Florencia Franceschina LING212- SLA L1 transfer Florencia Franceschina

What is this speaker’s L1? “… it is confirmed by studies that smoking can cause the addictive and dependence, both on psychology and physic.[…] The earlier a people begin to smoke or the more cigaretters he smoked, the more dangerous he will have on his health.” Source: S02FLPEDU01WT, HKC Spanish Chinese German

What is transfer? “[transfer is evidenced as] those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language” Weinreich (1953: 1)

“[transfer is] the use of the native language (or other language) information in the acquisition of an L2 (or additional language)” Gass (1996: 321) “[transfer is] influence that the learner’s L1 exerts on the acquisition of an L2” Ellis (1997: 51)

Other terms Transfer Mother tongue influence (Corder, 1967) Native language influence (Gass, 1996) Cross-linguistic influence (Kellerman and Sharwood-Smith, 1986; Odlin, 1989) Cross-linguistic generalization (Zobl, 1984)

Early research 1950s-1960s Behaviourism Lado (1957), Fries (1945) Positive transfer (facilitation) vs Negative transfer (interference) 

Contrastive Analysis Methodology (strong version of CAH): 1. Find out what the differences are between pairs of languages 2. On the basis of 1, you can predict areas in which L2 learners will have difficulties and those where they won’t Pedagogical uses

Lado’s hierarchy of difficulty: Differentiation New category Absent category Coalescing Correspondence

Problems with CAH CAH was empirically unsupported: It predicted some difficulties that were not observed in L2 learners It failed to predict some difficulties that were observed in L2 learners

Error Analysis Corder (1967) Mistake vs Error EA methodology: Collect data Identify errors Classify errors Quantify errors Identify source Remedy

Classifying errors Source or errors: Interlingual Intralingual

Problems with E.A. Total reliance on errors (not the whole picture) Difficulties identifying source of errors

Morpheme order studies Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) Bailey, Madden and Krashen (1974) Claim: there is little or no influence of the L1 in L2 development

Problems with no-L1-influence-on-SLA views There IS empirical evidence of L1 influence Methodological drawbacks of morphemes studies

Krashen’s account of L1 transfer No L1 influence in the acquired system L1 influence is a communication strategy (Krashen, 1982, 1985)

Kellerman’s (1979) framework Learner’s perceived language distance Psychotypology Markedness

Current views on transfer General consensus: both the L1 and general developmental processes shape SLA. No agreement on exactly what each contributes, or how.

Transfer may be realised as: Errors Facilitation Avoidance strategies Hypercorrection Overproduction ...

Where can transfer manifest itself? Rate of acquisition Route of development Frequency of occurrence of errors/omissions Perception and production Seemingly all areas of the grammar Exercise

Transfer in the L2 initial stage Minimal Trees (Vainikka and Young-Scholten, 1994, 1996, 1998) vs Full Transfer/Full Access (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1994, 1996)

Recent developments Transfer in L3 acquisition (Cenoz and Jessner, 2000) L2 effects on the L1 (Cook, 2003)

References Bailey, N., C. G. Madden and S. D. Krashen. 1974: Is there a ‘natural sequence’ in adult second language learning? Language Learning 24, 235-243. Cenoz, J. and U. Jessner. (eds.) 2000: English in Europe: the acquisition of a third language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Corder, P. 1967: The significance of learner errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics (IRAL) 5, 2/3: 161-170. Cook, V. J. (ed.) 2003: Effects of the second language on the first. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dulay, H. and M. Burt. 1973: Should we teach children syntax? Language Learning 23, 245-258. Dulay, H. and M. Burt.1974: Natural sequences in child second language acquisition. Language Learning 24, 37-53. Ellis, R. 1997: Second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fries, C. 1945: Teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gass, S. M. 1996: Second language acquisition and linguistic theory: the role of language transfer, in W. C. Ritchie and T. K. Bhatia, eds. The handbook of second language acquisition. San Diego: Academic Press. Pp. 317-345. Kellerman, E. 1979: Transfer and non-transfer: where we are now. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 2, 37-57. Kellerman, E. and M. Sharwood Smith. 1986: Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition. New York: Oxford University Press.

References Krashen, S. D. 1982: Principles and practice in SLA. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Krashen, S. D. 1985: The Input Hypothesis: issues and implications. London: Longman. Lado, R. 1957: Linguistics across cultures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Odlin, T. 1989: Language transfer: cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, B. D. and R. A. Sprouse. 1994: Word order and nominative Case in nonnative language acquisition: a longitudinal study of (L1 Turkish) German interlanguage, in T. Hoekstra and B. D. Schwartz, eds. Language acquisition studies in generative grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 317-368. Schwartz, B. D. and R. A. Sprouse. 1996: L2 cognitive states and the 'full transfer/full access' model. Second Language Research 12, 1: 40-72. Vainikka, A. and M. Young-Scholten. 1994: Direct access to X'-theory: evidence from Korean and Turkish adults learning German., in T. Hoekstra and B. D. Schwartz, eds. Language acquisition studies in generative grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Vainikka, A. and M. Young-Scholten. 1996: Gradual development of L2 phrase structure. Second Language Research 12, 1: 7-39. Vainikka, A. and M. Young-Scholten. 1998: Functional categories and related mechanisms in child second language acquisition, in S. Flynn, G. Martohardjono and W. O'neil, eds. The generative study of second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Weinreich, U. 1953: Languages in contact. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York. Zobl, H. 1984: Aspects of reference and the ponominal syntax preference in the speech of young child L2 learners, in R. W. Andersen, ed. Second languages: a cross-linguistic perspective. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Reading Odlin, T. 2003: Cross-linguistic influence. In Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, eds. C. J. Doughty and M. H. Long. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Pp. 436-486.