Inter- and intralingual lexical influences in advanced learners' French L3 oral production

• Published in: IRAL. International review of applied linguistics in language teaching Vol. 48; no. 2-3; pp. 131 - 157
• Main Author: Lindqvist, Christina
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG 01.07.2010; Walter de Gruyter; De Gruyter
• Subjects: Adults. Performance, acquisition; Advanced Students; Bilingualism; Bilingualism Research; cross-linguistic influence; English; English (Second Language); French; French L3; HUMANIORA och RELIGIONSVETENSKAP; HUMANITIES and RELIGION; Italian; Language Proficiency; Language Usage; Languages and linguistics; Lexicon; Linguistic Interference; Linguistic subjects; Linguistics; Lingvistik; Lingvistikämnen; Multilingualism; Oral Language; Prediction; Production and comprehension processes; Psycholinguistics; Psychology of language; Second Language Learning; Semantics; Spanish; Speech Production; Språkvetenskap; Swedish; third language acquisition; Third Language Learning; Tvåspråkighet; tvåspråkighetsforskning; French as third language; Psycholinguistics; Second language acquisition
• ISSN: 0019-042X; 1613-4141; 1613-4141
• DOI: 10.1515/iral.2010.007

The present study investigates lexical inter- and intralingual influences in the oral production of 14 very advanced learners of French L3. Lexical deviances are divided into two main categories: formal influence and meaning-based influence. The results show that, as predicted with respect to advanced learners, meaning-based influence is the most important category, especially semantic extensions. Furthermore, only the languages in which the learners are highly proficient (Swedish L1, English L2 and French L3) are used in cases of meaning-based influence. By contrast, no use is made of closely related languages (Spanish and Italian). These results indicate that the proficiency factor is decisive for lexical inter- and intralingual influences to occur in advanced learners.