The Role of L1 in the Acquisition of Motion Verbs in English by Chinese and Japanese Learners

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that cross-linguistic lexical similarities are generally positive for target language lexical acquisition, especially when the two languages in question are related. For example, Palmberg (1985) showed that Swedish-speaking learners with no experience of learning English at school could identify correctly more than half of 40 everyday English words, and that the percentages correct were especially high for words similar or almost similar in pronunciation to their Swedish translation equivalents. He also reported (Palmberg, 1987) that elementarylevel Swedish-speaking learners could successfully recognize and identify the meaning of unfamiliar words in English with the help of inferencing procedures. Ard and Homburg (1983) compared the responses of Spanish- and Arabic-speaking learners on the lexical items of a standardized test of English as a second language. Their study showed that the Spanish-speaking learners did better than their Arabic-speaking counterparts of comparable English proficiency, not only on items similar to their native language (NL), but also on those where there was no overt similarity involved. Ard and Homburg suggested that 'over-all closeness in lexical structuring' (1983, p. 171) between Spanish and English might be responsible for the results of their investigation. The facilitative role of linguistic similarity is succinctly summed up by Ringham (1987): 'Similarities, both cross-linguistic and intra-linguistic, function as pegs on which the learner can hang new information by making use of already existing knowledge, thereby facilitating learning' (p. 134).