Errors in Language Learning and Use by Carl James

Author:Carl James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

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I think Senhor is *constipated (√caught a cold ⇐ Portuguese ‘constipado’)

This type of error is common where the MT and the TL are cognate, which is paradoxical: a difficulty is created by interlingual similarity, where one might well expect facilitation to result. Perhaps the similarity is insufficient to be helpful, or is of the wrong type. Another possible key to this enigma might lie in the facilitative effects of such cognates in receptive language use, where context will neutralize any potential semantic misassociations. In fact, a cottage industry has grown up in FL teaching based on false friends and how to avoid them. Too often overlooked in FL learning circles are the benefits bestowed by trusty friends, as Ringbom (1987) has shown. He demonstrates that Swedish-MT Finns learning EL2 have a headstart in their receptive competence over their Finnish-MT compatriots, on account of the facilitation coming from the cognateness of MT Swedish and the English TL, two Germanic languages.

Laufer (1992) shows how the L1 can influence synform difficulty. She compared the synform errors committed by 136 L1 Semitic, 58 L1 Germanic and 69 L1 Romance learners of English as an L2. Her first finding was that these three groups of learners, different only in their L1, showed different frequencies of synform errors overall: Semitic 70 per cent; Germanic 20 per cent; and Romance 10 per cent. In other words, the Romance L1 group was less troubled by synforms in English than the Germanic, which in turn was less confused by synforms than the Semitic. Why should this be? Laufer offers four perceptive explanations:

(i)

Many of the English confusibles involved Latinate words, which Romance L1 speakers would already have distinguished in L1 use: the French imaginative/imaginary = imaginatif/imaginaire.

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