Call for papers

The term crosslinguistic influence, introduced by Michael Sharwood-Smith (1983), was suggested as an alternative to transfer, given the behaviorist connotations of the latter. Subsequently, generativist and cognitivist approaches rejected contrastive analysis and the idea of the influence of the L1 on an L2, and research focussed henceforth more on difficulties intrinsic to the L2, as well as L2 learners’ internal cognitive processes.

The development of usage based theories has since drawn attention to the influence that a learner’s previous knowledge of several spoken languages, even if at varying levels of proficiency, could have in language processes. As a consequence, the idea of L1 influence on an L2 has been rehabilitated. Furthermore our increasingly multilingual world has inspired researchers to study multiple crosslinguistic influences (L1, L2, L3, …)(e.g. De Angelis, Jessner & Kresic, 2015; Westergard et al., 2017; Schmid & Köpke, 2017). These studies deal with crosslinguistic influence at several levels (linguistic, conceptual, cognitive, etc), and in multiple directions (L2-L3, L3-L2, L2-L1, …). They also consider factors that may be responsible for the emergence of this influence ((psycho)typology, the speaker’s proficiency in the source and target languages, the status of L2 or the L2 factor, the level of immediacy of the source language, …) and the interaction among the different factors (see for example Cook & Bassetti, 2011; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2010 ; Pavlenko, 2011). The complexity of these factors continues to inspire SLA researchers. Therefore we invite interested researchers to come to Toulouse in order to collectively discuss and take stock of where research on crosslinguisitcs is today.

We invite oral and poster presentations addressing all aspects of crosslinguistic influence in SLA and bilingualism. These include, but are by no means limited to, linguistic, conceptual, cognitive, emotional, gestural, etc. aspects in oral and/or written perception, comprehension, and/or production.

REFERENCES

  • Cook, V., & Bassetti, B. (Eds.). (2011). Language and bilingual cognition. New York: Psychology Press.
  • De Angelis, Jessner & Kresic (2015). Crosslinguistic influence and crosslinguistic interaction in multilingual language     learning. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2010). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition(paperback ed). New York, NY: Routledge.
  • Pavlenko, A. (Ed.). (2011). Thinking and speaking in two languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
  • Schmid M. S. & Köpke, B. (2017). The relevance of first language attrition to theories of bilingual development.Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 7(6), 637-667.
  • Sharwood-Smith, M. (1983). Cross-linguistic Aspects of Second Language Acquisition. Applied Linguistics,4(3), 192–199.
  • Westergard, M., Mitrofanova, N., Mykhaylyk, R. & Rodina, Y. (2017). Crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of a third language. The Linguistic Proximity Model. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(6), 666-682.