use of French.

75 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:12

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

75

Recordings The researcher and the subjects were recorded sitting face to face in a classroom in both an informal and a formal situation. The informal situation involved one-to-one conversations between the researcher and subjects in a relaxed atmosphere. They were told that the purpose of the conversation was merely to have a relaxed informal chat about their studies, hobbies, politics, etc. Efforts were made to make the interviewees feel at ease, and to this end it was stressed that the content more than the form of their speech was important. Errors were not corrected, and a coherent and spontaneous discussion was thus maintained. There was no time-restriction. In all, 14 hours of speech (33,144 words) were recorded. The formal situation consisted of an oral exam of about ten minutes aimed at evaluating the learners’ proficiency in the TL. Topics were politics, economics and the subjects’ performance in other exams. These topics in themselves could have reinforced the more formal atmosphere. It was also stressed that the evaluation of the test would depend not only on the content of their speech, but also on its form. In all five hours of speech (17,012 words) were recorded. The recordings were transcribed by the researcher into orthographical French. These transcriptions were then coded at the word level according to their grammatical nature and possible lexical or morphological errors. Linguistic Variables Mixed utterances

The quantity of mixed utterances gives an indication of the position of the speaker on the language mode continuum. The absence of mixed speech points to a monolingual speech mode, where the other languages in the speaker’s mind are deactivated, while mixed utterances (codeswitches and borrowings) would suggest that the other languages are only slightly less active than the base language and that the speaker is therefore closer to the bilingual/multilingual end of the language mode continuum. A code-switch was defined as ‘a complete shift to the other language for a word, a phrase or a sentence whereas a borrowing is a morpheme, word or short expression taken from the less activated language and adapted morphosyntactically ( ... ) to the base language’ (Grosjean, 2001: 5). The code-switches are often editing remarks in Dutch:

76 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:12

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

76

Frank Informal 29091: Oui mais biologie appliquée à le développement de ja, des humains. ‘Yes but biology applied to the development of (Dutch), the humans.’ or meta-frame remarks (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998): Frank Informal 3042: Euh il a euh amai mijn woordenschat zeg ! ‘Er he has er (Dutch) !’ or insertion of English or Dutch word(s) in the French utterance (not adapted morpho-phonologically): Danny Informal 2128: Oui une rédaction oui qu’on devait faire et j’avais sur content sur euh ça c’était dedans, qui était dedans, je euh sur dix sept ou huit. ‘Yes an essay yes that we had to make and I had for (English) out of er that was in it, what was in it, I er out of ten seven or eight.’ Katja Informal 3227: Il n’est pas gentil et ça dure déjà twee, deux ans qu’il n’est pas gentil ‘He is not friendly and he has been like that for (Dutch) two years that he is not friendly.’ Anton Informal 797: Je voudrais donner un peu aux Derde wereld landen? ‘I would like to give some to (Dutch).’ Speech rates

The speech rate (measured in words per minute) gives us a global idea of the efficiency of the speech production process (Levelt, 1989). Higher speech rates suggest a higher degree of automaticity in the speech production, lower speech rates on the other hand can be an indication of more

77 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:12

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

77

controlled processing, requiring speakers to pay attention to the processing while it is happening (Towell et al., 1996; Dewaele, 1998a). Hesitation phenomena

Hesitations, often followed by editing expressions or filled pauses such as ‘er’, are generally interpreted as evidence of cognitive activity. The ‘er’ may serve to signal to the addressee that there is trouble and that the source of the trouble is still actual (Levelt, 1989: 484). These editing expressions are especially common in L2 production after or before lexical gaps (Dewaele, 1996a). They can, however, also be a sign that the incremental processing is breaking down (Levelt, 1989). The filled pauses are presented as a proportion of the total number of word-tokens. Length of utterance

Mean length of utterance can provide an interesting insight into the learners’ capacity to build complex structures in their interlanguage, and is often considered as another measure of fluency (Dewaele, 1995b: 2000). It also reflects the development of the IL (Towell et al., 1996: 112). We used a formula based on the mean length of the 3 longest utterances in a speech extract (MLU3). Omission of the ‘ne’ in the negation

The omission rate of the ‘ne’ in the negation is generally high in the oral speech of native speakers in informal situations, who omit much less in formal situations and do not omit at all in written texts (Gadet, 1989). Non-native speakers omit the ‘ne’ much less because of a lack of authentic oral communication in the TL and an abundance of formal input in the classroom (Dewaele, 1992; Dewaele & Regan, in press). The choice of speech-style

In Dewaele (1995a) it was explained that the perception that speakers have of the formality of the situation leads them to make different pragmatic choices. The choice of speech style will depend on the need of the speaker to be unambiguously understood, and is decided in the conceptualiser (Levelt, 1989). This decision is reflected in the proportion of ‘deictical’ word classes in the speech extracts, and was measured as follows: for each of two situations (informal and formal), a separate factor analysis was performed on the proportion at token-level of nouns, determiners, prepositions, verbs, pronouns, adverbs and conjunctions in the French interlanguage of the participants. Each time, two main orthogonal factors appeared. The first dimension, which explains over 50% of the variance, was called ‘implicitness/explicitness’. The nouns, modifiers and prepositions obtained strong negative loadings on this factor, as opposed

78 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:12

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

78

to the pronouns, adverbs, and verbs, which obtained high positive loadings. The nouns, modifiers and prepositions are thus situated near the explicit end of this dimension, in contrast to the pronouns, adverbs, and verbs on the implicit end on the continuum. Lexical richness

Dewaele (1993b) found significant negative correlations between lexical richness scores and measures of fluency in the formal situation. When more cognitive resources are diverted to lexical searching, the speech production slows down. Lexical richness scores were calculated considering the number of types and tokens in the following formula: log 2 Tokens log Tokens − log Types Morpholexical accuracy rates

In Dewaele (1993a, 1994) morpholexical accuracy rates for all word classes were calculated using the following formula:

( Total of word tokens − (incorrect + omitted + oversupplied words)) × 100 Total number of word tokens Among the morphological errors, six classes were distinguished: violation of gender and number, and, for verbs, violation of tense and aspect, of mode and of person. Taken into account at the lexical level were: lexical inventions (see next paragraph), words that were superficially right but that did not fit in the context (semantic errors), the absence of a word in an obligatory context, and finally the supplying of a word where it was not required. Our corpus contains 3,400 morpholexical errors. Lexical inventions

Lexical inventions were defined in Dewaele (1998b: 471) as ‘lexemes ( ... ) which are morpho-phonologically adapted to the TL but which are never used by native speakers’. These lexical inventions were found to be either of intralingual origin, interlingual origin, or a combination of both. The value reflects the relative proportion of lexical inventions among the different types of morpholexical errors (see previous paragraph). The phenomenon of lexical inventions has recently come to the attention of several researchers in the field of trilingualism (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; De Angelis & Selinker, this volume; Ecke, this volume; Ringbom 1987, this volume). Our decision to select these variables is based on the fact that they encompass the working of the whole model of speech production as

79 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:13

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

79

described by Levelt (1989) and its recent adaptations for second language production (Pienemann, 1998). The nature of these variables is very different but they were shown to be highly interrelated (Dewaele, 1996b).

Analysis Variation on the language mode continuum A t-test reveals that there is a significant difference (t(24) = 3.773, p < 0.001) between the proportion of mixed utterances in the informal situation (mean = 9%, SD = 8.8) and the formal situation (mean = 3%, SD = 3.9). These results are visualised in Figure 5.1, and they suggest that the subjects were closer to the multilingual end of the language mode continuum in the informal situation. The formality of the oral exam situation clearly affected frequency of code-switching. The fact that the researcher had underlined the fact that he would pay attention to the form of their speech might have convinced the subjects that intrusions of native language might be penalised. They consequently moved towards the monolingual end of the language mode continuum, trying to stick as much as possible to French as base language. There is also a strong correlation between the proportion of mixed utterances in both situations (r(24) = 0.45, p < 0.023), suggesting that those who switched more in the informal situation were the same ones who switched more in the formal situation (albeit less frequently overall). 20 18 % mixed utterances

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 % mixed utterances informal

% mixed utterances formal

Figure 5.1 Mean proportion (with SD) of mixed utterances in the informal and in the formal situation

80 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:13

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

80

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Table 5.1 T-tests: the effect of French as a L2 (n = 19) versus French as a L3 (n = 6) on linguistic variables in an informal and a formal situation t

p

Mean L2

Mean L3

SD L2

SD L3

Mixed utterances INF

-2.130

0.044

7.0%

15.2%

7.7

9.8

Mixed utterances FOR

-1.704

0.101

2.2%

5.2%

2.6

6.4

Speech rate INF

1.581

0.128

121.4

99.2

33.2

13.8

Speech rate FOR

1.195

0.244

108.5

93.2

30.5

10.7

Filled pauses INF

-1.994

0.058

1.9%

3.5%

1.8

1.7

Filled pauses FOR

-1.660

0.111

3.7%

6.1%

3.0

3.1

MLU3 INF

-0.707

0.487

28.7

31.3

8.1

6.5

MLU3 FOR

2.671

0.014

29.6

22.9

5.3

5.3

Omission of ‘ne’ INF

-1.740

0.095

12.6% 12.1%

9.0

18.1

Omission of ‘ne’ FOR

-1.021

0.318

10.7% 17.1%

11.5

18.4

Implicit speech-styles INF

1.715

0.100

0.2

-0.6

1.1

0.8

Implicit speech-styles FOR

0.946

0.354

0.1

0.3

1.1

1.1

Variable

Lexical richness INF

1.377

0.182

19.8

18.0

3.1

1.6

Lexical richness FOR

-0.992

0.331

18.3

19.3

2.1

1.9

Morpholexical accuracy INF

3.621

0.001

94.2% 90.0%

2.7

1.5

Morpholexical accuracy FOR

2.533

0.019

92.3% 88.4%

3.4

3.0

Lexical Inventions INF

0.001

0.960

8.2 %

4.1

5.0

8.2 %

Interindividual variation A number of t-tests (Table 5.1) revealed that French L3 speakers make significantly more morpholexical errors than French L2 speakers in both situations. In the formal situation, the L3 speakers make shorter utterances and produce more lexical errors. In the informal situation, the L3 speakers produce more mixed utterances. A number of t-tests (Table 5.2) reveal that those who communicate more frequently in the target language have higher speech rates in both situations, produce less filled pauses in both situations, are closer to the native sociolinguistic norm (omission of the ‘ne’ in the negation and the choice of more implicit speech styles) in both situations, their lexical richness is lower, but their utterances are longer in the formal situation, they commit

81 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:13

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

81

Table 5.2 T-tests: the effect of little (n = 9) versus regular functional use (n = 16) of French on linguistic variables in an informal and a formal situation Mean

Mean

SD

SD

little

regular

little

regular

0.0002

16.7%

4.3%

7.6

6.0

0.119

0.901

3.0%

2.9%

3.8

4.1

Speech rate INF

-3.032

0.005

94.4

128.2

13.0

31.7

Speech rate FOR

-2.355

0.027

88.8

113.8

15.7

29.2

Filled pauses INF

2.821

0.009

3.5%

1.6%

2.3

1.0

Filled pauses FOR

3.145

0.004

6.5%

3.0%

3.0

2.5

MLU3 INF

0.050

0.960

29.2

29.4

5.8

8.8

MLU3 FOR

-0.196

0.060

25.0

29.6

4.4

6.1

Omission of ‘ne’ INF

-1.896

0.070

9.1%

18.4%

3.0

14

Omission of ‘ne’ FOR

-2.020

0.055

5.5%

16.0

8.1

14.3

Implicit speech-styles INF

-2.256

0.033

-0.545

0.366

0.8

1.0

Implicit speech-styles FOR

-2.244

0.034

-.570

0.344

0.6

1.1

Lexical richness INF

-0.931

0.361

18.6

19.7

2.5

3.0

Lexical richness FOR

2.092

0.047

19.6

17.9

2.3

1.6

Morpholexical accuracy INF

-3.716

0.001

90.7%

94.5%

1.8

2.7

Morpholexical accuracy FOR

-2.973

0.006

88.8%

92.7%

3.2

3.1

Lexical Inventions INF

-0.380

0.681

8.1%

8.3%

6.0

3.0

Lexical Inventions FOR

-0.301

0.750

8.8%

9.6%

5.8

6.1

t

p

Mixed utterances INF

4.410

Mixed utterances FOR

Variable

fewer morpholexical errors in both situations, and produce fewer mixed utterances in the informal situation. A fitting model? Contrary to what was expected on the basis of Green’s (1998) model of inhibitory control, speech production in the informal situation with speakers nearer the bilingual end of the language mode continuum turned out to be more fluent (speech rates) than speech production in the formal situation with the same speakers nearer the monolingual end of the continuum (t(24) = -4.183, p < 0.0001). In other words, more frequent code-switching to the stronger language(s) does not hamper overall fluency. This confirms earlier findings by Grosjean (1997).

82 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:14

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

82

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

A Pearson correlation analysis revealed however a different pattern of within group variation: the speakers in the informal situation who produced more mixed utterances tended also to speak more slowly (r(24) = -0.596, p < 0.002); this relation becomes non-significant in the formal situation (r(24) = -0.219, ns). The correlation probably does not reflect a cause–effect relationship. The production of more mixed utterances could be the sign of weaker competence or performance in the base language (Grosjean, 2001: 18). These weaker speakers may have a less automatised speech production (Dijkstra, 1998; Towell et al., 1996) combined with less cognitive control over the relative contribution of the two other languages, hence their inability to attain a monolingual mode in the informal situation. However, slower speech rates could be an indication of more complex processing (i.e. more languages simultaneously activated, Mägiste, 1984). All the speakers seem, however, capable of mobilising more cognitive control and hence move closer to the monolingual end of the continuum in the formal situation. So why do they not all do the same in the informal situation? Is it because the level of activation of the base language is lower than in the formal situation? Is it because they are unable to deactivate the two other languages, as Grosjean suggests? This is somewhat surprising, because one would assume that turning the power off for the two other languages would save energy and thus be ideal for weaker speakers. Another possible interpretation is that speakers do not merely deactivate but rather actively inhibit the lemmas of the two other languages, and that this is costly in terms of cognitive resources. Weaker speakers could therefore decide that the price for constant inhibition of lemmas with the wrong language tag is too high in the informal situation but acceptable in the formal situation. The lower fluency and accuracy in the formal situation (see also Dewaele, 1994, 1996b, 1998a) could reflect the heavy cost of inhibition, although other variables like general stress and anxiety (Dewaele & Furnham, 2000) resulting in more monitoring, might also affect the performance of the speakers. A further point is that even when speakers adopt a more monolingual mode, with French as base language, in the formal situation, some are better able than others to block the output of lexical inventions resulting from transfer from the less activated languages. Is it because they are better able to turn the tap off at the source (i.e. to deactivate or inhibit the stronger languages) or because they monitor their production process in the target-language more closely?

83 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:14

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

83

When L2 speakers create lexical inventions, they rely, probably unconsciously, more on base (target) language-related strategies than do the L3 speakers. When transfer does occur, the L2 speakers use their L1 more than the L3 speakers who rely more on their English IL. This shows that even advanced speakers can never completely deactivate or inhibit the other languages. They might be able to avoid ‘open’ breaches (i.e. by codeswitching) but they cannot prevent diacritical information from other languages being used whenever a problem occurs in the production of the base (inter)language.

Discussion How can these findings be interpreted in the light of the various models presented earlier? Grosjean’s ‘language mode’ turns out to be a very valuable concept. The proportion of mixed utterances in the subjects’ discourse was used to determine their position on the language mode continuum. The formality of the situation clearly affects the choice of the language mode: a general shift towards the monolingual end of the continuum was observed in a formal situation in which the subjects’ French interlanguage was tested. There may however be an issue in terms of process versus product distinction. If the use of L1 or L2 in the TL in the formal situation is the result of more conscious monitoring, it could be argued that monitoring is a conscious process while parallel planning and activation is an unconscious one. The speaker could still proceed with parallel planning and thus be close to the multilingual end of the continuum even if s/he produced few mixed utterances. Two factors, the status of the IL (L2 or L3) and the frequency of use of the IL outside the classroom, were found to have a similar effect on the position on the language mode continuum and on a range of linguistic variables. The results show, however, that whether the IL is an L2 or an L3 seems to have less effect, and on fewer linguistic variables, than regular use of the TL in authentic communication outside the classroom. The combination of the factors ‘L3’ and ‘irregular use of the TL’ is linked to more frequent code-switching in the informal situation. This could be interpreted as evidence that they have more difficulty reaching the monolingual end of the language mode continuum. Alternatively one could argue that these speakers knew that their interlocutor was trilingual and therefore did not feel the need to exert themselves too much. Their code-switching patterns might have been very different when speaking with a strictly monolingual French speaker. The two groups use different strategies, however, when they move

84 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:14

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

84

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

closer to the monolingual end of the language mode continuum in the formal situation. Those who use French less frequently outside the classroom do not create more lexical inventions, which suggests that they are better able to keep dynamic morpholexical interferences at bay. The L3 speakers, however, more readily invent words that do not exist in French but which are morpho-phonologically adapted to the TL (lexical inventions). In terms of Grosjean’s language mode continuum one could say that all our learners are able to occupy the intermediate pole, some even the monolingual pole of the continuum, if it is felt that the situation (such as an oral exam) requires it. The base language is always French, but the degree of activation (or deactivation/inhibition) of the native Dutch or the English IL lemmas varies according to the speaker’s judgement of his/her capacity to translate his/her communicative intentions in the base language. The picture is slightly different for the less proficient French L3 speakers, who are less likely to function in pure monolingual mode when their L3 is the base language. It was suggested that if the speaker feels that s/he will not be penalised for code-switching to his L1 or English IL (known to the interlocutor), s/he will do so whenever the need arises. The speaker will then be closer to the bi/multilingual pole of the continuum. The motive for preferring this position on the language mode continuum could be the smaller quantity of cognitive resources needed to control the output. Switching could be interpreted as the ‘lazy’ option: ‘(it) can be characterised as a convenient shortcut strategy, since a switch requires little processing effort and defines the intended notion very explicitly in terms of a familiar background language’ (Hammarberg, 1998: 182). In terms of the IC model, one could argue that the formal situation establishes a schema to speak in L2/L3, which involves not speaking other languages. Being slower in such circumstances is perfectly compatible with the need to suppress competitors in the more dominant language. The IC model could also explain the code-switching in the informal situation: task schema can allow both languages to control production of the language with available lexical concepts controlling the output at some point in the utterance. Green (personal communication) argues that language production does not invariably involve intense competition between languages, and that the whole idea of multiple levels of control is that the system can be flexibly configured. Code-switching can therefore lead to fluent speech. The IC model does, however, predict that where L2 is to be produced then there can be an L1 competitor that is subject to inhibition. Our data could be interpreted as supporting both the inhibition control model and the activation models. Roelofs’ concept of production rules

85 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:14

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

85

could prove most useful in combination with the language mode of the speaker. We imagine a set of production rules set up in a hierarchy. If the production rule at the top produces no satisfactory result, the speaker will opt for an alternative one lower in the hierarchy and repeat this if necessary. Imagine the following example, with the speaker in multilingual mode:

or:

With the speaker nearer the monolingual end of the language mode continuum, the following set of production rules could apply:



The difference between the multilingual and monolingual modes is thus the explicit interdiction in the latter case to select a lemma with the wrong language-tag. Alternatively one could argue that there is stronger inhibitory suppression of non-target language lemmas near the monolingual end of the continuum than nearer the multilingual end. It remains unclear whether the use of diacritical information from a non-base language is a conscious choice near the monolingual mode. The use of one or two

86 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:15

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

86

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

morphemes from a non-base language could be adapted phonologically to the base language and hence be output undetected by the monitor (at least in the internal speech). Clearly, the latitude for making a guess using base language rules creatively is much greater nearer to the monolingual mode. Not only would there be the specification in the production rules that only the base language lemmas should be used, but it is probable that the monitor would be used to enforcing this specification. It would thus be much more attentive to language tags, blocking lexemes created from the non-TL lemmas. This system can function with an inhibition mechanism. Production rules specify which lemmas with which language tags need to be activated and, according to the situation and thus the language mode, the lemmas with the highest levels of activation will be selected. Parallel planning allows ultra-fast language switches, although more advanced speakers will avoid this, because of their greater cognitive control and because of their more automatised speech production process. If a speaker is able to translate all his/her communicative intentions in the base language, he or she will do so. As the conversations in our corpus took place between language learners and their teacher, it could be expected to have been interpreted as another language exercise, hence the avoidance of code-switching for linguistic or social reasons. Indeed most code-switches were related to lexical gaps in the learners’ knowledge. A last point concerns the assumption that what is produced reflects the position on the language mode continuum. Green (personal communication) argues that no direct inference can be drawn. Indeed, in a formal situation one could be avoiding speaking the L1, but that L1 could nonetheless be active and responsible for slower speech rates and occasional intrusions. The L1 would be equally active in an informal situation, but more intrusions would be allowed.

Conclusion The interaction between three languages on the language mode continuum was investigated , in an informal and a formal interview situation, using a corpus of French interlanguage produced by 25 adult participants, who had Dutch as an L1 and English as an L2 or L3. The formality of the situation turned out to be a crucial factor in determining the position of the speaker on the language mode continuum. Code-switches were less numerous in the formal situation, suggesting a general move towards the monolingual end of the continuum. Interindividual and intra-individual variations were found to be quite considerable, not only for code-switches, but for a range of variables reflecting fluency, accuracy, complexity and

87 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:15

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

87

sociolinguistic competence. The factor ‘frequency of communication in French’ was found to have a more profound impact on the interlanguage than the status of the IL (L2 versus L3, i.e. the amount and the length of formal instruction in French). Only the latter factor, however, affected the frequency of lexical inventions in the formal situation and their origin. We discovered in an earlier study (Dewaele, 1998b) that the lexical inventions of the French L3 speakers showed more interlingual influence than those of the French L2 speakers, and that, as far as interlingual influence was concerned, French L3 speakers relied more on their English L2 while the French L2 speakers relied more on their L1. While no conclusive evidence could be found to support either proactive models where lemma selection operates by activation/deactivation or reactive models where lemma selection proceeds by inhibition of potential competitors, it was felt nonetheless that proactive models presented the most attractive option. We proposed a combination of Roelofs’ extension of the WEAVER++ model (1998) and Grosjean’s model of language mode (1997, 1998, 2001). It was suggested that the hierarchy of production rules varies according to the language mode of the speaker. We accepted, however, that inhibitory suppression of competing lemmas (Green, 1998) could also take place in the selection process (see also Costa & Caramazza, 1999). Inter- and intra-individual variation could be explained in terms of availability of the resources needed for a strict application of production rules and of monitoring of the output.

Acknowledgement We would like to thank Gessica De Angelis, David Green, François Grosjean, Willem Levelt and Ardi Roelofs for their excellent comments on an earlier version of the present paper. Note 1. Every utterance is preceded by the (fictional) name of the speaker, the type of interview (Informal or Formal) and the number of the utterance in the corpus.

References Bartning, I. (1997) L’apprenant dit avancé et son acquisition d’une langue étrangère. Tour d’horizon et esquisse d’une caractérisation de la variété avancée. AILE 9, 9–50. Costa, A. and Caramazza, A. (1999) Is lexical selection in bilingual speech production language specific? Further evidence from Spanish–English and English–Spanish bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2, 231–44. De Groot, A.M.D. (1998) Retroactive or proactive control of the bilingual system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 86–7.

88 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:15

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

88

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Dewaele, J-M. (1992) L’omission du ‘ne’ dans deux styles d’interlangue française. Interface. Journal of Applied Linguistics 7, 3–17. Dewaele, J-M. (1993a) Variation in the morphosyntactic and lexical systems of French-based interlanguages. In B. Ketteman and W. Wieden (eds) Current Issues in European Second Language Acquisition Research (pp. 130–40). Tübingen: Narr. Dewaele, J-M. (1993b) Extraversion et richesse lexicale dans deux styles d’interlangue française. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 100, 87–105. Dewaele, J-M. (1994) Variation synchronique des taux d’exactitude. Analyse de fréquence des erreurs morpholexicales dans trois styles d’interlangue française. International Review of Applied Linguistics 33, 275–300. Dewaele, J-M. (1995a) Style-shifting in oral interlanguage: Quantification and definition. In L. Eubank, L. Selinker and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) The Current State of Interlanguage (pp. 231–38). Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dewaele, J-M. (1995b) Variation dans la longueur moyenne d’énoncés dans l’interlangue française. In L. Beheydt (ed.) Linguistique appliquée dans les années 90. (Special issue). ABLA Papers 16, 43–58. Dewaele, J-M. (1996a) Les phénomènes d’hésitation dans l’interlangue française: analyse de la variation interstylistique et interindividuelle. Rassegna Italiana da Linguistica Applicata 28, 87–103. Dewaele, J-M. (1996b) Effet de l’intensité de l’instruction formelle sur l’interlangue orale française de locuteurs néerlandophones. In F. Myles and D. Engel (eds) Teaching Grammar: Perspectives in Higher Education (pp. 122–34). London: Association for French Language Studies / Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research. Dewaele, J-M. (1998a) Speech rate variation in 2 oral styles of advanced French interlanguage. In V. Regan (ed.) Contemporary Approaches to Second Language Acquisition in Social Context: Crosslinguistic Perspectives (pp. 113–23). Dublin: University College Academic Press. Dewaele, J-M. (1998b) Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3, Applied Linguistics 19, 471–90. Dewaele, J-M. (2000) Saisir l’insaisissable? Les mesures de longueur d’énoncés en linguistique appliquée. International Review of Applied Linguistics 38, 31–47. Dewaele, J-M. and Furnham, A. (2000) Personality and speech production: A pilot study of second language learners. Personality and Individual Differences 28, 355– 65. Dewaele, J-M. and Regan, V. (in press) Le rôle vital de la communication authentique dans l’acquisition de la norme sociolinguistique. University of London. Dijkstra, T. (1998) From tag to task: Coming to grips with bilingual control issues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 88–9. Gadet, F. (1989) Le Français Ordinaire. Paris: Armand Colin. Green, D.W (1986) Control, activation and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language 27, 210–23. Green, D.W. (1998) Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 67–81. Grosjean, F. (1988) Exploring the recognition of guest words in bilingual speech. Language and Cognitive Processes 3, 233–74.

89 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:15

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Interaction of L1, L2 and L3 on the Language Mode Continuum

89

Grosjean, F. (1997) Processing mixed languages: Issues, findings, and models. In A.M.B. De Groot and J.F. Kroll (eds) Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspectives (pp. 225–54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Grosjean, F. (1998) Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptual issues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 131–49. Grosjean, F. (2001) The bilingual’s language modes. In J.L. Nicol (ed.) Language Processing in the Bilingual (pp. 1–25). Oxford: Blackwell. Hammarberg, B. (1998) The learner’s word acquisition attempts in conversation. In D. Albrechtsen, B. Henriksen, I.M. Mees and E. Poulsen (eds) Perspectives on Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy. Essays Presented to Kirsten Haastrup on the Occasion of the Sixtieth Birthday (pp. 177–90). Odense: Odense University Press. Hoffmann, C. (1999) The Status of Trilingualism in Bilingualism Studies. Plenary presented at the International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Trilingualism, Innsbruck. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989) Speaking. From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Levelt, W.J.M., Roelofs, A. and Meyer, A.S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Brain and Behavorial Sciences 22, 1–75. Mägiste, E. (1984) Learning a third language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 5, 415–21. Pienemann, M. (1998) Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Poulisse, N. and Bongaerts, T. (1994) First language use in second language production. Applied Linguistics 15, 36–57. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Roelofs, A. (1998) Lemma selection without inhibition of language in bilingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 94–5. Treffers-Daller, J. (1997) Variability in code-switching styles: Turkish–German code-switching patterns. In R. Jacobson (ed.) Code-Switching Worldwide (pp. 177– 97). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Towell, R., Hawkins, R. and Bazergui, N. (1996) The development of fluency in advanced learners of French. Applied Linguistics 17, 84–119. Voorwinde, S. (1981) A lexical and grammatical study in Dutch–English–German trilingualism. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 52, 3–30. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333.

90 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:15

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 6

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language: Evidence from Errors and Tip-of-the-Tongue States PETER ECKE

Introduction Investigations into the mental lexicon have received renewed attention over the last decade (Singleton, 1999). Research has gone beyond studying the acquisition and processing of monolingual L1 lexicons, acknowledging that bi-and multilingualism is the norm in language learning and use in many parts of the world, and consequently that models of lexical representation and processing have to account for the manifestations of multilingual speech behaviour, such as code-switching, cross-language influence / transfer, lexical errors and lexical loss (De Bot, 1992; Hall, 1996; Laufer, 1991; Myers Scotten, 1995; Schreuder & Weltens, 1993). The present study is concerned with the acquisition and processing of L3 words, their organisation and relation to other words (of L1, L2, and L3) in the mental lexicon. In particular, the study attempts: (1) To discover principles of the integration, organisation and processing of L3 words in the mental lexicon at form, syntactic-frame, and meaning levels of representation. (2) To examine the amount of, sources and conditions for cross-lexical influence in L3 lexical production. A word translation task served to elicit L3 word productions. Of particular interest for analysis were the failures of lexical retrieval, including incomplete and incorrect word recall. Fragmentary target word knowledge, associations, and non-target recall responses were analysed with respect to their similarity to the target word and their source language. It was expected that associates and partially recalled attributes, found to be similar to the target, would point to parameters potentially relevant to lexical organisation, storage and retrieval. The attributes most frequently

90 91 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:16

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

91

shared by fragmentary information, associates and their corresponding target words were taken as indicative of salient attributes/parameters that govern lexical retrieval. Salient attributes in lexical retrieval Both lexical errors and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon have been studied by psycholinguists to investigate the structure and functioning of the (L1) mental lexicon (e.g. Brown & McNeill, 1966; Burke et al., 1991; Fromkin, 1973; Garrett, 1975). Analysing these failures of lexical production may reveal what went wrong in lexical production, including information about the underlying mechanisms of the process itself (Garrett, 1993). A lexical error will be narrowly defined within the context of this study as a substitution of an intended target word by a different word (intrusion). Errors can be the result of competence (representation) or performance (processing) problems (Ecke & Hall, 2000; James, 1998). They can intrude in target language production from L1, L2 and L3. Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states are temporary word retrieval failures in which the subjects are certain that they know the target word and frequently have partial access to attributes of it. See Brown (1991) for a comprehensive review. Example (1) illustrates a subject’s record of a TOT state prompted by the word translation task of the present study. (1) TOT state, prime: ‘ventana’ (window) FOK*: 5 (subject was certain s/he knew the target.) F’ __ __ (# of syllables indicated by __, stress position by ‘) Fernsehe(r) (TV set) (window) Fenster * FOK = feeling of knowing

The subject of example (1) did not manage to recall the target word immediately, but indicated on a five-point scale of ‘feeling of knowing’ (FOK) that she was certain she knew the target, i.e. it was on the ‘tip of her tongue’. She recalled the initial letter ‘F’, correctly predicted the number of syllables, and indicated the main stress position on the initial syllable. She then recalled the form-related associate ‘Fernseher’ (TV set), and finally retrieved the correct target word ‘Fenster’ (window). Based on data from TOT states and word-substitution errors, the main stress position, the number of syllables, and the initial segment of the word were suggested salient attributes of L1 lexical form (Fay & Cutler, 1977; Garrett, 1993, 1984; Levelt, 1989). The processing of (new) L2 words (especially in beginning learners) is generally perceived to be more form-

92 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:16

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

92

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

focused compared to the processing of well-represented, stable lexis (e.g. Ecke, 1998; Meara, 1982; Singleton, 1999; Söderman, 1993). Some studies (Gupton 1999; Laufer, 1991) suggest that the parameters most relevant for the processing of L2 word form are similar overall to those of L1 lexis, although the number of syllables may not be among the salient attributes (Ecke & Garrett, 1998; Laufer, 1991). Other studies show less clear patterns of salient attributes. They claim that L2 word processing seems to rely on a wider range of attributes, in particular, on those that display similarity to other, already well-represented items (Ecke, 1998). In general, the left part of new L2 words seems to be better recalled and more salient than the right part (Campaña & Ecke, 1998). However, whether these findings reflect patterns of long-term lexical organisation is still unclear. It may well be that the memorisation and recall of new (unstable) lexis is constrained by short-term (phonological) memory restrictions. See Baddeley et al. (1998), Ellis (1997), and Ellis and Beaton (1993) for a discussion. While it might be expected that L3 words would be processed similarly to L2 words or any other new to-be-learned words, few empirical studies have investigated the principles that govern their processing and storage. Cross-lexical influence Cross-language influence (transfer) of L1 structures is an important factor in L2 learning and use (e.g. Faerch & Kasper, 1983; Gass & Selinker, 1993; Poulisse & Bongaerts, 1994; Ringbom, 1987; Singleton, 1987). Cross-lexical influence refers to the influence of information from one lexical entry onto another. The phenomenon was characterised as the result of a ‘parasitic learning strategy’ (Hall, 1996; Ecke & Hall, 2000) that relies on the recognition and use of similarity between new and already-represented information (Dahan & Brent, 1999; Matz et al., 1988; Zipf, 1949) – a general cognitive disposition for learning. Other authors claim that transfer is (in part) responsible for fossilisation (Jiang, 2000; Selinker & Lakshmanan, 1993). Research has pointed not only to L1 influence, but also to L2 influence in multilingual speakers (e.g. Hufeisen, 1993; Shanon, 1991; Sikogukira, 1993; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). A recent study on lexical errors (Ecke & Hall, 2000) with Spanish-speaking new learners of German (L3) and English (L2) suggested a strong L2 influence on L3 written productions compared with a relatively weak influence from L1 and from within L3. Of all error types, 27.4 % stemmed from the L1, 18.3% came from within the L3, and a high 69.1% intruded from the L2. Examples (2)–(5) from the Ecke/ Hall corpus illustrate the error types (underlined) of the most frequently occurring category, cross-lexical influence from the L2.

93 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:16

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

93

(2) L2 influence at the meaning level 8 Uhr habe ich dinner. (At 8:00 I have dinner.) Target: Abendessen (3) L2 influence at the syntactic frame level Ich kann warten nicht für mein Reise. (I cannot wait for my trip.) Target: warten auf (4) L2 influence at the form level Und du? Was machst du? Choose Kate! (And you? What are you doing? Bye Kate!) Target: Tschüß (5) L2 influence at the form / meaning level Aber ich habe kleine stress mit zwei classes. (But I have little stress with two classes.) Target: Klassen Similar findings of substantial L2 influence on L3 production were reported by Hufeisen (1993) and Williams and Hammarberg (1998). One question explored in the present study was whether extensive word search in temporary word finding problems would reflect a similarly high degree of L2 influence as found in error production data. Thus, the source language(s) of cross-lexical influence in word associates and non-target word recall responses of the present study were compared to the results from Ecke and Hall’s error study with L3 learners who shared the subject characteristics described in the methods section below. Research questions The research questions of this study are stated as follows: (a) What are the salient attributes in the search and retrieval of L3 lexis at form, syntactic frame, and meaning levels of representation? (b) Is cross-lexical influence in L3 word production exercised strongest from L1, from L2 or from within L3? (c) Do lexical errors and tip-of-the-tongue states demonstrate similar patterns of lexical organisation and cross-lexical influence?

94 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:16

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

94

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Method Design A translation task was developed and used to elicit (written) word production and extensive word search where immediate L3 target retrieval failed. Previously, translation was shown to be an effective technique to elicit temporary word finding problems in bilinguals (Ecke, 1996). Fragmentary information about the target word, word associates in TOT states, and wrong target recall responses were analysed with respect to their similarity to the target word. The attributes most frequently recalled and similar to the target were reasoned to be parameters that potentially guide lexical storage and retrieval. Subjects Twenty-four new learners of German (L3) with Spanish (L1) and an intermediate-high proficiency level of English (L2) participated in the study. All subjects were undergraduate students enrolled in a firstsemester course of German at a Mexican university. It is university policy that students must prove an intermediate–high proficiency level of English (L2), either in a placement test or by successfully passing a third-level English course, before they are allowed to enrol in an L3 course. At the time of the study, the participants have had about 50 hours of L3 instruction in a communicatively oriented program. Materials (a) The following criteria served for target word selection. All 23 target words (including the two items for practice) were taught in class as part of the normal curriculum. They were judged by the teacher to be easily recognised by students, but likely to be produced with difficulty. Target words were non-cognates with the L1, content words (16 nouns, 4 verbs, 2 adjectives, and 1 adverb) and contained 2–4 syllables (Appendix 6.1). (b) The stimuli used for the translation/recall task were presented on slides. Every stimulus included the Spanish translation equivalent and a brief sentence context in L3 with the target word left blank. Examples are listed in Appendix 6.2. (d) Every subject received a booklet with written instructions for the experiment on the cover page (Appendix 6.3), and 23 semi-structured answer sheets for the recording of recall responses, fragmentary target word knowledge and word associations (Appendix 6.4).

95 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:16

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

95

Procedure Subjects (as a group) were presented 23 stimuli on transparencies for L3 word recall. The first two stimuli served as practice items, and were excluded from the analysis. The Spanish translation equivalent and sentence context were read once by the investigator. Subjects were given 90 seconds for word search and filling in the answer sheet. The researcher then asked the subjects to stop writing and to listen to and read the correct L3 target word presented on a transparency. Subjects were asked to mark ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the lower part of the answer sheet whether (a) they knew the target word and (b) they were searching for it. This information was needed in order to identify +TOT states (those instances of word search in which subjects were thinking of the actual target word – selected by the researcher), and to distinguish these from -TOT states in which the subjects were searching for another word. Recall response types The following recall responses were possible; all of them actually occurred in the elicitation task: (1) (2) (3) (4)

The subject recalled/translated the correct target word immediately. The subject immediately recalled an incorrect/incomplete target word. The subject did not know the target word. The subject was in a -TOT state and extensively searched for a non-target word. (5) The subject was in a +TOT state and extensively searched for the target word. The recall responses were coded according to the following criteria: Correct target recall: the subject recorded The correct target word. (Two wrongly spelled letters were tolerated, also letters corresponding to the correct phonological form of the target word.) Wrong target recall: An incorrect / different or incomplete target word was recorded. Unknown target: Subjects marked a feeling-of-knowing (FOK) score of 1, 2 or 3 on a five-point scale (from 1 = ‘I don’t know the word’ to 5 = ‘I am sure I know it"; the score of 3 was used only if no information was provided on the target.) -TOT State: Subjects marked an FOK score of 5, 4, or 3. (The last score was used only if fragmentary information or associates were recorded.) Subjects answered control question 2 with ‘no’ indicating that they were not thinking of the target word.

96 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:17

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

96

+TOT State: Subjects marked an FOK score of 5, 4, or 3. (The last score was used only if fragmentary information of the target and / or associates were recorded.) Subjects answered control questions 1 and 2 with ‘yes’. (They knew the target word and were thinking of it.) Analyses Fragmentary information of target word form was coded for every +TOT state. It included (part of) the initial segment, middle segment, final segment, the number of syllables, and the stressed syllable. Associates in TOT states and wrong target recall responses were analysed with respect to language (L1, L2, L3), general relation type (form, form/meaning, meaning, syntactic class), meaning relation type (superordinate, subordinate, category member, synonym, antonym, attributive, associative), form similarity (initial segment, middle segment, final segment, number of syllables, and stressed syllable). Examples for these categories will be provided below.

Results Recall response types The word translation task elicited 504 responses overall. The numbers and percentages of the different response types are illustrated in Table 6.1. In 30.9% of the recall attempts, subjects reported to have the word on the tip of the tongue. This is a very high rate of TOT state generation compared with other studies (Brown, 1991). Of all TOT states (n = 156), only the 97 cases of +TOT states were analysed, because only these cases allowed for a comparison of fragmentary information and associates with the target word. The 46 cases of wrong target recall responses also became part of the present analysis. Table 6.1 Number, percentages, and mean proportions of recall response types (n = 504) n

%

X

SD

Correct Target

185

36.7

7.71

4.61

Wrong Target

46

9.1

1.92

1.50

Unknown Target

117

23.2

4.80

4.67

-TOT States

59

11.7

2.46

1.96

+TOT States

97

19.2

2.53

4.04

97 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:17

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

97

Table 6.2 Percentages of fragmentary information reported in +TOT states (n = 97) Initial

Middle

Final

Syllables

Stress

58.76

34.02

44.33

49.48

17.53

Fragmentary information Table 6.2 illustrates the percentages of partial target information that was accessed by the subjects in +TOT states. Subjects most frequently recalled the initial segment of the target word. Final segments were recalled less frequently, and middle segments were recalled least frequently. This pattern corresponds to findings reported on TOT states with L1 words (Brown & McNeill, 1966). The number of syllables was provided correctly 49.48% of the time and this is somewhat lower than what has been reported about L1 word retrieval failures. The stressed syllable was reported rarely by subjects. Word associates and wrong recall responses Overall, 48 words were associated by the subjects during their search for the target word. The analysis of general relation types with respect to associate–target similarity is displayed in Table 6.3. Examples for the corresponding relation types are also displayed in the table. Most of the associates coincided with the target in syntactic class (77% of the time). Some 41.7% of the associate–target pairs were similar in meaning (without any similarity of form) and 37.5% of the pairs resembled each other in form only, while 18.7% of the pairs displayed similarity at both form and meaning levels. All associates that were classified as similar in form to the target were further analysed with respect to the specific form attributes shared by associate and target pairs (see Table 6.4). Form-related associates display a very strong overall similarity to the target word. Most of the time, initial segments and middle segments coincide. Final segments are shared less frequently. The number of syllables is not among the attributes shared frequently by target–associate pairs. However, the main stress position is shared frequently by the pairs. All word associates classified as related in meaning to the target (n = 29) were further categorised with respect to the specific meaning relations between associate–target pairs (Tables 6.5 and 6.6). Most of the meaning relations were of the associative (thematic/ event-based) type, i.e. they were connected through a common situation or event that they belonged to (see Klix, 1980). Category membership was the

98 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:17

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

98

Table 6.3 Percentages of associate–target relation types (n = 48) in +TOT states Form

Form/ meaning

Meaning

Syntactic class

No relation

Examples

37.5

18.7

41.7

77.1

77.1

Associate

Fleisch

glass

Arbeit

gehen

Sonnen

Target

Flasche

Flasche

Arbeit

reisen

manchmal

Table 6.4 Percentages of form attributes coinciding in associate–target pairs similar in form (n = 27) Initial

Middle

Final

Syllables

Stress

85.18

81.48

59.26

29.63

77.78

Associate

schon

Lehrer

gehen

Kugel

‘Arbeit

Target

Schule

Beruf

reisen

Regal

‘Abfalleimer

Note: Most associates shared more than one attribute with the target.

Table 6.5 Percentages of relation types of associate–target pairs similar in meaning (n = 29) Superordinate Subordinate 3.45

3.45

Category

Synonym

Attribute

Associative

34.48

17.24

3.45

41.38

Note The percentages add up to more than 100% because a few associates were assigned more than one potential relation type.

Table 6.6 Examples of meaning–relation types Relation Type

Associate

Target

Schrank (closet)

Kleiderschrank (wardrobe)

Lehrer (teacher)

Beruf (profession)

vaso (glass)

Flasche (bottle)

carpet

Teppich (carpet)

Attributive

(made of) glass

Flasche (bottle)

Associative

Wort (word)

buchstabieren (spell)

Superordinate Subordinate Category member Synonym

99 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:17

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

99

Table 6.7 Percentages of relation types of wrong target-target pairs similar in meaning (n = 20) Super. 5.0

Sub. 15.0

CM 60.0

Syn. 10.0

Ant. 10.0

Attr. 0.0

Asso. 0.0

Super. = superordinate, e.g. Wissenschaft (science), internationale Beziehungen (international relations); Sub. = subordinate, e.g. Pommes (French fries), Kartoffeln (potatoes); CM = category member, e.g. Dose (can), Flasche (bottle); Syn. = Synonym, e.g. carpet – Teppich (carpet); Ant. = Antonym / Contrast, e.g. ledig (single) – verheiratet (married); Attr. = Attributive; Asso. = associative

second most frequent meaning relation type. Synonymy was less frequent, but still a substantial category. The remaining relation types were very rare. Antonyms/opposites were not recalled at all. Similar categorisations of relation types were carried out for the pairs of wrong target responses and the corresponding targets. Wrong recall responses that were related to the target in form only (n = 2), and those that involved non-word coinage (n = 2) were excluded from the analysis because they do not allow for a determination of the meaning relation type. Also, those responses that were incomplete, i.e. partially retrieved target words (n = 22) had to be eliminated from the analysis, since these responses do not reflect genuine effects on word search at the meaning level. Notice, that the compound target words of this study Kleiderschrank (wardrobe), Ehebett (double bed/fig. marital bed), Speisekarte (menu), and Taschenrechner (pocket calculator) were predisposed to induce the incomplete responses: Schrank (closet, cupboard, cabinet), Bett (bed), Karte (card) and Rechner (calculator) respectively. In addition, the L1 stimulus for Gesundheit (health) prompted the partial recall of gesund (healthy) several times. The remaining, truly non-target responses (n = 20) displayed the following patterns. They were exclusively (100% of the time) related in meaning to the target without any sound/form resemblance (see examples below). The percentages of the specific meaning relations of these responses with the target are illustrated in Table 6.7. Most wrong recall responses are category members of the corresponding target word. Responses with a superordinate, subordinate, synonymic, and antonymic relation to the target were provided less frequently. Associative and attributive responses did not occur at all. A final analysis concerned the source language of cross-lexical influence, as indicated by the language of associates in +TOT states and the language of wrong recall responses. Figure 6.1 displays the results of these

100 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:17

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

100

two analyses, and the source of cross-lexical influence in the lexical errors reported in Ecke & Hall (2000) for a convenient comparison. L1, L2 and L3 influence in associations during L3 word search is illustrated by the following examples of associate–target pairs: L1 influence: agua (water) – Flasche (bottle) René (name) – Taschenrechner (pocket calculator) L2 influence: fence – Fenster (window) seldom – manchmal (sometimes) L3 influence: schlaf (sleep) – Flasche (bottle) Kuli (pen) – Taschenrechner (pocket calculator) The L3 is by far the most frequent source of cross-lexical influence reflected in both the reported associations in TOT states (75% of the time) and in the wrong target responses (95% of the time). In other words, the subjects seem to primarily search intralingually within the target language L3 – a finding that sharply contrasts with the strong influence of L2 on lexical errors (69.1% of the time) in Ecke and Hall’s (2000) study.

120

Associates 95.6

Percentages

100

Lexical errors

75

80

Wrong target recall

69.1

60 40 27.4

20

18.3

14.6 10.4 0

4.4

0 L1

L2

L3

Language

Figure 6.1 Percentages of language of associates in +TOT states, wrong target recall responses, and lexical errors

101 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:18

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

101

Discussion Lexical Meaning In extensive word search attempts prompted by translation tasks and in TOT states in general, the meaning/concept of the target word is normally activated provided that the two lexemes share a common concept (see de Groot, 1992; Kroll & De Groot, 1997). What fails is the selection of the targeted lexical form (Burke et al., 1991; Ecke & Garrett, 1998). When the automatic retrieval of an L3 word form fails, the search can proceed at the form level if the phonological representation of the target has been activated in part. The result is related in form to the target. However, if no form attributes are available to the subject or if they do not serve as recall cues, search remains at or is re-directed to the meaning level. The subjects’ associations of words related in meaning to the target indicate this. During extensive word search, associatively related words (41.38%) and category members (34.48%) are most frequently activated at the meaning level. The activation of these categories makes sense if one takes into account that the subjects of this study were new learners of an L3 with a still limited vocabulary. The communicative method used for instruction may also, in part, have affected these results, in particular, the high rate of associative responses. Note that young children’s word associations were shown to be primarily syntagmatic (different-form class), partially overlapping with our category of associative responses, whereas older children and adults preferably produce paradigmatic (same-form class) responses, roughly subsuming our categories of category members, synonyms, antonyms, superordinates and subordinates (e.g. Nelson, 1977; Söderman, 1993). Thus, high rates of associative recall responses might be characteristic for subjects with a developing, still very limited, vocabulary. A previous study conducted by the author on failures of L2 word recall in more advanced learners showed that, in addition to category members, synonyms (including a minor proportion of translation equivalents) are frequently activated as associates in extensive word search (Ecke, 1996). The beginning learners of the present study recalled synonyms less frequently than associatives and category members, but considerably more frequently than superordinates, subordinates, and attributive items. It is reasonable to assume that new learners are not likely to have acquired a great number of L3 synonyms. Thus, few intralingual synonyms are available for activation during word search, leaving mostly associatively and categorically related candidates for preliminary word recall. Garrett (1992) reported category members to be the most frequent error type in L1 noun substitutions. Synonymic substitutions did not occur

102 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:18

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

102

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

frequently in that corpus. The author pointed out that incorrectly used/ recalled synonyms are, in general, difficult to detect and may therefore occur infrequently in error data. The same holds for synonym substitutions and other meaning-related errors in L2 corpuses unless they intrude intralingually, i.e. from another language (Ecke & Hall, 2000). A recent study of semantic errors (Henry & Metussin, 1999) in a bilingual setting reported patterns that appear consistent with the overall results of this study: Associatively related substitutions (including category members) were the most frequently occurring type of semantic error in that corpus. Wrong (immediate) recall responses are also informative with respect to organisational principles and search processes at the meaning level. There are various possible explanations for why recall may result in wrong responses. One possibility is that the L1 stimulus immediately (and mistakenly) activates a related concept and with it the corresponding form equivalent (Nation, 1990). Such failure to activate the precise concept may occur if the performance routine (to translate between L1 and L3 words in this case) has not yet been automated yet, and if L1 and L3 word forms do not share exactly the same concept. Another related possibility is that the new word forms were not mapped precisely onto the right concept in the process of word learning (see, for example, Kroll & De Groot, 1997). In other words, the meaning representation has not yet been assigned correctly or completely to the new L3 word form and needs to be (continuously) reshaped – a normal and common process that is also characteristic for child L1 acquisition (e.g. Bowerman, 1993). Communicative/contextual approaches to L2/L3 learning are likely to foster the occurrence of wrong (or imprecise) recall, since learners frequently assign word meanings only by guessing from context (see Sternberg, 1987). Referring to translation equivalents and using mnemonic techniques may prevent at least some of these, essentially, competence errors (Ecke, 1999; Ellis, 1997; Hulstijn, 1997). Finally, one cannot totally exclude the possibility that some of the wrong recall responses were the result of a (communication) strategy (Dörnyei & Scott, 1997; Poulisse, 1993), in which learners consciously or unconsciously opted to provide the word closest in meaning to the target. However, superordinates that would appear best candidates for such compensation because they share important semantic features with the target were recalled infrequently. Among the wrong recall responses, category membership shows as the strongest relation type with the target (60% of the time). The remaining wrong recall responses reflect subordinate (15%), synonymic (10%), and antonymic/contrastive (10%) relations to the corresponding targets. The high percentage of recalled category members is in line with what has been

103 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:18

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

103

reported for word associates above. The absence of associatively related wrong responses, however, contrasts with the frequent recall of this relation type during extensive word search. Their absence in the wrong responses might be due to the low degree of feature overlap with the target word which makes it easy for the subject to reject associatively related concepts as potential targets. The parallels between L1, L2, and L3 retrieval failures seem to suggest that, in principle, the organisation of word meaning, no matter whether for words of L1, L2 or L3, does not differ substantially. One may tentatively suggest that associatively related words, category members, and possibly synonyms (the first especially at low proficiency levels, the last with an increasing frequency at higher proficiency levels) are the categories most frequently activated in lexical search at the meaning level. It has to be acknowledged, though, that the present description of word search at the meaning level remains somewhat simplistic. The patterns reported here are likely to reflect best search processes for nouns (the most frequent target word class in this study), perhaps also for verbs. Extensive search for adjectives and adverbs (infrequent target word classes here) may reflect quite different search patterns, probably with higher proportions of antonymic/ contrastive associations (see Garrett, 1992). Future studies with larger databases might be advised to analyse meaning relation types separately for the different word classes (nouns, verbs, and adjectives/adverbs). Syntactic frame information Both word associates and wrong target recall responses reflect a high degree of coincidence with the corresponding target in syntactic class. The syntactic class of associate–target pairs coincided 77.78% of the time. The wrong target–target pairs shared syntactic class 86.36% of the time. These percentages indicate that syntactic class has been acquired as part of the new L3 word’s specification, and that it is a strong constraint on L3 lexical search and selection, very much as in the selection of L1 words (Burke et al., 1991; Garrett, 1993). It confirms that syntactic class is selected early (i.e. before phonological encoding) in the time course of lexical production (Ecke & Garrett, 1998; Garrett, 1993, 1975; Levelt, 1992, 1989). Lexical form TOT states with L3 words frequently involve partial access to form attributes of the target word. Types of fragmentary target information recalled most frequently are initial segments, and to a lesser degree the number of syllables and the final segment. Word associates display a high degree of similarity to the target and most frequently share (parts of) the

104 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:18

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

104

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

initial segment, the middle segment, and the position of main stress. The number of syllables does not coincide frequently in the associate–target pairs of this study. See Ecke & Garrett (1998) and Laufer (1991) for similar findings on L2 lexical processing. The partially different results from fragmentary information and associate–target similarity do not allow for a clear-cut determination of salient attributes as parameters for word form storage and retrieval. However, the data support the view that the initial segment maintains a special status for lexical organisation (Fay & Cutler, 1977). The word onset, the left part of words in general, the number of syllables, and the main stress seem to come into play in the learner’s storage and retrieval of new words according to form similarity (Ecke & Hall, 2000). It is possible that constraints of short-term memory and its interaction with lexical information in longterm memory (e.g. Baddeley et al., 1998; Ellis, 1997) are responsible for the variety of recalled form attributes in our data. Whereas temporary retrieval failures of well-established words usually involve the partial access of a limited number of salient attributes (word initial, number of syllables), failures of new (in this case L3) word recall may involve any attribute that the learner paid attention to in the process of learning/memorising word form. It is likely that many of the attributes attended to were those identified as similar to well-represented lexical information in the phonological store. This would be in line with what has been suggested as the learners’ use of a ‘parasitic strategy’ to integrate and process new lexical items by drawing on well-represented information (Ecke & Hall, 2000; Hall, 1996). With the stabilisation of the new words’ representations and an increasing automation of word retrieval, probably fostered by reading, the attributes recognised originally as similar may become less relevant for word search and retrieval. On the other hand, salient parameters (especially the initial segment) may develop as more economic guides for word retrieval. Their importance gradually increases as cues or lexical pointers (Garrett, 1984) that trigger word form selection (Campaña & Ecke, 1998; Ecke, 1998). They are likely to become equally relevant for word recognition. Notice that assumptions about developmental changes with respect to priorities in lexical organisation and processing are not new. They have been discussed in child language acquisition research for some time (e.g. Aitchison & Straf, 1981; Vihman, 1981), but have had relatively little impact on L2 research. See, however, Singleton (1999) and Söderman (1993), both of whom have suggested differences in lexical organisation based on the representational qualities of individual lexical items.

105 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:19

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

105

Cross-lexical influence The second question raised in the introduction referred to the strength of L1, L2 and L3 representations in cross-lexical influence (as reflected in associations and wrong recall responses). The recall task results of this study with new L3 learners provide evidence for cross-lexical influence from L1, L2 and L3 structures at form and meaning levels. However, the strength of influence from the different source languages differs widely. Extensive search in TOT states with L3 words involves primarily influence from within the L3. Ecke (1998, 1996) found a similar strong intralingual influence in TOT states with L2 target words. The firm L3 influence in this study was reflected in the frequently occurring intralingual word associations in the TOT states, but also in the high rate of wrong recall responses in the L3 (compared to infrequent L2 responses and no L1 production). On the other hand, it was pointed out above that lexical errors in L3 production by similar subjects reflected a particularly strong L2 influence (Ecke & Hall, 2000). How can these, apparently contradictory, findings be explained? The differing patterns may suggest important processing differences between error production and TOT word search. The high L2 influence, and relatively low L3 and L1 influence in lexical errors may, in part, be explained as follows. On recall attempt, the selection of the L3 target fails completely, i.e. little or no fragmentary information of the L3 target word is accessed. Since no L3 word is found, automatic activation/retrieval of an L2 word (that is similar to the target in one or more domains) is realised. The retrieval of an L2 candidate, instead of L3 and L1 equivalents, is possible because of various contributing factors: (a) the low degree of L2 suppression mechanisms due to the speaker’s/writer’s need to process/communicate on-line; (b) little monitoring by the learners, which makes automatic errors relatively difficult to self-detect and to correct, and (c) the learners’ psychotypology (Kellerman, 1983), i.e. their perception of the L2 as more similar to the L3 than is the L1. In addition, it is possible that some learners use voluntary switches to the L2 as a communication strategy. These usually conscious, intentional borrowings are difficult to distinguish from unintended cases of cross-lexical influence in error data. Further, certain L3 errors, closely related to the target in meaning, may not be detectable by the researchers (very much like synonym substitution errors in L1). One might speculate that the rate of intralingual errors might be somewhat higher if these potential error types were detectable. The low degree of L2 and L1 influence in extensive word search in TOT states may be, in part, explained as follows: Lexical selection of an L3 target fails. No immediate neighbour from the L2 or L1 is recalled or, if another

106 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:19

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

106

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

word is retrieved, it is recognised by the subject as incorrect, and word search continues. Since the speaker has no need to communicate on-line and has extensive time resources to resolve a TOT state, s/he is able to suppress L2 and L1 influence to a certain extent, and selectively focuses attention on potential targets in the L3. Extensive self-monitoring of lexical search, including the analysis of incomplete and preliminary output, also makes it possible for search to proceed mainly within L3 structures. External factors might include the high degree of target form similarity with other L3 forms, compared to relatively distinct L2 and L1 forms. The communicative method used to teach and practice L3 vocabulary might have contributed to the development of a control/suppression mechanism that reduces interlingual influence. The easy detection of L3 influence in TOT states (compared to a relatively difficult detection in error data) may have had a limited additional effect on the differing results obtained for the two conditions. In sum, the degree of L1, L2 and L3 influence varies according to processing tasks and conditions. Errors mainly reflect unintended, automatic retrieval failures (mostly due to the influence of connected L2 structures that cannot be suppressed), whereas TOT states primarily involve extensive, conscious word search within the L3 (partially due to the suppression of L2 and L1 influence). One more finding still requires some discussion: L1 influence was found to be weak, both in extensive word search in TOT states and in substitution errors in L3 writing and speech (Ecke & Hall, 2000; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). This weak effect of the L1 on lexical production cannot be explained solely by a lack of similarity between L1 and L3 structures. An analysis of errors with cognate equivalents in L1, L2 and L3 (e.g. clase, class, Klasse) has shown that almost all these substitutions were L2 words (Ecke & Hall, 2000). The L2 equivalents were frequently accessed even when L3 and L1 equivalents showed a greater sound similarity compared to the L2 equivalent. It is possible that the (still little investigated) notions of psychotypology (Kellerman, 1983), foreign language effect (Meisel, 1983) and last language effect (Shanon, 1991) might have contributed to the weak L1 influence in L3 errors.

Conclusion This article has presented the results of an investigation into extended word search and compared some of the observed patterns with results from a study on lexical errors with similar subjects (Ecke & Hall, 2000). Only the investigation of both extended word search and lexical errors can

107 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:19

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

107

provide an overall picture of the representational and control mechanisms in the mental lexicon. Summing the possible links between targets and associates from both phenomena may be informative with respect to lexical structure (the network/representation), whereas differences in associative connections may demonstrate differential control of the network/representation. Data on naturally-occurring tip of the tongue (TOT) state information is relatively difficult to collect. However, elicitation tasks, such as the one employed in this study, make it possible to obtain interesting and important data in a relatively short time and under relatively controlled conditions. It has to be acknowledged, though, that the data presented and analysed here are of relatively small scale. Follow-up studies with more subjects generating a larger database are needed to validate many of the present findings, explanations and hypotheses about what may constitute some of the underlying constraints and parameters for the retrieval of new words in new learners of an L3. Studies with other languages, including typologically different L1, L2 and L3, are needed to understand the phenomenon of cross-lexical influence in L3 production and to compare it with similar phenomena in the production of L2 and L1. These studies would be relevant not only to researchers interested in L3 or L2 acquisition, but also to cognitive scientists who study language representation and production and recognise the need to extend the scope of their theories to model bi- and multilingual speech processing.

Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the support for this investigation from the ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’ (Stipendium Ec 183–1/1) and the ‘Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología’ (Convenio 25850-H). I would also like to thank Christopher Hall and Renate Schulz for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Appendix 6.1 Pairs of Spanish (L1) stimuli and German (L3) target words used in the translation task verduras – Gemüse (trial item 1), cómodo – bequem (trial item 2), ropero – Kleiderschrank, escuela – Schule, ventana – Fenster, relaciones (internacionales) – Beziehungen, botella – Flasche, calculadora (de bolsillo) – Taschenrechner, profesión – Beruf, cubo de basura – Abfalleimer, plato fuerte – Hauptgericht, deletrear – buchstabieren, salud – Gesundheit, jugar – spielen, casado/a –verheiratet, la carta (en un restaurante) – Speisekarte, viajar – reisen, alfombra – Teppich, papas – Kartoffeln, estante – Regal, cama matrimonial – Ehebett, trabajar – arbeiten, a veces – manchmal

108 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:19

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

108

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Appendix 6.2 Examples of stimulus presentation (Spanish L1 equivalent and German L3 context) Stimulus presentation:

English translation:

ventana Das _________ ist offen.

window The _________ is open

relaciones (internacionales) Ich studiere Internationale

(international) relations I study international _________.

botella Ich trinke eine _________ Bier.

bottle I drink a _________ of beer.

Appendix 6.3 Written instructions for the translation/recall task (Spanish original) Instrucciones para experimentos concernientes a palabras en la punta de la lengua Este es un experimento relacionado con lo que se conoce como el fenómeno de la palabra en la punta de la lengua. Este fenómeno ocurre cuando estamos a punto de recordar alguna palabra, pero no logramos encontrarla. El propósito del experimento es averiguar cuando ocurren estas experiencias y la forma en que las mismas son resueltas. De la misma manera también se intenta precisar qué tipo de información se puede recordar acerca de la palabra meta aunque ésta no se pueda recordar. Yo empezaré leyéndole las traducciones / equivalentes de 23 palabras alemanas en español. Para cada traducción usted llenará una página en su libro. Si usted recuerda la palabra alemana inmediatamente, escríbala. Si está seguro de que no sabe la palabra, marque el número 1 y si la conoce, marque del 2 al 5 dependiendo de que tan seguro esté. Anote también cualquier atributo que conozca de la palabra meta (tales como número de sílabas, acento, letras / sonidos). En algunas ocasiones usted no sabrá mucho acerca de la palabra que se intenta encontrar. Sin embargo, por favor, anote todo lo que usted pueda recordar de esta palabra, y no tenga miedo adivinar. También existe la posibilidad de que usted piense en otras palabras o fragmentos relacionados con el significado o sonido de la palabra meta aunque esté seguro de que no es la palabra meta. En ese caso, anote por favor, todas las asociaciones. Si usted logra encontrar la palabra meta durante el experimento, escríbala al lado de “palabra meta”. Después de un tiempo, yo les diré la palabra meta. Por favor, no la escriba si no la encontró antes que yo la diga. Marque con sí X si usted conoce la palabra y con sí X si pensaba en esa palabra. La razón por la cual le hago estas preguntas es porque necesito saber si usted estaba pensando en la misma palabra que yo tenía en mente. Por favor levante la mano si tiene alguna pregunta.

109 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:20

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

109

Written instructions for the translation/recall task (English translation) Instructions for tip-of-the-tongue state experiments This is an experiment about what is known as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. Tip-of-the-tongue states occur when one is close to remembering a word, but cannot recall it completely. I am interested in when such experiences occur, how they are resolved, and what kind of information the speaker can recover about the word, even if s/he cannot recall the word itself. I am going to read to you the Spanish translation equivalents of 23 German words. After each stimulus, I will ask you to recall the German translate and fill in a page in your booklet. If you recall the German target word immediately, write it down. If you are certain that you do not know the word, circle number 1. If you think that you know the word, circle one of the numbers 2 to 5 depending on how sure you are. Please also record any attributes that you know about the target word (in particular, the number of syllables, main stress position, letters / sounds). Sometimes, you will not know much about the word that you intend to recall. However, please write down everything that you can remember about the target word, and do not hesitate to guess any of its attributes. It is also possible that you will think of other words or word fragments related in meaning or sound to the target word. These words may resemble the target, but you will be certain that they are different words. It is important that you record all these associations. If you recall the target word during the experiment, write it after ‘target word’. After some time, I will pronounce the target word. Please do not write the word if you did not recall it before. If you know the word, mark control question (1) with yes X, and if you were thinking of it, mark control question (2) with yes X. I am asking you this question because I need to know whether you were searching for the word that I had in mind. Please raise your hand if you have any questions.

110 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:20

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

110

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Appendix 6.4 Answer sheets Answer sheet for the recording of recall response (Spanish original) Palabra meta: No la conozco.

1

2

3

4

5

Estoy seguro de conocerla.

Número de sílabas: Acento: Letras/sonidos: Otra información: Asociaciones: Palabra meta: ¿Conoces esta palabra?

sí ___ no ___

¿Es la palabra en qué pensabas?

sí ___ no ___

Answer sheet for the recording of recall response (English translation) Target word: I don’t know it.

1

2

3

4

5

I am sure I know it.

Number of syllables: Stress: Letters / Sounds: Other information: Associations: Target word: Did you know this word?

yes ___

no ___

Did you think of this word? yes ___

no ___

111 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:20

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

111

References Aitchison, J. and Straf, M. (1981) Lexical storage and retrieval: A developing skill? Linguistics 19, 751–95. Baddeley, A., Gathercole, S. and Papagno, C. (1998) The phonological loop as a language learning device. Psychological Review 105, 158–73. Bowerman, M. (1993) Learning a semantic system: What role do cognitive predispositions play? In P. Bloom (ed.) Language Acquisition: Core Readings (pp. 329–63). New York: Harvester. Brown, A.S. (1991) A review of the tip-of-the-tongue experience. Psychological Bulletin 109, 202–23. Brown, R. and McNeill, D. (1966) The ‘tip of the tongue’ phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5, 325–37. Burke, D.M., MacKay, D.G., Worthley, J.S. and Wade, E. (1991) On the tip of the tongue: What causes word finding failures in young and older adults? Journal of Memory and Language 30, 542–79. Campaña, E. and Ecke, P. (1998) Experimentally elicited word retrieval failures in foreign language learners: Evidence for the processing of new words. Paper presented at the EUROSLA 8 Conference, Paris, September. Dahan, D. and Brent, M.R. (1999) On the discovery of novel wordlike units from utterances: An artificial-language study with implications for native-language acquisition. Journal of Experimental Psychology 128, 165–85. De Bot, K. (1992) A bilingual production model: Levelt’s speaking model adapted. Applied Linguistics 13, 1–24. De Groot, A.M.B. (1992) Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations. In R. Frost and L. Katz (eds) Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning (pp. 389–412). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Dörnyei, Z. and Scott, M.L. (1997) Communication strategies in a second language: Definitions and taxonomies. Language Learning 47, 173–210. Ecke, P. (1996) Cross-language studies of lexical retrieval: Tip-of-the-tongue states in first and foreign languages. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. The University of Arizona. Ecke, P. (1998) Tip of the tongue states in first and foreign languages: Similarities and differences of lexical retrieval failures. Proceedings of the EUROSLA 7 Conference (pp. 505–14). Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Ecke, P. (1999) Resumen práctico de mnemotécnicas para la enseñanza de lenguas extrajeras. Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada 29, 55–69. Ecke, P. and Garrett, M.F. (1998) Lexical retrieval stages of momentarily inaccessible foreign language words. Ilha do Desterro: Cognitive Perspectives on the Acquisition/Learning of Second/Foreign Languages 35, 157–83. Ecke, P. and Hall, C.J. (2000) Lexikalische Fehler in Deutsch als Drittsprache: Translexikalischer Einfluss auf 3 Ebenen der mentalen Repräsentation. Deutsch als Fremdsprache 1, 31–7. Ellis, N. (1997) Vocabulary acquisition: Word structure, collocation, word-class, and meaning. In N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (eds) Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy (pp. 122–39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, N. and Beaton, A. (1993) Psycholinguistic determinants of foreign language vocabulary learning. Language Learning 43, 559–617.

112 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:21

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

112

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Faerch, C. and Kasper, G. (1983) Perspectives on language transfer. Applied Linguistics 8, 111–36. Fay, D. and Cutler, A. (1977) Malapropisms and the structure of the mental lexicon. Linguistics Inquiry 8, 505–20. Fromkin, V.A. (ed) (1973) Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence. The Hague: Mouton. Garrett, M.F. (1975) The analysis of sentence production. In G. Bower (ed.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation Vol. 9 (pp. 133–75). New York: Academic Press. Garrett, M.F. (1984) The organization of processing structure for language production: Application to aphasic speech. In D. Caplan, A. Lecours and A. Smith (eds) Biological Perspectives on Language (pp. 172–93). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Garrett, M.F. (1992) Lexical retrieval processes: Semantic field effects. In E. Kittay and A. Lehrer (eds) Frames, Fields and Contrasts (pp. 377–95). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Garrett, M.F. (1993) Errors and their relevance for models of language production. In G. Blanken, J. Dittmann, H. Grimm, J.C. Marshall and C.W. Wallesch (eds) Linguistic Disorders and Pathologies (pp. 72–92). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Gass, S.M. and Selinker, L. (eds) (1993) Language Transfer and Language Learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gupton, H. (1999) An analysis of orally produced lexical errors of third language learners. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Departamento de Lenguas, Universidad de las Américas - Puebla. Hall, C.J. (1996) La estrategia parasítica: Un modelo psicolingüístico del aprendizaje de vocabulario. In S. Cuevas and J. Haidar (eds) La Imaginación y la Inteligencia en el Lenguaje: Homenaje a Roman Jakobson (pp. 229–38). Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Henry, A. and Metussin, D.H.R.P.H. (1999) An investigation into levels of difficulty of certain semantic word classes in a bilingual setting. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 2, 13–29. Hufeisen, B. (1993) Fehleranalyse: Englisch als L2 und Deutsch als L3. International Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 242–56. Hulstijn, J. (1997) Mnemonic methods in foreign language vocabulary learning: Theoretical considerations and pedagogical implications. In J. Coady and T. Huckin (eds) Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Rationale for Pedagogy (pp. 203–24). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, C. (1998) Errors in Language Learning and Use: Exploring Error Analysis. London: Longman. Jiang, N. (2000) Lexical representation and development in a second language. Applied Linguistics 21, 24–54. Kellerman, E. (1983) Now you see it, now you don’t. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 112–34). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Klix, F. (1980) On the structure and functioning of semantic memory. In F. Klix and J. Hoffmann (eds) Cognition and Memory (pp. 11–25). Amsterdam: North Holland.

113 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:21

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Lexical Retrieval in a Third Language

113

Kroll, J.F. and De Groot, A.M.B. (1997) Lexical and conceptual memory in the bilingual: Mapping form to meaning in two languages. In A.M.B. De Groot and J.F. Kroll (eds) Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspectives (pp. 169–99). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Laufer, B. (1991) Some properties of the foreign language learner’s lexicon as evidenced by lexical confusions. International Review of Applied Linguistics 29, 317–30. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989) Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: Bradford and MIT Press. Levelt, W.J.M. (1992) Accessing words in speech production: Stages, processes and representations. Cognition 42, 1–22. Matz, K-D., Teschmer, J. and Weise, G. (1988) Angewandte Fremdsprachenpsychologie und ihr Beitrag für die Effektivierung des Lernens und Lehrens von Fremdsprachen. Deutsch als Fremdsprache 4, 224–29. Meara, P. (1982) Word associations in a foreign language: A report on the Birbeck vocabulary project. The Nottingham Linguistic Circular 11, 29–38. Meisel, J. (1983) Transfer as a second language strategy. Language and Communication 3, 11–46. Myers Scotten, C. (1995) A lexical-based production model of code-switching. In L. Milroy and P. Muysken (eds) One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Codeswitching (pp. 233–56) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nation, I.S.P. (1990) Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Newbury House. Nelson, K. (1977) The syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift revisited: A review of research and theory. Psychological Bulletin 84, 93–116. Poulisse, N. (1993) A theoretical account of lexical communication strategies. In R. Schreuder and B. Weltens (eds) The Bilingual Lexicon (pp. 157–89) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Poulisse, N. and Bongaerts, T. (1994) First language use in second language production. Applied Linguistics 15, 36–57. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Influence of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Schreuder, R. and Weltens, B. (eds.) (1993) The Bilingual Lexicon. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Shanon, B. (1991) Faulty language selection in polyglots. Language and Cognitive Processes 6, 339–50. Selinker, L. and Lakshmanan, U. (1993) Language transfer and fossilization: The ‘Multiple Effects Principle’. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 197–216). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sikogukira, M. (1993) Influence of languages other than the L1 on a foreign language: A case of transfer from L2 to L3. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics 4, 110–32. Singleton, D. (1987) The fall and rise of transfer. In J. Coleman and R. Towell (eds) The Advanced Language Learner (pp. 27–53). London: CILT. Singleton, D. (1999) Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

114 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:21

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

114

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Söderman, T. (1993) Word associations of foreign language learners and native speakers: The phenomenon of a shift in response type and its relevance for lexical development. In H. Ringbom (ed.) Near-native Proficiency in English (pp. 91–182). Åbo: Åbo Akademi University. Sternberg, R.J. (1987) Most vocabulary is learned from context. In M.G. McKeown and M.E. Curtis (eds) The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition (pp. 89–105). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Vihman, M.M. (1981) Phonology and the development of the lexicon: Evidence from children’s errors. Journal of Child Language 8, 239–64. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333. Zipf, G. (1949) Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. New York: Addison-Wesley.

115 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:21

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 7

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation: Evidence from Lexical Processing in L1–L2–L3–L4 Translation ANNA HERWIG

Introduction The plurilingual1 mental lexicon is taken here to consist of dynamically interacting subsystems of a common linguistic system, subject to individual variation and change over time (Jessner, 1997). The linguistic competence of the plurilingual speaker is correspondingly assumed to reflect a distinct state of mind, known as holistic multicompetence (e.g. Cook, 1992). From a psychological perspective, the structure of the lexicon, the connectivity of its subsystems and their interrelation depend on a number of factors, such as perceived linguistic distance, proficiency of the user, or method of acquisition (see for example: De Groot, 1993; Singleton, 1996, 1997, 1999; Weinreich, 1953; Woutersen, 1997). Neurophysiologically, lexical knowledge is seen as embedded in general cognitive structure (e.g. Gazzaniga et al., 1998), whereby word knowledge can be described as memorised associations, which consist of strengthened synaptic connections within the neural network of the brain (Eccles, 1989). Lexical processing in second language production often involves the deliberate or automatic consultation of other languages, whereby different languages may be used for different purposes (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). The present chapter investigates principles of multilingual processing in translation from a mother tongue into three related second languages, with a specific focus on lexical selection and error production. The discussion centres on the following aspects: • • • •

network organisation of the mental lexicon; connectivity among lexical items and their component structure; processes of lexical retrieval and search in translation; factors of individual variation.

115 116 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:22

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

116

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Levels of Analysis: Approaches to Describing Lexical Organisation and Lexical Access A psycholinguistic perspective on bilingual organisation: Paradis’ Subset Hypothesis Languages are today widely regarded as forming distinct but interlinked and interacting subsystems of a common linguistic system, which follow similar though language-specific principles (Fabbro & Paradis, 1995; Green, 1986; Perecman, 1989; Paradis, 1985, 1987; Singleton, 1996, 1997, 1999). Proceeding from the insight that their nature and interrelation is by no means unitary or static, but dynamic and flexible, Paradis (1985, 1987) proposed the following model of bilingual organisation. His Subset Hypothesis suggests that two languages are stored in identical ways in a single system, whereby the elements of each language are seen as forming separate networks of connections. In the light of findings obtained from aphasia studies, which show selective impairment of different languages, Paradis concludes that bilinguals must have two subsets of neural traces, which enable them to access their languages separately, while at the same time a larger set embraces the whole system, rendering possible language mixing. He emphasises that the organisation of two languages can vary across individuals and within individuals across time. According to Paradis, a typical developmental sequence in the process of second language acquisition lies in the shift from an extended, i.e. mixed first/ second language system to two distinct subsystems. In the early stages of acquisition, second language items typically have strong ties to corresponding first language items, forming an extended system. Those interlinguistic links will become looser as, with increasing proficiency, the second language network builds up. Eventually, the two languages are thought to develop into (more or less) independent subsystems. Some of their elements, however, such as cognates, may retain their strong primary connections. For a bilingual situation, Paradis’s model may be displayed as in Figure 7.1. Two languages form a network of interconnected nodes, which are thought of as lexical items. Their links can vary qualitatively and quantitatively, i.e. they can be of different types (e.g. semantic or phonological), and also of varying strength and quantity of connections. These distinctions hold for intra-linguistic links as well as cross-linguistic ones. In a relatively balanced bilingual situation (as in Figure 7.1), the two sub-networks are distinct, with intra-linguistic connections dominating over cross-linguistic ones. An early phase of second language acquisition, on the other hand,

117 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:22

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

117

would contain fewer second-language items that are predominantly linked to first-language items, any of which are scarcely linked to each other. Further languages are seen as following the same general principles as the first second language. Likely to start as an extension of another language (not necessarily the mother tongue), they may gradually turn into more or less independent systems. Which languages are most readily associated and to what extent a second language will become independent varies, and is related to individual factors such as perceived linguistic distance, method of acquisition, or user proficiency (see, for example, Singleton, 1999). Paradis’s model appears suitable for explaining selective impairment of individual languages, as well as the seemingly contradictory phenomena of language mixing and separate processing in normal speakers. It does, however, raise the question of the nature of several different subsets of neural traces, which Paradis proposes. Where languages share the same neural substrate and the interconnectivity of their elements is not only variL1 network L2 network Interlinguistic links

Figure 7.1 Network model of the bilingual mental lexicon

118 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:22

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

118

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

able but, indeed, also changes repeatedly, it is hard to imagine that these constant changes should involve complex physiological adaptations. Furthermore, the knowledge of multiple languages would require several distinct systems and also various types of interconnections, which is neurophysiologically implausible. It seems more plausible to assume that the difference between intra- and interlinguistic links is one of strength and quantity rather than of kind. With frequent use and increasing proficiency, intralinguistic associations multiply and grow stronger, and intralinguistic processing becomes automated. Cross-linguistic connections, on the other hand, become weaker because of lesser use (Eccles, 1989). A computational model of lexical networks: Meara’s application of Random Boolean Networks Meara (1999) has developed computer models that resemble plurilingual situations as described above, i.e. as network systems with varying degrees of connectivity between elements within and across languages. Meara’s so-called Random Boolean Networks simulate active and passive vocabulary and the process of spreading–activation, which is triggered by random stimulation of nodes in the network, the nodes being thought of as lexical items. The experiments in question demonstrate that under stimulation the system tends predominantly to activate elements of the stimulated language while, in a quiet state, it settles back into an equilibrium state with a predominant first language and a lesser degree of second or third language activity. An interesting result relates to third language interference, which seems to be unavoidable in a multilingual situation, even when the interfering language is never actively stimulated. The findings, which resemble real-life linguistic behaviour surprisingly accurately, lead Meara to suggest that these phenomena should be seen as a property of the system as a whole. In other words, the experiments may be interpreted such that the psychologically observable could be based on mechanistic principles emerging from the overall structure of the system. But what gives rise to that structure? What causes the system to develop the kind of interconnectivity that prevails among its elements? An answer to these questions might be found in the internal structure of what are commonly referred to as ‘items’ or ‘entries’ of the mental lexicon. A neurolinguistic approach to modelling lexical connectivity: Lexical knowledge as representation across two cognitive levels A cognitive view of lexical knowledge reveals that it is not as straightforward a phenomenon as it may seem. To begin with, it should be recalled

119 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:22

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

119

that ‘lexical items’ in the sense of unified entries stored somewhere in the brain do not exist. At least since Saussure’s seminal series of lectures around the turn of the century (Saussure, 1973), if not longer, it is common ground that our knowledge of words consists in the association between a conceptual content and a linguistic expression, or a semantic and a phonological (and/or (ortho)graphic)2 pole (Langacker, 1987). Neurolinguistically, this means that word knowledge is represented by two distinct activation patterns at different cognitive levels with a link between them. This understanding entails that the so-called ‘mental lexicon’ consists not in one but in two distinct network systems and the associations that hold between them (see, for example, Aitchison, 1994; Harris & Coltheart, 1986). A lexicosemantic network, which organises conceptual content in semantic fields, is opposed to a lexical-formal network, which organises linguistic expressions according to perceptual similarity. The basis of lexical processing lies thus in three sets of associations: one within each representational level, and a third one connecting the two levels. In addition, lexical knowledge comprises collocational knowledge and grammatical knowledge, which are again based on specific associative connections and on procedural knowledge. I will not discuss these aspects in detail, as they are of minor relevance to the present discussion. The above explanations hold for a monolingual situation. In a plurilingual individual, the complexity involved in lexical representation is magnified as intralinguistic links are supplemented by cross-linguistic links at the different levels. These considerations are important with regard to lexical processing, one aspect of which, lexical access in language production, will be discussed below. Before turning to lexical selection, however, I will briefly outline Weinreich’s classic account of bilingual lexical organisation and its recent elaborations. Lexical connectivity in a psycholinguistic perspective: Categories of bilingualism Weinreich (1953) established a framework for modelling the relationship between the first and second language mental lexicon, which can be extended to take account of additional languages on the same basis. As discussed above, ‘lexical items’ consist of a formal and a semantic pole, and can thus be formally and semantically or, in Weinreich’s terminology, conceptually linked. Starting from this bipolarity, Weinreich proposed three types of cross-linguistic connectivity: In a subordinative relationship, a second language expression is connected to a first language concept via a primary link to the corresponding first language form. A compound arrangement posits a connection of word forms at the conceptual level, i.e.

120 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:23

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

120

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

a second language form is associated with a first language concept. Coordinative bilingualism refers to a situation where two expressions are associated with two distinct concepts. Weinreich relates the type of bilingualism found in a person to learning experience, and points out that a bilingual mental lexicon need not be of a single type only. De Groot (1993) elaborated on Weinreich’s model suggesting a mixed representational system, in which cognates and concrete words are subject to compound storage, while non-cognates and abstract words are processed coordinatively. De Groot (1993) and Woutersen (1997) have further extended the model to include proficiency as an additional variable. They found that early stages of second language learning are often characterised by subordinative connections, with a gradual shift towards compound and coordinative organisation. The approach thus appears to be a valid account of the variability and constant flow of the language systems in a second language learner and a bilingual individual, which Jessner (1997: 26) ascribes to ‘the various factors involved in the language acquisition process’. Acquisitional factors – a discussion of which I will not pursue here – include most prominently age and method of acquisition. An additional variable, suggested by the data of the present study, is the classroom language, in cases where second language learning is mediated by a language other than the mother tongue. Besides accounting for crosslinguistic lexical organisation as such, the Weinreich–De Groot–Woutersen model is suggestive for aspects of lexical processing, in particular for mechanisms at work in form retrieval in production, and concept access in comprehension. Lexical selection Lexical access is thought to occur under the general principle of spreading–activation, which refers to the forward and backward flow of stimulation across the system. Activation proceeds along neural traces that detect lexical items on the basis of their semantic, grammatical and formal characteristics (see, for example, Bates & MacWhinney, 1989; Bierwisch & Schreuder, 1992; Dell, 1986; Dell & O’Seaghdha, 1992; Roelofs, 1992; Zimmermann, 1994). Lexical selection in language production involves two major steps, which I will refer to as lexical search (choosing an appropriate conceptual content) and lexical retrieval (accessing the corresponding formal representation), respectively. These processes take place within and across the above-mentioned levels of representation. The principle of spreading–activation causes the environment of the units in demand to be activated along with them which, in cases of uncertainty, may lead to the conscious consideration of several alternatives at

121 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:23

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

121

either or both the semantic and the formal level, in the course of lexical selection. In second language production, alternatives are often considered in several languages, and it is not surprising that the complexity involved in these processes can lead to production errors. Associative chains and errors, in turn, can account for organisation and processing principles. These phenomena will be illustrated below.

Towards an Integrative View of Lexical Organisation The above discussion raises the question of how to combine psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic findings in a comprehensive model of lexical organisation. The models of both Paradis and Meara take a unified perspective on lexical items, and are therefore suitable to illustrate language networks. The neurolinguistic approach reveals underlying cognitive principles and mechanisms, but is in its complexity unsuitable for illustrating the perceived reality of lexical knowledge and processing. Weinreich’s model accounts for aspects of lexical processing on the basis of the relationship of the form and content of related items across languages, but does not consider their wider setting. How can the different approaches be integrated? The key to explaining lexical organisation in an all-embracing manner could lie in a network model whose nodes integrate the different component aspects of lexical knowledge, and can thus account for the complexity involved in lexical processing. Paradis’s Subset Hypothesis and its suggested graphic illustration (see Figure 7.1) could serve as a basic framework for such a model. More differentiated aspects of interconnectivity and processing would have to be explained by the internal structure of lexical items. The frame model illustrated in Figure 7.2 is based on an approach to modelling conceptual knowledge put forward by Barsalou (e.g. 1992). It consists of attribute-value sets, which display the different aspects of lexical knowledge, and the relations that hold between them. The attributes (big circles) represent the component aspects of lexical knowledge, and their values the range of possibilities for shaping them. The dimensions of lexical knowledge are semantic quality, semantic valency, grammatical or morpho-syntactic specification, and phonological and orthographic layout. The inner triangle represents the core entry of the mental lexicon, i.e. a basic form (phonological and orthographic) associated with a semantic core value (basic meaning). It corresponds to the connectivity between lexico-semantic and lexical-formal level. On the basis of this entry, which allows for modification upon variation of the values (small circles), a

122 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:23

Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:24

123

Semantic valency

Functor specification

Core value

Word order specification

Orthography

Phonemic structure

Orthographical layout

Phonological layout

Basic form

Morphosyntactic specification

Basic form

Figure 7.2 Component structure of a lexical item: Frame model

Collocates

Semantic role

Semantic quality

Prosody

122

Metaphorical meaning

Extended meaning

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

123

lexical item is selected and used for phrasal construction. Displaying the psychological unit of a ‘lexical item’ as consisting of the above component properties, their cognitive reality, as well as the complexity of their interconnections becomes clear, and can be integrated in a psycholinguistic network model. In order to illustrate such a model transparently, the dimensions of lexical knowledge may be presented as a set of layers centred on the semantic quality as their core attribute (see Figure 7.3). This delineation has the additional advantage of ranking their relative significance in descending order from centre to periphery. The interconnectivity of lexical items can then be marked transparently as associative links at various levels, both intra- and cross-linguistically.

Empirical Evidence The conclusions of the previous discussion are supported by data collected in a research project on lexical processing in translation from a native language into several second languages, involving learners with a varying degree of proficiency across their second languages. It was conducted in the wake of a project on bilingual processing, which had yielded results that sustained the above proposals in respect of modelling lexical organisation and processing as applicable to a bilingual situation. The experiment was launched as a preliminary study in preparation for a possible later large-scale investigation of multilingualism.

al

Ph

l

rpho-syntactic Mo Semantic ographic rth a O nologi c o Semantic quality

Lay o ut La yout Valency Speci ation fic Figure 7.3 Component structure of a lexical item: Layer model

124 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:24

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

124

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Data collection Subjects

The participants in the experiment were four university students of Germanic languages, two of them in their second and two in their fourth year of study. One of the fourth-year students was a native Norwegian, who had lived in Ireland for many years; the others were Irish nationals. In their undergraduate degree programme they were following intensive courses in German, which they had already learned at school, and Dutch and Swedish, which were introduced in the first and second year of study, respectively. The second-year students thus had a very good command of German, advanced skills in Dutch, and a basic knowledge of Swedish. The fourth-year students, after prolonged study periods abroad, were fluent or almost fluent in at least two of the languages, with a very good knowledge of the third one. The particular situation of the Norwegian national will be discussed later. Methodology

The data collection covered two broad categories: experimental data, and information on the subjects’ linguistic background. The former comprised three sets of data, namely the composition of a story on the basis of a series of pictures in their mother tongue, a translation of the same story into the respective second languages, and think-aloud verbal protocols on performing the translation task. The series of tasks were carried out in one session, with the translation being performed in the order German – Dutch – Swedish and, in the case of the Norwegian student, Swedish – German – Dutch. Information on the subjects’ linguistic background was collected by means of a questionnaire, including detailed questions on their previous linguistic experience, on the perceived linguistic distance of the languages tested, and a self-assessment of their proficiency in these languages. The task

The main focus of this study is on productive processing in translation. An instrumentation that lends itself most readily to such an investigation is a combined application of written translation and concurrent think-aloud protocols (see, for example, Dechert, 1987; Hölscher & Möhle, 1987; Krings, 1987; Zimmermann, 1994). Translation, by definition, requires a reproduction of the source language message in terms of meaning and structure (Bassnett-McGuire, 1980: 2). With the content of the utterance given, the performer would be engaged in a search for translation equivalents, aiming at accuracy and precision of expression which, it was hoped, would trigger a high degree of linguistic, in particular, lexical processing. In order

125 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:24

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

125

to reduce the cognitive load on the informants and to ensure that the source text was well understood, the comprehension dimension, normally inherent to translation, was eliminated by having the subjects produce their own translation sources. The advantage of having subjects do this immediately before the act of translating is that the conceptual content has recently received focal attention and is therefore still available in shortterm-memory. The study thus set a first task of composing a story on the basis of a series of pictures, which was then to be translated. The cartoon, an episode of Calvin and Hobbes, in which Calvin gets his hair cut by Hobbes, resulting in a bald head and emotional uproar, featured a number of key situations and elements that were expected to be verbalised. These later provided the basis for a comparison of the students’ performance. The informants were not aware that their compositions would be their later translation source, since this might have led to prior back-translation and avoidance of difficulties. Of special interest for the present study were situations where a required lexical item was not accessible. Here, the think-aloud protocols trace the routes taken in lexical retrieval or search by documenting the informants’ chain of thought. Think-aloud protocols have been established as a valid instrument of investigation, being widely acknowledged as providing most genuine information without corrupting the thought process (Ericsson, 1990: 195). Zimmermann (1994) used the method of written translation along with concurrent think-aloud protocols to investigate the mechanisms involved in lexical selection. His findings show that the analysis of lexical processing can provide useful information on several issues in relation to lexical organisation. First of all, it supplies solid evidence of the validity of the concept of spreading–activation at different cognitive levels. It is also applicable to the verification of the idea of lexical network organisation and its two distinguishable levels of representation, the lexico-semantic and the lexical-formal one. Finally, it allows conclusions to be drawn about the relationship of different languages in the plurilingual mind. Results The data obtained were analysed with specific focus on issues of lexical processing and organisation. Of major interest were associative chains documenting lexical search processes, and erroneous products, which, marking points of breakdown in the system, shed light on its structure (Garman, 1990: 151). They will be discussed with a view to the above models of lexical organisation, with the objective of revealing both general principles and mechanisms and of explaining individual peculiarities. Two

126 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:24

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

126

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

aspects have been given particular attention, namely, processing across languages other than the source language (mother tongue) and target language, and evidence of third language interference in translation results or intermediate solutions. Table 7.1 Associative chains Source item

Target language: Associative chain

English 1. he complains

D: gives out (E) – beschwert sich (G) – criticises (E) – kritiseert (D)

2. to comb

G: *komen (E→*G) – brush (E) – bürsten (G) – brush (E) saubermachen (G) – clean (E) – tidy (E) – opruimen (D), no that’s Dutch

3. he refuses

D: sich weigern (G) – I’ll turn that into wijeren – hij wijert zich (G E→*D)

4. he colours

D: to place (E) – stellen (G) – hij stellt (G→D) – place (E) – put (E) – stellen (G) – draw (E) – mark (E) – create (E) – scheppen (E) - hij schept (E→D)

5. realise

D: erkennen (G) – verstehen (G) – what’s that in Dutch – bemerken (G) – no, that’s German – merken (D)

6. he freaks out

D: sorry (E) – niet blij (D) – zorn (G→D) – angry (E) – bang zijn (D) – angst (G→*D) – and worries*heeft angst (G→*D)

7. mirror

S: spiegel (D) – spegel (S)

8. head

S: Kopf (G) – hoofd (D) – head (E) – hår (S(‘hair’))

Norwegian 9. liker ikke

G: doesn’t like (E) – kann nicht leiden (G)

10. speilet

D: Spiegel (G) is – en spiegel? (G→D)

11. forferdelig

G: grässlich (G) – horrible (E) – grässlich (G)

12. tegner

G: draws (E) – zeichnen (G)

13. hat

D: Hut (G) – [hat] (N) – [hæt] (E) – [hat] (N) – hut (G→D)

14. tegner

D: schrijve (D) – skrive (N) – zeichnet (G) – maakt (D)

* Formally incorrect or non-existent items

127 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:25

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

127

Table 7.1 shows a selection of associative chains as reported by the think-aloud protocols. For reasons of transparency, the associative chains have been simplified to show the stages of lexical access without taking account of immediate repetitions, grammatical processing, or metalinguistic comments and other remarks, unless they will be specifically referred to in the later discussion. On the left, the source item is given, on the right the target language (D = Dutch, G = German, S = Swedish) and the associative chain leading to the translation product. Formally incorrect or non-existent items are identified by an asterisk (*); they will be discussed below. The language of each item is given in brackets, so that notations such as (G≥*D) mark cases of cross-linguistic lexical transfer, in this case a transfer from German to Dutch, as identified by pronunciation or spelling. Table 7.2 presents results that show cross-linguistic influence from languages other than the mother tongue. Most often this relates to borrowing or loan translation, either deliberately or automatically, based on perceived structural similarity. From left to right, the table shows the source language and source item, the target language and erroneous translation result, the correct target form, and the borrowed form and its language. Table 7.2 Production errors Source language/ Source item

Target language/ Translation result

Target language/ Correct form

Third language/ Borrowed form

1. E: suggests

S: *föreslägger

föreslår

G: vorschlagen

2. E: suggests

D: *schlagt voor

stellt voor

G: vorschlagen

3. E: conceal

S: *förberga

dölja

G: verbergen

4. E: gutted and shocked

S: *jättebös

jättearg

G: böse

5. E: cuts

S: *knippar

klipper

D: knippen

6. N: hat

D: *hut

hoed

G: Hut

7. E: hat

G: *Muts D: *mots S: *moets

Mütze; Hut muts; hoed mössa; hat

(Mütze/muts/ mössa=woolen/ knitted hat)

8. E: he complains

S: *han spreker inte brå över

han taler inte bra om

D: spreken over (G: sprechen über)

Note: E = English, G = German, D = Dutch, S = Swedish, N = Norwegian

128 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:25

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

128

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Discussion of Results Aspects of lexical processing Cross-linguistic consultation in lexical selection

The associative chains (see Table 7.1) reveal that lexical selection in situations of non-accessibility of an item in demand involves both automatic and deliberate consultation of several languages. Whether or not third language consultation happens deliberately is not always clearly discernible, but meta-linguistic comments or erroneous solutions often shed light on the question. Examples 1 to 8 in the table are from the two second-year students, whose dominant second language is German, followed by Dutch and Swedish. In the first example, the subject aims to translate the English item ‘complains’ into Dutch. Obviously lacking the Dutch translation equivalent, she activates an English synonym, arrives at a German form, returns to English to look for another alternative expression, and eventually, mediated by the English form, arrives at a Dutch item. In the second example, the target language is German. The associative sequence starts with a non-existing foreignisation of the source item, which is immediately discarded, and followed by semantic approximations across English, German and Dutch. As the comment ‘no, that’s Dutch’ in the case of opruimen suggests, Dutch was here involuntarily activated. Example 3, on the other hand, shows strategic foreignisation of an immediately associated third language item. It may be noted that the result, *hij wijert zich is incorrect with regard to spelling and reflexiveness. The correct form would have been hij weigert. The transfer may therefore be considered partly successful. Example 4, again, evidences first and third language consultation and an erroneous foreignisation attempt. The final solution is mediated by the first language form, and is incorrect in so far as it disregards the distributional restriction of the Dutch item. (Schepen can refer only to creation by God; see also opruimen, which means tidying up a room.) The following examples consist in a semantic search in a third language (German), of which the informant appears to be aware, as her comments suggest. Her search eventually leads her to a related target language (Dutch) form. Example 6, which will be discussed in more detail later, involves a semantic search in both the target language Dutch and in German, as well as incorrect lexical transfer. In Examples 7 and 8, the target language is Swedish. They both involve third language consultation, which in the first case results in a correct solution. In the second one, no translation equivalent is found, and the clause is rephrased using the item ‘hair’ (Swedish hår (/ho:r/)). The verbal protocol documents a correct

129 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:25

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

129

pronunciation of the item, thus suggesting that the form (/hær/) involves a spelling error, rather than first language transfer, as might be assumed on the basis of the written product only. Examples 1 to 8 show that cross-linguistic consultation occurs independently of the degree of proficiency in the target language. They also suggest, supported by the information gained from the questionnaires, that lexical transfer among languages perceived as linguistically close plays an important role in second language production. While English serves as a medium of semantic approximation, for all second languages borrowing occurs predominantly from other Germanic languages. These findings agree with examples 9 to 14, which document the approximation strategies of the Norwegian fourth-year student. They also feature an interesting peculiarity. Although English is neither the subject’s mother tongue, nor perceived as closer to either target language than the other Germanic languages or otherwise linguistically helpful, she repeatedly resorts to English in her search for words (see examples 9, 11, 12, 13). This phenomenon may be explained by the fact that she lives in an English-speaking environment and studies the respective languages through the medium of English. The intermediary function of English appears to lead to strong associative connections which, in her case, outweigh perceived linguistic distance. Lexical processing at two cognitive levels

Some of the associative chains document the difference between semantic search and lexical retrieval. Examples 2, 4, and 5 clearly illustrate the spread of activation at the conceptual level, i.e. the scanning of the semantic environment of the source item in one or more languages. The semantic environment of comb includes brush, clean, and tidy, and their respective German or Dutch equivalents. To colour triggers to place, put, draw, mark, and create, and some of their second language equivalents. Realise evokes a series of three close synonyms in German, erkennen, verstehen, and bemerken. The examples could also be interpreted as evidence of the three categories of lexical organisation, and their developmental sequence: a distribution of subordinative, compound, and coordinative storage of items according to the level of proficiency in a second language appears to be supported by the data of the second-year students (examples 1 to 8). Overall, their strongest language, German, appears to be readily accessed conceptually. Dutch items seem to be stored in a mixed way, possibly according to their degree of familiarity. The form-mediated access of many of them point to subordinative storage; some of them are associatively

130 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:25

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

130

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

linked with the concepts corresponding to first language synonyms (see opruimen and create), suggesting a tendency towards a compound system, while again others are automatically and immediately retrieved in Dutch, which suggests coordinative storage. Target language Swedish involves a particularly strong element of language mixing. Here, both the German and Dutch lexicons are consulted to supply items assumed to exist in a similar form in Swedish. However, this strategy reflects more on the subjects’ metalinguistic knowledge than on their lexical organisation, because many of the missing target elements were simply not known to them. The fourth-year student (examples 9 to 14) shows little evidence of subordinative organisation, a certain degree of compound arrangement, but predominantly coordinative multilingualism across all her second languages. The latter statement is not supported by the given examples, but becomes evident from the high degree of direct, unmediated and non-erroneous translation into a second language. The same holds to a certain extent for the other fourth-year student who, unfortunately, did not provide much introspective information. She verbalised hardly any of her processing activities. However, as will be shown in the following, she produced several errors that allow conclusions to be drawn about cross-linguistic influence, in particular from a third language. Third language interference The examples presented in Table 7.2 show translation results that evidence influence from languages other than the mother tongue. Most often this relates to borrowing or loan translation, either deliberately or automatically, based on perceived structural similarity. The first three examples are cases of an involuntary use of German terms, which are automatically adapted to the Dutch and Swedish phonological and orthographic system. The fourth is similar, except that the German adjective is combined into a mixed German–Swedish compound. Example 5 is a conscious loan, accompanied by the comment ‘Att knippa – I believe that exists in any language’, which clearly indicates the subject’s awareness of cognates existing across the Germanic languages and her application of that knowledge. Examples 6 and 7 are self-explanatory. Example 8 is of particular interest as it shows that transfer can go beyond the word level. In an attempt to circumvent the missing item ‘complains’ in Swedish, the informant takes evasive action, resorting to what would correspond to the phrase ‘does not speak good about’, borrowing verb form and preposition from Dutch (possibly also in knowledge of the corre-

131 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:26

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

131

sponding German item). The solution, it may be remarked, is unidiomatic in any of the languages. Examples 1, 2, 3 and 7 come from the Irish fourth-year student, who complained repeatedly about getting confused and being unable to concentrate on the respective target language. At the same time, she does not seem to be aware of the recurring transfer in her translations. Her errors suggest that she has not (yet ?) been able to build up independent second language networks, but that German, Dutch and Swedish are instead stored together under an imaginary heading ‘Germanic’. Cross-linguistic influence of more than one language

A few translation products reveal confusion across several languages. One such example is the translation of Norwegian bord (‘table’) into German Tafel (‘(black)board’), where the correct item would have been Tisch. (The fact that Tafel can also mean ‘table’ in the context of a festive occasion can be left out of consideration here, as the subject did not know Tafel in that sense, and instead confirmed that she simply confused the different languages.) Figure 7.4 shows the complexity and asymmetry involved in the form–meaning correspondence of the respective lexical fields across the four languages involved. On the left we find the respective words for board, on the right for table. They originate in three different etymons of related meaning, which have taken a different development in the Germanic languages and in English, resulting in lexical asymmetries and false friends. Norwegian

tavle

semantic links (cross-linguistic)

bord

phonological links (cross-linguistic) English

board

table

German

Tafel

Tisch

Dutch

bord

semantic links (intra-linguistic)

Tafel

tafel

Figure 7.4 Connectivity of lexical items across languages

132 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:26

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

132

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Possibly relevant for the present example are several associations. Most notably, the Dutch item tafel (‘table’) is a false friend of Tafel. On the other hand, German Tafel corresponds to Norwegian tavle, which might have been expected to overrule the confusion with Dutch, in particular, since Dutch had not recently been activated. Another aspect relates to a possible underlying association with English, as English and Dutch (not Norwegian) share the distribution of the two lexemes. In a longitudinal case study, Williams and Hammarberg (1998) observed that a third language learner had the tendency to suppress her native language in favour of a related second language in situations of cross-linguistic lexical consultation, even in cases where mother tongue and target language structures were similar. They proposed two explanations for this behaviour: an automatic activation of other second languages in the context of second language learning (or, we may add, second language use), and the desire to suppress the first language in the belief that an inherently ‘foreign’ language would serve better as a point of reference for another ‘foreign’ language (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998: 323). In the light of these findings, the Norwegian informant’s tendency to consult English in cases of uncertainty (see above), and the fact that both English and Dutch display the same lexicalisation pattern, the translation of bord into Tafel could be explained as a case of overgeneralisation. Although a final explanation of the error is not available, the example demonstrates the complicated intertwining of lexical knowledge structures across several languages, and the confusion it can lead to. A cognitive perspective on the example may further elucidate the complexity of the associations involved. Displaying the lexical items as semantic and formal representations at two different levels (Figure 7.5), each intertwined in their respective environment, as well as connected with each other, with antagonistic links across languages, illustrates the sources of confusion. Another example of influence from more than one language can be found in the translation of ‘His mother gets angry’ into Dutch ‘Zijn moeder wordt *zorn’. The error involved in this phrase is twofold: *zorn is an item borrowed from German (Zorn), where it means ‘anger, fury’, and it is used as an adjective in analogy to the English phrase. The errors involved become more transparent when we visualise the lexical item as a frame consisting of the different component properties, or attribute-value sets, as illustrated above. We find that in the case of *zorn, a Dutch frame has been supplied with values from different languages: The core entry is borrowed from German, adapted orthographically (and phonologically, as the verbal report shows) to the Dutch layout, and the grammatical category has been

133 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:26

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

133

taken over from English. The result is a possible Dutch word in a construction that conforms to the Dutch language system – except that the word in question does not exist. Metalinguistic comments

As seen from the examples, metalinguistic comments document both controlled and involuntary third language activation. While strategic consultation involves conscious awareness, automatic third language activation is not always recognised as such. However, some of the subjects comment on the fact that third language interference seems to be difficult to control. The most striking of these comments is the remark by one of the second year students, ‘The more I think in German the more Dutch is coming out of me.’ Most interesting about this is not the mere fact that she activates the wrong language, but that it is her first translation task, and she had not used Dutch (which is a weaker language for her, anyway) recently, so that interference cannot be due to recent activation or dominant knowledge, as might be assumed. This supports Mearas’s hypothesis that third language interference is a mechanism emerging from the structure of the system itself. It could be explained by the fact that perceived linguistic similarity (which is confirmed by the subject’s comments) has led to strong associative, i.e. synaptic, connections which are automatically triggered as activation cascades through the system. Norwegian semantic

English

(Tafel)

German

bord

tavle

table

board Tafel

Tisch

Dutch

bord

tafel

Norwegian

bord

tavle

formal

English

(Tisch)

German

board

Dutch

table Tafel bord

tafel

Figure 7.5 Lexical networks as representations at two cognitive levels

134 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:26

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

134

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Individual variation Individual variables have been investigated only marginally in this study. In accordance with the literature, perceived linguistic distance and level of proficiency have been found to be of significance for the type of interconnectivity that prevails between the lexical items of different languages and corresponding processing mechanisms, i.e. routes of lexical access. The classroom language, when deviating from the mother tongue, has suggested itself as an additional factor, even if it is not perceived as linguistically close to the target language. With regard to the question of language mixing as opposed to independent second language processing, proficiency appears to be the major variable. The better a second language is mastered, the less it is prone to third language interference. An interesting observation relates to the apparently strong influence of stress on second language performance. The Irish fourth-year student, who could be considered almost fluent in all three second languages, appeared to have major difficulties controlling/avoiding third language interference. Not only did she find herself increasingly unable to focus her mind on one language, she also seemed to be relatively unaware of the strong third language element in [any of her] her translations. Her translation results contain a comparatively high degree of errors involving third language influence, despite her advanced skills in the different languages. Dutch in particular, her mastery of which she considers greater than that of German, shows considerable transfer from German. It appears that her particular way of experiencing the experiment as an exam situation led to a lack of control over her language system. At closer scrutiny, individual variables, in particular acquisitional aspects and previous linguistic experience, are expected not only to shed light on variation, but also to further elucidate lexical organisation mechanisms in general.

Conclusions The present chapter has proposed to integrate neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives on lexical organisation in a unifying model, in order to comprehensively explain language processing in plurilingual individuals. The proposed approach has been supported by data collected in a study of lexical processing in translation from a mother tongue into three related second languages. The data collection utilised the method of concurrent think-aloud protocols, which traced the routes taken in lexical

135 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:26

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

135

retrieval or search, and provided useful evidence in respect of language mixing and cross-linguistic influence in second language production. The results furnish support for the notion that the languages in the multilingual brain are multifariously linked but can also, to a certain extent, be activated independently. Perceived linguistic distance, proficiency of the user, and classroom language have presented themselves as factors of interconnectedness, determining the nature and strength of cross-linguistic links and the user’s ability to process multiple languages separately. Production errors and processing mechanisms show that lexical items are linked in a complex way at various linguistic levels, supporting the notion of lexical knowledge as representation at different cognitive levels. In order to psychologically account for the mechanisms involved, and to draw an integrative picture of the plurilingual mental lexicon, lexical items can be modelled as being composed of a number of component properties, whose interdependence can be illustrated by displaying them as attributevalue sets connected in an associative frame. Notes 1. ‘Plurilingual(ism)’ refers to linguistic competence in more than one language. It is used whenever there are no differences in principle assumed between a bi- and a multi-lingual situation. Likewise, ‘second language’ is used to refer to any language other than the mother tongue, unless explicitly opposed to additional languages. 2. Speaking of two levels of representation, I refer to semantic and formal knowledge. The distinction between phonological and orthographic representation is taken to be a sub-differentiation at the formal level, involving two distinct cognitive domains. For the sake of transparency, I will refer only to ‘formal knowledge’ and a corresponding network system. It is understood that this subsumes the distinction between phonological and orthographic representation.

References Aitchison, J. (1994) Words in the Mind. Oxford: Blackwell. Barsalou, L.W. (1992) Cognitive Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bassnett-McGuire, S. (1980) Translation Studies. London and New York: Methuen. Bates, E. and MacWhinney, B. (1989) Functionalism and the competition model. In B. MacWhinney and E. Bates (eds) The Crosslinguistic Study of Sentence Processing (pp. 3–73). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bierwisch, M. and Schreuder, R. (1992) From concepts to lexical items. Cognition 42, 23–66. Cook, V. (1992) Evidence for multicompetence. Language Learning 42, 557–91. De Groot, A. (1993) Word-type effects in bilingual processing tasks: Support for a mixed representational system. In R. Schreuder and B. Weltens (eds) The Bilingual Lexicon (pp. 27–51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

136 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:27

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

136

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Dechert, H.W. (1987) Analysing language processing through verbal protocols. In C. Færch and G. Kasper (eds) Introspection in Second Language Research (pp. 96– 112). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dell, G (1986) A spreading–activation theory of lexical retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 283–321. Dell, G. and O’Seaghdha, P.G. (1992) Stages of lexical access in language production. Cognition 42, 287–314. Eccles, J.C. (1989) Evolution of the Brain. London: Routledge. Ericsson, K.A. (1990) Introspection. In M.W. Eysenck (ed.) The Blackwell Dictionary of Cognitive Psychology (pp. 193–95). Oxford: Blackwell. Fabbro, F. and Paradis, M. (1995) Acquired aphasia in a bilingual child. In M. Paradis (ed.) Aspects of Bilingual Aphasia (pp. 67–84) Oxford: Elsevier Science. Garman, M. (1990) Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gazzaniga, M.S., Ivry, R.B. and Mangun, G.R. (1998) Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. New York and London: Norton Company. Green, D. (1986) Control, activation and resource: A framework and a model for the control of speech in bilinguals. Brain and Language 27, 210–23. Harris, M. and Coltheart, M. (1986) Language Processing in Children and Adults. London: Routledge. Hölscher, A. and Möhle, D. (1987) Cognitive plans in translation. In C. Færch and G. Kasper (eds) Introspection in Second Language Research (pp. 113–34). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jessner, U. (1997) Towards a dynamic view of multilingualism. In M. Pütz (ed.) Language Choices (pp. 17–30). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Krings, H.P. (1987) The use of introspective data in translation. In C. Færch and G. Kasper (eds) Introspection in Second Language Research (pp. 159–76). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Langacker, R. (1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar 1. Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Meara, P. (1999) Self-organisation in bilingual lexicons. In P. Broeder and J. Muure (eds) Language and Thought in Development: Crosslinguistic Studies (pp. 127–144). Tübingen: Narr. Paradis, M. (1985) On the representation of two languages in one brain. Language Sciences 7, 1–39. Paradis, M. (1987) The Assessment of Bilingual Aphasia. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Perecman, E. (1989) Language processing in the bilingual: Evidence from language mixing. In K. Hyltenstam and L.K. Obler (eds) Bilingualism across the Lifespan (pp. 227–44). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roelofs, A. (1992) A spreading–activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition 42, 107–42. Saussure, F. de (1973) Cours de Linguistique Generale T. de Mauro (ed.). Paris: Payot. Singleton, D.M. (1996) Crosslinguistic lexical operations and the L2 mental lexicon. In T. Hickey and J. Williams (eds) Language, Education and Society in a Changing World (pp. 246–52). Dublin: IRAAL/Multilingual Matters. Singleton, D.M. (1997) Learning and processing L2 vocabulary. Language Teaching 30, 1–13. Singleton, D.M. (1999) Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weinreich, U. (1953) Languages in Contact. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.

137 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:27

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Plurilingual Lexical Organisation

137

Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333. Woutersen, M. (1997) Bilingual Word Perception. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Zimmermann, R. (1994) Dimensionen des mentalen Lexicons aus der Perspektive des L2-Gebrauchs. In W. Börner and K. Vogel (eds) Kognitive Linguistik und Fremdsprachenerwerb (pp. 107–27). Tübingen: Narr.

138 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:27

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 8

Learners of German as an L3 and their Production of German Prepositional Verbs MARTHA GIBSON, BRITTA HUFEISEN and GARY LIBBEN

Background This investigation comes out of some recent research into how the learning of an L3, a second or even third foreign language, is similar or dissimilar to the learning of an L2, or first foreign language. Researchers such as Hufeisen (2000a), Klein (1995), Jessner (1997) and Mägiste (1984) depart from the view that learning an L3 or L4 is for all intents and purposes the same process as learning an L2. The main difference is that an adult L3 learner brings with her or him a wealth of knowledge and strategies that a learner of a first foreign language (L2) does not (Kallenbach, 1996, 1998; Mißler, 1999). While both types of learner make use of similar general cognitive capabilities, such as general learning strategies, to those of adult learners of a foreign language, L3 learners bring more to the learning table, attributable to previous foreign language learning experience. As Hufeisen states (2000a: 214), ‘The factors which affect learning an L3 have not only become more complex, but they are also qualitatively different from L2 learning.’ These learners will have a broader depth and range not only of general language learning strategies, but also of specific experiences and strategies related to foreign language learning (Hufeisen, 2000b), as well as a greater metalinguistic knowledge of how languages are structured in general (Thomas 1985, 1988, 1992), whether or not they are of IndoEuropean in origin. These added sources of knowledge give the L3 learner a foreign language learning edge that is not available to someone who is learning a foreign language for the first time. In theoretical and practical terms then, these experiences and capabilities clearly distinguish adult L3 learners from first-time learners of a foreign language, making them unique learner-types and warranting in-depth investigation. The above issues were broken down into three conceptual questions:

138 139 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:27

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Learners of German as L3: Their Production of Prepositional Verbs

139

(1) Does having a second language help or hinder in the production of German L3 prepositional verbs? Experimentally, this question asks whether or not those participants having an L2 (German is thus their L3 or even later, L4/L5, foreign language) will show an advantage in task accuracy compared to those participants who are learning German as their first foreign language, or L2. The expectation was that, having already learned a foreign language before tackling German, the L3 language learner will have both specific linguistic and more general metalinguistic scaffolding to make the linguistic task easier, compared to those who are learning German as their first foreign language. These latter learners are encountering linguistic structures, both in lexical and morphological structural terms, for the first time. We therefore predicted that the overall accuracy of those groups having an L2 would be higher than the combined accuracy of the two remaining who do not, i.e.: Learners with L2 (L3 German) > Learners without L2 (L2 German) (2) Does having an L1 similar to the German L3 help or hinder in the production of German L3 prepositional verbs, given the presence of an L2 similar to German? The structural similarity of a learner’s various foreign languages to one another is an important factor in his/her production of German as an L3. It might be expected, for instance, that a participant having an L1 (such as Chinese) that is not structurally similar to the German L3, and an L2 such as English, would evince less accuracy in the task since English, as the first foreign language, would produce a natural source of interference in the production of the, also foreign, German verbs. Having both an L1 and L2 that are similar to German might in fact create less interference if the interference effects of the two previous languages work to cancel each other out. In this case, someone with Swedish as L1, English as L2 and German as L3 would show greater accuracy in the task than someone with a language profile such as Chinese as L1, English as L2 and German as L3. On the other hand, the inhibitory effect may be based on the sheer number of structurally similar foreign languages, the status as L1 or L2 notwithstanding. Two intervening languages similar to German could provide a cumulative inhibitory effect on the production of the German L3, thereby creating a larger interference effect. Learners with a structurally similar foreign language (L2 or L3), such as Swedish or English for example, would therefore show less interference and a higher accuracy

140 Cenoz: Proof 3a, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 06 August 2001 17:13:12

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

140

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

score. In this case, then, the speaker with Chinese L1, English L2 and German L3 speaker would outperform the speaker with Swedish L1, English L2 and German L3. (3) Does having an L2 similar to the L3 help or hinder in the production of an L3? The other major variable in the foreign language equation is if and how the type of intervening L2, or even L3, affects the production of German as the later foreign language. Experimentally, this pits the accuracy performance of participants who have an L2 similar to German, such as English, against those who have an L2 structurally different from German, such as Chinese. Again, there might be a structural and even lexical advantage to having a German-like L2, a linguistic bootstrapping effect that renders the task of producing German prepositional verbs easier for the learner. In this case: Learners with L2 similar to German > Learners with L2 dissimilar to German On the other hand, the effect of number of similar languages might again come into play and the two (or more) German-like intervening foreign languages will provide cumulative interference in the later foreign language, German. Thus, those learners with Arabic, Turkish, and other languages not possessing prepositional verbs may experience less of an interference effect by virtue of fewer sources of interference. In this case the following effect would be expected: Learners with L2 similar to German < Learners with L2 dissimilar to German (4) Are German prepositional verbs whose prepositions are translation equivalents of the English easier for learners of German as an L3 to produce? This question assumes that having English somewhere in one’s mix of foreign languages will be of benefit for accuracy in those German prepositional verbs which share a preposition with English such as gehören zu – listen to, compared to those which do not, e.g. warten auf – wait for. Those learners with no knowledge of English should naturally enough show no difference in accuracy between the two verb types in the task. Thus, we expect the following result: German verbs like English > German verbs not like English

141 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:28

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Learners of German as L3: Their Production of Prepositional Verbs

141

Method Participants There were 64 participants in total, 33 men and 31 women with an average age of 25. All were adult learners of German as a foreign language studying at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. All had at least a Mittelstufe 2 level of German competence. The participants were asked in a post-task questionnaire about their foreign language background, and rated on a five-point scale their own levels of proficiency in speaking, understanding, reading and writing their various foreign languages. Their first foreign language, or L2, was considered to be the language they first started learning chronologically. A wide variety of languages were reported as mother tongues or L1, 20 different languages in all. The number of different L2s and L3s were not nearly so numerous. The languages reported as L1, L2, and L3/L4 are as follows: L1: Armenian, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, Finnish, French, Georgian, Greek, Korean, Kurdish, Mongolian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian L2: English, French, German, Latin, Macedonian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian L3/L4: Arabic, English, French, German, Japanese, Swedish Stimuli The stimuli consisted of 33 German prepositional verbs of the type talk to, listen to, consist of. These verbs were divided into two types. One group (13 in total) consisted of direct translations between German and English (such as gehören zu- belong to) such that the preposition was the same. The second group of prepositional verbs (20 in total) had different prepositions in German and English, for example, sprechen über versus talk about. Procedure Participants performed a pen and paper task that required filling in the correct preposition to go with the verb, e.g. hoffen ________. They were given as much time as they needed to complete the task. Participants were encouraged to guess the answer if they were not sure of it.

142 Cenoz: Proof 3a, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 06 August 2001 17:13:13

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

142

Table 8.1 Experimental groups Group

L1

L2

L3/L4 (German)

1

like German

German

—

2

not like German

German

—

3

like German

like German

German

4

not like German

like German

German

5

like German

not like German

German

6

not like German

not like German

German

Design The 64 resulting questionnaires were subsequently placed into one of 6 groups, based on whether or not the participants had a second language, and whether or not their mother tongue (L1) and/or their second language (L2) was structurally similar to German (which was usually their L3, sometimes their L4). For example, if their L1 was a language that had prepositional verbs and their L2 did as well, they were placed in Group 3. If their L1 did not have prepositional verbs, but their L2 did, they were placed in Group 4. The six experimental groups can be seen in Table 8.1.

Results Most participants did very well in the task. The average number correct was 25, and the average percentage correct was 77%. The range of task accuracy for all participants (n = 64) was 39% to 94%. The average accuracy of each group is shown in Table 8.2. The first issue we were interested in was whether having a second (intervening) foreign language helps or hinders in the performance of the German L3 task. We expected that those learners who had an intervening foreign language and German as their L3 or later would outperform those Table 8.2 Task accuracy by group Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Group 6

Total

8

1

27

25

2

1

64

Average accuracy/33

25.6

26

25

25

18

28

25

% accuracy

77

79

75

76

55

85

77

n

143 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:28

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Learners of German as L3: Their Production of Prepositional Verbs

143

Table 8.3 Comparison of accuracy between German as L2 to German as L3 German as L2

German as L3/L4

n

9

55

average accuracy/33

26

25

% accuracy

78

74

who had German as their L2 – their first foreign language. This expectation was not borne out, however. The overall accuracy of the two categories is shown in Table 8.3. Participants from Groups 1 and 2 were combined as the ‘German as L2’ category and obtained an overall task accuracy of 78%. Participants in Groups 3, 4, 5 and 6 were combined as the category ‘German as L3/L4’ (and in a few cases as L5), and showed an accuracy of 73%. The tendency was for learners without an intervening foreign language to perform better on the task. This difference was, however, not statistically significant, as shown by a t-test comparing the average scores of the learners in the two categories (p = 0.315, d.f. = 62). This result can only be considered preliminary because of the low sample size in the ‘German as L2’ category. The second question was whether or not there was a difference in production accuracy between those participants who have an L1 (such as Swedish) that is structurally similar to German, and those who have one (such as Chinese) that is not. This comparison measured the performances of learners in Group 3 against those in Group 4, both of whom had an L2 that was similar to German, such as English. Group 3 (L1 like German) showed an overall accuracy score of 77%; Group 4 (L1 not like German) behaved identically, also with an accuracy rate of 77%. A t-test confirmed that the difference in accuracy was non-significant (p = 0.89, d.f. = 25). In other words, the structural identity of the L1 as similar or dissimilar to the L3 has no bearing on the accuracy of production in the German L3 in this task. Our third experimental question was whether learners having an L2 similar to the German L3 would have an advantage in the production task over those who have a dissimilar L2. This analysis compares learners from Groups 3 and 4 with those in Groups 5 and 6. Unfortunately, the low sample size in the latter two categories makes this comparison untenable at this stage of the study. Learners who are studying German as their second or third foreign language (L3 or L4) do not tend to have a first foreign language (L2) that is dissimilar to German, such as a non-IndoEuropean language, or one that has no prepositional verbs.

144 Cenoz: Proof 3a, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 06 August 2001 17:13:13

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

144

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Our final experimental question concerned the effect of knowledge of English on task performance. Some of the German prepositional verbs had prepositions that were translation equivalents of English, whereas others had prepositions that were different from the English translations. We wanted to know which type of prepositional verb learners who know English would find easier to produce. Contrary to our expectations, it turned out that the prepositional verbs that were equivalent in German and English were slightly more difficult for learners who have English as a foreign language to correctly produce. ‘Not Like English’ verbs received an average score of 80% correct, while ‘Like English’ verbs received an average correct score of 75%. The statistical effect was somewhat ambiguous, however. A 1-factor ANOVA (analysis of variance) comparing the average scores on ‘Not Like English’ verbs (n = 20) to ‘Like English’ verbs (n = 13) showed no significant difference (F = 0.502 (1, 24), p = 0.485). However, a repeated-measures ANOVA over all participants with Verb Type as the within factor (2 levels: ‘Not Like English’ versus ‘Like English’) showed significance at the p < 0.05 level, (F = 5.86 (1, 56), p = 0.0188). For this latter analysis, seven Not Like English verbs were randomly eliminated, as the program demanded an equal number of verbs of each type. At this point, we can only tentatively conclude that a knowledge of English is not helpful in producing German prepositional verbs that have equivalent prepositions, such as with ‘sich konzentrieren auf’ versus ‘concentrate on’. Knowledge of English may even be acting as a hindrance by providing a negative source of interference, such that learners are deliberately avoiding any English-sounding preposition, knowing that the similarity of German and English can lead to interference. The result of such a strategy would be an over-correction away from English, leading to errors. This possibility will be explored in detail in a subsequent analysis of the errors made by learners. Another noteworthy result was the high degree of score variation over the individual verbs, which is evident from the accuracy scores on each prepositional verb, shown in Table 8.4. Accuracy ranged from a low of 42% on zeigen auf, to a high of 98% on warten auf and reden mit.

Summary and Discussion Although we are limited to speculation regarding certain results at this stage of the study, the following conclusions seem to be clear from the data as it stands. (1) Learners who have acquired an intervening L2 before learning

145 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:29

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Learners of German as L3: Their Production of Prepositional Verbs

145

Table 8.4 Accuracy on individual prepositional verbs by all learners (n = 64) ‘Not like English’ prep. verbs 1. abhängen von 2. bitten um 3. denken an/über 4. hoffen auf 5. hören auf 6. lachen über 7. reden von 8. sich bemühen um 9. sich freuen auf 10. sich fürchten vor 11. sich interessieren für 12. sich kümmern um 13. sich verlieben in 14. sprechen über/von 15. suchen nach 16. teilnehmen an 17. verhandeln über 18. warten auf 19. wissen von 20. zeigen auf ‘Like English’ prep. verbs 1. abziehen von 2. bestehen auf 3. danken für 4. flüchten nach/von 5. fungieren als 6. gehören zu 7. reden mit 8. sich entschuldigen für 9. sich konzentrieren auf 10. sich sorgen um 11. sich überzeugen von 12. sprechen mit 13. wählen zwischen

English gloss depend on ask for/trouble someone for think about hope for listen to laugh about speak about take trouble to look forward to be afraid of be interested in look after something fall in love with speak about search/look for take part in negotiate/discuss (about) wait for know about point at English gloss depart from insist on thank for flee to/from function as belong to talk with excuse oneself for concentrate on worry about be convinced of speak with choose between

146 Cenoz: Proof 3a, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 06 August 2001 17:13:13

% Accuracy 91 89 97 84 47 84 97 66 94 69 77 84 83 98 81 88 50 98 84 42 % Accuracy 77 88 72 53 39 94 95 72 69 48 69 95 58

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

146

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

German as an L3/L4 do not outperform those who are learning German as their first foreign language. In fact, the tendency is for the task to be slightly easier for those learning German as their L2. This result is contrary to our expectation that having extra, intervening foreign languages would give a learner a tactical linguistic advantage for tackling the German L3 production task. Instead, it may be that these earlier foreign languages are providing fodder for linguistic interference in the task, contributing to a cumulative ‘confusion effect’. Whether or not this interference is language-specific must be teased out in the error analysis. A larger sample size of learners in the ‘German as L2’ is also necessary in order to confirm or disconfirm these findings. It may also be that the lexical nature of the production task is not able to adequately capture the suspected foreign language scaffolding effect and that a more transparently structural task is required, perhaps one involving both lexical and syntactic constructions. (2) Having an L1 that is structurally similar to German makes no difference in the production of these German L3 prepositional verbs. Given an L2 that is structurally similar to German, learners who have Russian as their L1 performed no better or worse than learners who have Chinese as their mother tongue. This confirmation of the null hypothesis is interesting in that we suspect that the identity of the L1 has less of an impact on the ability to manipulate the L3, that is process and produce it, than does the identity of the intervening L2. In other words, we expect that the intervening foreign language will have a more salient inhibitory or facilitatory effect on the production of German as L3/L4 than does the mother tongue, by virtue of its status as a foreign and not native language. This hypothesis will be investigated as soon as the number of participants in the respective groups reaches a reasonable size. (3) In this task, the similarity of German to English does not work in favour of those who have English as a foreign language. The prepositional verbs in the task with equivalent prepositions in German and English are not easier for the learners to produce, and appear to be somewhat more difficult. For some reason, the production of the preposition is not being facilitated even though it is a translation equivalent in German and English. As mentioned above, one possibility is that learners are ‘over-correcting’ on these verbs, deliberately avoiding a resemblance to English in their answer. The question is therefore which of the learners’ languages is the prime source of interference

147 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:29

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Learners of German as L3: Their Production of Prepositional Verbs

147

(for example in the function of some kind of ‘base language’, Chandrasekhar, 1978). Is it the native language, assuming it has prepositional verbs? Or, as is more likely, is the source one of their other foreign languages (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998)? This interference could present itself as a combination of the learners’ most recentlylearned languages, or be driven by the foreign language that the learner reports being most proficient in. Again, these possibilities will be investigated in the error analysis. As a final observation, the individual identities of the prepositional verbs must be considered in the analysis. Although the items were chosen as representative of the typical lexicon that a student needs to know to pass the DSH Prüfung (Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang ausländischer Studienbewerberinnen/Studienbewerber – the German language entrance test for foreign student applicants to university and college), and were thus a homogenous sample of German prepositional verbs, there was a wide variance in accuracy on each item. This variance naturally contributes to the amount of statistical noise in the experiment. Fortunately, there is about the same amount of variance in accuracy scores over the two types of prepositional verbs. The suspected culprit is the so-called frequency effect, such that certain items have a higher rate of occurrence in the German language than others and would be expected to be easier to produce in a recall task. This phenomenon needs to be at the very least accounted for in further testing. References Chandrasekhar, A. (1978). Base Language. International Review of Applied Linguistics 16, 62–5. Hufeisen, B. (2000a) Tertiary languages with a focus on German as a foreign language. In J. Rosenthal (ed.) Handbook of Undergraduate Second Language Education: English as a Second Language, Bilingual, and Foreign Language Instruction for a Multilingual World (pp. 209–29). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hufeisen, B. (2000b) How do foreign language learners evaluate various aspects of their multilingualism? In S. Dentler, B. Hufeisen and B. Lindemann (eds) Tertiärsprachen. Empirische Berichte (pp. 23–40). Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Jessner, U. (1997) Towards a dynamic view of multilingualism. In M. Pütz (ed.) Language Choices: Conditions, Constraints and Consequences (pp. 17–30). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kallenbach, C. (1996) Subjektive Theorien – was Schüler und Schülerinnen über Fremdsprechenlernen denken. Tübingen: Narr. Kallenbach, C. (1998) ‘Da weiß ich schon, was auf mich zukommt.’ L3-Spezifika aus Schülersicht. In B. Hufeisen and B. Lindemann (eds) Tertiärsprache. Theorien, Modelle, Methoden (pp. 47–57) Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

148 Cenoz: Proof 3a, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 06 August 2001 17:13:14

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

148

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Klein, E.C. (1995) Second versus third language acquisition: Is there a difference? Language Learning 45, 419–65. Mägiste, E. (1984) Learning a third language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 5, 415–21. Mißler, B. (1999) Fremdsprachenlernerfahrungen und Lernstrategien. Eine empirische Untersuchung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Thomas, J. (1985). The role played by prior linguistic experience in second and third language learning. In R.J. Hall (ed.) The Eleventh Linguistic Association of Canada and United States Forum 1984 (pp. 510–18). Columbia, South Carolina: Hornbeam Press. Thomas, J. (1988) The role played by metalinguistic awareness in second and third language learning. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 9, 235– 47. Thomas, J. (1992) Metalinguistic awareness in second- and third-language learning. In R.J. Harris (ed.) Cognitive Processing in Bilinguals (pp. 531–45). Amsterdam: North-Holland. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333.

149 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:30

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 9

Too Close for Comfort? Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L>_3 ROBERT J. FOUSER

Introduction Research on the learning of a non-native language (L3) beyond the first non-native language made substantial progress in the 1990s, as evidenced by a number of articles in mainstream SLA publications (Hufeisen, 1993; Klein, 1995; Dewaele, 1998; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998) and specific volumes on L3 (Hufeisen & Lindemann, 1998; Cenoz & Jessner, 2000). Though gratifying to researchers in the field, a number of important theoretical and methodological issues have not yet been adequately addressed. Theoretical issues include the cross-linguistic influence of an L3 on L2, and possibly L1, and the cross-linguistic influence of the L3 on the acquisition of subsequent non-native languages (L4, L5, etc.). Methodological issues include the use of terminology to describe the acquisition of a second non-native language, the role of L1, L2 and other language baseline data in investigating the acquisition of the target language, and developing adequate controls and data elicitation instruments. To discuss these issues, I will report the results of an introspective study on two learners of Korean as an L3 and L5 respectively who had achieved high–intermediate proficiency in the language by the time the data were collected. The research questions underpinning the study are as follows: (1) Given the syntactic, morphological, lexical and sociolinguistic similarities between the Japanese and Korean, how did the learners ’experience of having acquired Japanese affect subsequent acquisition of Korean? (2) Did the learners ’acquisition of Korean and comparatively long residence in Korea affect their competence in Japanese?

149 150 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:30

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

150

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

(3) What subjective states did the learners bring to their language learning, and how do they define language learning as an activity? The study was designed to elicit data on these and other questions relating to language transfer in general and to sociolinguistic transfer in particular. Including a sociolinguistic element allows for a deeper comparison of the language transfer phenomena, because Korean and Japanese both have a number of clearly marked speech levels and honorific expressions, whereas the L1 (English) of the learners in this study does not. It provides insight into how learners use their linguistic, cultural and world knowledge, to acquire and process an L3 and beyond. Background Terminology

One of the most basic issues in any research project is consistent labels for the phenomena under investigation. To date, a number of different terms have been used to describe the acquisition of a second non-native language. Ringbom (1985), perhaps out of a desire not to burden readers with new terminology, used the term L2 for the target language even if that language has been or is being acquired after a native and first non-native language, which is frequently noted as LN. Williams and Hammarberg (1998) use L3 to refer to any language that is the target language regardless of how many non-native languages have been acquired or learned previously. These terms are unfortunate because they obscure the differences between monolingual learners who acquire an L2, a first non-native language, and learners who have acquired or at least have studied a first non-native language before acquiring an L3. To refer to general phenomena of post-L2 acquisition in this study, I will use the notation ‘L≥3,’ which originates from the mathematical formula ‘Li,i≥3’, that is, greater or equal to three. In referring to the learners in this study, the terms ‘L3’ and ‘L5’ will be used to refer to individual findings. The term ‘L≥3 acquisition’ is sufficiently broad to include all languages learned beyond the L3 without the addition of another cumbersome numerical term, such as L4, L5 or L6. This is justifiable because learners of an L3 and subsequent languages all have the experience of learning two languages, one of which is most frequently a non-native language. They thus have a linguistic and cultural knowledge base of at least two languages to draw on and, in many cases, cognitive language acquisition skills derived from having already acquired a non-native language (Zobl, 1992; Cenoz & Valencia, 1994; Klein, 1995). In this paradigm, there are thus three major types of language acquisition: L1, L2 (either a second or foreign

151 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:30

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

151

language), and L≥3. When numerical specificity of the order of languages acquired and being acquired is beneficial, of course, terms such as L4, L5, etc. can be used to describe more succinctly the relationship between languages. Overview of the Korean and Japanese languages

Space is too limited here to provide a complete overview of the Korean and Japanese languages, but some background information is in order. Linguists have yet to prove a genetic affiliation between Korean and another language, but it is generally agreed that the language is a member of the Altaic language family that includes Turkish, Mongolian and Manchu. Like these languages, Korean word order is SOV with a large number of agglutinating verbal endings. The relationship with Japanese is problematic, because the syntax and morphology are very similar, but the phonology is quite different. Attempts to find lexical cognates in Japanese have also failed to produce a clear pattern of genetic relationship. Intuitively, however, many scholars and language learners believe that Japanese is the closest major language to Korean (see Shibatani, 1990, for a detailed discussion of the genetic relationship between Korean and Japanese). Korean and Japanese also share a common lexicon based on Chinese characters. Thus, while few, if any, indigenous cognates between the two languages have been found, the large Chinese-character-based lexicon closely links the two languages, much as French and Latin words in English connect it to French and other non-Germanic languages. The writing systems of each language differ, which obscures some of the lexical similarities between the languages. The Korean script, hangul, which was invented in 1443, is a phonographic script in which some of the 24 (originally 28) graphs depict the points of articulation of all of the phonemes in the Korean language. These graphs are then combined together into units that correspond with syllable boundaries in Korean. Diphthongs are also made by combining the graphs for pure vowels. Before the invention of hangul, the Korean writing system used Chinese characters exclusively. Hangul became the dominant form of writing only in the twentieth century. Chinese characters continue to be used in South Korea, mainly in academic writing and newspaper headlines, but they have been eliminated from official orthography in North Korea (Hannas, 1997). The Japanese writing system is a combination of the phonographic syllabary, kana, and characters (logographs) borrowed from Chinese. The kana is composed of two scripts: hiragana, which is used extensively for morphemes, and katakana, which is used for words of foreign (though not Chinese) origin. Kana emerged from Chinese characters in the eighth and ninth centuries. The

152 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:30

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

152

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Table 9.1 Overview of politeness in Korean, Japanese and English

Korean

System of honorifics

Humble expression

Speech levels

Male / female language

complex

rarely used

age & status (rigid)

little

complex

complex

distance & status (variable)

complex

none (except royalty)

none

distance & status (variable)

little

Japanese

English

Roman alphabet is used frequently in Japan for commercial products and in advertising. Japanese is the only language in the world composed of four different scripts, each with a different role in the writing system. Because the qualitative analysis of the data in this study will be based on a comparison of learner sociolinguistic competency in Korean, Japanese and Australian English, the L1 of both learners, some background information on sociolinguistic norms in Korean and Japanese is in order. Korean and Japanese both have a complex system of honorifics and humble expressions that denote various speech levels. Table 9.1 gives an overview of the honorific systems in Korean, Japanese and English. English has only a few clearly marked honorific expressions in terms of address. Korean has a complicated system of referent and addressee-related honorifics that determine the general level of the speech. In general, Koreans are guided by absolute rules that go beyond the context of the conversation. Age and social status, rather than sex and social distance, provide Koreans with the necessary information to assess the context of the conversation (Sohn, 1986; Park, 1990). Unlike Japanese, Korean has very few humble expressions, and thus relies on elevation of the addressee and related referents through the use of honorific expressions. Japanese has a complicated system of referent and addressee honorifics that speakers use according to the context of the conversation. How speakers manipulate honorifics determines the level of speech. Native speakers of Japanese determine the context of the conversation by considering the age, sex, status and social distance of the participants, and their assessments of the context vary considerably according to the individual (Shibatani, 1990; Coulmas, 1992). The Japanese system of honorifics is a relative one in which the speaker’s relationship to the addressee provides the basis of assessment of the context of the conversation (Ogino, 1989; Park 1990). In addition to

153 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:31

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

153

honorifics, Japanese has a system of humble expressions that speakers use to lower themselves, while elevating the addressee and related referents. Unlike Korean, where speech levels are rarely mixed in discourse with the same interlocutor, there is also considerable mixing of speech level in Japanese as speakers use the informal speech level to indicate emotional solidarity with the addressee.

Methodology Participants The participants in this study were two learners of Korean as an L≥3, and two native speakers of Korean. The learner of Korean as an L3, whom I will call ‘Eric,’ had studied Japanese intensively for one year and had completed an undergraduate major in law, both in Japan, before learning Korean. The learner of Korean as an L5, whom I will call ‘Jeff,’ had studied French and German in school and had majored in Japanese at university before learning Korean. He spent a year in Belgium during high school and maintained intermediate–advanced proficiency in French by the time the data were collected. Both learners had highly advanced proficiency in Japanese. I met Eric by e-mail in mid-1999 when he contacted me to inquire about employment in Japan. He found my e-mail address at the bottom of a regular column that I write in The Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper in Korea. I met Jeff through a friend of mine in Korea who had introduced us six months before the data were collected in early 1996. During those six months, I had kept in touch regularly by e-mail. By the time the data were collected Eric was 24 and had been in Korea for three years; Jeff was 27 and had been in Korea for 18 months. Instruments Because this is an introspective study, a combination of instruments could be used (see Table 9.2) to elicit a wide range of data that might be unwieldy if used with a large group of learners. Two instruments were use to gather background information: a language learning experience questionnaire and a multiple language learning experiential report. The language learning experience questionnaire was modelled on the questionnaires used by Gardner and Lambert (1972), Naiman et al. (1978), and in the Modern Languages Research Project at Trinity College Dublin (Singleton, 1990). The questionnaire contained a ranking system of three to five levels. Questions containing five levels were designed to elicit more detail than did those with three levels. I also included a ‘not applicable’ category, indicated by an ‘NA,’ so that the

154 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:31

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

154

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Table 9.2 Data elicitation instruments for Korean and Japanese Instrument

DCT*

Language Choice*

SWT*

global proficiency

speech act judgements/ production (speaking)

request speech act judgements/ awareness

speech act production (writing)

4 passages 100 deletions

8 speech acts 8 situations

1 speech act 20 interlocs.

1 speech act 1 situation

C-Test

Purpose

Type Written introspection

No

No

No

Yes

*Instrument also used to elicit data on L1 English

learners did not feel forced to answer questions that they did not feel applied to them or that they did not want to answer. The experiential report was an open-ended task in which the learners were asked to write at length on anything about their prior language learning experience that they wanted to write about. The report was designed primarily to elicit information on the learner’s attitudes, motivation and other subjective states surrounding past language learning experience(s) (Grotjahn, 1991). The C-test was chosen as the main measure of proficiency because it correlates well with other measures of global language proficiency (Klein-Braley, 1985). Fouser (1997) adapted the C-test to Japanese in an introspective study of an advanced learner of Japanese as an L3. Adapting the C-test to Korean and Japanese required some adjustments from conventional C-test construction, as represented by the example from English in Table 9.3. Deletions are noted in boxes, and ‘Greece,’ a proper noun that is not included in the alternating count of words, is underlined in each language. Developing a Korean C-test was simple, because a sentence in Korean is divided into words based on a combination of phonological and morphological segments of the sentence. It was relatively easy to determine which section of the orthographic word to delete. In the standard C-test, the last Table 9.3 C-test construction for Korean and Japanese

155 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:31

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

155

half of every other word is deleted, but this would have placed excessive emphasis on syntax and morphology because grammatical particles and morphological agglutinations almost always occur at the end of the orthographic word in Korean. Alternating deletions between the first half and second half of every other word, however, creates a more balanced view of proficiency because omitting the first half of a word tests lexical proficiency more than syntactic or morphological proficiency. The idea of first-half, or left-hand deletions came from Cleary (1988) who conducted several experiments with Arabic-speaking learners of English as an L2, using an English C-test with left-hand deletions. Constructing the C-test for Japanese was more challenging because Japanese has no spaces between words in a sentence. This made it more difficult to determine where word boundaries lie, or even what constitutes a ‘word.’ I decided to follow a phonological definition of a word as a bunsetsu because Japanese textbooks commonly separate elements in a Japanese sentence into bunsetsu. Like its Korean counterpart, a bunsetsu is a phonologically determined element composed of a lexical item and a suffixed grammatical particle that Japanese linguists use to define word boundaries (Shibatani, 1990). As with the Korean C-test, deletions alternated between the first and second half of each word (bunsetsu) because the syntactic and morphological structure of Japanese is similar to Korean. Finally, one additional measure of proficiency was used to check the accuracy of the C-test. The learners were asked to give their scores on Level One, the highest level, of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). Three instruments were used to elicit data on sociolinguistic competence and transfer. The first was a DCT, or Discourse Completion Task, which has been used in a number of studies on cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics (e.g. studies in Blum-Kulka et al., 1989; studies reviewed in Kasper & Dahl, 1991). Each of the eight situations on the DCT was designed to elicit data on sociolinguistic competence in the speech acts: asking for permission, refusals, invitations, making promises, apologies, expressing thanks, expressing opinions, and requests. All the situations omitted the hearer’s response so as not to influence the results. Although recent research (e.g. Rose, 1994) has raised questions about the validity of DCTs, I chose the DCT for this study so that the data could be compared with previous interlanguage speech act realisation studies based on DCTs. Instead of using DCTs as a measure of spoken language production, I decided to use the DCT as a measure of sociolinguistic competency, and the accompanying written introspection of the type used in the Trinity College Modern Languages Research Project (Singleton, 1990) as a measure of metalinguistic awareness of sociolinguistic norms in Korean and Japanese.

156 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:31

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

156

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

The second sociolinguistic instrument was the Language Choice Questionnaire modelled on the questionnaires used by Ide et al. (1986) and others in a number of studies on sociolinguistic norms and sociolinguistic transfer in learners of Japanese and English. The instrument consists of a short written response that the learner would use to ask to borrow a pen from 20 different interlocutors of varying age, social status and familiarity. The instrument is designed to elicit information on learner judgements on the sociolinguistic norms required in a given communicative situation. Unlike the DCT, the Language Choice Questionnaire has never been used as a measure of linguistic production. It has instead been used primarily to elicit information on learner judgements and awareness of sociolinguistic norms. In this study, the same speech act and language used in 20 different situations is useful in revealing patterns of sociolinguistic transfer under controlled conditions. An introspection section was included at the end of the 20 situations. The third sociolinguistic instrument was the Short Writing Task, which was designed to elicit data on language in production under relatively natural conditions. This instrument was important to the overall research design because of the lack of natural spoken data in the sample. Although writing differs considerably from speaking, writing provides important insight into learner sociolinguistic competence in language production and into interlanguage rhetorical patterns. Findings can also be compared with research on cross-cultural rhetoric (Hinds & Jenkins, 1987; see studies in Purves, 1988) to deduce patterns of sociolinguistic and rhetorical transfer. An introspection section was included at the end of the instrument. Procedure In an e-mail message, I asked the learners to participate in the research, and they agreed. I explained the purpose of the research, but emphasised that I did not want them to refer to their knowledge of my research on L≥3 in completing the tasks. Eric knew me mainly as a newspaper columnist, but Jeff was somewhat familiar with my research. In Eric’s case, I arranged data elicitation sessions in Korea and asked him to send the language learning experience questionnaire and multiple language learning experiential report by post or e-mail to Japan several weeks later. In Jeff’s case, I sent him the questionnaire and the report by post and e-mail in advance, and asked him to complete both items by the time he visited Japan one month later, at which time I arranged several data elicitation sessions in Korea in another month. The difference in procedures was because I had more lead-time in arranging things with Jeff than with Eric who had

157 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:32

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

157

e-mailed me with a query about one of my newspaper columns only weeks before I was to visit Korea. Instruments relating to language learning experience were completed in English, but the C-test was completed in Korean and Japanese. This was necessary to compare learner proficiency in the target language and the language that was the likely source language. Learners were asked to complete the three measures of sociolinguistic proficiency – the DCT, the language choice questionnaire, and the short writing task – in Korean, Japanese and English. Because the number of learners was small, and because both learners had the same L1, indeed the same variety of L1, it was possible to control for L1. As with the C-test, information on Japanese is important in detecting patterns of transfer from the most likely source language into the target language. In the case of Jeff, this method would have been problematic if his French or German proficiency were close to his Japanese proficiency and if he had been using either language frequently in Korea. This was not the case, however, and because of the language distance from Korean between French and German, on the one hand, and Japanese, on the other, it was assumed that the most likely source language would be Japanese followed by L1 English. There was no strict time limit for any of the instruments, but a 30–35 minute limit was observed for the C-test.

Results and Discussion Language proficiency Results from the C-test showed that differences in Korean proficiency corresponded to differences in Japanese proficiency. Table 9.4 gives C-test results by overall score, and the component passages. The underlined numbers indicate the lowest score of the four passages, and the shaded numbers indicate the highest score. Table 9.4 shows that Jeff achieved a 30% higher score on the Japanese C-test than Eric did, and that this result carried over to the Korean C-test, in which Jeff achieved a 34% higher score. Jeff’s 73% on the C-test indicates a high level of proficiency in Japanese, which is only slightly lower in percentage terms than his score of 358 (89.5%) on Level One of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). This score indicates a high level of proficiency, because the minimum for passing the JLPT is 270 out of a maximum of 400 points. Jeff’s JLPT score was similar to the score reported in Fouser (1997) of an advanced learner of Japanese as an L3 who had Korean as an L1. The learner in that study scored 362 (90.5%) on the JLPT and 89% on the C-test. Eric’s score of 43% on the Japanese C-test is somewhat surprising, because he completed a language program at Tokyo University of Foreign

158 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:32

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

158

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Table 9.4 Korean and Japanese C-test results for Eric and Jeff Total

#1

#2

#3

#4

Eric

21%

8.3%

42.3%

10%

25%

Jeff

55%

41.6%

61.5%

66.7%

45%

Eric

43%

56.6%

64.3%

19.2%

65%

Jeff

73%

83.3%

78.6%

76.9%

85%

Korean

Japanese

Studies before entering a full-time degree course in Law at Kobe University, and both these universities are national universities. Students who complete the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Japanese language course are considered to have Level-One equivalency and are exempt from the test for admission into other national universities. Eric’s five-year residency and completion of an undergraduate degree at a Japanese university indicate that he should have proficiency close to Jeff, who had learned Japanese in Australia and had spent only one year at a university in Nagoya as an exchange student. Results for Korean also raise questions about the validity of the C-test, because Eric’s score was only 21%, which indicates a level of proficiency that is lower than would be expected of a student in an MA course taught in Korean. Eric had also completed a one-year intensive Korean course at a university in Korea before starting his MA. In his experiential report, he wrote that he read law textbooks in Korean and wrote reports in Korean. Data from the other instruments in this study also suggest a higher level of proficiency than the C-test results indicate. Eric’s abnormally low score on the C-test in both languages suggests that the test may have been too difficult, or that the time limit of roughly 30–35 minutes for the C-test caused him to leave a large number of items blank. Had Jeff’s scores on the C-test in both languages been lower than his proficiency as defined by other measures, this would have raised doubts about the construction of the C-test for this study or the use of the C-test as a measure of proficiency in Korean and Japanese. The participants did not achieve their highest score on the same passage on the Korean C-test: while Jeff achieved 64.7% on Passage 3 (the highest score of the four passages), Eric achieved 10% on the passage, which was close to his lowest score of 8.3% on Passage 1. Both learners, however, achieved their lowest score on Passage 1 of the Korean C-test. On the Japanese C-test both learners achieved their highest score on Passage 4, and

159 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:32

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

159

their lowest score on Passage 3. The similarity in maximum and minimum scores on the C-test shows that the content and difficulty of the text affected learners in a similar way, particularly in the Japanese C-test. In no case were the minimum and maximum scores on the Korean C-test higher than the minimum and maximum scores on the Japanese C-test. This indicates that the scores on the components of the C-test were consistent with the overall gap of 30% between the learners on both C-tests. Together, these results show that the C-test revealed a consistent pattern of difference in Korean and Japanese proficiency between the learners. Sociolinguistic proficiency and cross-linguistic influence Because of the large quantity of data, it was necessary to develop coding schemes for each instrument that would allow for comparisons across the three languages: Korean, Japanese and English. The comparative typological similarity between the two languages, particularly in the areas of syntax, morphology and the lexicon (elements derived from Chinese characters) indicates intuitively that the probability of cross-linguistic influence coming from Japanese is higher than from English. In the Multiple Language Learning Experiential Report, which will be discussed toward the end of this study, both learners stated clearly that their prior knowledge of Japanese facilitated their acquisition of Korean. Little mention was made of the influence of English. Learner awareness of these similarities, and willingness to transfer from Japanese into Korean confirms Kellerman’s (1979) ‘psychotypological hypothesis ’and the findings of some L≥3 researchers (e.g. Ringbom, 1985). The coding scheme used in this section is thus general enough to allow for comparisons among the instruments and to cover the three languages, but specific enough to focus on areas of language that are related directly to the instruments and to specific features of Korean and Japanese. Because of limitations of space, however, the selection of situations for analysis and the coding scheme was designed to focus on cross-linguistic influence. The DCT consisted of eight different situations that were designed to elicit a particular act and speech level. A coding scheme based on the discourse strategies and honorific forms can thus be developed to interpret the sociolinguistic variables that framed the situation and speech act realisation. Table 9.5 presents the coded DCT data for selected situations in all three languages. In the table, ‘pronoun’ refers to the use of a pronoun in the response. Pronouns are used relatively infrequently in colloquial Korean and Japanese. ‘No. of hon.’ refers to the number of honorifics that appeared in response. Honorifics are broadly defined to include terms of address and humble expressions. ‘Verb endings’ refers to the register indicated by the

160 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:33

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

160

Table 9.5 Korean, Japanese and English DCT results for Eric and Jeff Eric Korean

Jeff

Japanese

English

Korean

Japanese

Korean

Situation 1 (request) pronoun

none

none

I/your

na (‘I’)

ore (‘I’)

you/my

no. of hon.

none

none

none

none

none

none

verb endings

polite

informal

–

informal

informal

–

affirm. question

affirm. question

declar.

declar. hint

affirm. question

declar.

none

none

I

none

uchi (‘our’)

I

1

2

1

1

2

1

verb endings

formal

formal

–

formal

formal

–

final speech act

imper.

declar.

declar.

declar.

declar.

affirm. question

final speech act

Situation 4 (promise) pronoun no. of hon.

Situation 5 (apology) pronoun

none

none

I/my

none

none

I/you

no. of hon

none

1

none

none

none

none

informal

informal

–

informal

informal

–

imper.

imper.

declar.

declar.

imper.

declar.

uri (‘we’)

none

you/our

uri (‘we’)

none

we/our

1

none

none

1

none

none

polite formal

–

affirm. question

declar.

verb endings final speech act

Situation 8 (complaint) pronoun no. of hon. verb endings

polite

polite

–

polite formal

final speech act

declar.

affirm. question

affirm. question

affirm question

affirm. = affirmative, declar. = declarative, imper. = imperative

161 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:33

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

161

final morpheme of the verb. For Korean, the ‘polite’ register is clearly marked by a verb ending and sits between ‘informal’ and formal’ (this category was omitted for English because it is not relevant). ‘Final speech act’ refers to the speech act that was used in the last utterance. This provides a clear indication of cross-linguistic influence and individual variation in discourse strategies. The shaded and underlined items in Table 9.5 indicate points of discussion that reveal patterns of cross-linguistic influence and individual variation. Situation 1, a request to borrow a friend’s computer, shows that the influence of Japanese sociolinguistic norms was variable. Frequent use of pronouns by native speakers of English in Korean or Japanese can be taken as a sign of transfer from English, because pronouns are frequently omitted in Korean and Japanese, especially in colloquial situations such as Situation 1. In this regard, Jeff’s Korean and Japanese responses reflect the influence of English, his L1. Eric did not use any pronouns in Korean or Japanese, and this conforms more closely to native-speaker norms in both languages. Eric’s use of polite verb endings in his Korean response suggests that he is uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the appropriate informal form. With Situation 4, making a promise to one’s boss at work, Jeff again shows a preference for pronouns by using it in his Japanese response, but not in his Korean response. Eric omits the pronoun in both responses, which conforms more closely to native-speaker norms in both languages in a situation of differing social status such as this. Responses to Situation 5, an apology to a close friend for being late for an appointment, are consistent for both learners in Korean and Japanese. Both learners omit pronouns and use the informal register. Eric’s use of an honorific in Japanese in a situation in which it would normally not be used, however, suggests that he is somewhat uncomfortable with the informal register of Japanese. Given his level of proficiency and experience of living in Japan, it is more likely that the artificiality of the DCT using written language to elicit data on spoken language influenced his response. Responses to Situation 8, a complaint about slow service in a restaurant, were also remarkably consistent. Both learners used a pronoun in Korean, and both used an honorific referring to their interlocutor. They used neither of these in Japanese. These results suggest clearly that sociolinguistic transfer from Japanese did not affect their responses in this situation. A look at final speech acts throughout the examples reveals several salient trends. In three of the four examples, Eric used a different speech act in English from the two that he used in Korean and Japanese, and in two of the examples he used the same speech act for Korean and Japanese. In the fourth example, Situation 8, he used the same speech act for English and

162 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:33

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

162

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Japanese. This indicates that, on the level of discourse, sociolinguistic transfer from L1 English did not occur. By contrast, Jeff twice used the same final speech act in English as he did in Korean, and twice used the same speech in Korean and Japanese. This suggests that sociolinguistic transfer from English and Japanese into Korean occurred fairly equally. Retrospective comments from the questionnaire, however, suggest that Jeff had developed a subjective view of Korean that may have had more influence on his Korean responses. In response to the question ‘Do you change your mannerisms and ways of behaviour when speaking this language’, Jeff wrote, ‘I think that my behaviour generally becomes more assertive (though more respectful in front of elders) than when speaking English (and certainly more so than when speaking Japanese!)’. Together, findings from the DCT suggest that, in sociolinguistic areas, transfer from Japanese did not occur frequently. The Language Choice Questionnaire was designed to elicit information on learner judgements of an appropriate way to request to borrow a pen with 20 different interlocutors or varying age, social status, and social distance. Data was elicited in the same three languages as the DCT. Table 9.6 compares the frequency of use of honorifics and selected types of discourse for the two learners. The total for the discourse categories (affirmative questions, negative questions, declarative statements, and imperative statements) equals the number of situations (20). The findings are interesting because, as the shaded items in the table indicate, they show a difference between the learners. Because English has few honorifics beyond terms of address, the lack of honorifics in English is common between the two learners. Declarative statements are also not Table 9.6 Korean, Japanese and English language choice questionnaire results for Eric and Jeff Eric Korean

Jeff

Japanese English

Korean

Japanese English

Honorifics

11

6

0

16

13

0

Affirmative questions

12

18

20

12

11

13

Negative questions

0

1

0

0

1

6

Declarative

0

0

0

0

0

1

Imperative

7

2

0

8

8

0

163 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:33

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

163

common, because requests in English normally require questions or imperatives. With questions, the learners show a clear difference. Eric used no negative questions in English, whereas Jeff used six negative questions in English. This indicates considerable differences among two native speakers of the same English dialect. Use of imperatives was interesting because none of the learners used imperatives in English, but both used them seven or eight times in Korean. Jeff used imperatives equally in Korean and Japanese, but Eric used them only twice in Japanese after having used them seven times in Korean. Overall, Jeff’s responses in Korean and Japanese are quite similar to one another, whereas Eric’s responses in Japanese and English are similar, with his Korean responses showing the greatest difference. Together, these findings confirm trends found in responses to the DCT; namely, that there is insufficient evidence, in speech act realisation, of transfer from Japanese into Korean in sociolinguistic areas such as discourse. While the DCT and the Language Choice Questionnaire controlled responses, the Short Writing Task is designed to elicit a coherent text on the speech act of apology. The data are thus more naturalistic than the other measures, and provide deeper insight into how learners use honorifics and organise their discourse in Korean, Japanese, and English. Such information is useful in discerning patterns of sociolinguistic transfer at the discourse level. Table 9.7 gives an overview of the number of honorifics and the rhetorical structure of the learners ’responses as determined by the order of speech acts that appeared in the text. The term ‘fact’ refers to ‘statement of fact.’ Table 9.7 Korean, Japanese and English short writing task results for Eric and Jeff Eric

Number of honorifics Rhetorical structure

Jeff

Korean

Japanese

English

Korean

Japanese

English

4

6

1

12

16

0

apology request reason request apology

apology request reason request apology

fact reason apology

greeting fact reason apology request promise

greeting fact reason apology request promise apology greeting

fact reason apology request promise apology

164 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:34

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

164

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

In contrast to responses from the DCT and the Language Choice Questionnaire, results from the Short Writing Task show that both learners used the same or very similar rhetorical patterns in their Korean and Japanese responses. Eric’s responses were exactly the same in Korean and Japanese, whereas Jeff’s responses in the two languages differed only at the end. Jeff added another apology and closing greeting at the end of his Japanese response. In both cases, their Korean and Japanese responses differed considerably from their English responses, and their Korean and Japanese responses differed somewhat from one another. These findings suggest that the learners have developed two broad rhetorical structures for written apologies: one for English and one for Japanese and Korean. Findings from the other instruments also suggest this pattern, but less strongly than those from the Short Writing Task. Eric’s Korean and Japanese responses to the DCT, for instance, were closer to each other in terms of pronoun and final speech act usage than either was to his English responses. In Jeff’s case, his Korean and Japanese responses on the Language Choice Questionnaire were much closer to each other than either was to his English responses. Thus, perhaps at a deep level, the learners have developed a two-track approach to the three languages. However, because they had both lived in Japan before going to Korea, and were living in Korea at the time the data were collected, they were aware of sociolinguistic differences between the languages and were able to create their own understanding of Korean independently of the knowledge that they borrowed from Japanese. Introspective comments from the learners would have helped clarify this, but none made introspective comments on the Language Choice Questionnaire or the Short Writing Task, and Jeff made only a few comments on the DCT. The above pattern of responses, however, could also be because the coding scheme of the Short Writing Task differs somewhat from the DCT and Language Choice Questionnaire, but the coding schemes in these two instruments also differ from one another, which makes it difficult to ascribe the difference to the coding schemes. Learner awareness of cross-linguistic influence The Multiple Language Learning Experiential Report and the introspective and retrospective comments sections on each of the instruments were designed to gather data on learner metalinguistic attitudes and their subjective views of past language learning experiences. Of these instruments, the experiential report yielded the most comparable information between the two learners, because Eric rarely made introspective and retrospective comments on the other instruments. Jeff’s comments, mainly on

165 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:34

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

165

Table 9.8 Outline of multiple language learning experiential report results for Eric and Jeff Jeff

Eric Reason for learning Korean Facilitative influence of Japanese on reading Korean Problems with speaking and listening Overall facilitative influence of Japanese Negative effects of being a native speaker of English in Korea Thinks in Japanese while speaking Korean Told that ‘accent’ sounds Japanese Facilitative influence of knowledge of the concept of honorifics. Negative influence of Japanese pronunciation Use of Japanese in Korea inhibits development of higher proficiency in Korean

Interest in language learning from childhood Learning to think in French during one-year home stay in Belgium in high school Reason for learning Japanese Facilitative cognitive effect of learning French on learning Japanese No interference from French Facilitative effect of Japanese in learning Korean grammar and lexicon Differences in Korean and Japanese writing systems Korean ‘blurts’ in Japanese while speaking it in Korea Mixing Korean and Japanese unconsciously

the questionnaire, however, provide addition insight into his metalinguistic views of Korean and Japanese. For the experiential report, learners were asked to write freely about anything that they wanted to write about. Table 9.8 presents an overview of the topics in each report as they were discussed. The table shows that Eric focused his report on how his previous knowledge of Japanese, the only non-native language that he had acquired before learning Korean, affected his acquisition of Korean. Jeff, on the other hand, focused his comments on broader issues, such as having learned ‘how to think in French’, the effect of different writing systems on acquisition, and the cognitive relationship between Korean and Japanese in his language use. Both learners, however, reported that their proficiency in Japanese greatly facilitated their acquisition of Korean, particularly in areas of syntax, morphology and the lexicon. Eric wrote: Prior knowledge of Japanese was invaluable in learning Korean. Grammatical structures, Kanji [Chinese characters], similarity of expressions, etc. made reading/writing Korean a relatively easy task.

166 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:34

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

166

Jeff reported a similar phenomenon: I found Korean grammar and Chinese loanword vocabulary very easy to learn, as in these aspects, it was remarkably similar to Japanese. Because of this, I would say that I learnt the basics of Korean in a much shorter period than had been required in learning Japanese – it was almost like just learning new words to substitute for the Japanese ones when building sentences. Eric reported that knowledge of Japanese honorifics helped him acquire competence in using Korean honorifics much faster than other learners of Korean who knew only European languages. Eric wrote: I believe that knowledge of the concept of keigo [honorifics] (relatively foreign to Western European languages) has also helped me to learn Korean. I found learning keigo much easier than its Japanese equivalent, though most Westerns seem to have problems with this. Both learners reported finding Korean pronunciation more difficult than Japanese and that, in the case or Eric, phonological transfer from Japanese had a negative affect on his Korean. The above comments also reflect the results of the preceding discussion on proficiency and sociolinguistic transfer. They show that both learners drew extensively on their knowledge of Japanese to shorten the time required to learn Korean and to achieve fairly high proficiency in the language, but that transfer became a less salient phenomenon after they had acquired a certain level of proficiency in Korean and had developed a ‘feeling ’for Korean culture from living in Korea.

Conclusion It is difficult to extrapolate broad conclusions from this case study of two learners. In the case of Korean and Japanese, the number of people who learn both languages sequentially as an L2 and L≥3 is few, so gathering a large group of learners would have been difficult. (Woo, in a study in 1995, compared learners of Korean as an L2 with Korean as an L≥3, but only a few of these learners had Japanese as an L2, and Woo did not consider language distance in his discussion.) Though somewhat speculative, the results of the present study provide tentative answers to the three research questions raised at the beginning of this paper. In both cases, learners drew actively on their knowledge of Japanese, particularly syntax, morphology and lexicon (Chinese characters in particular) to achieve basic proficiency in Korean within months of beginning to learn the language. They continued

167 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:34

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

167

to draw on this knowledge throughout the acquisition process and, for the most part, believed that it helped more than hindered their acquisition of Korean. Regarding the effects of long residence in Korea on their Japanese, Jeff mentioned that he had experienced Korean blurts (brief unintentional switches into Korean) in his Japanese, whereas Eric mentioned that he continued to ‘think in Japanese’ while speaking Korean. In both cases, however, none of their Japanese responses to instruments here showed the influence of Korean, and Eric’s Korean responses did not show clearly that he ‘thought in Japanese’ while completing the tasks. In both cases, Japanese remained the stronger language even after several years had passed since either learner had lived in Japan. Finally, both learners showed keen awareness of their language learning processes and the relationship between Korean and Japanese. This helped them to be selective in drawing on their Japanese in using Korean, which was evident in their responses to sociolinguistic instruments in this study. Together, results from this study show that highly developed metalinguistic awareness of languages already acquired and being acquired helps learners to create, in Jeff’s words, ‘channels’ for languages in which transferability is determined by the degree to which knowledge of another language facilitates the acquisition of the target language. So, for Eric and Jeff, the answer to the question ‘too close for comfort?’ posed in the title of this study must be ‘no’.

Acknowledgement This paper is a substantially-revised version of a paper presented at the International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Trilingualism, University of Innsbruck, Austria, September 16–18, 1999. I would like to thank the two persons who participated in this study for their time and splendid Cupertino. I would also like to thank the editors of this volume for their helpful comments on the first draft of this paper. References Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. and Kasper, G. (eds) (1989) Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Cenoz, J. and Jessner, U. (2000) (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, J. and Valencia, J.F. (1994) Additive trilingualism: Evidence from the Basque Country. Applied Psycholinguistics 15, 195–207. Cleary, C. (1988) The C-test in English: Left-hand deletions. RELC Journal 19, 26–38. Coulmas, F. (1992) Linguistic etiquette in Japanese society. In R.J. Watts, S. Ide and K. Ehlich (eds) Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice (pp. 299–323). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

168 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:35

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

168

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Dewaele, J-M. (1998) ‘Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3. Applied Linguistics 19, 471–90. Fouser, R.J. (1997) Pragmatic transfer in advanced language learners: Some preliminary findings. Occasional Paper No. 50. Dublin: Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Gardner, R.C. and Lambert, W.E. (1972) Attitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Grotjahn, R. (1991) The research programme subjective theories. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13, 187–214. Hannas, W.C. (1997) Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hinds, J. and Jenkins, S. (1987) Business letter writing: English, French, and Japanese. TESOL Quarterly 21, 327–49. Hufeisen, B. (1993) Fehleranalyse: English als L2 and Deutsch als L3. International Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 242–56. Hufeisen, B. and Lindemann, B. (eds) (1998) Tertiärsprachen. Theorien, Modelle, Methoden. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Ide, S., Ogino, T., Kawasaki, A. and Ikuta, S. (1986) Nihonjin to Amerikajin no keigo kodo [The use of honorific speech by Japanese and Americans]. Tokyo: Namunt. Kasper, G. and Dahl, M. (1991) Research methods in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13, 215–47. Kellerman, E. (1979) Transfer and non-transfer: Where we are now. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 2, 37–57. Klein, E.C. (1995) Second versus third language acquisition: Is there a difference? Language Learning 45, 419–65. Klein-Braley, C. (1985) A close-up on the C-test. Language Testing 2, 76–104. Naiman, N., Frohlich, M., Stern, H.H. and Todesco, A. (1978) The Good Language Learner (Research in Education Series: 7). Toronto: The Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. Ogino, T. (1989) Taisho shakai gengogaku to nihongo kyoiku: Nikan no keigo yohono taisho kenkyu o rei ni shite [Contrastive sociolinguistics and Japanese language education: An example from contrastive research on the use of honorifics in Japanese and Korean]. Nihongo Kyoiku [Journal of Japanese Language Education] 69, 47–63. Park, M-R. (1990) Conflict avoidance in social interaction: A sociolinguistic comparison of the Korean and Japanese honorific systems. In H. Hoji (ed.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics (pp. 111–27). Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. Purves, A.C. (ed.) (1988) Writing across Languages and Cultures: Issues in Contrastive Rhetoric. London: Sage. Ringbom, H. (1985) The influence of Swedish on the English of Finnish learners. In H. Ringbom (ed.) Foreign Language Learning and Bilingualism (pp. 39–58). Åbo: Åbo Akademi. Rose, K.R. (1994) On the validity of discourse completion tests in non-Western contexts. Applied Linguistics 15, 1–14. Shibatani, M. (1990) The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

169 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:35

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Sociolinguistic Transfer from Japanese into Korean as an L³3

169

Singleton, D. (1990) The TCD modern languages research project: Objectives, instruments and preliminary results. CLS Occasional Paper No. 26. Dublin: Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College. Sohn, H. M. (1986) Cross-cultural patterns of honorifics and sociolinguistic sensitivity to honorific variables: Evidence from English, Japanese, and Korean. In H.M. Sohn (ed.) Linguistic Expeditions (pp. 411–39). Seoul: Hanshin. Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. (1998) Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. Applied Linguistics 19, 295–333. Woo, B-K. (1995) Interlanguage interference in adult acquisition of Korean as a second and a third language. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of San Francisco. Zobl, H. (1992) Prior linguistic knowledge and the conservatism of the learning procedure: Grammaticality judgements of unilingual and multilingual learners. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (revised edn) (pp. 176–96). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

170 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:35

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Chapter 10

New Uses for Old Language: Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in the Narratives of Non-Native Speakers ERIC KELLERMAN

Introduction In this chapter, I am going to talk less about L3 acquisition than about non-native language acquisition in general, and less about the interaction between L2s and L3s than about the study of cross-linguistic influence (CLI, or ‘transfer’). This is partly because I am not an expert in L3 acquisition but more importantly because I believe that there are new directions to pursue in the study of transfer, and these are worthy of research by people interested in language development in general. Whether that interest concerns the interaction between L1 and L2, or between L2 and L3 or between L1 and L3 does not matter very much at this stage. My principle concern is to outline these new research directions (‘new uses for old language’) and leave others to work out the implications, if any, for L3 acquisition in particular. The areas I shall explore below are cross-linguistic influence in narrative, in gesture and in metaphor.

Cross-linguistic Influence Popular awareness that the language we were brought up speaking can affect our attempts to speak a foreign language certainly goes back far into the mists of time. There is a 15th century French poem that makes fun of an Englishman who went to the butcher to buy lamb (añel) for a sick friend, but got donkey (anel) meat instead, and all because he couldn’t pronounce the /ñ/ (Busby, 1978). Some centuries later, a hapless American exchange student in France, arriving at the dockside in Le Havre just in time to see his ship back to America steaming out of the harbour, was heard to call out ‘Attendez! Je suis gauche derrière!’ (Brian Wenk, personal communication).

170 171 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:35

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

171

CLI is one of the phenomena that perhaps most clearly divides child first from adult second language acquisition, and it is difficult to think of many other topics that have remained so central to the relatively young field of second language acquisition (SLA) research, which, if we take Lado’s (1957) Linguistics Across Cultures as its founding text, is not yet 50 years old. Almost every survey of SLA will devote several pages to what is known about the role of the native language in syntax, morphology, phonology, discourse, pragmatics, lexis, and so on and so forth, and I do not intend to go over this well-trodden ground again (see the relevant pages in Ellis, 1994; Gass & Selinker, 1992; Kellerman, 1995; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991; Odlin, 1989; Ringbom, 1987). Instead I would like to concentrate on one relatively unexplored aspect of linguistic behaviour involving language learners: relating narratives. What role might the first language play in the way stories are constructed?

... and Narrative There are several reasons for looking at the ways learners construct narratives. Obviously, narratives are extended texts, which therefore allow us to study non-native performance at all the linguistic levels mentioned above. Stories are also forms to which we are exposed from a very early age, and children gradually learn to obey the conventions that the genre imposes on them. These conventions, as contributors to Berman & Slobin (1994) make very clear, may vary considerably from language to language. But narrating is not limited to native speakers. Even the most hesitant non-native may feel called upon to relate some personal odyssey, describe the plot of a movie just seen, or tell a shaggy dog story. Consequently, narrators will need to have (or will need to compensate for the lack of) the requisite discourse-organisational skills as well as the grammatical structures and words needed to bring the story across successfully. As a method of eliciting data, then, narratives have more ecological validity than many of the less natural language tasks we sometimes saddle our learner informants with. There are three aspects of non-native performance in relating narratives that I would like to consider. The first concerns the nature of the linguistic means for expressing the causation of movement in the stories of Dutch learners of English. Interesting typological work by Talmy (1991), for instance, shows that languages either incorporate manner in the verb expressing motion and direction in a ‘satellite’, or direction in the verb and manner in a satellite. Such differences between languages have obvious implications for the study of CLI.

172 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:35

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

172

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

The second aspect concerns the gestural correlates of such motion expressions – while people are telling their stories, they will not as a rule be keeping still – their arms, hands and even heads will also be active, even if they are using the telephone. Usually we dismiss gesture as unimportant – it’s the words that carry the message. But recent research has shown that many of the gestures that accompany speech also serve a parallel expressive function, providing a complementary source of inference about the nature of thought and imagery. Different languages demand different gestures, it seems. Finally, I shall be looking at the linguistic depiction of the psychological states of characters in a narrative. How do people talk about themselves when relating some incident in which they were emotionally caught up, for instance? Recent research has begun to explore the role of metaphor in precisely this area, and I will consider this topic from a cross-linguistic viewpoint.

Motion Events in the Frog Story In their edited volume Relating Events in Narrative: A Cross-linguistic Study, Berman and Slobin (1994) collect together a number of papers analysing spoken accounts of Marcel Mayer’s story Frog, Where are You? related by child and adult speakers of English, German, Spanish, Hebrew and Turkish. The volume actually constitutes a massive cross-linguistic study of the development of narrative competence in the first language. The Frog Story, as it is popularly known, is a wordless set of 24 pictures recounting the adventures of a little boy and his dog who go in search of their missing pet frog. The story has a happy ending. According to Berman and Slobin, there are three major themes to investigate in the study of narrative. These they call filtering, packaging and development. The first theme, filtering, is characterised like this: The world does not present ‘events’ to be encoded in language. Rather experiences are filtered into verbalised events (a) through choice of perspective, and (b) through the set of options provided by the particular language. (Berman & Slobin, 1994: 9) The second theme is packaging: A skilful narrative does not simply consist of a linear chain of successive events located in time and space. Rather events must be packaged into hierarchical constructions. (Berman & Slobin, 1994: 13)

173 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:36

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

173

The third theme is the crucial one of development: Younger children take fewer expressive options because (a) cognitively, they cannot conceive of the full range of encodable perspectives, (b) communicatively, they cannot fully assess the listener’s viewpoint, and (c) linguistically, they do not command the full range of formal devices. (Berman & Slobin, 1994: 15) This last aspect (c), the range of formal devices available, is obviously of particular interest to SLA researchers and language teachers. Yet although there are masses of base-line data on child and adult performance in various languages, and some data on bilingual children performing in two languages (see references listed in Berman & Slobin, 1994) there is, as far as I know, virtually nothing on the development of narrative competence in adult foreign language learners. Now it might be assumed that, as adult learners are mature speakers of one language already, they will have learned how to tell a story, and there will be nothing to research beyond the usual errors of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. But this is where we have to consider the three themes above. Figure 10.1 shows a set of pictures from the Frog Story (reproduced by permission of the publishers), which will be referred to as the deer–boy episode: In picture 15, we see a boy grasping what he thinks are branches of a tree. He has just climbed a rock to see if he can find his pet frog, which has disappeared. In picture 16, the branches turn out to be a deer’s antlers, and their owner has set off at a gallop, the boy’s pet dog running alongside.

15 Figure 10.1: The deer–boy episode

16

174 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:36

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

174

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Then finally, in picture 17, the deer comes to a sudden stop at the edge of a precipice, and the boy and the dog fall over the edge and into the water below. Now let us briefly consider how American, German and Spanish 9-year-olds each handle this episode. The data are taken from Berman & Slobin (1994: 11–12): (1) American: And he starts running. And he tips him off over a cliff into the water. (2) German: Der Hirsch nahm den Jungen auf sein Geweih und schmiß ihn den Abhang hinunter genau ins Wasser. ‘The deer took the boy on his antlers and hurled him down the cliff into the water.’ (3) Spanish: El ciervo le llevó hasta un sitio, donde debajo había un río. Entonces el ciervo tiró al perro y al niño al río. Y despues, cayeron. ‘The deer took him until a place, where below there was a river. Then the deer threw the dog and the boy to the river. And then they fell.’ (4) Hebrew: (transl.) ‘(The deer) reached a cliff that had a swamp underneath, and he stopped, and the boy and the dog fell into the swamp together.’ (5) Turkish (transl.) ‘Just in front of them there was a cliff. Below there was a lake. Because the boy was making speed, he fell from the deer’s head together with his dog.’

17 Figure 10.1: The deer–boy episode continued

175 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:37

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

175

What is noticeable in these extracts, say Berman and Slobin, is that, in the English and German versions, the speakers use compact expressions that map the course of the fall with a series of particles attached to the verb: tips OFF – OVER the cliff – INTO the water and schmiß den Abhang HINUNTER – INS Wasser ‘down from the cliff right into the water’ (12). The verbs are also of interest: tips and schmiß describes the manner of the action causing the fall. The Spanish, Hebrew and Turkish children, on the other hand, take more trouble to set the scene, and their accounts seem more linear or strung out than the compact English and German versions – a place where below was a river, a cliff that had a swamp underneath, there was a cliff; below there was a lake. The verbs used are unadorned changes of state – stop, throw, fall. Berman and Slobin (1994) suggest that these are not accidental differences between speakers; in fact, they represent narrative structures that accord best with the possibilities offered by the particular languages concerned. Languages filter these events differently. On the one hand, you have languages like English and German, whose speakers have available a wide range of locative particles which, when combined with motion verbs that also encode manner, lead to a linguistically dense packaging of events. English and German are two examples of what Talmy (1991) calls satellite-framed languages. In these and many other languages of this type, the verb merely conveys the fact of motion, possibly coupled to the manner of motion – go vs. rush, travel vs. crawl, move vs. waltz. It is the satellites, adverbial particles or prepositions in the case of English and German, that convey the direction of the motion: rush across the street, crawl along, waltz out of the room. Spanish and other Romance languages, amongst others, make use of looser structures for expressing change of states and locations, leading to more extended scene settings. These languages are among those characterised by Talmy as verb-framed. Here it is the verb itself that conveys the direction of the motion: entrar, salir, bajar, subir, and it is the expression of manner, if required, that is taken over by a satellite, in the case of Spanish often in the form of a gerund. For example, where English says The owl flew out of the tree, Spanish could say el buho salió volando del agujero, ‘the owl left the tree flying’ (Berman & Slobin, 1994: 118). The differences between the two types of language is nicely encapsulated by a notice on a door in bilingual Belgium which proclaims:1 (6) Entrer sans sonner (‘enter without ringing’) Binnen zonder bellen (‘inside without ringing’)

176 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:37

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

176

Given cross-linguistic differences such as those captured by verb- and satellite-framing, the question is whether learners will simply transfer the filtering and packaging preferences from their first language straight to the target language. In an attempt to answer this question, Rachel Vermeulen and myself (1998) recently conducted a study that compared 46 Dutch speakers who were also learners of English with a group of native speakers of English. Since Dutch is a satellite-framed language like English, we might expect to find strong similarities in performance between Dutch speakers, Dutch learners of English, and the English speakers. There were three groups of Dutch learners: Group 1 consisted of 15 12-year-olds with two years of school English; Group 2 consisted of 16 16-year-olds with between four and six years of classroom English; Group 3 consisted of 15 university students in an English department. The task for all Dutch subjects was to recount the Frog Story in both Dutch and English. Seven English native speakers served as controls. The first event I shall deal with will again be the deer–boy episode. Let us examine the way Dutch native speakers and Dutch learners of English on the one hand, and English native speakers on the other, deal with the role of the deer in the descent of boy and dog in this particular incident. There are three crucial elements in this episode. These are: Event 1

Event 2

Event 3

deer goes towards edge

deer stops

boy falls (and dog)

There seem to be three ways in which the relevant causation is expressed. These divide into implicit and explicit types: Implicit causation zero

Explicit causation

sequential

lexical

In a case of zero causation, the narrator refers only to events 1 and 3 above: The deer goes to the edge of the cliff and the boy falls. Causation is implicit: Event 1

Event 3

deer walks towards edge

boy falls

Here is an example from the Dutch version of the episode produced by a member of Group 1:

177 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:38

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

177

(7) Het hert gaat een afgrond af. De hond ook. De hond en de jongen vallen in het water. ‘The deer goes towards a ravine. The dog too. The dog and the boy fall in the water.’ And from a Dutch learner from Group 3: (8) The deer is moving to a cliff and the boy and the dog fall off the cliff. In neither case does the narrator make the deer explicitly accountable for what happens to the boy.2 In sequential causation, the narrator links events 2 and 3, but even though causation still remains linguistically implicit, the listener may easily infer the causal link because the juxtaposition of the two events invokes folk theories of inertia – if buses or escalators suddenly stop, their passengers will be propelled forward. Event 2

Event 3

deer stops

boy falls

Here is an example from of sequential causation in Dutch: (9) Het reedier rent weg en de hond ook en dan stopt hij en dan valt hij in een afgrond. (Group 2) ‘The moose runs away and the dog too and then he stops and then he falls into a ravine.’ And one in learner English: (10) The deer runs away. He stops at the end of a cliff. The boy falls in it. (Group 1) One English native speaker and one Dutch learner employ sequential causation, but also make it abundantly clear by the use of an adverb of manner that the deer is in fact braking hard. This device makes the inference complete: (11) Suddenly the deer stopped very very sharply. And the little boy fell off. (12) En opeens stop de eland voor de afgrond en de jongen en de hond knikkeren naar beneden. ‘And suddenly the moose stops in front of the ravine and the boy and the dog plunge down.’ (Group 2) It will have been noticed that, in these examples of implicit causation, the

178 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:38

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

178

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

deer’s actions and the boy’s fall are captured in linear fashion over a series of clauses, with or without co-ordination. However, in our next case, that of explicit lexical causation, elements of the event become conflated within the clause. This may be viewed as the most mature option in English, and the one that most typifies adult speakers. Events 2 and 3 are merged, causation is packaged along with manner in the verb, and direction is signalled by prepositional phrases and particles – satellite-framing writ large. (13) Hij werd meegenomen en toen werd hij van een afgrond afgegooid. (Group 2) ‘He was taken along and then he was thrown off a cliff.’ Here are examples from the learners: (14) The hert (deer) throw the boy into a pool. (Group 1) (15) The reindeer shoves him off and he falls into a swamp. (Group 3) As a rule, the native speakers also preferred this form of causation: (16) The stag dumped the boy into the pond at the end of the garden. Let us now put all this information together in tabular form. Table 10.1 is a summary of the English-language data. Given the smallish numbers involved, we can speak only of trends in the data, but one or two emerge quite clearly. We see evidence that the choice of explicit lexical causation is very much proficiency-related, with only the most advanced group performing like the native speakers of English in this respect. Members of Group 1, the least proficient group, prefer zero causation, and those in Group 2 occupy an intermediate position. We might therefore be tempted to think that these figures indicate that the less proficient learners simply don’t have the English vocabulary necessary for compact expression of causation. Table 10.1 Choice of causation type in deer–boy episode: English English Age group

Type of causation Zero

Sequential

Lexical

1 (12)

9 (60%)

2 (13%)

4 (27%)

2 (16)

5 (31%)

3 (19%)

8 (50%)

3 (18–20)

3 (13%)

1 (7%)

11 (73%)

Total

17 (37%)

6 (13%)

23 (50%)

NSE

0

1 (14%)

6 (86%)

179 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:38

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

179

But if we turn to the Dutch data (Table 10.2), we will see that it is not simply a matter of a lack of vocabulary that is at stake. The same trends are surprisingly discernible here, too, and even though the narrators of Group 1 might well, given their age, have been considered linguistically mature, these figures point to ongoing development in the narrative skills of young speakers of Dutch as L1. While not too much should be read into the figures, they do suggest a developmental dimension at work that operates cross-linguistically. The tentative conclusion is that what goes for narrative performance in your first language may quite possibly go for performance in your second – we see the same pattern in both sets of data, suggesting an interesting interaction between cognitive and linguistic factors. What seems to take time to develop is the conflation of events in this episode. Causation, itself strictly an inference from the picture set, is beyond expression for many. The conclusion here is that there is transfer from Dutch, but it is transfer of the linguistic correlates of a developing narrative competence. The cognitive demands of the narration task seem to require a more linear, less densely packaged style of narration from less experienced narrators.

Gesture Despite the comprehensive nature of the work collected by Berman and Slobin, they acknowledge a serious limitation of their data collection and analysis. It is that they have treated the many accounts of the Frog Story as texts divorced from their tellings – ‘We overlook’, they admit, ‘such important features of storytelling as gesture, facial expression, prosody, and other paralinguistic ... accompaniments to the verbal components of the task’ (Berman & Slobin, 1994: 24). As it is obvious that anybody telling a story to a visible audience accompanies the narrative with gesture and, as an increasing number of researchers are now beginning to take gesture very seriously indeed, we will now shift our attention from the verbal to the manual. Table 10.2 Choice of causation type in deer–boy episode: Dutch Dutch Age group

Type of causation Zero

Sequential

Lexical

1 (12)

8 (53%)

4 (27%)

3 (20%)

2 (16)

4 (25%)

3 (19%)

9 (56%)

3 (18–20)

2 (13%)

2 (13%)

11 (73%)

14 (30%)

9 (20%)

23 (50%)

Total

180 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:38

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

180

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Current thinking on gesture, principally inspired by the work of McNeill (e.g. 1992), emphasises its shared conceptual origins with spoken language, with which it occurs simultaneously, and with which it may share the same expressive functions. The gestures of interest here exclude the sign languages of the deaf or those culture-bound ‘emblems’ such as ‘gun’ or ‘first-class’ or ‘crazy/loco’. Instead, we will focus on the unconscious movements of fingers, hands and arms that we make while we talk. It is the belief of McNeill and his followers that gesture and speech together provide a window onto our thought processes, our ‘thinking for speaking’; in fact, taken together, speech and gesture reveal a far more complete picture of the conceptual basis of language than speech can alone.3 Again, virtually no research has been conducted on the use of gesture by non-native speakers (though see, for example, Gullberg, 1998; Kita, 1993; Stam, 1999; Van Hoof, 2000). Let us briefly return to the way that events are packaged in English and Spanish. English, like Dutch and German, is a satellite-framed language: movement and manner of movement are conflated on the verb, while direction is indicated by satellite particles and prepositional phrases. Spanish, as a Romance language, is a verb-framed language. Motion and direction are contained in the verb, and manner is farmed out to satellites such as gerunds. One of the problems that a learner of a Romance language may have in acquiring a language such as English is exactly this shift from verb-framing to satellite-framing. Work by Harley (1989) in Canada with Anglophone children in French immersion programmes shows clearly that these children will use French verbs conveying motion, like courir ‘to run’, but do so in an English way by using French prepositions to express path, even though most French prepositions are neutral with respect to location or path. Thus we find non-native examples such as: (17) Le chat courait à la maison. ‘The cat was running home.’ instead of the more idiomatic: (18) Le chat est rentré chez lui. ‘The cat returned home.’ where the verb rentrer indicates the direction of the movement. In fact the French native speakers in Harley’s study only used après ‘after’ and vers ‘towards’ as path prepositions with courir; on all other occasions, courir expresses the manner of movement, not the path. Immersion children, on

181 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:38

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

181

the other hand, used not only après and vers, but dans, à, jusqu’au, au dessus de, sur in clear directional senses. The fact that Anglophone children impose a satellite-framed organisation on describing movement, manner and path in French raises an interesting question as to whether the gestures accompanying such descriptions also reflect the English pattern. Clearly one would first have to establish whether there is a gestural correlate of the verb- and satellite-framing distinction. And if there is such a correlate, do learners acquire the appropriate gestures at the same time as they acquire the appropriate linguistic means of expression? Will we find evidence for gestural transfer, even if we do not find evidence for linguistic transfer? As far as the gestural evidence for depicting motion events is concerned, the evidence is unambiguous (see, for example, McNeill & Duncan, 1998). Furthermore, with regard to the transfer issue, Stam (1999) examined the gestures of Mexican-Spanish monolinguals, Mexican learners of English and native speakers of English as they retold a Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoon called Canary Row. Stam looked at two episodes in Canary Row, the first where Sylvester the cat climbs up inside a drainpipe, and the second where Sylvester and a bowling ball roll down and out of the drainpipe, across the street and into a bowling alley. Two types of gesture were counted, those indicating path only, and those indicating path and manner. Like other researchers, Stam found confirmation for the claim that Spanish speakers tend to focus their path gestures either on path verbs or on what is technically known as the Ground, that is to say, the reference point in relation to which the Figure moves. Furthermore they continued to show this general pattern even when operating in English, though there was also evidence of an increasing use of gesture on the Satellite. Anglophone speakers, on the other hand, limited their path gestures to the Satellite or Ground. Clearly, then we have gestural transfer of the framing pattern favoured by the first language. Van Hoof (2000) looks at Dutch and Spanish speakers telling the Frog Story both in L1 and L2 (English), and compares their data with those of American and British speakers of English. As van Hoof’s database (though not large) is larger than Stam’s, it is interesting to report on a number of similarities and differences she found. First and foremost, Dutch and English speakers do not locate their path gestures in similar fashion, even though both languages are satellite-framed. Dutch speakers tend to place their path gestures on adverbial particles (hij is naar beneden gevallen – ‘he is to down fallen’ – he fell downwards) or prepositions (de hond is tegen de boom staan springen – ‘the dog is against the tree stand jump’– the dog

182 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:39

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

182

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

jumps at the tree), classic satellites, while English speakers tend to distinguish between types of satellite, embracing the verb when it is followed by a preposition (the dog climbs over the windowsill), or selecting the adverbial particle alone (he runs away).This difference in gesturing patterns suggests a different degree of integration of verb and particle in the two languages; in Dutch (a V2 language with frequent SOV word order), verb and satellite may become quite detached from each other, whereas in English there is rarely much in the way of intervening linguistic material. Psycholinguistically then, the gestures accompanying the narration of motion events suggest a difference in integration of the elements constituting VPs in English and Dutch. Spanish speakers perform more or less as one would predict from a verb-framed language: the verb is the locus of the path-bearing gesture. And this is pretty much what happens in their English narrations too, so even though their syntax is in many cases splendidly native-like, their gestures are not. There are, however, a number of satellite-like gestures placed on prepositions (the boy got on top of the rock), and it is interesting to note that the verbs associated with these prepositions are in all cases but one the light verbs go, get and be. Perhaps such verbs serve as the loci of the acquisition of truly satellite-framed motion descriptions.

Metaphor and Emotion Now to the last aspect – metaphor. Research and common sense have both shown how powerful metaphor is in the expression of emotion. When we are depressed, we say things like ‘I’m at the end of my tether’, ‘My whole world has collapsed’, ‘I feel totally empty inside’. When we are elated we talk about being ‘on top of the world’ (no doubt the same world that had collapsed only a month or so ago), ‘in seventh heaven’, ‘on cloud nine’. When we are angry, ‘steam comes out of our ears’ or ‘we flip’. Thanks to the work of cognitive linguists like Lakoff (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and psycholinguists like Gibbs (1994), it is now a commonplace that metaphor, far from being an esoteric literary device, is a remarkably pervasive phenomenon that so successfully inhabits the world of thought and language that its very conventionality goes largely unnoticed. Now it has been claimed by a recent BBC television programme that among many other activities, the average human being will in a lifetime talk for 12 years.4 If the talk estimate is true, and if the metaphor counts based on things like newscasts and US Senate debates are right, then in those 12 years we should each be using about 26 million metaphors, both conventional and novel.

183 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:39

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

183

Yet foreign language teaching programmes are notoriously slow to pick up on this aspect of language, even though teachers and students alike will acknowledge that the idioms and metaphors of a second language are amongst the hardest things to learn, even after many years of exposure to the language. Research on how figurative language is acquired and used by adult learners is hardly more advanced. Ortony (1975, cited in Gibbs, 1994) has suggested that metaphors serve three interrelated purposes. The first is expressibility: metaphor and idiom provide a means of talking about things that might be exceptionally difficult or cumbersome to talk about in literal language. Closely allied to this reason for using metaphor is its compactness. A good metaphor, says Gibbs (1994: 125) can ‘better capture the rich, continuous nature of experience than does literal discourse alone’. The third reason is that metaphors and idioms can be vivid, setting up imagistic echoes in both speaker and listener that may convey some experience more immediately than a more prosaic literal description. The friend of mine who complimented his wife by calling her ‘my pillow’ certainly managed to combine all three attributes into the tightest of spaces. Twenty years ago, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) coined the term conceptual metaphor to refer to a conventionalised mode of thought that permitted us to talk about abstract domains in concrete terms. A conceptual metaphor gives rise to a host of expressions (linguistic metaphors and idioms) that may at first sight appear unrelated, but which, on closer inspection, are actually all linked to each other in terms of the imagery they evoke. These conceptual metaphors may be language- or culture-specific. Or they may be universal – this is an empirical question that I will return to in a moment. Perhaps some examples are in order here. One of the best known and most widely cited conceptual metaphors in the literature is ‘Life is a Journey’. When we talk about our lives, our relationships or other long-term projects, we often do so as if we are travellers: Babies arrive, the dead depart; we set out with the best intentions, lose our way, reach a crossroads, decide there’s no going back, come up against a number of obstacles, build bridges, go our separate ways, try desperately to get over the relationship, and remark that the marriage, which should have been plain sailing, was a stormy one that has now ended up on the rocks. It will be clear from this short selection that journey imagery has given rise to a large number of interrelated conventional metaphors and idioms, and it often serves as a basis for the striking of novel linguistic metaphor as well. The reason why languages such as English make so much use of this conceptual metaphor is that a familiar and fairly simple concrete domain, the Journey

184 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:39

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

184

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

(and its associated perils), makes sense of a relatively abstract and complex one, Life (and its vicissitudes). Let us now consider the expression of emotion in narrative. According to Williams-Whitney et al. (1992), feelings are more likely to invoke the production of linguistic metaphors than actions are, and Fussell and Moss (1998) show that the two factors that play a role in determining the degree to which metaphor is used are the type of the emotion and its intensity. Sadness and happiness are metaphorically more productive emotions than pride and anger, and the more intense the feeling, the more metaphor is used to express it. Let us consider anger: of all the emotions that have been studied in terms of the metaphors used to express them, this is the one that has been most thoroughly investigated. The way in which one describes the emotion itself (rather than what caused the emotion), ranging from the first stirrings to the final loss of control, give rise to such English beauties as I totally flipped (my lid), I just went through the roof, I sat there seething, I blew a gasket. At first sight, these idioms seem connected only by the fact that speakers of English have learned that they conventionally describe aspects of feeling angry. Lids, roofs, gaskets, seething, what do they have in common? But a little further thought soon shows that they are literally descriptions of what happens to a container of fluid when subjected to heat. In this they subscribe to the conceptual metaphor ‘Anger is heated fluid in a Container’ – we are the container, the heat is what makes us angry, and the state of the fluid inside represents the degree of control we exercise on our emotion. Anger being a strong universal emotion with an evident physiology, a good test of the power of the conceptual metaphor argument would be the detection of cross-cultural commonalities in the linguistic expressions associated with that emotion. For instance, a recent study of Chinese expressions of anger by Yu (1998) reveals that the ‘Anger is heated fluid in a Container’ metaphor has its counterpart in Chinese, though the fluid is gas go through the roof hit the ceiling flip our lids, blow a gasket (our tops) pent-up anger, boil, seethe fume, steam simmer become heated, get hot under the collar Lose our cool

185 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:39

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

185

in this case and, as is true for emotions in general in Chinese, frequent reference is made to body parts, especially the internal organs. Yu attributes the linguistic form of Chinese anger metaphors firstly to yin (which includes ‘cold’ and ‘water’) and yang (which contains ‘heat’ and ‘fire’), and secondly to the five elements of Chinese medicine. This gives rise (Yu, 1998: 55) to anger idioms such as He’s got hot gas in his spleen’ (‘He is hot-tempered’) or He held back a belly of gas (He was filled with pent-up anger). Literal translation into English of these ways of talking about anger would possibly lead to misunderstanding, though we would still be grateful for the restraint. A Japanese expressing anger might say the equivalents of the following: • • • • • •

Finally it’s come to my skull. My chest feels sick. My chest is full of bad shit.5 My stomach rises. I can’t keep it in my guts. Store it in your guts.

At first glance these do not obviously indicate anger any more than the English expressions do but, according to Matsuki (1995), such expressions are also evidence for the ‘Anger is heated fluid in a Container’ metaphor.

atama

‘Finally, (it) has come to my atama’ (skull)

mune

‘Mune is strangled because of rise of hara’ ‘My mune (chest) feels nauseous’ ‘Cannot keep it in hara (guts)’

hara

‘Hara rises up’ ‘Store it in hara’

Figure 10.2 The expression of anger in Japanese (adapted from Matsuki, 1995)

186 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:40

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

186

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

However, the system is somewhat differently constructed. In her view, anger builds up in the guts (hara), a container of limited capacity. From there it flows into the chest region (mune), where keeping it in check may make one feel extremely uncomfortable, because it is socially unacceptable to express anger publicly. In exceptional circumstances, the anger builds up to such a point that it has to seek an exit via the next chamber, the skull (atama), which may explode as a result. Here and only here may one use the word ‘finally’ – ‘finally it has come to my head’. The head is the last safety valve, whose rupture means the unthinkable in Japanese society: control is lost. Again, while anger may in broad terms be conceptualised as heated fluid rising into a series of interconnecting chambers, the linguistic metaphors and idioms illustrating this process are obviously different in form from their English counterparts. The important thing is that at one level all three languages, English, Chinese and Japanese, seem to conceptualise the physiological experience of anger in similar ways, yet each culture adds some quite specific folk-theoretical detail of its own. Now, I know of no research that has shown that non-native speakers use their native metaphorical conceptualisations when speaking about their emotions, but then research on such things is still in its infancy. I think that here is a rich new subdomain in second language learning ripe for exploration. After all, being a second language learner or non-native speaker in society is itself an experience often fraught with emotion (Aston, 1993; Rampton, 1997). Yet we know very little about how learners express themselves in this regard, and how the first language and culture shapes their linguistic expression of it. However, a Dutch student was recently telling me in English about an altercation with a good friend that had made her very angry. At a certain point, I asked her ‘And how did you feel when she said that?’ Her answer was ‘I got really mad’, but her gesture revealed much, much more. Her hands moved to a position in front of her stomach, where, palms and fingers curved and pointing downward, she appeared to be holding an imaginary ball whose dimensions were slightly smaller than the stomach area. As she uttered the word ‘mad’, her hands quickly moved outwards and beyond the limits of the body, all the while retaining their curved shape. This movement could be taken to indicate an explosion or rupture. There is a Dutch expression meaning to burst with anger, but as far as I know, no Dutch idiom specifically locates anger in the stomach.

Implications for L3s Since the topics I have proposed as worthy of study are in themselves fairly new as far as SLA research is concerned, it is difficult to draw specific

187 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:40

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

187

inferences as to their relevance for L3 acquisition and use. My observations will therefore be rather general. Two factors will be of prime importance: the vividness relations between the various Ls, and the typological distance between them. I use vividness in the sense of Vildomec (1963), that is, the extent to which a particular language is currently being used or learned – the more attention we pay it, the more it is likely to interfere with other, perhaps better-known languages. Here are two examples from my own learning of Dutch. A short time after my arrival in the Netherlands, I attempted to speak French at a gathering in the presence of Dutch speakers of French. French was at that time by far my strongest L2, but I and others noticed my tendency to make word-order errors. I would place adjectives in front of the noun (e.g. la rouge chaussure). ‘Ah ha, that’s your English’, people pointed out. I hastened to explain that, as I had not made this mistake before coming to the Netherlands, and furthermore, I was also placing lexical verbs at the end of the sentence à la néerlandaise, the source of this error was my currently most vivid if least proficient L2, Dutch. The effects of vividness outweigh the relative proficiencies in the languages that may potentially interfere with one another. A second phenomenon I wish to describe I will call ‘eruptive’ transfer. This is in a sense the obverse of vividness, and it may also relate to the typological proximity of the languages involved. Again I will illustrate it from my own experience. As a child I was exposed to some German in my house and developed enough competence to be able to function in Germany during vacations. When I came to the Netherlands as an adult, my limited knowledge of German provided certain shortcuts to learning Dutch, particularly where syntax and the lexicon were concerned. And to this day, whenever I leave the Netherlands for periods of even as little as a week, German lexical items will ‘erupt’ like pimples in the place of quite ordinary Dutch words. I usually realise something is wrong, but the desired word has taken flight. This has led to hilarious exchanges with Dutch customs, who have switched to German the moment I uttered urlaub ‘vacation’ in place of Dutch vakantie. No doubt the fact that my exposure to German occurred at an early age, and my exposure to Dutch began comparatively late, plays a major role here. But German is not a vivid language for me. As for typological distance, or more strictly the learner’s perception of distance or ‘psychotypology’ (Kellerman, 1983), it is all too clear that related L2s will trip over each other. Kellerman (1977) and Clyne and Cassia (1999) refer to Whinnom’s (1971) characterisation of Cocoliche, the ‘Spanish’ of Italian immigrants in Argentina as a continuum ranging from substandard Italian to local variants of Spanish. Cocoliche shows evidence

188 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:40

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

188

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

of assimilation of Spanish lexical items in so far as these do not closely resemble Italian, and Whinnom speculates that incorporation of specifically Spanish syntactic features may never have happened at all. Work in Swedish-speaking Finland (e.g. Ringbom, 1987) shows the importance of psychotypologies in a situation where English is a foreign language and Swedish and Finnish are first or second languages. Both Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers are more likely to use their Swedish than their Finnish as a source of borrowing. Clyne and Cassia (1999) also maintain that data collected from their Spanish-English-Italian trilinguals in Australia show that these speakers are aware of the typological relations between the three languages. As for the themes of this chapter, the depiction of motion in words and gestures, and the use of metaphor, one could speculate that typological distance will play its expected role – the closer the L2s to each other or the L1, the more likely transfer will occur. However, there are at least two provisos consider. The first is whether a language-related structure (within or beyond the sentence) is accessible to awareness. If it is not (as gestures are generally not), it is quite conceivable that transfer will come from the L1, rather than between the L2s. The second proviso has to do with the comprehensibility of potential transferees: if an item such as an idiom or conventional metaphor is considered by the non-native to be communicatively opaque or culture-bound, it may not be transferred. Again, awareness plays a role here, as research evidence has shown that sophisticated classroom learners are suspicious of the existence of cognate idioms, even when they do in fact exist (e.g. Kellerman, 1977). Thus Japanese speakers of English may (or equally well may not) transfer their underlying conceptualisation of anger in their attempt to convey that emotion in an L2. Again, typological distance and metalinguistic awareness will play a role here.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued for the narrative as a fruitful source of study for second language researchers. The narrative not only permits one to study what might be termed the orthodox aspects of second language development, it also provides a golden opportunity to consider those interesting cases where language and cognition are difficult to tease apart. Languages bias their speakers towards focusing on events in certain ways, requiring them to think before speaking. They manifest differences in the way motion events are typically encoded, for instance. It is not so much that the verb-framed motion event is impossible in English – it clearly is not – it is just that it is not the usual way of doing it.

189 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:40

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

189

Secondly, narrators use gesture and, if we accept McNeill’s view that gesture and speaking have common origins, then the study of gesture will benefit our understanding of thought processes. Here too there is ample opportunity for studying the use of gesture by non-native speakers. Finally, emotional involvement in the stories we tell can be accomplished by the use of metaphorical language. Metaphor is considered to be a very powerful means of self-expression, and its use in everyday language is far more widespread than was once considered to be the case. Again, we have very little idea how the first language or the culture one belongs to affects the expression of emotion in another language, but we do know that metaphor and idiom are topics that are rarely addressed in foreign language classrooms, and even advanced learners have great difficulty mastering their form. Recently Allyssa McCabe (1997:137) has written that narrative is ‘a linguistic crossroads of culture, cognition and emotion’. Here, then, are three new areas of endeavour for second language researchers to explore where the first or other languages will probably play an important part. There should be no turning back.

Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Keiko and Kaoru Yoshioka for revealing information on Japanese, and to Theo Bongaerts and Clive Perdue for their perennially wise commentary on earlier versions. Notes 1. I am grateful to Peter Jordens for bringing this example to my attention. 2. There is of course no a priori reason to attribute volition to the deer, though most people seem to. 3. In his book Hand and Mind (1992), McNeill shows how spontaneous gestures may be classified into five types: Iconic gestures: pictorial representations of actions or objects. Metaphoric gestures: pictorial representations of an abstract idea. Beats: quick movements that introduce new characters and themes, summarise action. Cohesive gestures tie together thematically related material that has been temporally separated by parts of the discourse. Deictics are pointing gestures used to point to places in real or imagined space. Our main concern in this chapter is with iconic gestures. 4. The Human Body, cited in The Week. We also spend six months on the lavatory, eat for three and a half years, work for eight, grow two metres of nose hair, and have sex over 2,500 times with 5 different partners only two of whom one will have loved. 5. Example from Keiko Yoshioka (personal communication).

190 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:40

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

190

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

References Aston, G. (1993) Notes on the interlanguage of comity. In G. Kasper and S. Blum-Kulka (eds) Interlanguage Pragmatics (pp. 224–50). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berman, R. and Slobin, D. (eds) (1994) Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Busby, K. (1978) Plus ça change – A case of mediaeval interlanguage. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin 3, 118–26. Clyne, M. and Cassia, P. (1999) Trilingualism, immigration and relatedness of language. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 123 (4), 57–77. Ellis, R. (1994) The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fussell, S. and Moss, M. (1998) Figurative language in emotional communication. In S. Fussell and R. Kreuz (eds) Social and Cognitive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Ablex. Gass, S. and Selinker, L. (eds) (1992) Language Transfer in Language Learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gibbs, R. (1994) The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gullberg, M. (1998) Gesture as a Communication Strategy in Second Language Discourse. Lund: Lund University Press. Harley, B. (1989) Transfer in the written compositions of French immersion students. In H. Dechert and M. Raupach (eds) Transfer in Language Production (pp. 3–20). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Kellerman, E. (1977) Towards a characterisation of the strategy of transfer in second language learning. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin 2, 58–145. Kellerman, E. (1983) Now you see it, now you don’t. In S. Gass and L. Selinker (eds) Language Transfer in Language Learning (pp. 112–34). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Kellerman, E. (1995) Crosslinguistic influence: Transfer to nowhere? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 15, 125–50. Kita, S. (1993) Japanese adults’ development of English speaking ability: Change in the language–thought process observed through spontaneous gesture. Paper presented at the Second Language Research Forum, University of Pittsburgh, March. Lado, R. (1957) Linguistics Across Cultures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Larsen-Freeman, D. and Long, M. (1991) An Introduction to Second Language Research. London: Longman. Matsuki, K. (1995) Metaphors of anger in Japanese. In J. Taylor and R. MacLaury (eds) Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. McCabe, A. (1997) Developmental and crosscultural aspects of children’s narration. In M. Bamberg (ed.) Narrative Development: Six Approaches (pp. 137– 74). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. McNeill, D. (1992) Hand and Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

191 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:41

Color profile: Disabled Composite Default screen

Cross-linguistic and Cross-gestural Influence in Non-Native Speakers

191

McNeill, D. and Duncan, S. (1998) Growth points in thinking-for-speaking. In D. McNeill (ed.) Language and Gesture (pp. 141–61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Odlin, T. (1989) Language Transfer: Cross-linguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rampton, B. (1997) A sociolinguistic perspective on L2 communication strategies. In G. Kasper and E. Kellerman (eds) Communication Strategies: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 279–303). London: Addison Wesley Longman. Ringbom, H. (1987) The Role of the First Language in Foreign Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Stam, G. (1999) Speech and gesture. What changes first in L2 acquisition. Paper presented at the Second Language Research Forum, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September. Talmy, L. (1991) Path to realisation: A typology of event conflation. In L. Sutton, C. Johnson and R. Shields (eds) General session and parasession on the grammar of event structure, Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. Van Hoof, A. (2000) Gesture placement in motion events: A crosslinguistic study of ‘thinking for speaking’ patterns. Unpublished undergraduate thesis, English Dept, University of Nijmegen, December. Vermeulen, R. and Kellerman, E. (1998) Causation in narrative: The role of language background and proficiency in two episodes of ‘the frog story’. In D. Albrechtsen, B. Henriksen, I. Mees and E. Poulsen (eds) Perspectives on Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy (pp.161–76). Odense: Odense University Press. Vildomec, V. (1963) Multilingualism. Leiden: Sythoff. Whinnom, K. (1971) Linguistic hybridisation and the ‘special case of pidgins and creoles’. In D. Hymes (ed.) Pidginisation and Creolisation of Languages (pp. 91– 115). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams-Whitney, D., Mio, J. and Whitney, P. (1992) Metaphor production in creative writing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 21: 497–509. Yu, N. (1998) The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: A Perspective from Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

192 Cenoz: Proof 3, Wordworks 0870 740 7725 05 August 2001 20:59:41

Index Authors Ahukanna, J.G.W. 9, 16 Aitchison, J. 104, 119 Aston, G. 186 Baddeley, A. 92, 104 Barsalou, L.W. 121 Bartelt, G. 9, 16 Bartning, I. 97 Bassnett-McGuire, S. 124 Bates, E. 120 Baumgartner-Cohen, B. 47, 49, 56 Berman, R.A. 11, 171-175, 179 Bierwisch, M. 120 Bild, E.R. 1, 5, 6, 9, 19 Blum-Kulka, S. 155 Bock, K. 55 Bongaerts, T. 17, 27, 38, 70, 92 Bowerman, M. 102 Brent, M.R. 92 Brown, A.S. 96 Brown, R. 91, 97 Burke, D.M. 89, 99, 103 Busby, K. 170 Campaña, E. 92, 104 Caramazza, A. 73, 87 Carroll, S. 9, 16, 60 Cassia, P. 49, 187, 188 Cenoz, J. 1, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 16, 60, 150 Chandrasekhar, A. 22, 23, 147 Chumbow, B.S. 22, 23 Cleary, C. 155 Clyne, M. 1, 2, 8-10, 17, 49, 187, 188 Coltheart, M. 119 Cook, V. 1, 9, 21, 115 Costa, A. 73, 87 Coulmas, F. 152 Cutler, A. 91, 104

Dahan, D. 92 Dahl, M. 155 De Angelis, G. 9, 45-47, 49 De Bot, K. 2, 21, 23, 24, 37-39, 90 De Groot, A.M.B. 73, 101, 102, 115, 120, 122 Dechert, H.W. 124 Dell, G. 51, 120 Dentler, S. 1, 10 Dewaele, J-M. 1, 2, 9, 10, 17, 22, 45-47, 49, 54, 70, 71, 77-79, 82, 87, 149 Dijkstra, T. 73, 82 Dörnyei, Z. 102 Douglas, D. 48 Eccles, J.C. 115, 118 Ecke, P. 5, 78, 91-94, 100-106 Edwards, J. 1 Ellis, N. 63, 65, 92, 102 Ellis, R. 171 Ericsson, K.A. 125 Fabbro, F. 116 Faerch, C. 92 Fay, D. 91, 104 Fouser, R.J. 154, 157 Frohlich, M. 153 Fromkin, V.A. 91 Fussell, S. 184 Gadet, F. 77 Gardner, R.C. 153 Garman, M. 125 Garrett, M.F. 55, 91, 92, 101, 103, 104 Gass, S. 1, 42, 92, 171 Gazzaniga, M.S. 115 Genesee, F. 1, 9 Gibbs, R. 182, 183 192

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition Index

Index Green, D.W. 2, 24, 45, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 81, 84, 86, 87, 116 Grosjean, F. 1, 2, 4, 9, 21, 36, 45, 70-73, 75, 81-84, 87 Grotjahn, R. 154 Gullberg, M. 180 Gupton, H. 92 Hakuta, K. 21 Hall, C.J. 91-93, 100, 102-106 Hammarberg, B. 1-4, 8-12, 17, 21, 25, 28, 30, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 46, 47, 49, 56, 61, 62, 65, 76, 78, 84, 92, 93, 106, 115, 132, 147, 149, 150 Hannas, W.C. 151 Harley, B. 9, 180 Harris, M. 119 Henry, A. 102 Herdina, P. 9 Hinds, J. 156 Hoffmann, C. 1, 69 Hölscher, A. 124 House, J. 155 Hufeisen, B. 1, 2, 5, 10, 22, 93, 138, 149 Hulstijn, J. 102 Ide, S. 156 James, C. 91 Jenkins, S. 156 Jessner, U. 1, 9, 10, 115, 120, 140, 149 Jiang, N. 92 Johnson, M. 182, 183

193 Lakshmanan, U. 92 Lambert, W.E. 153 Langacker, R. 119 Larsen-Freeman, D. 171 Lasagabaster, D. 1, 5 Laufer, B. 90, 92, 104 Laver, J. 33 Levelt, W.J.M. 2, 23, 39, 70, 73, 76, 77, 79, 91, 103 Lindemann, B. 1, 10, 22, 149 Long, M. 171 Mackey, W.F. 21, 38 MacWhinney, B. 12, 120 Mägiste, E. 46, 82, 138 Malmberg, B. 34 Matsuki, K. 185 Matz, K-D. 92 Mayer, M. 1, 174 McCabe, A. 189 McNeill, D. 91, 97, 180, 181, 189 Meara, P.M. 65, 92, 118, 121, 133 Meisel, J. 9, 106 Metussin, D.H.R.P.H. 102 Mißler, B. 138 Möhle, D. 9, 16, 22, 124 Moss, M. 184 Myers Scotten, C. 90 Naiman, N. 153 Nation, I.S.P. 102 Nelson, K. 101 Nemser, W. 63, 65, 67

Kallenbach, S. 138 Kasper, G. 155 Kecskes, I. 2 Kellerman, E. 1, 2, 6, 12, 16, 42, 55, 59, 105, 106, 159, 171, 187, 188 Kelz, H.P. 34 Kita, S. 180 Klein, E.C. 138, 149, 150 Klein-Braley, C. 154 Korlén, G. 34 Krings, H.P. 124 Kroll, J.F. 101, 102

Odlin, T. 1, 16, 42, 53, 171

Lado, R. 171 Lakoff, G. 182, 183

Rampton, B. 186 Regan, V. 77

Papp, T. 2 Paradis, M. 116, 117, 121 Park, M-R. 152 Perecman, E. 116 Pienemann, M. 79 Poulisse, N. 9, 13, 15-17, 24, 27, 38, 50, 70, 92, 102 Purves, A.C. 156 Quay, S. 1

194

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Ringbom, H. 2, 4, 9, 16, 22, 47, 49, 60, 67, 78, 92, 150, 159, 171, 188 Roelofs, A. 74, 84, 87, 120 Rose, K.R. 155

Todesco, A. 153 Towell, R. 77, 92 Treffers-Daller, J. 72 Ulijn, J.M. 60

Saltarelli, M. 10 Saussure, F. de 119 Schreuder, R. 90, 120 Scott, M.L. 102 Selinker, L. 1, 3, 9, 42, 45-49, 56, 78, 92, 171 Shanon, B. 92, 106 Sharwood Smith, M. 1, 42, 43 Shibatani, M. 151-153 Sikogukira, M. 60, 92 Singh, R. 9, 16, 60 Singleton, D. 9, 22, 63, 65, 91, 92, 104, 115-117, 153, 155 Slobin, D.I. 11, 171-175, 179 Söderman, T. 65, 92, 101, 104 Sohn, H. M. 152 Stam, G. 180, 181 Stedje, A. 22, 47, 49, 59, 62 Stern, H.H. 153 Sternberg, R.J. 102 Straf, M. 104 Swain, M. 1, 5, 9 Talmy, L. 171, 175 Teschmer, J. 92 Thomas, J. 1, 5, 138

Valencia, J.F. 1, 5, 150 Van Hoof, A. 180, 181 Vermeulen, R. 176 Vihman, M.M. 104 Vildomec, V. 47, 49, 187 Vogel, T. 22, 23 Voorwinde, S. 59, 69 Weinreich, U. 115, 119, 120, 121 Weise, G. 92 Weltens, B. 90 Whinnom, K. 187, 188 Williams, S. 1-3, 9-11, 22-25, 28, 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 44, 46, 56, 59, 62, 65, 76, 78, 92, 93, 106, 115, 132, 147, 149, 150 Williams-Whitney, D. 184 Woo, B-K. 166 Woutersen, M. 115, 120 Yu, N. 184, 185 Zimmermann, R. 120, 124, 125 Zipf, G. 92 Zobl, H. 150

Subjects Accent 33, 59, 165 Activation 3-4, 7, 32, 38, 40, 45-46, 51-58, 62, 69, 70-72, 74, 82-84, 86-88, 101, 105, 118-120, 125, 129, 132-133, 136 — Activation of languages 4, 45-46, 69, 71, 82, 132 — Active language 24, 45, 46, 71 Age 3, 8-20, 120, 141, 152, 156, 162, 171, 178, 179, 187 ANOVA 144 Attitude 27, 35-36, 71, 154, 164, 168 Automaticity 73, 76 Avoidance 1, 5, 42, 86, 125, 168 Awareness 7, 16, 18, 64, 130, 133, 148, 154-156, 159, 164, 167, 170, 188

Background language 25, 30, 32, 34-35, 37-38, 84 Base language 10, 17, 18, 40, 71, 75, 79, 82, 84-86, 147 Bilingualism 1, 3, 6-7, 19-22, 36, 38-41, 45, 57-58, 69, 87-89, 112-113, 119-120, 136, 168 — Bilingual 1, 3-4, 6-9, 18, 23-24, 36-37, 39, 40, 45-46, 58, 69, 70-73, 75, 81, 87-89, 102, 111-113, 116-117, 119-120, 123, 135-137, 147, 173, 175 — Coordinative bilingualism 120 Borrowing 1, 13, 75, 77, 105, 127, 129, 130, 188 — Borrow 8, 10, 14, 17, 156, 161, 162

Index Childes project database 12 Classroom language 120, 134, 135 Code-switching 40, 60, 69, 70-75, 79, 81, 83-84, 86, 89, 90, 113 — Switches 4, 7, 12, 20, 24-32, 37-38, 41, 46-47, 58, 60-61, 67-68, 72, 86, 89, 105, 114, 137, 148, 167, 169 Cognates 60-62, 66, 94, 116, 120, 130, 151 Cognition 19, 40, 87, 88-89, 92, 112-113, 135-136, 188-189 Cognitive 7, 9, 10, 19, 43, 73, 77-78, 82, 84, 86, 88, 92, 107, 111, 113, 115, 118-119, 121, 123, 125, 129, 132-133, 135-136, 138, 148, 150, 165, 173, 179, 182, 190 Collocational knowlege 119 Communication 5, 9, 16, 17, 20, 57, 77, 83, 84, 86-88, 102, 105, 111, 113, 168-170, 189-191 — Communication strategy 5, 16, 17, 102, 105, 190 Communicative competence 5, 6 Compensation 51-52, 102 Compensatory strategy 13, 50-52 Competence 1, 5, 6, 9, 19, 21-24, 37, 40, 48, 55-56, 65, 67, 74, 82, 87, 91, 102, 115, 135, 141, 149, 155-156, 166, 172, 173, 179, 187 Comprehension 23, 49, 59, 63, 66, 67, 120, 125 Conceptualiser 23, 24, 37, 77, 186 Content words 14, 17, 27, 94 Context 3, 7, 9-11, 18, 24-25, 27, 29 58, 60, 62-63, 66-67, 72, 78, 88, 91, 94-95, 102, 108, 114, 131-132, 152, 169 Conversation 9, 24-29, 35-36, 40, 71-72, 75, 86, 89, 152 Cross-lexical influence 90, 92-93, 99, 100, 105, 107 Cross-linguistic influence 1-20, 32, 42-43, 58, 127, 130-131, 135, 149, 159, 160-161, 165, 170, 191 Cross-linguistic transfer 16 Dialect 33, 163 Discourse 23, 59, 83, 153, 157, 159, 161-163, 168, 171, 183, 189, 190 Discourse strategies 159, 161

195 Distance 2-3, 8, 10, 15-18, 55-56, 60, 115, 117, 124, 129, 134-135, 152, 157, 162, 166, 187-188 Dominant language 73, 84 Dormant language 24, 45, 70 Early trilingualism 1 Elicitation 3, 28-29, 31, 95, 107, 149, 154, 156 Editing 9, 26, 75, 77 Foreignising 13, 15, 18 — Foreignisation 128 Form and meaning 49, 53, 63, 97, 105 Formal instruction 4, 48, 74, 87 Fluency 47, 49, 74, 77-78, 81-82, 86, 89 Function words 11, 14, 17, 27, 38, 47, 67 Grammar 59-60, 88, 136, 165-166, 173, 191 — Grammatical 23, 27-28, 62, 67-68, 75, 89, 119-121, 127, 132, 155, 165, 169, 171 Hesitation phenomena 77 Inhibition 4, 69, 72-73, 82, 84, 86, 87, 89, — Inhibitory effect 139 Interaction 1-4, 9-10, 12, 19-20, 26, 35, 41, 44, 55, 57, 69, 71, 86, 104, 168, 170, 179 Interference 1, 18, 38, 139-140, 144, 146-147, 165, 169 — Third language interference 118, 126, 130, 133-134. Interlanguage 3-4, 6, 19, 40, 42-57, 67, 70, 74, 77, 83, 86-88, 155-156, 168-169, 190 — Interlanguage influence 45, 49, 51 — Interlanguage production 43-44, 47-49, 51, 53, 55-56 — Interlanguage transfer 3-4, 42-45, 49-53, 55-57 Interlingual influence 87, 106 Intonation 27, 29, 39, 59 Intra-lingual 18, 66 Introspection 136, 154-156 — Introspective 25, 130, 136, 149, 153-154, 164

196

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Knowledge 5, 10, 12, 16, 21-24, 33, 35-37, 42-43, 48-52, 55-57, 63, 66, 68, 85-87, 90, 94, 103, 115, 118-119, 121, 123-124, 130, 132-133, 135, 138, 140, 144, 150, 156, 159, 164-167, 169, 187 L2 Status 2-5, 8-9, 18, 23, 36 L3 production 3-4, 7-9, 20-21, 41, 47, 58-59, 60, 65-68, 70, 89, 93, 105, 107, 114, 137, 146, 148, 169 L3-comprehension 66 L3-learning 62 Language loss 1 Language of instruction 11 Language processing 51, 55, 57-58, 69, 71, 89, 134, 136 Language mixing 71, 116-117, 130, 134-136 Language switches 7, 20, 25-27, 29-31, 37, 41, 46-47, 58, 60-61, 67-68, 86, 89, 114, 137, 148, 169 Language transfer 4, 6-7, 19-20, 42-44, 50, 53, 55, 57-58, 112-113, 129, 150, 169, 190-191 Lexical inventions 6, 19, 40, 46, 54, 57, 70-71, 78, 80-82, 84, 87-88, 168 Lexical meaning 101 Lexical production 90-91, 103, 106 Lexical retrieval 4, 51, 90-91, 111-112, 115, 120, 125, 129, 136 Lexical search 78, 103, 106, 120, 125 Lexicon 4, 19, 23, 33, 37, 63, 65, 68, 74, 90-91, 107, 112-115, 117-121, 135-136, 147, 151, 159, 165-166, 187 Linguistic distance 3, 8, 10, 15-18, 115, 117, 124, 129, 134, 135 Loan translation 60, 61, 127, 130 Longitudinal 16, 22, 24, 27, 46, 62, 132 Majority language 11, 63 Mental lexicon 4, 63, 65, 68, 90-91, 107, 112-113, 115-116, 118-121, 135-136 Metaphors 5, 182-184, 185-186, 190 Metalinguistic 17, 26, 27, 29, 127, 130, 133, 138, 139, 164, 165 — Metalinguistic awareness 7, 16, 148, 155, 167, 188 — Metalinguistic development 9, 10, 18

Methodology 6, 58, 74, 124, 153 Mode 9-10, 18, 35-36, 38, 73, 78, 82, 183 — Language mode 56 — Language mode continuum 4, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79, 81, 83-86 Monitoring 82-83, 87, 105 — Self-monitoring 23, 106 Monolingual 4, 8-9, 18, 21-23, 37, 51, 73, 75, 79, 81-86, 90, 119, 150 — Monolinguals 1, 2, 45, 71, 181 Morphosyntax 33 Motivation 58, 112, 154, 168 Multicompetence 9, 40, 115, 135 Multilingualism 3, 6-7, 19, 21, 44, 47, 58, 68, 90, 123, 130, 136, 147, 191 — Multilingual 1, 3-4, 6-7, 20, 40-42, 45-46, 55-58, 68, 72, 75, 79, 83-85, 89, 90, 92, 107, 113, 118, 135-136, 147-148, 167, 169, 191 — Multilingual acquisition 16, 18, 19, 67 — Multilingual processing 115 Neurolinguistic 5, 118-119, 121, 134 Non-verbal communication 5 Perceived linguistic distance 115, 117, 124, 129, 134, 135 Perception 10, 16, 55-56, 71, 77, 105, 137, 187 Performance 23, 43, 46-47, 67, 75, 82, 91, 102, 125, 134, 140, 142-144, 171, 173, 176, 179 Phonetic 23-24, 33, 34-39, 41, 71 Plurilingual 5, 115, 117-119, 125, 134-135 Polyglot 3, 7, 20-22, 36-38, 41, 46, 58, 68, 89, 113-114, 137, 148, 169 Pragmatic 3, 5, 27, 35, 37-38, 47, 77, 155, 167-168, 171, 190 Processing 2, 4, 6-7, 19, 50-51, 55-58, 63, 69-71, 73, 77, 82, 84, 89-92, 105-107, 111-112, 117-118, 126-127, 130, 135-136, 148 — Lexical processing 5, 104, 115, 119-121, 123-125, 128-129, 134 Production 2-9, 11, 16-17, 20-24, 37-38, 40-41, 43-53, 55-60, 62, 65-70, 72-74, 76-79, 81-94, 103, 105-107, 111-115,

Index 119-121, 127, 129, 135-140, 143, 146, 148, 154-156, 169, 184, 190-191 Proficiency 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18, 19, 23, 29, 32, 35, 36, 37, 50, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 73, 75, 94, 103, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 124, 129, 134, 135, 141, 149, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 165, 166, 178, 191 — Sociolinguistic proficiency 157, 159 Proficient learners 9, 178 Pronunciation 25, 30, 33, 35, 129, 165-166, 173 Prosody 122, 179 — Prosodic 33, 34 Psycholinguistic 1, 2, 5-7, 19-20, 40-41, 58-59, 111, 113, 116, 119, 121, 123, 134, 136, 167, 182, 191 Psychotypology 4-5, 8, 10, 55, 62, 65, 105-106, 189 Recency 2, 4, 10, 23, 36, 37 Retrieval 57, 73, 90-91, 93-94, 97, 101, 103-107, 111-113, 120, 135-136 — Lexical retrieval 4-5, 51, 90-91, 111-112, 115, 120, 125, 129, 136 Retrospective 25, 33, 162, 164 Second language acquisition 1-3, 6-10, 19-21, 41, 45, 58, 67, 88, 116, 168, 171, 190 Self-repairs 26 Sociolect 33 Sociolinguistic 1, 5, 20, 74, 80, 87, 149-150, 152, 155-157, 159, 161-164, 166-169, 191 Source language 4, 8, 9-11, 13-15, 17-18, 90, 93, 99, 105, 124, 126-127, 157 Speech production process 76, 86 Status 2-5, 8-9, 18, 23, 36, 38, 69, 71, 83, 87, 89, 104, 139, 146, 152, 156, 161-162 Strategies 10, 12, 20, 51, 62-63, 67, 70,

197 83, 111, 113, 129, 138, 159, 161, 191 — Communication strategy 5, 16, 17, 102, 105, 190 — Compensatory strategy 13, 50-52 — Discourse strategies 159, 161 Supplier language 30-32, 36-38 — Code switching 40, 60, 69, 70-75, 79, 81, 83-84, 86, 89, 90, 113 Target language 8-9, 17, 42-44, 46, 49-52, 54, 56, 60-61, 65-66, 73-74, 80, 82-83, 85, 91, 100, 126-132, 134, 149-150, 157, 167, 176 Text 25-26, 35, 39, 66, 125, 159, 163, 171 Think-aloud protocols 124-125, 127, 134 Third language acquisition 1-3, 6, 8-10, 15, 19, 22, 24, 41, 67, 89, 147, 167, 168 Tip-of-the-tongue 4, 90-91, 93, 109, 111 Transfer 1-9, 11, 13-17, 19-20, 24, 42-45, 49-53, 55-61, 63-68, 70-71, 74, 82-83, 90, 92, 112-113, 127-131, 134, 149-150, 155-157, 159, 161-163, 166, 168-170, 176, 179, 181, 187-188, 190-191 Transfer in discourse 59 Transfer of form 4, 49-53, 55, 57, 60-61, 63 Transfer of meaning 4, 49, 50, 53, 57, 60, 63 Translation 4-5, 48, 60-61, 90-91, 94-96, 101-102, 107-110, 115, 123-128, 130-136, 140-141, 144, 146, 185 t-test 79, 80, 81, 143 Typology 3-5, 8, 10, 36-37, 191 — Typological 2, 16, 18, 22, 49-50, 55, 59-61, 66, 107, 159, 171, 187-188 Vividness 187 Vocabulary 9, 27-28, 65, 67, 71, 76, 101, 106, 111-114, 118, 136, 166, 173, 178, 179