Non-Native Languages and Crosslinguistic Influence

The study of crosslinguistic influence (CLI) seeks to explain how and under what conditions prior linguistic knowledge influences the production, comprehension and development of a target language. The term crosslinguistic influence was first introduced in the mid-1980s (cf. Kellerman, 1984; Sharwood-Smith, 1983) as a theory-neutral term for the various types of influences that are possible on the target language, such as 'transfer, interference, avoidance, borrowing and L2 related-aspects of language loss' (Sharwood-Smith and Kellerman, 1986: 1). This chapter is chiefly concerned with transfer phenomena in multilinguals' oral and written production and the terms crosslinguistic influence and transfer are used interchangeably with no implied difference in meaning.

Non-native languages have been regarded as potential sources of influence for several decades (for early research, see Selinker, 1969; Vildomec, 1963) and continue to be included in most of the definitions of CLI that we find in the literature. Odlin, for instance, defines CLI as 'the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired' (1989: 27). Sharwood-Smith defines crosslinguistic influence as 'the influence of the mother tongue on the learner's performance in and /or development of a given target language; by extension, it also means the influence of any "other tongue" known to the learner on that target language ' (1994: 198, italic in the original). Gass and Selinker say that 'for most researchers, language transfer is the use of native language (or other language) knowledge – in some as yet unclear way – in the acquisition of a second (or additional) language' (1983: 372).

From these definitions and remarks we can generally infer that, from as early as the 1960s, researchers have widely believed non-native languages to be potential sources of transfer.