Proceedings of the - British Association for Applied Linguistics

17
Third Language Acquisition: L3 proficiency as a factor in Cross Linguistic Influence
Ursula Langegger-Noakes
Third Language Acquisition: L3
proficiency as a factor in Cross Linguistic
Influence
Ursula Langegger-Noakes
Bangor University
This paper examines cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in oral and written L3
productions of British university students. In common with other students
of German in Great Britain, the majority of students at the School of
Modern Languages in Bangor, studying German, have English as L1,
French as their L2 and German as their L3.
The purpose of this paper is to report on findings of a study carried out with
first and third year students of German at Bangor University. The written
and oral work collected for the purpose of this study is, as one might call it,
“authentic academic data” and consists of essays, short texts, presentations
and interviews. The aim of the study is to investigate if the L3 proficiency
level is a key variable in CLI, therefore beginners’ and intermediate
students’ productions were analysed.
Error Analysis in some form has been used as a tool by a number of
researchers in the field of Third Language Acquisition who investigate
Cross Linguistic Influence or transfer. In SLA researchers employ
frameworks to describe learners’ errors such as James’ (1998). In TLA the
majority of studies focus on the area of lexis (e.g. De Angelis & Selinker,
2001; Cenoz, 2001; Ringbom, 2001, 2006; Tremblay, 2006) and
researchers either simply list the types of lexical deviation encountered,
based on a descriptive grammar of the target language, or they use
classifications such as Ringbom’s (2001), for analysing lexical transfer,
such as language switches, coinage, deceptive cognates, semantic
extensions and calques or Hufeisen’s (1998), whose framework allows
categorizing deviations on all linguistic levels, from the grapheme and
morpheme level to the text level, and of three different types, namely
syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. For this study Hufeisen’s framework
was amended and Ringbom’s classification integrated, which resulted in
the following framework below (table 17.1).
Transfers of an L1 or L2 word form, or parts of it, to the L3 are included in
categories 1 to 7, transfer of meaning, e.g. semantic extensions, calques and
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