New Trends in Crosslinguistic Influence and Multilingualism Research

Introduction

GESSICA DE ANGELIS and JEAN-MARC DEWAELE

The main purpose of this book is to introduce readers to ongoing work on crosslinguistic influence (CLI) and multilingualism and to highlight the most recent trends in research in this area.

The study of CLI and multilingualism saw a rapid increase in interest over the past 20 years as more and more researchers started considering the combination of different languages as potential sources of CLI on target language production and development. For a long time, the study of CLI was conceived as the study of transfer phenomena from the first language (L1), with little attention being paid to nonnative languages and their possible influence on the CLI process. This gradually changed in the late 1980s and the 1990s, when researchers started to identify evidence of nonnative languages interacting with the L1 and other nonnative languages, sometimes at the same time. Theoretical thinking quickly moved away from the idea that transfer concerned the exchange of information between two languages. As research output increased, it became clear that other languages played a role in the CLI process and that bilingual and multilingual minds could not be assumed to function in exactly the same way. The presence of other languages made a difference, and many studies have focused on finding that difference.

The awareness that multilingualism research has unique characteristics and needs in terms of questions and aims is discussed in several publications (Cenoz & Jessner, 2000; Cenoz et al., 2001, 2003; Hoffman, 2000, 2001a, 2001b; Pavlenko, 2008). Scholars started to ask specific questions about multilingualism rather than bilingualism since some phenomena could not exist without a minimum of three languages in the mind (Bouvy, 2000; Cenoz, 2001; De Angelis, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2007; De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Edwards & Dewaele, 2007; Falk & Bardel, 2010; Gibson & Hufeisen, 2003; Gibson et al., 2001; Hammarberg, 2001, 2009; Odlin & Jarvis, 2004; Ringbom, 2007). In addition to evidence of CLI from nonnative languages, an overall positive effect of bi/multilingualism on third or additional language learning was found, particularly in additive learning contexts (Brohy, 2001; Cenoz, 2003; Cenoz & Hoffmann, 2003; Jessner, 2008; Keshavarz & Astaneh, 2004; Sagasta Errasti, 2003; Sanz, 2000).

So far, evidence of CLI in multilinguals has been identified in most fields, including phonology (Gut, 2010; Kim, 2009), morphology (Clyne & Cassia, 1999; Lowie, 2000), syntax (Flynn et al., 2004; Klein, 1995; Leung, 2009; Rothman & Cabrelli Amaro, 2010) and pragmatics (Safont Jordà, 2005a, 2005b; Serratrice et al., 2004).

Perhaps one of the most investigated areas to date has been that of language distance and typology since it became clear to researchers that language distance alone was not sufficient to explain some CLI phenomena observed in multilingual production. Several scholars examined the topic with different language combinations (Clyne, 1997; Clyne & Cassia, 1999; Dewaele, 1998; Odlin & Jarvis, 2004; Selinker & Baumgartner-Cohen, 1995), including non-Western languages (Foroodi-Nejad & Paradis, 2009; Hacohen & Schaeffer, 2007; Kim, 2009). Specific instances of CLI or the overall effect of prior language knowledge on a target language were attributed to the presence or absence of literacy in the nonnative languages, L2 status and/or a heightened awareness of languages (Charkova, 2004; De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Galambos & Goldin-Meadow, 1990; Jessner, 1999, 2006; Kemp, 2001; Lasagabaster, 2001; Swain et al., 1990; Thomas, 1992; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). The study of CLI has changed radically since it is no longer conceived as a one-language-to-another kind of phenomenon but as a process that concerns all language knowledge in the mind, including the influence of the nonnative languages on the L1 (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008; Pavlenko & Jarvis, 2002). Findings suggest that language interactions affect the learning process as well as the cognitive development of individuals.

There are ongoing debates in the field of CLI on aspects of the multilingual language production process and evidence from this line of research has been increasingly used to explain how and when native and nonnative knowledge is used in language production. Grosjean (1998, 2001) has created an influential psycholinguistic framework to explain the interaction between languages. His language-mode hypothesis is based on the fact that the bilingual's languages are active to varying degrees when an interaction takes place. There is usually a base, fully active, language, and there are other language(s) that can be active to varying degrees. Grosjean defines language mode as ‘the state of activation of the bilingual's languages and language processing mechanisms at a certain point in time’ (2001: 3).

The bilingual can be in a complete monolingual mode at one end of the continuum when ‘they are interacting only with (or listening to) monolinguals of one – or the other – of the languages they know. One language is active and the other is deactivated’ (Grosjean, 1998:136). The same person can be in a bilingual language mode at the other end of the continuum, when they are communicating with (or listening to) bilinguals who share their two (or more) languages and where language mixing may take place (i.e. code-switching and borrowing). In this case, both languages are active but the one that is used as the main language of processing (the base of the matrix language) is more active than the other. These are end points, and bilinguals also find themselves at intermediary points depending on the factors mentioned above. (Grosjean, 1998: 136)

The bilingual has to decide at any given point in time, usually quite unconsciously, which language to use and how much of the other language is needed (Grosjean, 2001: 2). Sometimes, however, some influence of the deactivated language is detected in the base language, which is the most highly activated language. Grosjean (2008: 77) points out that ‘future research will have to investigate the underlying mechanism (...) that make the stronger language seep through despite the fact that it has been deactivated (...)’.

Other researchers have focused on how the multilingual lexicon is organized (Abunuwara, 1992; Cenoz et al., 2003; Pavlenko, 2009) and how multilingual memory functions (De Groot & Hoeks, 1995), leading to stimulating discussions on the speech production process (De Bot, 1992; Dewaele, 1998; Grosjean, 2001, 2008; Hammarberg, 2009). In addition to these, numerous studies focused on the lexicon, word selection problems and tip-of-the-tongue states, where questions on the use of prior knowledge in comprehension and production processes remained central (Cenoz et al., 2003; Dewaele, 2001; Dijkstra & van Hell, 2003; Ecke, 2001; Ecke & Hall, 2000; Festman, 2009; Jessner, 2003; Ringbom, 2007; Schonpflug, 2000, 2003; Singleton, 2003; Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002; Wei, 2003).

Recent research has also looked into the possible causes of CLI among bilinguals. Festman (to appear) has demonstrated that some bilinguals are more susceptible to CLI than others despite similar levels of language proficiency and language mode. She argues that the increased CLI is linked to language control and related to executive functions, in particular to inhibition.

There is a general awareness that CLI is a broader and more complex process than the one-to-one type of phenomenon researchers had initially focused on. Most academic discussions now take into account the presence of nonnative languages and attempt to account for such knowledge. The collection of contributions in the present volume will give the reader a general idea of where CLI research is heading now in the areas of syntax, lexis and phonology. The authors, both veteran researchers and newcomers to the field, situate their research in current debates in terms of theory and empirical data. In the present volume, readers will find several chapters discussing issues of lexis, metalinguistic awareness and L2 status. The data have been collected from participants with a wide combination of languages: besides English, German, French and Spanish, there is Finnish, Swedish, Polish, Chinese and Catalan.

Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic argues for the existence of a relationship between the theory of affordances and crosslinguistic similarities in the area of lexis, with special emphasis on the role of cognate vocabulary in the learning process. Reference to Gibson's theory of affordances has appeared recently in trilingualism research (see Dewaele, 2010; Singleton & Aronin, 2007). Her research suggests that multilinguals are advantaged over bilinguals in noticing the role of lexical similarities and have a wider range of affordances available to them during learning that bilinguals do not have at their disposal.

Ringbom's contribution also focuses on the learning process, this time in relation to learners’ use of redundancies. He revisits the notion of redundancy that George (1972) proposed several years ago and suggests it should be brought into current debates on CLI and multilingualism. He argues that learners tend to conserve effort as a strategy to simplify the learning task. Whenever a target language category does not exist in the L1 or a native language, the learner perceives it as redundant. As a result, this category is omitted at the early stages of learning.

Bono's chapter focuses on multilingual competence (mainly French, Spanish, English and German, with a few participants having Vietnamese, Hebrew, Wolof and Arabic as L1s) and the role of crosslinguistic interactions and metalinguistic awareness in the production of lexis. She argues in favor of the L2 status overriding typological proximity in production. She also claims that the study of language switches should include the study of metalinguistic sequences and argues that learners carry out conscious crosslinguistic comparisons based on L2 data.

Interesting evidence of reverse transfer from German L3 to English L2 can be found in Cheung, Matthews and Tsang's chapter who worked with Chinese (Cantonese) L1 students. Drawing on the distinction between the use of the past tense with or without current relevance in Chinese, English and German, they hypothesize that learners with knowledge of German are more likely to use the English present perfect tense when referring to past events without current relevance. Their results confirm the hypothesis: Those who have studied German as a third language are more likely to produce and accept the use of the present perfect without current relevance in English.

Gibson and Hufeisen also present a study involving German and English. They focus on EFL learners' perception of spatial prepositions and how these are used in production. The authors asked learners to complete a grammaticality judgment task of prepositional errors involving of, in, at and on and found differences based on learning experience.

Experienced language learners seem more accurate in their judgments, which is explained in terms of these learners having enhanced multilingual abilities.

Laura Sanchez presents a study on the L2 status and its role in CLI. Since the L2 status is often difficult to tease apart from typological distance, the author designed a study where the two are kept separate. She tested two hypotheses with Spanish and Catalan L1 speakers learning German and English. Her findings suggest that in third-language acquisition, nonnative languages are more likely to be activated than the mother tongue regardless of typology.

The last chapter by Eva-Maria Wunder contributes to the current debate on CLI and phonology, an area where only a few studies are currently available. The author examines the aspiration patterns of voiceless stops with L3 learners of Spanish with German L1 and English L2. She recorded learners performing a read-on-your-own task and analyzed the degree of aspiration of the voiceless stops in stressed onset position (VOT measurements). Her results identify the existence of nonnative language influence as well as forms of combined CLI with an underlying L1 effect.

Acknowledgments

A word of thanks, finally, to the many friends and colleagues who acted as reviewers for the contributions in the present volume: Patricia Bayona, Raphael Berthele, Jasone Cenoz, Bjorn Hammarberg, Britta Hufeisen, Scott Jarvis, Ulrike Jessner, Nicole Marx, Hakan Ringbom, Laura Sanchez, David Singleton and John Witney.

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