with Kirsten Haastrup

This chapter serves two functions. It is first of all an extension of the research review in Chapter 1 that focuses in detail on a particular topic that has only recently begun to receive systematic study – cross-linguistic dimensions of lexical inferencing. It also provides the necessary background for Part 2 of this book, the trilingual study on this topic with a particular focus on how readers' (first language) L1 influences their (second language) L2 lexical inferencing.

Most research to date on L2 lexical inferencing has concentrated on L2 learners inferring the meanings of unfamiliar words embedded in written texts. Studies have convincingly chronicled such readers' high reliance on their proficiency in the text language for successful inferencing. However, despite a large body of research on lexical transfer as it manifests in other contexts, few researchers have explored such influences in L2 lexical inferencing. What information there is on this topic has, with few exceptions, come from introspective reports of L2 learners or researchers' observations based on L2 data on lexical processing from mixed-L1 participants. Only recently have researchers begun to systematically compare L1 and L2 lexical inferencing by the same learners or L1 and L2 inferencing by groups of learners with different L1s and the same L2, as sources of specific insights into cross-linguistic influences in lexical processing.

Given the many gaps in research on these issues, the final section of this review will work from a broad to a narrow perspective, first considering our general understanding of such influences, then providing relevant examples from L2 reading and lexical processing studies, and wherever possible, from lexical inferencing.

First Language Influences in Second Language Lexical Inferencing

L1 influences on L2 performance, known as transfer effects, have been documented in all linguistic sub-systems, including pragmatics and rhetoric, semantics, syntax, the lexicon, morphology, phonology, phonetics and orthography (Odlin, 2003). Learners' L1 (or Ln) knowledge may affect formal linguistic aspects of L2 performance as well as semantic or pragmatic aspects (or meaning transfer).