<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.