Crosslinguistic influence (CLI) refers to the different ways in which one language can affect another within an individual speaker. It typically involves two languages that can affect one another in a bilingual speaker. An example of CLI is the influence of Korean on a Korean native speaker who is learning Japanese or French. Less typically, it could also refer to an interaction between different dialects in the mind of a monolingual speaker. CLI can be observed across subsystems of languages including pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics, and orthography.Odlin, Terence (2003). "Cross-Linguistic Influence". The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell. p. 437. Discussed further in this article are particular subcategories of CLI—transfer, attrition, the complementarity principle, and additional theories.
History The question of how languages influence one another within a bilingual individual can be addressed both with respect to mature bilinguals and with respect to bilingual language acquisition. With respect to bilingual language acquisition in children, there are several hypotheses that examine the internal representation of bilinguals' languages. Volterra and Taeschner proposed the Single System Hypothesis, which states that children start out with one single system that develops into two systems. This hypothesis proposed that bilingual children go through three stages of acquisition. In Stage I there is a single lexicon that contains words from both languages, and there is a single syntactic system. Children in this stage will never have a translation equivalent for a word in the other language. Translation equivalents are two corresponding words in two separate languages with the same meaning. Also, it is common for the child to use two different languages in a single utterance. The syntactic rules are hard to define because of the lack of two-word and three-word utterances by the bilingual child. In Stage II there are two lexicons, but there is one syntactic system. In addition, there is evidence for language separation because at this stage children become less likely to mix their languages. Across both languages, the same syntactic rules are applied. For example, Japanese has subject–object–verb word order (SOV), and English has subject–verb–object word order (SVO). An English-Japanese bilingual might apply only one of these word orders to all utterances, regardless of what language the utterance is in. In Stage III there are two lexicons and two syntactic systems, with adult-like separation of the languages. When a child reaches this stage, they are considered fully bilingual. In response to the Single System Hypothesis, a different hypothesis developed regarding the idea of two separate language systems from the very beginning. It was based on evidence of monolinguals and bilinguals reaching the same milestones at approximately the same stage of development.Cantone, K. (1999). Das Genus im Italienischen und Deutschen: Empirische Untersuchung zum bilingualen Erstspracherwerb. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hamburg.Müller, Natascha (1990). "Developing two gender assignment systems simultaneously". J. Meisel. Two first languages. Early grammatical development in bilingual children: 194-243. For example, bilingual and monolingual children go through identical patterns of grammar development. This hypothesis, called the Separate Development Hypothesis, held the notion that the bilinguals acquiring two languages would internalize and acquire the two languages separately. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from lack of transfer and lack of acceleration.Paradis, Johanne; Genesee, Fred (1996). "Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent?". Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 18: 1-25. Transfer is a grammatical property of one language used in another language. Acceleration is the acquisition of a feature in language A facilitating the acquisition of a feature in language B.Mishina-Mori, Satomi (2005). "Autonomous and interdependent development of two language systems in Japanese/English simultaneous bilinguals: Evidence from question formation". First Language. 25: 292-293 In a study of Dutch-English bilingual children, there were no instances of transfer across elements of morphology and syntactic development, indicating that the two languages developed separately from each other.De Houwer, Annick (1990). The acquisition of two languages from birth: A case study. Cambridge: CUP In addition, in a study of French-English bilingual children, there were no instances of acceleration because finiteness appeared much earlier in French than it did in English, suggesting that there was no facilitation of the acquisition of finiteness in English by acquisition in French. Under this hypothesis, bilingual acquisition would be equivalent to monolingual children acquiring the particular languages.
In response to both the previous hypotheses mentioned, the Interdependent Development Hypothesis emerged with the idea that there is some sort of interaction between the two language systems in acquisition. It proposed that there is no single language system, but the language systems are not completely separate either. This hypothesis is also known as the Crosslinguistic Hypothesis, developed by Hulk and Müller. The Crosslinguistic Hypothesis states that influence will occur in bilingual acquisition in areas of particular difficulty, even for monolingual native language acquisition. It re-examined the extent of the differentiation of the language systems due to the interaction in difficult areas of bilingual acquisition.Hulk, Aafke; Müller, Natascha (2000). "Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics". Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 3: 227-244.Müller, Natascha; Hulk, Aafke (2001). "Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages". Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 4: 1-53. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from delay, acceleration, and transfer in particular areas of bilingual language acquisition. Delay is the acquisition of a property of language A later than normally expected because of the acquisition of language B. CLI is seen when the child has a dominant language, such as Cantonese influencing English when Cantonese is the dominant language,Yip, Virginia; Matthews, Stephen (2006). "Assessing Language Dominance in Bilingual Acquisition: A Case for Mean Length Utterance Differentials". Language Assessment Quarterly. 3: 101-102. and it will only occur in certain domains. Below are the two proposals represented in the Crosslinguistic Hypothesis where CLI may occur. It may occur where there is an interface. An interface, for example, could be between syntax and pragmatics of dislocations. Dislocations are a grammatical option in French under certain pragmatic conditions (e.g. ), which have been studied in French-English bilinguals positioning of the word that. French-English bilinguals make use of this device when they move that to a dislocated position of the periphery of the sentence in English. The placement of that was dislocated in English sentences because of the influence from French on English syntax. For example, French-English bilingual children may produce Is a big one this? instead of meaning to say Is this a big one? The children produced significantly more of these dislocations in English than monolingual English children.Notley, Anna (2005). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005. Benjamins. pp. 231-234. It may occur where is an overlap between two languages with language A allowing only one option and language B allowing two options. One option of language B overlaps with an option in language A. For example, French allows adjectives before and after a noun, but English only allows adjectives before the noun. There is an overlap in the correct placement of adjectives between these two languages, and there will be transfer, especially with postnominal adjectives in French. For example, French-English bilinguals might produce instead of .Nicoladis, Elena (2006). "Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective-noun strings by preschool bilingual children". Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 9: 17-26. Since the development of the Crosslinguistic Hypothesis, much research has contributed to the understanding of CLI in areas of structural overlap, directionality, dominance, interfaces, the role of input, and the role of processing and production.
Transfer
In linguistics, language transfer is defined by behaviorist psychologists as the subconscious use of behaviors from one language in another. In the applied linguistics field, it is also known as exhibiting knowledge of a native or dominant language (L1) in one that is being learned (L2). Transfer occurs in various language-related settings, such as acquiring a new language and when two languages or two dialects come into contact. Transfer may depend on how similar the two languages are and the intensity of the conversational setting. Transfer is more likely to happen if the two languages are in the same language family. It also occurs more at the beginning stages of L2 acquisition, when the grammar and lexicon are less developed. As the speaker's L2 proficiency increases, they will experience less transfer.
Jacquelyn Schachter (1992) argues that transfer is not a process at all, but that it is improperly named. She described transfer as "an unnecessary carryover from the heyday of behaviorism." In her view, transfer is more of a constraint on the L2 learners' judgments about the constructions of the acquired L2 language. Schachter stated, "It is both a facilitating and a limiting condition on the hypothesis testing process, but it is not in and of itself a process."
Language transfer can be positive or negative. Transfer between similar languages often yields correct production in the new language because the systems of both languages are similar. This correct production would be considered positive transfer. An example involves a Spanish speaker (L1) who is acquiring Catalan (L2). Because the languages are so similar, the speaker could rely on their knowledge of Spanish when learning certain Catalan grammatical features and pronunciation. However, the two languages are distinct enough that the speaker's knowledge of Spanish could potentially interfere with learning Catalan properly.
Negative transfer (interference) occurs when there are little to no similarities between the L1 and L2. It is when errors and avoidance are more likely to occur in the L2. The types of errors that result from this type of transfer are underproduction, overproduction, miscomprehension, and production errors, such as substitution, calques, under/overdifferentiation and hypercorrection.
Underproduction (avoidance)