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The present study aimed to examine the speech act of correction produced by Chinese, Americans, and Chinese EFL learners. A total of 120 participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire with two major parts: a Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) and a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Elicited data were analyzed in terms of three perspectives: perception of face-threat, overall correction strategy use, and the use of external modifications. The results showed some similarities and differences between Chinese and Americans' corrections. As for the EFL learners, they exhibited their interlanguage development in the perception and overall strategy use. In addition, instances of L1 pragmatic transfer were found in the learners' use of some individual strategies and external modifications. Learners' interlanguage development and L1 socio-cultural transfer demonstrated the multi-competence of the learners. The present study suggests that further instruction should be implemented to enrich L2 learners' pragmatic repertoire for successful ELF communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language practices of Latinos in the US continue to attract attention from politicians, educators, journalists, linguists and the general Hispanic and non-Hispanic public. While monolingual speakers of English in the US expect Hispanics to shift to English like other minority language speakers have done in the past, monolingual speakers of Spanish expect them to speak "pure" Spanish. Even Spanish-English bilingual speakers criticize Latinos for mixing Spanish and English or speaking Spanglish. This term has been rejected by some linguists who claim that it is technically flawed and only applies to casual oral registers. In this paper I consider the linguistic nature, sociolinguistic functions and attitudes towards Spanglish, I show that Latinos are using this hybrid, heteroglossic variety beyond casual oral registers, and I suggest a broader perspective which not only considers the linguistic features of Spanglish but also the political, social and cultural issues involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cypriot and Standard Greek still stand in a diglossic relationship; however, recent work on Cypriot Greek points to ongoing processes of levelling of local sub-varieties and the emergence of a pancypriot koiné. This paper explores patterns of structural mixing between Standard and Cypriot Greek in the Cypriot koiné. The data indicate that structural mixing is mostly achieved through morphological choices, while Cypriot phonology and syntax remain largely intact. The fact that morphology has this capacity of a 'buffer' between two presumably competing grammatical systems provides a strong parallel to interlanguage phenomena and a potential account of why the two systems are prevented from merging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a brief comparison of the interface hypothesis and the full transfer/full access/full parse model. It cites the distinct, but interrelated questions presented by the adult (L2) second acquisition. It asserts that the model explains how to characterize and account the developmental stages of interlanguage and answers why adults exposed to a nonnative language develop systems of linguistic knowledge.

This paper examines the concept of languaging (SWAIN, 2006) in the context of form-focused instruction and its role as an important tool for Brazilian foreign language learners, both at advanced level and at elementary level, if linguistic precision is the target. Supported by the Vygotskian sociocultural theory of mind (VYGOTSKY, 1978) and based on studies developed by Swain (2006) in the Canadian context and by Vidal (2003) in the Brazilian scenario, both with advanced learners, the paper shows how Brazilian learners of English of different levels of proficiency and from different instructional realities benefit from languaging - the process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through target-language use. A qualitative analysis of both collaborative dialogue and corrective feedback provide evidence for the claim. It is suggested that form-focused instruction via conscious reflection on language use seems to be a very attractive pedagogical resource to help learners EFL to develop their interlanguage further as well as it serves language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas is the property of Revista Nebrija de Linguistica Aplicada a la Ensenanza de Lenguas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas is the property of Revista Nebrija de Linguistica Aplicada a la Ensenanza de Lenguas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A contact language called Broken Slavey or Slavey Jargon flourished among the Gwich’in in the nineteenth century. Slavey Jargon absorbed elements of at least five source languages: French, Gwich’in, South Slavey (Dene-Tha’), Chipewyan, and English. Analyzing historical sources and recorded ethnographic texts from fluent speakers of Gwich’in, I offer an explanation of how the lexicon and grammar of this kaleidoscopic language converged regionally in the small subarctic communities of Fort McPherson, La Pierre’s House, and Fort Yukon. I also conclude that there is no internal textual evidence that Slavey Jargon was used as a trading pidgin. The polyglot form of most Slavey Jargon texts represents a curious inseam of linguistic democracy, suggesting that a measure of social equality was negotiated between the speakers of its diverse component tongues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a discussion of creole morphology in the light of the interlanguage hypothesis which will then shed light on the question of universals, proximity to the superstrate, grammatical complexity and the role of superstrate. The author notes that it has often been implicitly assumed that believing in second language acquisition (SLA) processes in creolization amounts to more or less the same as believing in substrate transfer. The article sees that creoles can be meaningfully analyzed as conventionalized interlanguages of an early stage. More advanced stages can be explained in terms of language-external factors such as the availability of the superstrate.

Criticizing has been a rather under-represented speech act in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) literature. Native speakers (NSs) find this speech act challenging, often needing to pre-plan how to perform it (Murphy & Neu 1996). Thus, it can be expected that second-language (L2) learners will also experience considerable difficulty. This paper reports a study of the pragmatic strategies used by Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) when criticizing in English with a view to shedding light on the pragmatic properties of this under-researched act. Interlanguage data were collected from 36 adult learners via a peer-feedback task, a written questionnaire, and a retrospective interview. First and second language baseline data were collected from two respective groups of 12 Vietnamese NSs and 12 NSs of Australian English, via the same peer-feedback task and questionnaire. Results showed that the English language learners criticized in significantly different ways from the Australian NSs in terms of their preference for realization strategies, their choice of semantic formulae, and their choice and frequency of use of mitigating devices. A number of interplaying factors might explain these differences: learners' limited L2 linguistic competence and lack of fluency, which seemed to load their processing capability under communicative pressure, their lack of L2 pragmatic knowledge, and the influence of L1 pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how 3 fundamental concepts of second language acquisition (SLA), the native speaker, interlanguage, and the language learner have fared since . We review the ascendancy of these concepts and their relationship to the traditional dichotomies of language learning versus language use and individual mind versus social-context-as-environment. We discuss geopolitical changes of the 1990s and the related theoretical shifts from structuralist theories to discourse-based and constructionist social theories, which paved the way for Firth and Wagner. We examine subsequent efforts to reframe SLA as social process and knowledge as social action, arguing that such notions as collaborative dialogue, affordance, and investment have reconceptualized the concepts of output, input, and motivation without, however, escaping their structuralist roots. Looking at data from multilingual exchanges between immigrants recorded in shops in California, we suggest that 3 fundamental concepts be treated as discursive, socially, and historically relative categories, with the subject position of the researcher factored in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the reasons why Chinese learners of English avoid using phrasal verbs in an English community context or when using English as an interlanguage in China. The avoidance of phrasal verbs often leads to ineffective communication. By adopting appropriate pedagogical and methodological approaches or providing proper guidance to learning, Chinese learners of English may achieve the goal of using phrasal verbs appropriately in the context of English as an international language in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language is the means through which mathematics is learned and mathematical reasoning is developed and expressed. Students' development of mathematical knowledge is dependent upon their codevelopment of language competencies. This study sought to understand the intersection of language acquisition and mathematical reasoning in a multigrade, dual-language mathematics class- room. The focal research question was: In what ways do immigrant middle-school students use LI and L2 to communicate and to reason mathematically? The students who participated were first- and second-generation immigrants from Mexico. Data included (I) ethnographic field notes, (2), videotape and audiotape of small-group work, (3) interviews with the bilingual mathematics teacher, and (4) student work. Findings suggest that (I) nonroutine mathematical problem posing is useful for eliciting productive talk and encouraging reasoning; and (2) when given the opportunity, ELLs are likely to draw productively upon their linguistic resources in LI and L2 to support high-level mathematical reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the issue of non-target language representations analysing data from the acquisition of novel English synthetic compounds by bilingual (Basque-Spanish) speakers. Past research indicated that English L1 acquirers do not include regular -s inflection within compounds, whereas they do include irregulars (*clawsmarks versus teethmarks) and claimed that this was an innate constraint. More recent research contradicts this claim in the case of L2 acquirers. The aim of this study is to report on further work investigating this issue with bilingual learners in an EFL setting. The results indicate that there is a significant contrast between native and non-native speakers of English in novel compound production and also show that there is a significant effect on the proficiency level of the three groups tested. These results are discussed in the light of the predictions made by the level-ordered morphology model and the dual-mechanism model and also consider the role of the learners' L1s and the amount of target language input in determining novel compounding in L3 English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study looks at the levels of activation of different languages a trilingual language user operates in at the moment of text construction in one of these languages. Forty-eight Portuguese advanced users of English (L2) and intermediate in German (L3) were asked to perform a translation task. The subjects were divided into two subgroups: Group 1 was exposed to the input text in L1 (Portuguese) to be translated into L3, while Group 2 were to translate the same from their L2 into L3. The data collected through simultaneous introspection was compared in terms of languages activated on the level of conceptualisation: macroplanning (content) and microplanning (form), i.e. verbalised thoughts (object-regulation), formulation (encoding: selection of syntactic, lexical and morphological information—object and other regulation) and articulation (the final output—self-regulation). The levels of activation of L1, L2 and L3 were observed as well as intentional versus unintentional switches between languages. It was assumed that the language of input would determine the choice of languages activated in the process of translation. Also language proficiency, learning profiles and mode of language instruction were believed to influence text construction and strategies used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From some psycholinguistic perspectives, this study examines language transfer by exploring the nature of the multilingual mental lexicon in relation to sources of language transfer. It assumes that the multilingual mental lexicon contains not only lexemes but also language-specific lemmas; language-specific lemmas may activate language-specific morphosyntactic procedures in speech production, and third language learners' activation of lemmas for target language items may be influenced by the lemmas already stored in their mental lexicon through their previous language acquisition, especially second language acquisition. The interlanguage data for the study are from adult learners with Chinese as their first language, English as their second language and German as their third language, and those with Japanese as their first language, English as their second language and Chinese as their third language. The research findings provide empirical evidence that the activation of second language lemmas is the major source of interlanguage transfer in target language lexical—conceptual structure, predicate—argument structure and morphological realisation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been surprisingly little exploration of the effectiveness of pronunciation teaching by researchers. This classroom-based study makes an initial step towards addressing this gap by determining the immediate effect of instruction on specific forms in second language (L2) pronunciation and the extent to which gains were retained over time and integrated into phonological competence. The subjects were New Zealand (NZ) immigrants, largely of Asian origin, attending a high-intermediate level English class. The study focused on epenthesis (the addition of an extra sound, usually a schwa, after a consonant) and absence (the inappropriate dropping of a consonant sound). The instruction was explicit and involved a series of short input and practice sessions interspersed amongst the regular teaching over a period of two weeks. Dramatic gains were achieved: the average error rate dropped from 19.9% to 5.5% in the immediate post-test, and rose slightly to 7.5 % in the delayed post-test. A more general test conducted at the same time as the delayed post-test showed the error rate had halved, indicating that these gains had been largely integrated into learners' phonological competence. By way of comparison, similar groups of students, who did not receive the instruction, achieved no gains in this area of pronunciation during the course of one semester. This suggests that appropriately focused instruction can lead to changes in learners' phonological interlanguage even where this may appear to have fossilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is general agreement that conversational interaction can facilitate interlanguage development, much of the research on interaction has been conducted in experimental aboratory settings. Questions have been raised about the generalizability of the benefits observed in the laboratory to the classroom setting. The current research compared interaction in classrooms and laboratories. Seventy-four university-level students learning Spanish as a foreign language worked in dyads to complete 3 different communicative activities in classroom and laboratory settings. Analysis of the interactional patterns of each dyad provided insights into the nature of the interaction in each setting. The data suggest few differences in interactional patterns between the settings. Instead, there were differences depending on the type of task that the learners carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study we investigate sentence production in the German interlanguage of Turkish students who have learned German as a first and English as a second foreign language. The students know both languages at an (advanced) intermediate level. Nevertheless, we observed some properties of the German interlanguage that seem to indicate an influence of the second foreign language English on the first foreign language German. We focused our investigation on the processing of the V2 mechanism in German and the fact that it is in certain cases replaced by a SVO ordering, which seems to be a transfer from English. However, an analysis of the SVO ordering in the German interlanguage showed that this syntactic processing is not the result of a transfer from English. By analysing sentence processing as a derivational process in terms of a minimalist grammar, we concluded that the SVO ordering is a derivational strategy of separating adjuncts from the process of morphological checking to derive the syntactic relations inside the checking domain as a local process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of Hindi-English Interlanguage data, Bhatt and Hancin-Bhatt (2002) advance the Structural Minimality hypothesis in which C-domain categories are not licensed in early second language (L2) acquisition, and claim that this leads early L2 learners to misconstrue Prepositional Phrases in the immediate vicinity of the complementizer that introducing an embedded clause. We show, however, that the Structural Minimality thesis is conceptually weak and the argumentation seeking to establish it flawed in three areas: experimental design, reporting of results, and interpretation. Using data from Garcia (1998), we report asymmetries — in the construal of PPs immediately preceding the complementizer versus PPs immediately following the complementizer — that show that knowledge of the C-domain is necessarily implicated in L2 English. We argue that these asymmetries are rooted in the performance system, and we present additional supporting evidence from English-French Interlanguage that is, moreover, highly revealing of the precise, universal sentence processing mechanisms involved. Bhatt and Hancin-Bhatt’s (2002) proposal, in contrast, simply fails to explain any of these asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of consider and find attempts to shed light on second language acquisition of English small clause complements, as in we consider [Mary intelligent] and we find [Mary interesting]. It examines how learners' First language (Mandarin Chinese) interacts with the target language. The analysis is based on the results of two kinds of tasks: grammaticality judgements, intended to elicit nonnative participants' implicit knowledge as compared with the responses of native participants; and oral translations to test their explicit access to this knowledge. The results indicate that Chinese learners tend to avoid sentences that contain small clause complements. A related finding is that, like small clause complements, infinitival complements are under-generated and not preferred by the subjects; tensed clauses and clauses introduced by that are preferred. It is suggested that learners' difficulty with small clause complements involves underlying first language transfer. On the other hand, the difficulty with infinitive clauses may be related to universal developmental order, as the interpretation for an NP involves an extra mechanism, Exceptional Case Marking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study documents knowledge of UG-mediated aspects of optionality in word order in the second language (L2) German of advanced English and Japanese speakers (n = 39). A bimodal grammaticality judgement task, which controlled for context and intonation, was administered to probe judgements on a set of scrambling, topicalization and remnant movement constructions. Given first language (L1) differences and Poverty of the Stimulus, English and Japanese learners face distinct learnability challenges. Assuming Minimalist grammatical architecture (Chomsky, 1995), convergence on the target language would entail the unimpaired availability of Universal Grammar (UG), i.e., computational principles and functional features beyond their L1 instantiation. Irrespective of L1, the L2 groups are found to establish systematic native-like relative distinctions. In addition, L1 transfer effects are attested for judgements on scrambling. It is argued that these findings imply that interlanguage grammars are fully UG constrained, whilst initially informed by L1 properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article talks about topic and subject prominence in interlanguage development. The current study examined topic-prominent interlanguage of subject-prominent first language speakers. The results did not support the early universal stage of topic prominence in second language acquisition but showed that learners transferred their subject-prominent L1 features in topic-prominent L2 learning. With increasing L2 proficiency, learners gradually became sensitive to the characteristics of the target language approximating its norms.

Using role play and verbal-report data, this study investigates the sequential organization of politeness strategies of 24 learners of Spanish and whether the learners' ability to negotiate and mitigate a refusal was influenced by length of residence in the target community. Refusal sequences were examined throughout the interaction and across conversational turns. Results showed more frequent attempts at negotiation and greater use of lexical and syntactic mitigation among learners who had spent more time in the target community and also revealed a preference for solidarity and indirectness, which approximated native Spanish speaker norms. It is suggested that the variables of proficiency and length of residence should be considered independently. Finally, learners' perception of social status are discussed.

The relationship between group and individual has been explored within the variationist paradigm. In L1, group patterns of variation are replicated by the individual. Second language acquisition research is concerned with the individual learner, but second language acquisition variationist researchers tend to group learners. Little empirical evidence exists that such grouping is valid, given the importance of individual variation. This article investigates whether it is meaningful to group learners. This is a longitudinal, quantitative study of the acquisition of variation by Irish speakers of French L2 over three years, of which one is a year abroad experience. Participants are five advanced learners, twenty years old, with five years of French classes at secondary school and two at university. A computer (Varbrul) analysis shows similar patterns in group and individual, in the deletion of ne. Theoretical implications are that it is legitimate to apply group standards to individual speakers and that native speaker variation acquisition is linked to a prolonged stay in the native speaker community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous investigations of the variable marking of past time by the L2 learner have given rise to a number of hypotheses which predict the patterns of acquisition and use of past time markers in interlanguage (IL). However, given the complicity between their predictions, it has been previously noted that hypotheses such as the aspect and discourse hypotheses can be supported with the same data. In an attempt to distinguish between the effects of such multiple constraints in advanced French IL, this paper presents quantitative findings to suggest that no single factor exclusively outweighs another, but rather, the factors ‘interact’ in their effect, such that the causes of aspectuo-temporal variation are not singular, but indeed multiple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents evidence of syntactic transfer from Chinese to English based on data obtained from 710 Hong Kong Chinese ESL learners at different proficiency levels. Three methodologies were used: self-reporting in individual interviews, translation (with and without prompts), and grammaticality judgment. The focus of the study was on 5 error types: (a) lack of control of the copula, (b) incorrect placement of adverbs, (c) inability to use the there be structure for expressing the existential or presentative function, (d) failure to use the relative clause, and (e) confusion in verb transitivity. The results showed that many Chinese ESL learners in Hong Kong tended to think in Chinese first before they wrote in English, and that the surface structures of many of the interlanguage strings produced by the participants were identical or very similar to the usual or normative sentence structures of the learners' first language (L1), Cantonese. The extent of syntactic transfer was particularly large for complex target structures and among learners of a lower proficiency level, though high-proficiency learners may also have relied on the syntax and vocabulary of their previous linguistic repertoire, their L1, when finding it difficult to produce output in the target language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates constraints on word order optionality in advanced and near-native English-German and Japanese-German interlanguage. Word order optionality in German is mandated by syntactic as well as information-structural and semantic factors at the syntactic interfaces. Studies on the first language acquisition of word order optionality (e.g. Krämer 2000) report a developmental disjunction between syntactic and interface knowledge. In an acceptability judgement task, we find a similar disjunction in the second language acquisition of German word order. Advanced English and Japanese learners demonstrate knowledge of putatively universal syntactic constraints, irrespective of first language differences. Yet, L1-specific differences between English and Japanese learners of German arise in their knowledge of interpretive interface aspects on optional word orders. We argue that these findings point to protracted L1 transfer at the syntactic interfaces in advanced and near-native interlanguage grammars, but do not reflect critical period effects in adult second language acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study into the pragmatic development of German learners of English. The data were elicited with the newly developed "Multimedia Elicitation Task" (MET), which contains 16 request scenarios investigating different status and imposition conditions. The 27 participants included 12 German adults studying at a British university for one academic year and an English native speaker control group of 15 students. The data were collected at three distinct points of the Germans' stay in Great Britain: shortly after their arrival, in the middle of their stay and shortly before their return to Germany. The results provide evidence both for temporal patterning and for individual variation in the learner group. Generally, internal lexical downgraders seem to be acquired earlier than syntactic downgraders, and external modifiers can be assigned to four main groups: the first group contains supportive moves that had already been acquired by all the participants before the first data collection session and the remaining three groups comprise external modifiers whose first occurrence in the corpus displays a correlation with the length of stay in the target environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linguistic classification of English speakers from outer-circle countries, such as India, Malaysia, and Singapore, is often ambiguous because the Englishes they speak are considered different from inter-languages yet are not considered native varieties. This study investigates whether outer-circle speakers can be viewed as equivalent to speakers of mother-tongue varieties in terms of their ownership of English (Norton. 1997), that is, the degree to which they project themselves as legitimate speakers with authority over the language. An Acceptability Judgment Task was used to elicit and record talk among pairs from inner- and outer-circle countries while they judged 24 sentences. Drawing upon Zimmerman's (1998) concepts of discourse identities and situated identities, Goffman's (1981) concept of footing, and Scollon's (1998) distinctions among the receptor roles, the analysis demonstrates the linguistic cues that indexed expressions of ownership through (a) references to the speakers' own English usage, (b) human subject pronouns, and (c) the modal can. The results reveal variation in degrees of ownership among both groups, but similarities across outer- and inner-circle groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the preference for and use of politeness strategies (direct and indirect) by native speakers and advanced non-native speakers of Spanish when declining an invitation (role-play) in three levels of social status (equal and unequal [higher and lower]). Thirty subjects participated in the study (15 males and 15 females): 10 Latin American speakers of Spanish (SPN-SPN), 10 Americans speaking Spanish (ENG-SPN), and 10 Americans speaking English (ENG-ENG). The variables of gender, education, age, and Spanish dialect were controlled. Significant differences were observed between the SPN-SPN and the ENG-SPN groups in six strategies: Alternative, Set Condition, Hedging, Promise of Future Acceptance, Solidarity, and Positive Opinion. Results suggested that there is a high degree of interlanguage variation in the use of and preference for refusal strategies among the ENG-SPN group. Regarding the preference for direct strategies, the ENG-ENG group was more direct than the SPN-SPN group; the ENG-SPN group exhibited an intermediate frequency of directness. It was noted that the preference for direct strategies was conditioned by the social status of the situation. Positive and negative transfer of these strategies was also attested. As for the transfer of L1 sociocultural knowledge, the subjects' performance and verbal reports showed that the lack of L2 sociocultural knowledge was a crucial factor afflicting the advanced non-native speakers' interlanguage. Pedagogical implications for the L2 classroom are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study define pragmatic characteristics of the Russian-Hebrew interlanguage of complaint and investigates its cultural origins. Complaints performed by throe groups (Israelis, Russians, and Russian immigrants to Israel) were analyzed. The results show that the politness strategy of the interlanguage is hybrid, since the immigrants' use both Russian and Hebrew mitigating strategies. However, since the immigrants' linguistic and cultural resources in a target language are limited, they use indicators of politeness to a much lower extent than the two groups of native-speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to establish connections between two different language contact phenomena, interlanguage and codeswitching. The data used in this analysis come from two sources: an interlanguage corpus which has English as the target language, but also contains material from the speaker's two first languages, Spanish and German; and a German-English codeswitching corpus containing data from 20 relatively balanced bilinguals. A comparison of these two corpora indicates that similar patterns appear in both types of bilingual output, and that the differences can be explained in terms of proficiency. The analysis is framed within the Matrix Language Frame model and relies on the concepts of complex lexical structure and a composite of features from the speaker's previously learned languages as well as the target language. The composite arises when levels of complex lexical structure come from different languages. This perspective on the study of languages in contact sheds light on the issue of L1 transfer and the structure of interlanguage grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Treating interlanguage as language contact results in an explanatory account of second-language acquisition (SLA). The proposed model is informed by three sets of assumptions. First, lexical structure is composed of levels or substructures; the relevant levels are lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological-realization patterns (Talmy 1985; Jackendoff 1990; Myers-Scotton and Jake 1995). Second, the distinction between content and system (i.e. functional) morphemes, developed in the matrix language frame model of intrasentential code switching (Myers-Scotton 1993), determines how lexical items can contribute to building the interlanguage grammatical system. Two types of system morphemes are recognized: conceptually "activated" system morphemes and structurally assigned system morphemes (Bock and Levelt 1994; fake and Myers-Scotton 1996,). Finally, the matrix-language and embedded-language distinction structures interlanguage. In SLA an INTENDED matrix language, the target language, and a DE FACTO matrix language, the developing linguistic competence, are recognized. The L1 acts as an embedded language. Interlanguage structures are projected by lexical substructures of the three linguistic systems in contact. Principles structuring language contact and the nature of the grammatical elements projecting lexical structure determine what types of grammatical structures each system can contribute and how they are combined into a developing composite matrix language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A publication dealing with language contact and change ends with the statement that "the field remains chaotic in that it combines concepts from different descriptions. The is no hope for unification, but perhaps the possibility of greater awareness of what are the common theme and issue." Although the assessment strikes a rather discouraging note, linguists endeavoring to reconcile relevant data with diverging interpretations cannot but continue their search for at least a modicum of uniformity and order. It is the intention of the author of this article to discuss few key issues such as scholarly attitudes and discuss some selective data in the light of the interlanguage hypothesis. The author also looks into the role of translation in language contact.

This article examines Slavic-Roumanian linguistic contacts. The questions of Slavic-Roumanian interlingual contacts undoubtedly do not belong to an unimportant and uninteresting sphere of Linguistic Balkanology and Carpathology. In the course of history, these contacts led to different Slavic-Roumanian interferences at all levels of language. These manifest themselves in the following way: 1) the impact of the Slavic language-systems on the system of Roumanian, and; 2) the impact of Roumanian on various structural forms in the Slavic languages.