Lexical Crosslinguistic Influence and Study Abroad: Do Learners Use L1-Based Resources Less?

Mireia Ortega,M. Luz Celaya

doi:10.3390/languages4030055

Abstract

Research in Crosslinguistic influence (CLI) has traditionally addressed two broad types of lexical CLI—transfer of form and transfer of meaning (Ringbom 1987)—which were reconceptualized by Jarvis (2009) as lexemic and lemmatic transfer, respectively. Whereas the former considers the phonological and graphemic structure of words, the latter is related to semantic and syntactic properties. These types of lexical CLI have been analysed in relation to L2 proficiency, but not in relation to factors such as Study Abroad (SA), which the present study aims to investigate. The oral production by 107 Catalan/Spanish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) was analysed in terms of lexical CLI and the amount of input received during their SA. Results show an inverse relationship between the amount of input in SA and lexical CLI; that is, the higher the number of hours abroad, the fewer cases of lexical CLI. Statistical differences were found for lemmatic CLI and for one type of lexemic CLI. In light of these findings, it is suggested that learners that take part in SA programmes do not rely on L1-based resources when gaps in their knowledge arise.

Highlights

As defined by Jarvis (2009, p. 99), Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) is “the influence that a person’s knowledge of one language has on that person’s recognition, interpretation, processing, storage and production of words in another language.” Since the number of multilingual speakers has drastically increased all over the world since the 1960s, research in CLI has been recently gaining momentum, as evident from the number of publications in the last ten years (e.g., Alonso 2016; Angelovska andHahn 2017; De Angelis and Dewaele 2011; Martínez-Adrián et al 2019; Peukert 2015)
Our findings show that lemmatic CLI appeared more frequently than lexemic transfer in the learners’ oral productions
Study Abroad (SA) allows for both the automatization and proceduralisation of new knowledge, (e.g., DeKeyser 2007; Llanes and Muñoz 2009; Pérez-Vidal 2014) and for the inhibition of the L1 (Linck et al 2009) and this is why we suggest that SA especially determines the occurrence of lemmatic transfer and one type of lexemic transfer, namely, language switches, which decrease with a higher number of hours abroad; that is, when gaps in learners’ knowledge arise, they draw on their L1 less

Summary

Introduction

As defined by Jarvis (2009, p. 99), Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) is “the influence that a person’s knowledge of one language has on that person’s recognition, interpretation, processing, storage and production of words in another language.” Since the number of multilingual speakers has drastically increased all over the world since the 1960s, research in CLI has been recently gaining momentum, as evident from the number of publications in the last ten years (e.g., Alonso 2016; Angelovska andHahn 2017; De Angelis and Dewaele 2011; Martínez-Adrián et al 2019; Peukert 2015). Many terms and concepts from the first wave of experimental studies have been redefined under new paradigms. Such is the case of lexical CLI, which has traditionally addressed two broad types, transfer of form and transfer of meaning (Ringbom 1987, 2001). 112); it includes cases of borrowings, false cognates and coinages, among others While the former two types involve the use of an inappropriate word, the latter refers to the modification of the word stem to make the word similar to a word in the Target Language (TL) or to the blending of two morphemes or words from different languages. Lemmatic transfer is realized as semantic extensions (polysemy is represented in different ways in the languages involved), calques

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion