engleski

Exploring the psychotypological dimension of transfer in L3 at the lexical level

In this talk I will discuss the design and results of a study that aims to clarify the role of psychotypology in constraining or facilitating crosslinguistic influence (CLI) from previously acquired languages in L3 production at the lexical level. The role of psychotypology was tested in a lexical retrieval task in L3 English of sequential multilinguals with Croatian and Italian as their background languages. Apart from the flipped conditions regarding the status of each background language (as either L1 or L2), the participants (N=189) formed a homogeneous sample in terms of levels of proficiency, age of onset, and exposure to their L1, L2, and L3. The study design allowed for a differentiation between the effects of psychotypology and the L2 status factor, and the lexical retrieval task allowed for a clear identification of the instances of both facilitative and non-facilitative influence from previously acquired languages. Additional retrospective tasks were used to tap into the nature of the CLI in the study (the amount of conscious cognitive control and implicit /explicit crosslinguistic awareness). The results showed that CLI came from both background languages, but the source language was determined by psychotypology (perceived or assumed similarity) between languages at the level of individual lexical items, rather than psychotpology at the language system level. The results will be discussed in terms of specific nature of CLI in the study and the differences in the psychotypological effect found in CLI from L1 and that from L2.

psychotypology, crosslinguistic influence, L2 status

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