History
The question of how languages influence one another within a bilingual individual can be addressed both with respect to mature bilinguals and with respect to bilingual language acquisition. With respect to bilingual language acquisition in children, there are several hypotheses that examine the internal representation of bilinguals' languages. Volterra and Taeschner proposed the ''Single System Hypothesis,'' which states that children start out with one single system that develops into two systems. This hypothesis proposed that bilingual children go through three stages of acquisition. * In Stage I there is a single lexicon that contains words from both languages, and there is a single syntactic system. Children in this stage will never have a translation equivalent for a word in the other language. Translation equivalents are two corresponding words in two separate languages with the same meaning. Also, it is common for the child to use two different languages in a single utterance. The syntactic rules are hard to define because of the lack of two-word and three-word utterances by the bilingual child. * In Stage II there are two lexicons, but there is one syntactic system. In addition, there is evidence for language separation because at this stage children become less likely to mix their languages. Across both languages, the same syntactic rules are applied. For example, Japanese has subject-object-verb word order (SOV), and English has subject-verb-object word order (SVO). An English-Japanese bilingual might apply only one of these word orders to all utterances, regardless of what language the utterance is in. * In Stage III there are two lexicons and two syntactic systems, with adult-like separation of the languages. When a child reaches this stage they are considered fully "bilingual." In response to the ''Single System Hypothesis'', a different hypothesis developed regarding the idea of two separate language systems from the very beginning. It was based on evidence of monolinguals and bilinguals reaching the same milestones at approximately the same stage of development. For example, bilingual and monolingual children go through identical patterns of grammar development. This hypothesis, called the ''Separate Development Hypothesis'', held the notion that the bilinguals acquiring two languages would internalize and acquire the two languages separately. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from lack of transfer and lack of acceleration.Paradis, Johanne; Genesee, Fred (1996). "Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent?". ''Studies in Second Language Acquisition.'' 18: 1-25. Transfer is a grammatical property of one language used in another language. Acceleration is the acquisition of a feature in language A facilitating the acquisition of a feature in language B. In a study of Dutch-English bilingual children, there were no instances of transfer across elements of morphology and syntactic development, indicating that the two languages developed separately from each other.De Houwer, Annick (1990). ''The acquisition of two languages from birth'': ''A case study''. Cambridge: CUP In addition, in a study of French-English bilingual children, there were no instances of acceleration because finiteness appeared much earlier in French than it did in English, suggesting that there was no facilitation of the acquisition of finiteness in English by acquisition in French. Under this hypothesis, bilingual acquisition would be equivalent to monolingual children acquiring the particular languages. In response to both the previous hypotheses mentioned, the ''Interdependent Development Hypothesis'' emerged with the idea that there is some sort of interaction between the two language systems in acquisition. It proposed that there is no single language system, but the language systems are not completely separate either. This hypothesis is also known as the ''Crosslinguistic Hypothesis'', developed by Hulk and Müller. The ''Crosslinguistic Hypothesis'' states that influence will occur in bilingual acquisition in areas of particular difficulty, even for monolingual native language acquisition. It re-examined the extent of the differentiation of the language systems due to the interaction in difficult areas of bilingual acquisition.Hulk, Aafke; Müller, Natascha (2000). "Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics". ''Bilingualism: Language and Cognition''. 3: 227-244. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from delay, acceleration, and transfer in particular areas of bilingual language acquisition. Delay is the acquisition of a property of language A later than normally expected because of the acquisition of language B. CLI is seen when the child has a dominant language, such as Cantonese influencing English when Cantonese is the dominant language, and it will only occur in certain domains. Below are the two proposals represented in the ''Crosslinguistic Hypothesis'' where CLI may occur. * It may occur where there is an interface. An interface, for example, could be between syntax and pragmatics ofTransfer
In linguistics,Underproduction (Avoidance)
Underproduction as explained by Schachter (1974),Schachter, J. (1974), AN ERROR IN ERROR ANALYSIS1. Language Learning, 24: 205–214. is a strategy used by L2 learners to avoid producing errors when using structures, sounds, or words which they are not confident about in the L2. Avoidance is a complex phenomenon and experts do not agree on its causes or exactly what it is. For example, Hebrew speakers acquiring English, may understand how the passive voice, 'a cake is made', works, but may prefer active voice, 'I make a cake,' thus avoiding the passive construction. Kellerman (1992) distinguishes three types of avoidance: (1) learners of the L2 make anticipations or know there is a problem with their construction and have a vague idea of the target construction, (2) the target is known by the L1 speaker, but it is too difficult to use in given circumstances; such as conversational topics that the L1 speaker may have a deficiency in or (3), the L1 speaker has the knowledge to correctly produce and use the L2 structure but is unwilling to use it because it goes against the norms of their behavior.Overproduction
Overproduction refers to an L2 learner producing certain structures within the L2 with a higher frequency than native speakers of that language. In a study by Schachter and Rutherford (1979), they found that Chinese and Japanese speakers who wrote English sentences overproduced certain types of cleft constructions: * 'It is very unfortunate that...' and sentences that contained ''There are''/''There is'' which suggests anProduction errors
Substitution is when the L1 speaker takes a structure or word from their native language and replaces it within the L2. Odlin (1989) shows a sentence from a Swedish learner of English in the following sentence. * Swedish Structure on English: ** But sometimes I must go bort. Here the Swedish word ''bort'' has replaced its English equivalent ''away''. * Polish learner of English: ** English ''think'' pronounced as 'fink''because of the influence of the Polish accent on English pronunciation. AAttrition
Also related to the idea of languages interfering with one another is the concept of language attrition.Complementarity principle
Grosjean (1997) explained the complementarity principle as the function of language use in certain domains of life leading to language dominance within that domain for a given speaker. This dominance in certain domains of life (e.g. school, home, work, etc.) can lead to apparent Crosslingusitic Influence within a domain. One study found that CLI was occurring within the speech of the studied bilinguals, but the intensity of influence was subject to the domains of speech being used. Argyri and Sorace (2007) found, much like many other researchers, that language dominance plays a role in the directionality of CLI.Argyri, Efrosyni; Sorace, Antonella (2007).Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 10(1), 79-99. These researchers found that the English dominant bilinguals had an influence of English on their Greek (concerning preverbal subjects specifically, but also the language in general), but not from their Greek to their English. On the other hand, the Greek dominant bilinguals did not show evidence of Greek influence on their English. This supports the notion that bilinguals who do not receive sufficient exposure to both languages acquire a "weaker language" and a "dominant language," and depending on similarities or differences between the languages, effects can be present or absent like that of the Greek-English example above. The effect of CLI can be primarily seen as a unidirectional occurrence, in that the L2 is likely to be affected by the L1, or simply the dominant language is more likely to affect the weaker, than the reverse. This supports the idea of individuals' susceptibility to crosslinguistic influences and the role of dominance. Take for example bilinguals who use different languages for different domains in their life; if a Spanish-English bilingual primarily uses Spanish in the home, but English in school you would expect to see English influences while speaking about school topics in Spanish and similarly you would expect Spanish influences on English when speaking about the home in English because in both instances the language being used is weaker in that domain. This is to say that not only do you see CLI from one language to another, but depending on the domains of use and the degree of proficiency or dominance, CLI can be a significant influence on speech production.Additional theories
Some researchers believe that CLI may be a result of "contact-modified input," or linguistic input modified or affected by some other source such as another language.Hauser-Grüdl, N., Guerra, L. A., Witzmann, F., Leray, E., & Müller, N. (2010). Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: Can input frequency account for it? Lingua, 120(11), 2638-2650. This is to say that the environment surrounding the learning of another language can influence what is actually being learned. Take for example the fact that most L2 learners are receiving input or teachings from similarly speaking bilinguals; Hauser-Grüdl, Guerra, Witzmann, Leray, and Müller (2010) believe that the language being taught has already been influenced by the other in the teachers' minds and, therefore, the input the learner is receiving will exhibit influence. These L2 learners will replicate influences because their input of the L2 is not as pure as input from a monolingual; meaning, what appears as CLI in the individual isn't really CLI of their L1 on their L2, but the effects of acquiring input that has already been modified. This theory has led some people to believe that all input for L2 learning will be affected and resemble CLI; however, this is not a well-supported theory of CLI or its function in L2 acquisition. Other researchers believe that CLI is more than production influences, claiming that this linguistic exchange can impact other factors of a learner's identity. Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) described such affected areas as experiences, knowledge, cognition, development, attention and language use, to name a few, as being major centers for change because of CLI.Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. London: Routledge. These ideas suggest that crosslinguistic influence of syntactic, morphological, or phonological changes may just be the surface of one language's influence on the other, and CLI is instead a different developmental use of one's brain.Future research
CLI has been heavily studied by scholars, but there is still much more research needed because of the multitude of components that make up the phenomenon. Firstly, theReferences
Further reading
Gaston, P. (2013)Syntactic error processing in bilingualism: an analysis of the Optional Infinitive stage in child language acquisition (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Yale University. Odlin, T. (2005). Crosslinguistic Influence And Conceptual Transfer: What Are The Concepts? ''Annual Review of Applied Linguistics,'' ''25''. {{doi, 10.1017/s0267190505000012 Cognitive science Multilingualism Psycholinguistics Second-language acquisition