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Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. Language transfer may occur across both languages in the acquisition of a simultaneous bilingual, from a mature speaker's
first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...
(L1) to a
second language A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language ( first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a ...
(L2) they are acquiring, or from an L2 back to the L1. Language transfer (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and crosslinguistic influence) is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language. Language transfer is also a common topic in bilingual child language acquisition as it occurs frequently in bilingual children especially when one language is dominant.


Types of language transfer

When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called ''positive transfer'': here, the "correct" meaning is in line with most native speakers' notions of acceptability. An example is the use of cognates. However, language interference is most often discussed as a source of
errors An error (from the Latin ''error'', meaning "wandering") is an action which is inaccurate or incorrect. In some usages, an error is synonymous with a mistake. The etymology derives from the Latin term 'errare', meaning 'to stray'. In statistics ...
known as ''negative transfer'', which can occur when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not the same in both languages.


Negative transfer

Within the theory of
contrastive analysis Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies. Second language acquisition Contrast ...
, the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities, the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected. For example, in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
, a preposition is used before a day of the week: "I'm going to the beach ''on'' Friday." In Spanish, instead of a preposition the definite article is used: "Voy a la playa el viernes." Novice Spanish students who are native English-speakers may produce a transfer error and use a preposition when it is not necessary because of their reliance on English. According to Whitley, it is natural for students to make such errors based on how the English words are used. Another typical example of negative transfer concerns
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
students trying to learn English, despite being part of the same
Germanic language family The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engl ...
. Since the German noun "Information" can also be used in the plural – "Informationen" – German students will almost invariably use "informations" in English, too, which would break the rules of uncountable nouns. From a more general standpoint, Brown mentions "all new learning involves transfer based on previous learning".Bransford , J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). '' How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school''. (Expanded ed.
PDF
. Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, .
That could also explain why initial learning of L1 will impact L2 acquisition.


Positive transfer

The results of positive transfer go largely unnoticed and so are less often discussed. Nonetheless, such results can have an observable effect. Generally speaking, the more similar the two languages are and the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur. For example, an Anglophone learner of
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
may correctly guess an item of German vocabulary from its English counterpart, but
word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
,
phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
, connotations, collocation, and other language features are more likely to differ. That is why such an approach has the disadvantage of making the learner more subject to the influence of "
false friend In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
s", words that seem similar between languages but differ significantly in meaning. This influence is especially common among learners who misjudge the relation between languages or mainly rely on visual learning. In addition to positive transfer potentially resulting in correct language production and negative transfer resulting in errors, there is some evidence that any transfer from the first language can result in a kind of technical, or analytical, advantage over native (monolingual) speakers of a language. For example, L2 speakers of English whose first language is Korean have been found to be more accurate with perception of unreleased stops in English than native English speakers who are functionally monolingual because of the different status of unreleased stops in Korean from English. That "native-language transfer benefit" appears to depend on an alignment of properties in the first and the second languages that favors the linguistic biases of the first language, rather than simply the perceived similarities between two languages.


Conscious and unconscious transfer

Language transfer may be
conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
or unconscious. Consciously, learners or unskilled translators may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language because they have not learned or have forgotten its proper usage. Unconsciously, they may not realize that the structures and internal rules of the languages in question are different. Such users could also be aware of both the structures and internal rules, yet be insufficiently skilled to put them into practice, and consequently often fall back on their first language. The unconscious aspect to language transfer can be demonstrated in the case of the so-called "transfer-to-nowhere" principle put forward by Eric Kellerman, which addressed language based on its conceptual organization instead of its syntactic features. Here, language determines how the speaker conceptualizes experience, with the principle describing the process as an unconscious assumption that is subject to between-language variation. Kellerman explained that it is difficult for learners to acquire the construal patterns of a new language because "learners may not look for the perspectives peculiar to the arget/L2language; instead they may seek the linguistic tools which will permit them to maintain their L1 perspective." The conscious transfer of language, on the other hand, can be illustrated in the principle developed by Roger Andersen called "transfer-to-somewhere," which holds that "a language structure will be susceptible to transfer only if it is compatible with natural acquisitional principles or is perceived to have similar counterpart (a somewhere to transfer to) in the recipient language." This is interpreted as a heuristic designed to make sense of the target language input by assuming a form of awareness on the part of the learner to map L1 onto the L2. An analogy that can describe the differences between the Kellerman's and Anderson's principles is that the former is concerned with the conceptualization that fuels the drive towards discovering the means of linguistic expression whereas Andersen's focused on the acquisition of those means.


Acceleration and deceleration

The theories of acceleration and deceleration are bilingual child language acquisition theories based on the known norms of monolingual acquisition. These theories come from comparisons of bilingual children's acquisition to that of their monolingual peers of similar backgrounds. Acceleration is a process similar to that of bootstrapping, where a child acquiring language uses knowledge and skills from one language to aid in, and speed up their acquisition of the other language. Deceleration is a process in which a child experiences negative effects (more mistakes and slower language learning) on their language acquisition due to interference from their other language.


Language Transfer & Literacy Development

Language transfer is often referred to as ''cross-language transfer''. Cross-language transfer is the ability to use skills acquired in one language and use those skills to facilitate learning of a new language. While cross-language transfer has been researched and analyzed by many scholars over the years, the focus on cross-language transfer in literacy research expanded in the 1990’s. It is a topic that has been gaining lots of interest from scholars due to the increasing amount of bilingual and multi-lingual people, especially students, around the world. In the USA alone, English Language Learners (ELL) account for over 10% of the students enrolled in public schools. The Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis claims that while language transfer can occur from L1 (
First language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...
) to L2 (
Second language A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language ( first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a ...
), there first has to  be a level of proficiency in L1 literacy skills in order for the skills to transfer over into L2. In other words, there must be some prior knowledge of literacy skills in L1 to assist with acquiring literacy skills in  L2. The acquisition of L2 literacy skills can be facilitated and gained with greater ease by having more time, access, and experience  with L1 literary skills. Over time, through formal exposure and practice with literacy skills, L2 learners have been able to catch up with their monolingual peers. However, literacy skills acquired in L2 can also be used to assist with literacy skills in L1 because cross-language transfer is bidirectional. Though most studies have indicated that literacy cross-language transfer can occur regardless of the L1 and L2 languages, Chung et al. (2012) state that cross-language transfer is less likely to occur when the languages do not share similar orthography systems. For example, using literacy skills acquired in English may be accessed and used with more ease in Spanish because English and Spanish follow similar orthography (they use letters). Whereas, using literacy skills acquired in English to facilitate ease of learning Korean would be more difficult because these languages do not follow a similar orthography system (English uses letters, and Korean uses symbols). Cross-language transfer can also occur with deaf bilinguals who use sign language and read written words. While people may think that American Sign Language (ASL) and English are both the same language, they are not. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders  ''“ASL is a language completely separate and distinct from English. It contains all the fundamental features of language, with its own rules for pronunciation, word formation, and word order"''. Because sign languages are considered to be their own language, most deaf people are considered to be bilingual because they speak in one language (sign language) and they read in other (examples: English, Spanish, Arabic, etc.). It should also be noted that not all sign languages are the same. Some examples of different sign languages are American sign Language (ASL), Mexican Sign Language (LSM), British Sign Language (BSL), Spanish Sign Language (LSE), and many
more More or Mores may refer to: Computing * MORE (application), outline software for Mac OS * more (command), a shell command * MORE protocol, a routing protocol * Missouri Research and Education Network Music Albums * ''More!'' (album), by Booka ...
.  


In comprehension

Transfer can also occur in polyglot individuals when comprehending verbal utterances or written language. For instance,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
and
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
both have relative clauses with a
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
-noun-
verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
(=NNV) order but which are interpreted differently in both languages: German example: ''Das Mädchen, das die Frau küsst, ist blond'' If
translated Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
word for word with word order maintained, this German relative clause is equivalent to English example: ''The girl that ''(or ''whom'')'' the woman is kissing is blonde.'' The German and the English examples differ in that in German the subject role can be taken by ''das Mädchen'' (the girl) or ''die Frau'' (the woman) while in the English example only the second noun phrase (the woman) can be the subject. In short, because German singular feminine and neuter articles exhibit the same inflected form for the accusative as for the nominative case, the German example is syntactically ambiguous in that either ''the girl'' or ''the woman'' may be doing the kissing. In the English example, both word-order rules and the test of substituting a relative pronoun with different nominative and accusative case markings (''e.g.'', ''whom''/''who''*) reveal that only ''the woman'' can be doing the kissing. The ambiguity of the German NNV relative clause structure becomes obvious in cases where the assignment of subject and
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
role is disambiguated. This can be because of case marking if one of the nouns is grammatically male as in ''Der Mann, den die Frau küsst...'' (The man that the woman is kissing...) vs. ''Der Mann, der die Frau küsst'' (The man that is kissing the woman...) because in German the male definite article marks the
accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...
case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...
. The syntactic ambiguity of the German example also becomes obvious in the case of semantic disambiguation. For instance in ''Das Eis, das die Frau isst...'' (The ice cream that the woman is eating...) and ''Die Frau, die das Eis isst...'' (The woman that is eating the ice cream...) only ''die Frau'' (the woman) is a plausible subject. Because in English relative clauses with a noun-noun-verb structure (as in the example above) the first noun can only be the
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
, native speakers of English who speak German as a
second language A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language ( first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a ...
are likelier to interpret ambiguous German NNV relative clauses as object relative clauses (= object-subject-verb order) than German native speakers who prefer an interpretation in which the first noun phrase is the subject (subject-object-verb order). This is because they have transferred their parsing preference from their first language English to their second language German.


Broader effects

With sustained or intense contact between native and non-native speakers, the results of language transfer in the non-native speakers can extend to and affect the speech production of the native-speaking community. For example, in North America, speakers of English whose first language is Spanish or French may have a certain influence on native English speakers' use of language when the native speakers are in the minority. Locations where this phenomenon occurs frequently include Québec,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
, and predominantly Spanish-speaking regions in the US. For details on the latter, see the map of the Hispanophone world and the list of U.S. communities with Hispanic majority populations. The process of translation can also lead to the so-called hybrid text, which is the mixing of language either at the level of linguistic codes or at the level of cultural or historical references.


See also

*
Calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
* Code-switching *
Contrastive rhetoric Contrastive rhetoric is the study of how a person's first language and his or her culture influence writing in a second language or how a common language is used among different cultures. The term was first coined by the American applied linguist ...
*
Interlanguage An interlanguage is an idiolect that has been developed by a learner of a second language (L2) which preserves some features of their first language (L1), and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules. These two characteristic ...
* Language contact * Language learning misconceptions *
Loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...
* Macaronic language * Mixed language * Multi-competence * Native-language identification *
Phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots fro ...
* Second language acquisition * Sprachbund *
Translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...


Notes


References

* Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, and Experience & School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. * * * * * * * Wahlbrinck, Bernd. ''German-English Language Interference'', Tumbleweed 2017. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Language Transfer Second-language acquisition