Ser ou naÌo ser? : a study of cross-linguistic influence between two foreign languages
There is a large body of research dealing with the question of the influence of the mother tongue on a foreign language being learnt, but relatively little which addresses cross-linguistic influence between two foreign languages. This thesis deals with this issue, examining specifically Spanish and Portuguese. The findings suggest that such influence does indeed occur, but not across the board. This study involved two features, clitic pronouns, and verbs of existence, thus comparing a more syntactic type of structure with a more semantic type of structure. Two different types of task were used in the study, grammaticality judgements and controlled production tasks, to compare knowledge with actual performance. No significant differences were found between their scores on the two tasks. Nor were there significant differences between their performance on the two structures, except on one aspect of the production task. The study also involved three different levels of students, whose scores were compared to ascertain whether transfer decreased with proficiency; this appeared to be the case for the judgements but not for the production task. The subjects were also asked to complete a grammaticality judgement task
Benson, Cathy
Ser ou naÌo ser? : a study of cross-linguistic influence between two foreign languages. There is a large body of research dealing with the question of the influence of the mother tongue on a foreign language being learnt, but relatively little which addresses cross-linguistic influence between two foreign languages. This thesis deals with this issue, examining specifically Spanish and Portuguese. The findings suggest that such influence does indeed occur, but not across the board. This study involved two features, clitic pronouns, and verbs of existence, thus comparing a more syntactic type of structure with a more semantic type of structure. Two different types of task were used in the study, grammaticality judgements and controlled production tasks, to compare knowledge with actual performance. No significant differences were found between their scores on the two tasks. Nor were there significant differences between their performance on the two structures, except on one aspect of the production task. The study also involved three different levels of students, whose scores were compared to ascertain whether transfer decreased with proficiency; this appeared to be the case for the judgements but not for the production task. The subjects were also asked to complete a grammaticality judgement task
study cross_linguistic influence foreign_language large_body deal_question influence mother_tongue foreign_language learnt relatively_little address cross_linguistic influence foreign_language deal issue examine specifically spanish portuguese finding_suggest influence indeed occur across board study involve feature clitic_pronoun verb existence thus compare syntactic type structure semantic type structure two_different type task use study grammaticality_judgement control production_task compare knowledge actual performance significant_difference find score task significant_difference performance structure except one_aspect production_task study also_involve three_different level student whose score compare ascertain_whether transfer proficiency appear case judgement production_task subject also ask complete grammaticality_judgement task