User:A42nato/sandbox

DRAFT 1 Alina Fortunato, Justin Marcellus, Caitlyn Adams, Katie Sobon

OPENING (Katie)

Crosslinguistic influence (CLI) is a common term for different ways in which one language affects the other. It typically involves two languages with either a monolingual or bilingual speaker. Additionally, it can be characterized in terms of comprehension or production that is non-existent in monolinguals of that particular language (Serratrice, 2013). A brief example of cross-linguistic influence is the influence of English syntactic structures on German-English bilingual children. Three children in a particular study used V_XP syntactic structures in their German utterances, but this structure does not exist in German. It had to come from the English influence on the German because V_XP is the only grammatical syntactic structure used in English (Dopke, 1998).  Discussed further in this article are particular subcategories of crosslinguistic influence--transfer, interference, attrition, avoidance, the Complementarity Principle, and additional theories.

MB comment: is there a reason you took out the example of Korean + Japanese or French? I would not use the example of "V_XP syntactic structures" at this point in the article because readers will have no idea what this means. You have to explain what you're talking about in lay terms.

HISTORY (Katie)

Pre-dating the crosslinguistic hypothesis was the idea that children acquiring two languages had two separate systems based on evidence of the same milestones being reached in monolinguals as well as in bilinguals (Cantone, 1999; Muller, 1990; Paradis & Genesee, 1996).  Later, the crosslinguistic hypothesis was developed by Hulk and Muller that examined the extent of the differentiation of the systems in the acquisition of two languages (Hulk & Muller, 2000; Muller & Hulk, 2001). Their research in crosslinguistic influence concluded that influence in bilinguals would occur in areas of particular difficulty for even monolinguals, and they examined the overlap between two language systems (Hulk & Muller, 2000, 2)  Since then, much research has contributed to the understanding of crosslinguistic influence in areas of structural overlap, directionality, dominance, interfaces, the role of input, and the role of processing and production (Serratrice, 2013).

MB comment: you should also talk about the single-system hypothesis of Volterra and Taeschner which we talked about in class.

SUBTOPICS

Transfer/Positive Transfer (Alina)

In linguistics, transfer is defined by behaviorist psychologists as the subconscious use of one language’s behaviors in a new language. In the Applied Linguistics field, it is also known as exhibiting knowledge of a native or dominant language (L1) in one that is being learned (L2) (Arabski, 2006). Transfer occurs in various language-related settings: when acquiring a new language, and when two languages or two dialects come into contact. The intensity of these settings can determine how much information is transferred from one language to the other. Transfer also depends on how similar the two languages are and how intense the settings are. Transfer is more likely to happen if the two languages are in the same language family (Arabski, 2006). It also occurs more at the beginning stages of L2 acquisition, when the grammar and lexicon are less developed; as the speakers’ L2 proficiency increases, they will experience less transfer (Lee, 2016).

MB comment: what do you mean by intensity of the setting?

Language transfer can also be positive or negative. Positive transfer yields correct production in the new language because the systems of both languages are similar or the same (Arabski, 2006). An example would be knowing Spanish (L1) and acquiring Catalan (L2). Because the languages are so similar, the speaker could rely on their knowledge of Spanish when learning certain Catalan grammatical systems and pronunciations. However, the two languages are distinct enough that the speaker’s knowledge of Spanish could interfere with properly learning Catalan, which brings into question the concept of negative transfer, also known as interference.

MB comment: positive vs. negative transfer is not necessarily about whether the languages are similar or different! They just refer to whether the effect of transfer is faciliative (positive) or inhibitory (negative). Similar languages *can* lead to positive transfer and dissimilar languages *can* lead to negative transfer. See me or check your sources if you have questions about this!

Interference (Justin)

Interference or negative transfer, is when there are little to no similarities between the L1 and L2; this is where errors and avoidance are more likely to occur in the L2.  Which leads to several debates between behaviorist and minimalist theories of both the positive/negative effects of interference on the L2 respectively.

• • • English to Spanish Errors
      • “put the fire out” from his native English into Spanish as “poner il fuego afuera” instead of as “extinguir el fuego” (Odlin, 165).
    • Language Transfer Debate
      • There is an ongoing debate as to where interference is a useful/hindering tool in L2 acquisition.
        • Behaviorist believe that Critical analysis (CA) can be used to predict errors in the L2; by comparing the dissimilarities of the L1 and L2.  Another view take, is that the L2 is a new set of habits that are in conflict with the learned habits of the L1
        • Minimalist, argue that L1 is important in acquisition.  They recognise that (CA) can predict some errors, but not to the extent that would suggest it is solely due to L1 interference.  A view is held that L1 and L2 work cohesively in learning the L2  

Attrition (Alina)

Language attrition, simply put, is language loss. Attrition can occur in both an L1 and an L2. Bardovi-Harlig and Stringer (2010) state that, according to the interference hypothesis (also known as the crosslinguistic influence hypothesis), language transfer is the direct cause of attrition. If a speaker moved to a country where their L2 is the dominant language and ceased regular use of their L1, the speaker could experience attrition in their L1. However, proficiency in the L2 could just as easily drop if the speaker moved back to a place where their L1 was the dominant language and they did not practice their L2 frequently enough. Attrition could also occur if a child speaker’s L1 is not the dominant language in their society. A child whose L1 is Spanish but whose socially dominant language is English could experience attrition of their Spanish simply because they are restricted to using that language in certain domains (Grosjean, 2013).

MB comment: Make it clear how this is related to CLI.

Avoidance (Justin)

Avoidance/Avoidance behaviour as explained by (Schatcher 1974), is a strategy used by L2 learners, as a means of error avoidance when using structures, sounds or words that they see as difficult in the language being acquired; although their L1 contains these very structures, words or sounds.  Avoidance occurs most frequently with phrasal verbs

• • • Causes
      • L1 learners do not rely on their mother tongue and attempt to create structures based on the knowledge of the language being acquired.
      • L1 learners use their mother language or other languages learned as a framework, to “simplify” the new structures.
    • Phrasal verbs
      • Are particles and verbs that when constructed create a semantically new lexical item that differs from the sum of its parts
      • Phrasal verbs are the most studied in avoidance, in the results by (Yidiz, 2015), who observed Norwegian and Turkish-English L2 learners, he discovered that each avoid verb phrases to varying degrees

MB comment: is this going to be a separate section from the one above on interference?

Complementarity Principle (Caitlyn)

Grosjean (2013) explained the complementarity principle as being the function of language and the use or dominance of languages used by a speaker. This dominance in certain domains of life (e.g. school, home, work, etc.) can be influenced by crosslinguistic information. One such study found that crosslinguistic influence was occurring within the speech of the studied bilinguals, but the intensity of influence was subjective to the domains of speech being used (Dopke, 1998; Muller, 1998; Yip and Matthews, 2000; Muller and Hulk, 2001). Argyri and Sorace (2007) found, much like many other researchers, that language dominance plays a role in the directionality of crosslinguistic influence. These researchers found that the English dominant bilinguals had influence of English on their Greek (concerning preverbal subjects specifically, but also the language in general), but not from their Greek to their English; contrarily however, the Greek dominant bilinguals did not show evidence of Greek influence on their English (Argyri and Sorace, 2007). This then lends way to both support of language dominance and opposition. One thought is that bilinguals who do not receive sufficient exposure to both languages, or in this case their ‘weaker’ language, do not exhibit crosslinguistic effects because their dominant language is much more advanced. This could lend to the idea of input frequency accounting for effects of crosslinguistic influences and the use of dominance in differentiated domains to strengthen or weaken susceptibility to this influence. Also, should influence such as English preverbal subjects not be found in this instance of Greek, then instead of omitting this learned aspect of language, the speakers will use it. This raises the question of use, input, and similarities versus differences between the languages used.

MB comment: this is good; be careful citing Grosjean though. You don't provide your bibliography here so I can't see which publication of his you mean. If you are citing the book we're using in class, note that there are TWO authors (Grosjean and Li), and also that most (if not all) of what's in that book is not original research. You should use that book to find references to the original work.

Additional Theories (Caitlyn)

Some researchers believe that CLI may be a side effect of contact-variety input, or linguistic input from a person whose language has already been affected by another (Hauser-Grüdl, Guerra, Witzmann, Leray, & Müller, 2010). This is to say that the environment one is learning another language can influence what the person is learning. Take for example the fact that most L2 learners are receiving input or teachings from similarly bilingual speakers, Hauser-Grüdl, Guerra, Witzmann, Leray, and Müller (2010) believe that the teacher’s languages have been influenced already by one another and therefore the input the learner is getting from this teacher will replicate this influence simply from the input rather than their own L1 language. Some may say that input for L2 acquisition is not as pure as that of L1.

MB comment: Hm, I'm not sure how it makes sense for CLI to be a side-effect of exposure to a contact variety of a language. As I understand it, CLI is the idea that the two languages (or dialects) in a speaker's mind can influence one another. It seems like what you are saying here, though, is that if a speaker exhibits errors in their L2, or apparent incomplete acquisition or something along those lines, that could actually be due to the type of language they are exposed to rather than a problem in learning. Make sure to be clear about the difference!

Other researchers believe that CLI is more than production influences, claiming that this linguistic exchange can impact other factors of a learner’s self. Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) described such affected areas as experiences, knowledge, cognitions, development, attention and language use, to name a few, as being major centers for change because of CLI. These ideas suggest that crosslinguistic influence of syntactic, morphological, or phonological changes may just be the surface of one language’s influence on the other, and CLI is instead a different developmental use of one’s brain (Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008).

Conclusion (Katie)

Crosslinguistic influence has been heavily studied by scholars, but there is still much more research to be conducted because of the multitude of components that make up the phenomenon.  The structural and functional components of languages in particular language pairings need to be researched further to differentiate crosslinguistic influence from the general effects bilingualism and bilingual acquisition.  In addition, research is needed in areas of syntactic overlap between two languages and the linguistic representations that both influence and discourage crosslinguistic influence. (Serratrice, 2013)

Another area of research to be developed further are the effects of crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of three or more languages.  There are limited numbers of studied on this issue that could potentially give rise to information regarding the effects of this phenomena in terms of multilanguage acquisition and multilingualism.

FURTHER READING

This section will be deleted because we will add more external links in the "external links" section

EXTERNAL LINKS

• Adding more external links; “Transfer”
• Max 3 or 4 links so as not to confuse the reader
• Keeping the links that already exist; “Cognitive science,” “Multilingualism,” “Psycholinguistics,” “Second-language acquisition”