The use of the L1 and the L2 in French L3: examining cross-linguistic lexemes in multilingual learners’ oral production

Abstract

This study investigates to what degree, and in what manner, the L1 and L2(s) influence spoken French L3. The analysis is divided in two parts. The first examines the cross-linguistic lexemes of 30 Swedish learners, divided into three groups according to previous exposure to French. The results show that proficiency in the L3 is crucial: the least advanced learners produce the highest number of cross-linguistic lexemes, whereas the most advanced learners produce the lowest number. Moreover, the lower the proficiency in the L3, the more background languages are used, and vice versa. Overall, there is a clear dominance of L1 influences. The second part contains six case studies of learners with partly different L1s and L2s. It examines the roles of the L1 and L2(s) in L3 oral production and the decisive factors for these roles. The main result is the use of Swedish L1/L2 and English L1 as instrumental languages, i.e. with clearly communicative purposes, in eliciting and metalinguistic functions. This is due to the interlocutors’ common access to these languages. It does not seem to matter if the instrumental language represents a learner's L1 or L2. The fact that there is mutual comprehension seems to outweigh other factors.

Keywords:

• cross-linguistic influence
• code-switching
• third language acquisition
• French L3
• oral production

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Camilla Bardel, and Inge Bartning, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. Of course, these are not the only factors that might determine cross-linguistic influence. Other factors such as age and motivation have been proposed as well. See for example De Angelis (2007) for an overview of factors affecting non-native language influence.

2. See Bartning and Schlyter (2004) for a proposal of acquisitional stages based on the InterFra corpus of Stockholm University and the Lund corpus.

3. There are two different interviewers: one of them interviewed the university students and the other one interviewed the beginners and the secondary-school students.

4. The author is grateful towards Rachel Hoare, Jean-Christophe Penet and David Singleton at Trinity College, Dublin for their help with the gathering of data.

5. The six case studies have also been analysed longitudinally in Lindqvist (2006). This part of the analysis cannot be included in the present paper because of lack of space.

6. See transcription conventions in the Appendix 1.

7. Other possible explanations for the activation of Swedish will be considered in a later section.

8. It is important to note that the secondary-school students only have access to English as an L2, thus they only have two potential sources of influence. On the other hand, the University students have several L2s at their repertoire but only use English.

9. Robert does not use German or Finnish. Jan only uses German once: vielleicht (=maybe).

10. There are three more word constructions in Robert's production. These have been classified as ambiguous cases, since it is difficult to establish their origin.

11. See Lindqvist (2006) for the complete list of Werner's word construction attempts.