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
a.
b.
c.
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-onSLA 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.