Positive and Negative Lexical Transfer in English Vocabulary Acquisition

The aim of the paper is to explore the appearance of positive and negative lexical transfer of plurilingual learners in English vocabulary acquisition. Cross-linguistic influences in the study are examined by word translation tasks from Croatian into English, including true, partial, and deceptive cognates or false friends in English, German, and Italian. The results have revealed different language dominances and positive or negative transfer manifestation. Lexical transfer from L4 German is manifested positively, but the Italian language seems to play a dominant role in the acquisition of English vocabulary. The effect of Croatian is manifested both positively and negatively. The study has confirmed previous psycholinguistic studies on the complexity of lexical connections in plurilingual learners and the dynamic interaction of various learning-based factors, such as language recency, proficiency, exposure to languages, the order in which languages are learned, and the formal context in language learning.

Small-scale multilingualism through the prism of lexical borrowing

Aims and Objectives: We assess whether data on lexical borrowing obtained through field elicitation may point not only to a specific donor language but also to its specific regional variety, and whether these data are a reliable tool for reconstructing unknown historical patterns of interaction between ethnic subgroups. Methodology: We use quantitative analysis of the data obtained by loanword probing—elicitations of short wordlists from speakers of minority languages—to calculate the amount and identify the source of lexical transfer. We compare the results across several areas with varying degrees of bilingualism and different contact varieties of the donor language to see how this influences our results. Data: The data for this study come from a large-scale field study in Daghestan, with 72 people from 19 villages speaking four languages. Findings: Our method suggests that speech communities clearly indicate one of the regional varieties of Azerbaijani as the donor, depending on the area of data collection. We also observe that the degree of lexical convergence with the donor depends not only on the level of bilingualism observed in the specific village but also on the native language of this village, suggesting language borders as a natural constraint to the spread of lexical borrowing. Originality: The study is novel in that it is fully based on analysis of data on lexical convergence obtained through fieldwork on minority languages and provides quantitative results that can be compared across speech communities in the survey. Implications: We conclude that the method is sensitive enough to trace donorship to specific regional varieties of the donor language. Limitations: Our observations on the relative weight of the level of bilingualism and language affiliation of a speech community as predictors of the degree of lexical convergence require more data obtained both from other linguistic environments and by different methods.

The role of morphological similarity in lexical activation and unintentional transfer

Aims: Within the current multilingual paradigm shift, transfer is increasingly conceptualised not only as an unintentional mechanism of “interference”, but also as an intentional mechanism used as a learner strategy. However, very little is known from an empirical perspective about (un)intentionality in transfer. This article builds on an exploratory study which suggested that background language words that fit well within the morphological constraints of the target language are highly activated during target language use and, consequently, likely to transfer unintentionally. The present study tests whether the correlation between morphological similarity and unintentionality in lexical transfer is statistically significant Methodology: A quasi-Poisson regression analysis was employed to test the significance of morphological similarity on the amount of unintentional transfer in the written production of Spanish by 78 highly multilingual school students, when tested together with additional variables (number of languages known, proficiency in the target and source languages, frequency of use, first language/second language status and psychotypology) that have also been proposed to affect lexical activation and transfer. Data and analysis: A picture-story description task was used to elicit written transfer. When a learner reported – introspectively or retrospectively – a word to have been transferred from a background language, this word was coded as an instance of intentional transfer. Reversely, non-target-like words traced back to a background language by the authors that were not commented on by the learner were coded as instances of unintentional transfer. Findings: A strongly significant ( p < 0.001), positive correlation was found between the amount of unintentional transfer and morphological similarity. A negative trend ( p < 0.1) was also found between amount of unintentional transfer and number of languages known by learners. Theoretical implications are discussed. Originality: This is one of few studies shedding light on (un)intentionality in transfer. It is also one of few studies to employ regression analysis to investigate the effect of several variables on transfer. Significance: The study provides empirical evidence to substantiate theoretical accounts of lexical activation. First, the results show that morphological similarity indeed seems to be the primary variable leading to high levels of cross-lexical activation and, second, the results show how highly activated words are more likely to be transferred unintentionally, further supporting these theoretical accounts.

Multilingual lexical transfer challenges monolingual educational norms: not quite!

Foreign language learners frequently use words from their previously acquired language(s) in the target language, especially if these languages are related (Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 59–68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Such insertions are referred to as ‘lexical transfer’, commonly divided into ‘transfer of form’ and ‘transfer of meaning’ (Bardel, Camilla. 2015. Lexical cross-linguistic influence in third language development. In Hagen Peukert (ed.), Transfer effects in multilingual language development, 111–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 59–68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Lexical transfer challenges the monolingual habitus prevailing in foreign language classes which requires students to rely exclusively on the target language and inhibit other influences. Thus, in such English classes, students should avoid the use of different languages and ideally only produce monolingual English output. In this context, the current study investigates the use of lexical transfer instances in short English texts written by bilingual (Russian/Turkish-German) and monolingual (German) secondary school students (initially attending year 7) from a longitudinal perspective. It assesses i) whether the students increasingly adhere to the imposed normative rules and ii) what influence background variables such as language background (mono- vs. bilingual), type of school (higher vs. lower academic track), gender (female vs. male), or age (four measurement points over a period of 2.5 years) exert on the use of lexical transfer instances. Apart from gender, all factors impact lexical transfer in a statistically significant way, evoking different norm-based explanations.

Examining transfer in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction in L2 English

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains ‘atoms’ or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic universal, atomicity holds across languages. However, the count/mass status of nouns may differ cross-linguistically. Our results, which show difficulty on atomic mass nouns in both learner groups, support an argument that atomicity is used as a semantic universal in the L2. Our results also suggest that both count/mass status in the L1 and word frequency in the L2 impact performance, suggesting roles for both L1 lexical transfer and lexical frequency. In addition, learners had better performance on abstract as opposed to concrete atomic mass nouns, providing evidence consistent with a theory of the accessibility of atoms.

Lexico – Semantic Transfer in the Interlanguage of Serbophone Students Learning Italian as L2 and Spanish as L3

Lexical transfer, ie the influence of the student's knowledge of a word of one language on the knowledge or use of words in the target language is an important cognitive process in learning a new language students often use as a compensation strategy. This paper deals with errors in the interlanguage of L1 Serbian students learning two typologically similar languages: Italian and Spanish, which arose as a consequence of lexico - semantic transfer. The most frequent errors caused by lexico - semantic transfer were identified and classified by the method of error analysis. An extremely large number of cases of lexico-semantic transfer were found in the corpus. All errors are classified into five categories: loan translations, semantic extension, cognates or false friends, hybrids and complete language shifts. In all cases, the negative lexical transfer occurred with words that are similar in Italian and Spanish. The errors in the written production in Spanish did not originate from the typologically distant, although the most dominant language of the students - Serbian as L1, but from the typologically similar Italian as L2. This proves the hypothesis that in typologically similar languages, lexical transfer is the most common and also that the factors of language distance and psychotypology are the key linguistic factors that will cause the transfer. Moreover, this kind of transfer was mainly used as a compensation strategy that students relied on to fill lexical gaps in situations where they did not have sufficient knowledge of the target language. Among the lexical errors, the largest number concerns cognates or false friends and hybrids. On the other hand, examples of loan translations or calques and semantic extensions were not frequent, so we conclude that the transfer of form (lexical transfer) is more frequent than the transfer of meaning (semantic transfer).

Are Translators Really Subservient? Empirical Evidence from Lexical Transfer and Language Prestige in Curaçao

This paper examines whether translator subservience is generalisable among translators. Taking professional Curaçaoan Papiamentu translators as a case study built on a much larger work, the research looks at issues of subservience from the perspective of agency in the English-to-Papiamentu lexical transfer process and at the influence of language prestige. The results show instances in which the translators reported more lexical transfers than did the non-translators. The results also reveal an overlooked translator agency in the process rather than translator subservience, in view of the fact that in this process they are on the “frontline”, pre-empting whatever decisions the official language planners make.

Is that Different from the?

English is a language with overt morphological representations of articles. On the other hand, Malay and Mandarin Chinese have none. In Malaysia, pupils are exposed to English articles as early as four years old. Despite early exposure, articles, or the definite article the specifically, appear to be a marked grammatical property for Chinese-speaking and Malay-speaking learners, two languages without articles. Based on the Fluctuation Hypothesis and Article Choice Parameter, this study seeks to investigate and compare the role of first language (L1) transfer on the article acquisition of the 77 L1 Chinese and 116 L1 Malay ESL learners, who were teacher trainees recruited from three teachers’ training institutes in Malaysia. The respondents were tested utilising a production task and a comprehension task. The statistical analyses of the participants’ performance revealed that only the advanced and intermediate groups of both L1 Chinese and L1 Malay ESL learners registered clear distinctions between the usage in the ‘Unique and salient’ and ‘Unique and non-salient’ categories and that usage in the ‘Non-unique’ category. The high accuracy rates suggest that L1 lexical transfer contributed to the positive performance by the ESL learners. The advanced and intermediate L1 Chinese and L1 Malay learners continuously interpreted the singular definite descriptions as referring to uniquely immediate salient entities similar to the demonstrative descriptions, making interpretations of the and that seemed similar.