This paper is dedicated to the investigation of receptive transfer with a special focus on the comprehension of spoken utterances in nonfamiliar Slavic languages. It investigates the possibility of applying the concept of passive multilingualism to the field of Slavic languages. It is often assumed that closely related languages provide ideal conditions for mutual intelligibility. By means of positive transfer from a previously known language of the group, one can achieve a certain degree of passive knowledge in related languages, even if these have never been learned consciously. In this paper, however, it will be shown that spontaneous intercomprehensibility of spoken utterances within the group of Slavic languages is rather restricted. After a short outline of the peculiarities of receptive and auditive transfer phenomena, as opposed to productive and written transfer, the paper provides empirical evidence for the failure of comprehension at different stages of the perception process. / Series: WU Online Papers in International Business Communication / Series One: Intercultural Communication and Language Learning

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Notre recherche doctorale, qui s’inscrit dans le champ de l’acquisition d’une troisième langue et du plurilinguisme, a pour objectif d’apporter une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement de la compétence plurilingue. Elle cherche plus particulièrement à déterminer si les langues d’un plurilingue jouent des rôles distincts dans l’acquisition d’une nouvelle langue au niveau des interactions translinguistiques lexicales et syntaxiques et si ces phénomènes sont associés. Elle examine également les activités métalinguistiques et translinguistiques permettant aux apprenants de gérer et d’appréhender la langue cible. Pour ce faire, nous avons réalisé onze études de cas de locuteurs de l’espagnol et de l’anglais avec des niveaux variés en français L3+. Ces participants ont été soumis à trois tâches de production orale. Afin prendre en compte la nature complexe des interactions lorsque les langues en contact sont typologiquement proches et lorsque différents domaines linguistiques sont examinés, nous avons adopté une approche mêlant travaux menés dans le champ de l’acquisition d’une L3 à ceux menés dans l’étude des contacts de langues. Par le biais d’une analyse quantitative et qualitative, notre travail a mis en évidence le fonctionnement de la compétence plurilingue de nos participants. Ils activent en effet toutes leurs langues à des degrés divers, au niveau de différents types d’ITL, propriétés syntaxiques et domaines linguistiques. Nos participants mobilisent, par ailleurs, leur conscience métalinguistique et translinguistique afin de mieux appréhender la LC et gérer leur production en recourant à des cognats, à des consultations translinguistiques et à des inférences. / This research is set within the fields of third language acquisition and multilingualism with a focus on developing our understanding of how multilingual competence functions. The research attempts to determine if the languages of a multilingual play distinctive roles in the acquisition of a new language specifically regarding the lexical and syntactic components in crosslinguistic interactions, and whether there is convergence between these phenomena. The research also examines the metalinguistic and crosslinguistic activities which allow learners to manage and comprehend the target language. The data for this research was collected from eleven case studies of speakers of Spanish and English with a variety of levels of proficiency in French. Participants were required to complete three speaking tasks. Approaches sourced from research from the fields of third language acquisition and language contact were utilised and developed to capture the complexity of the interactions, the typological relationship among the languages in contact, and the varying levels of the languages under examination. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis this research demonstrates how multilingual competence operates. The data indicates that participants activate all their languages to different degrees relating to different types of crosslinguistic interactions, syntactic properties and level of language. Participants also typically resort to their metalinguistic and crosslinguistic awareness to help them comprehend the target language and manage their output by the use of cognates, crosslinguistic consultations and inferences.

In vielen Staaten unterscheidet sich die Leistung von Schülern mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund. Schüler mit Migrationshintergrund sprechen eine Minderheitensprache sowie die Zielsprache des Wohnlandes, das führt zu einem gewissen Grad der Zweisprachigkeit. Die Zweisprachigkeit ist mit Entwicklungsmustern verbunden, die das Fremdsprachenlernen der bilingualen Schüler positiv beeinflussen können. Diese Dissertation untersucht die Beziehung zwischen Zweisprachigkeit und Fremdsprachenlernen. Die erste Studie untersuchte die Wirkung der Zweisprachigkeit von Schülern mit Migrationshintergrund auf das Erlernen von Englisch als Fremdsprache. Die Ergebnisse zeigen einen positiven Trend zwischen Zweisprachigkeit und Lernerfolg. Dieser Trend unterschied sich deutlich zwischen Gruppen verschiedener Heimatsprachen mit den Kenntnissen der Unterrichtssprache als stärksten Prädiktor. Die zweite Studie betrachtete die Wirkung von Zweisprachigkeit auf die Leistung in Englisch als Fremdsprache von der Grundschule bis zur weiterführenden Schule. Die Analysen zeigen, dass, ein wesentlicher Vorteil der Zweisprachigkeit in der Grundschule vorliegt, dieser aber in der Sekundarstufe I verschwindet. Dies führt zu unterschiedlichem Leistungszuwachs von zweisprachigen und einsprachigen Schülern. Die dritte Studie untersuchte die Wirkung der Zweisprachigkeit auf das Erlernen von Englisch als Fremdsprache unter Berücksichtigung der Auswirkungen von Methode und Abfolge des Erlernens der Zweitsprache sowie des Sprachgebrauchs. Die Ergebnisse zeigen Leistungsvorsprünge in der Drittsprache für Zweisprachige, die in ihrer Minderheitensprache unterrichtet werden, beide Sprachen simultan erwerben und häufiger zwischen beiden Sprachen wechseln. Diese Dissertation gibt weitere Hinweise darauf, dass unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen Zweisprachige mit Migrationshintergrund im Vergleich zu einsprachigen Schülern Vorteile im Fremdsprachenlernen haben, obwohl sich dieser Befund im Laufe der Zeit verändert. / There is a large achievement gap between students with immigrant background and their peers. Many students with immigrant backgrounds speak a minority language at home as well as the majority language of the larger society, resulting in some level of bilingualism. Bilingualism is associated with unique patterns of development that may affect their foreign language learning (FLL) in positive ways. This thesis explores the relationship between bilingualism and FLL, focusing on factors that affect this relationship. The first study investigates the effect of immigrant bilingualism on English FLL, examining confounding background variables and the effect of instructional language proficiency. The results showed a general positive trend between bilingualism and FLL. This positive trend differed between bilingual groups with different home languages with the strongest predictor for FLL being instructional language proficiency. This second study considers the effect of bilingualism on the FLL from elementary to secondary school. Although a significant advantage of bilingualism is found in elementary school, it disappeared as students proceed into secondary school, yielding differential gains for the language minority and monolingual groups. The level of exposure to the minority language played an important role for the FLL development. The third study examines the effect of bilingualism on FLL, considering the impact of manner and age of bilingual acquisition as well as language use practices. The results showed higher FLL for bilinguals who received formal instruction in their minority language, had acquired both languages simultaneously, and switched more often between their two languages, when compared to their other bilingual and monolingual peers. The findings of this thesis add to the evidence that under certain conditions, some bilinguals from immigrant communities have advantages in FLL compared to their monolingual peers although this pattern does change over time.

This study explores the possibilities of phonetic category formation in early bilingual Turkish-Swedish learners of English. Specifically, the high-front unrounded vowels across the three languages Turkish, Swedish and English are investigated. The bilinguals are compared to L2 learners of English with Turkish and Swedish as their first language, respectively, to aim to see if the English vowel categories /i/ and /ɪ/ would be harder to establish, since the bilinguals already have three similar categories across two languages. It is hypothesized that if the bilinguals have managed to keep the Turkish and Swedish categories separate, it will have made it more difficult to establish new categories for English, since having a larger phonological inventory is thought to increase the likelihood of equivalence classification in subsequent learning. The results reveal that all three groups of speakers produced English /ɪ/ similarly to one another, but the L1 Swedish speakers made the most consistent distinction of English /ɪ/ compared to the other vowels. Furthermore, the bilinguals produced the Swedish long allophone [iː] markedly differently than the monolingual Swedish speakers. The bilinguals’ categories for Turkish /i/, English /i/ and Swedish [ɪ] had merged except in one speaker, who produced Turkish /i/ slightly further back than the Swedish short allophone. This speaker had not established a new category for English /ɪ/, but since several of the bilinguals who had merged categories had not established a new category for English /ɪ/ either, the hypothesis is not directly supported. In other words, since L2 Swedish [ɪ] had merged with L1 Turkish /i/ for almost all bilinguals, this study does not provide evidence that bilinguals’ increased number of phonetic categories across two languages makes it easier or more difficult to establish new categories for an L3.

Cette étude relève de la didactique des langues et s´inscrit dans la réflexion sur le plurilinguisme et l’acquisition d’une troisième langue. Plus particulièrement, cette étude examine le phénomène de l’activation d’une autre langue que celle attendue dans la production orale en français d’étudiants grecs suivant des cours dans le secteur LANSAD à l’Université d’Athènes. Nous avons envisagé le développement d’une troisième langue comme un processus émergentiste et la démarche adoptée dans notre travail suppose de se focaliser à sa dimension psycholinguistique. Dans le présent travail, nous tenterons de décrire un microcontexte, celui de l’acquisition du français comme troisième langue, auprès d’adultes apprenant cette langue dans un milieu guidé et hétéroglotte. Notre objectif est de décrire dans un premier temps le phénomène de l’activation d’une autre langue que celle attendue, tel qu’il se manifeste dans la production orale du discours en français L/C3, ainsi que l’activité métalinguistique chez les apprenants. Ensuite, la langue y est envisagée dans notre travail comme un ensemble de pratiques et de représentations.Nous avons réuni un corpus oral afin d’explorer l’activation du grec L/C1 et de l’anglais L/C 2, lors de la production orale en français L/C3 d’apprenants grecs. La recherche de terrain a été conduite en Grèce, au sein d’un établissement public d’enseignement supérieur, auprès d’étudiants suivant des cours de français à l’Université d’Athènes. Il s’agit d’une population plurilingue où le français constitue au moins la troisième langue : ils ont comme première langue le grec et ont déjà appris l’anglais, l’allemand et d’autres langues au cours de leur scolarisation. / This study lies in the field of foreign language education, but it also refers to multilingualism and third language acquisition. In particular, this study examines the activation of another language in the speech production of greek-speaking learners of french as a foreign language. The study refers to ESP learners at university level. We postulate third language development as an emergent process and the approach adopted is focused in the psycholinguistique dimension. In this rechearch we are trying to describe a microcontext, this of the acquisition of French as a third language, whith adults learning the language in a guided and heteroglossic environment. Our goal is to describe the phenomenon of the activation of a language other than expected, manifested in oral speech production in French L/C3, as well as the metalinguistic activity that accompanies. Also, the language is considered in our work as a set of practices and representations. We have assembled an oral corpus to explore the activation of L/C1 Greek and English L / C 2 in the oral production of L/C3 French Greek learners. Field research was conducted in Greece, in a public institution of higher education, with students taking courses in French at the University of Athens. It is a multilingual population where French is at least the third language as their first language is Greek and they have learned English, German and other languages during their schooling.

No description available.

<p>The present study concerns cross-linguistic influence in the spoken French of multilingual learners. The main purpose is to investigate to what degree, and in what manner, previously acquired languages (L1, L2(s)) influence the target language, L3. Given the fact that the study only concerns spoken interlanguage, it makes use of a psycholinguistic perspective, which takes models of oral production into account.</p><p>The analysis is divided into two main parts. The first concerns the oral production of 30 Swedish learners of French, who fall into three groups according to their previous exposure to French: beginners, secondary school students and university students. The results show that proficiency in the L3 is crucial in at least two ways. First, there is a correlation between the level of proficiency in the L3 and the number of instances of cross-linguistic influence in that the least advanced learners produce the highest number of cross-linguistic lexemes, whereas the most advanced learners produce the lowest number. Second, the level of proficiency in the L3 is decisive for the number of background languages (L1, L2) used during oral production in L3: the lower the proficiency in the L3, the more background languages are used, and vice versa.</p><p>The second part of the analysis contains six case studies of learners with partly different L1s and L2s. It focuses on the roles of the background languages during conversation in L3 and on the factors contributing to the attribution of these roles. The results point at both similarities and differences between the learners with respect to the roles of the background languages. A result common to all the learners is the use of Swedish L1/L2 and English L1 as an instrumental language, i.e. a language used rather strategically with a communicative purpose. The use of these languages in this function seems to be due to the fact that Swedish and English are shared languages between the learner and the interlocutor.</p>

The present study concerns cross-linguistic influence in the spoken French of multilingual learners. The main purpose is to investigate to what degree, and in what manner, previously acquired languages (L1, L2(s)) influence the target language, L3. Given the fact that the study only concerns spoken interlanguage, it makes use of a psycholinguistic perspective, which takes models of oral production into account. The analysis is divided into two main parts. The first concerns the oral production of 30 Swedish learners of French, who fall into three groups according to their previous exposure to French: beginners, secondary school students and university students. The results show that proficiency in the L3 is crucial in at least two ways. First, there is a correlation between the level of proficiency in the L3 and the number of instances of cross-linguistic influence in that the least advanced learners produce the highest number of cross-linguistic lexemes, whereas the most advanced learners produce the lowest number. Second, the level of proficiency in the L3 is decisive for the number of background languages (L1, L2) used during oral production in L3: the lower the proficiency in the L3, the more background languages are used, and vice versa. The second part of the analysis contains six case studies of learners with partly different L1s and L2s. It focuses on the roles of the background languages during conversation in L3 and on the factors contributing to the attribution of these roles. The results point at both similarities and differences between the learners with respect to the roles of the background languages. A result common to all the learners is the use of Swedish L1/L2 and English L1 as an instrumental language, i.e. a language used rather strategically with a communicative purpose. The use of these languages in this function seems to be due to the fact that Swedish and English are shared languages between the learner and the interlocutor.

The study reported in this thesis investigates the source language of lexical transfer in multilingual learners using a mixed methods approach. Previous research has shown that the source language of crosslinguistic influence can be related to factors such as proficiency, recency/exposure, psychotypology, the L2 status, and item-specific transferability. The present study employed a mixed methods approach in order to best serve the particularities of each of the five factors under investigation. Multinomial logistic regression was emloyed to test the predictive power of the first four factors, thereby addressing the issue of confounding variables found in previous studies. A more exploratory qualitative analysis was used to investigate item-specific transferability due to the lack of prior empirical studies focusing on this aspect. Both oral and written data were collected, offering an analysis of modal differences in direct comparison. The results show a significant effect of proficiency and exposure, but inconsistent patterns for psychotypology. Most importantly, in this study of lexical transfer, a significant L1 status effect was found, rather than an L2 status effect. In addition, the statistical model predicted the source language of transfer better in the spoken than in the written mode. Finally, learners were found to assess, as well as actively improve, an item’s transferability in relation to target language norms and constraints. All of these findings contribute to our understanding of lexical organization, activation, and access in the multilingual mind.