Pragmatic transfer

Throughout the short life of interlanguage pragmatics as a subdiscipline of second language research, it has been a virtually uncontested assumption that non-native speakers' comprehension and production of linguistic action is considerably influenced by their L1 pragmatic knowledge. The literature strongly supports this hypothesis. However, whereas there has been a lively controversy about the role of transfer in the traditional core areas of second language research (syntax, morphology, semantics), there has been little theoretical and methodological debate about transfer in interlanguage pragmatics. As a contribution to such a debate, this article seeks to clarify the concept of pragmatic transfer, proposing as a basic distinction Leech/Thomas' dichotomy of sociopragmatics versus pragmalinguistics and presenting evidence for transfer at both levels. Evidence for purported pragmatic universals in speech act realization and for positive and negative pragmatic transfer is discussed. Further issues to be addressed include the conditions for pragmatic transfer (transferability), the interaction of transfer with non-structural factors (proficiency, length of residence, context of acquisition), and the effect of transfer on communicative outcomes. The article concludes by briefly considering some problems of research method in studies of pragmatic transfer.

A second language classic reconsidered - the case of Schachter's avoidance

This article reconsiders one of the classic articles in the second language literature, Schachter's 'An error in error analysis', in the light of subsequent work on avoidance. Such work is essentially of two kinds, either building on and refining the concept of avoidance, or offering alternative explanations for Schachter's findings. While avoidance as a genuine phenomenon is not proved or disproved by Schachter's data, hypotheses based on her figures suffer from the lack of methodological detail in her original study. In order to be able to establish whether avoidance is a feasible explanation for relative underproduction by a group of learners, it is necessary to look at the first language form, distribution and function of the entity supposedly being avoided in the L2 as well as the means being used to establish whether and to what extent the entity is already part of the L2 knowledge of members of that group.

Transferability and linguistic substrates

This article considers the issue of transferability, a well-known concept in the SLA literature but not one so frequently investigated in language contact research. Three principles can help to identify effects of transferability in language contact: similar distributional range in L1 and L2; multiple geographic occurrences; and high likelihood in certain geographic areas. The article shows the applicability of the principles to language contact in the British Isles (especially Ireland) with a detailed discussion of absolute constructions, structures which show interesting relations between syntax and discourse, and which also seem susceptible to crosslinguistic influence. Although counterarguments are possible to make, they do not account for the known facts. Moreover, the evidence for the transferability of absolutes in Hiberno-English strengthens the case for crosslinguistic influence in a totally different language contact situation, the Indian subcontinent. The most general conclusion to be drawn from the discussion is that SLA research and language contact studies can be mutually enriching. The former can provide principles to establish the likelihood of transfer of particular structures, while the latter can expand the range of data that will contribute to a sound theory of transferability.

A cognitive view of the role of L1 in the L2 acquisition process

In the first part of this article, I reflect on the role that the learner's hypothesis-forming activity may assign to the L1 during the course of the acquisition process. These remarks are illustrated in the second part of the article by observations from a longitudinal case study of the acquisition of movement verbs.

On cognates

In this article I examine cognates, lexical items from different languages which are identified by bilinguals as somehow being 'the same thing'. Cognates have at least 4 essential properties: 1) they are always structural units; 2) they are words; 3) words paired may be but need not be semantically identical; 4) there is always some kind of formal resemblance between cognates. I argue that these properties can be explained in terms of a particular model of lexical activation and word recognition, namely the Cohort Model. I also take up the question of defining cognates for psycho linguistic purposes, and argue against using traditional extensional definitions based on etymology and genetic relatedness. I argue for defining cognates in terms of their structural representations and the processes which activate and select them.

On triggering data in L2 acquisition: a reply to Schwartz and Gubala-Ryzak

In this reply, I address certain issues raised by Schwartz and Gubala-Ryzak (1992), who argue that White (1991a) is mistaken in claiming that negative evidence can lead to parameter resetting in L2 acquisition. I suggest that, although Schwartz and Gubala-Ryzak's reanalysis of White's findings solves a number of empirical and conceptual problems, their analysis raises new problems in its turn. Empirical evidence from French learners of English is presented which suggests that positive L2 data do not guarantee the loss of L1 parameter settings. The implications of this finding are discussed.

Longitudinal L2-attrition versus L2-acquisition, in three Turkish children- empirical findings

The attrition of German in two Turkish girls (seven and nine years old), previously resident in Germany, was observed in Turkey. The attrition was compared to the L2-acquisition of German of a Turkish boy aged 11. Attrition did not set in immediately. In the second stage, after six months, slower speech, hesitation and free morpheme code-switching to Turkish due to lexical attrition, particularly in verbs, indicated its onset. Basic grammatic al categories were involved in the third stage. Bound morpheme code- switching became the predominant pattern. Basic syntactic patterns of German were retained longest. Attrition was largely a mirror-image of acquisition. Simplification, overgeneralization and over-regularization were strikingly similar in both sets of data. Code-switching turned out to be developmentally systematic, and even 'grammaticalized' in the final stages.