Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition.

Transcription

1 Sociolinguistic Studies ISSN: (print) ISSN: (online) Review Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. Scott Jarvis and Aneta Pavlenko (2008) New York and London: Routledge. Pp 287. ISBN Reviewed by Anastassia Zabrodskaja Today monolingualism is often perceived as an unmarked phenomenon that does not require any explanations (see the famous example by Romaine [1995] 2000:1 that a book entitled Monolingualism would appear extremely strange). Continuing the analogy, one can say that approaches to language that ignore language contacts are also viewed as natural and do not require any theoretical or methodological explanations (hence contactlessness of a language is unmarked and contacts are not). Indeed, most linguistic theory presents languages as homogenous and clear-cut entities. However, there is no language that is not affected by contacts, be it to a smaller or greater extent. The expression language contact is somewhat imprecise because it is speakers of different varieties who communicate and not merely language systems. In this respect, Weinreich ([1953] 1966:71) was right in his claim that the bilingual brain is the locus of language contact. By saying this he stressed the cognitive dimension of bilingualism and language contact. Still, despite this early remark, the monolingual native speaker is a default yardstick in many theories and contact-induced language change is considered to be less relevant. From the contact linguistics point of view, however, the sameness of linguistic systems in all speakers in a given speech community is an illusion. As soon as we deal with Affiliation Tallinn University, and University of Tartu, Estonia anastassia.zabrodskaja@gmail.com SOLS VOL , EQUINOX PUBLISHING doi : /sols.v6i3.603

2 604 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES a multilingual speaker, it is not clear what is the mother tongue (see Skutnabb Kangas, 1988:18, 91; 2000:106, 573). Bilingual speakers cognition and linguistic intuition (i.e., judgement on what is acceptable/unacceptable) are different from those of a monolingual speaker. The question of the relevance of contact-induced language change is not new. In the second half of the nineteenth century in the so-called Schuchardt Müller controversy Hugo Schuchardt was ahead of his time, claiming Es gibt keine völlig ungemischte Sprache, There is no completely unmixed language (1884, quoted from Thomason and Kaufman, [1988] 1991:1). Some scholars discarded this idea altogether, while some believed that no language has been influenced by another language to such an extent that this would make genetic classification difficult (or even impossible). Yet some went further and claimed that all languages are creoles. While this claim is not true in its absolute form, certain languages exist that cannot be traced back to a single proto-language because their grammatical systems and their lexicons originate from genetically different sources. To a great extent, Schuchardt was right. Contact-induced language change is as important as internal change. What is more, in some situations it is difficult to distinguish between the two (multiple causation). According to Croft (2000:8), there is no fundamental difference between internally and externally caused changes. We have no reasons to believe that this was different in the past. Another debate concerns the relevance of structural and typological factors on the one hand and of sociolinguistic factors on the other. Based on empirical data, various predictions about borrowability have been made and constraints on contact-induced language change formulated. However, in the light of abundant counterevidence the universality of constraints should be doubted (Clyne, 1987). A look at the history of studies on contact-induced language change so far makes clear that to date researchers use notions such as interference (Weinreich, [1953] 1966), code-copying (Johanson, 2002), cross-linguistic influence (Jarvis, 2002), transfer (Heine and Kuteva, 2005) and convergence (Auer, Hinskens and Kerswill, 2005), but still talk about more or less the same topic how morphosyntactic similarities between the two language systems increase. Of course, I recognize that the terms compared have different terminological capacity but I speak here only about morphosyntactic interference, morphosyntactic transfer, etc. In Weinreich s ([1953] 1966:1) classic book, interference was used meaning: those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language. Transfer is defined by Odlin (1989: 27) as the influence resulting

3 REVIEW: ZABRODSKAJA 605 from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired. Heine and Kuteva (2005:4) speak about contact-induced change as transfer of linguistic material from one language to another that is based on the morphosyntactic equivalence between the model and the replica languages whereas notions of model language and replica language are relative, i.e., a given language can be associated with both roles. One of the main problematic issues I would like to emphasize here is that the linguistically based analysis of the mechanisms of language change is fragmentized because of the different terminology involved. As I have shown earlier, different researchers use various notions claiming that they are more precise. In this respect, Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition is the first general and comprehensive analysis of the crosslinguistic influence (CLI) phenomenon that offers a rich panorama of studies on language use and change and in doing so brings some new methodological perspectives that could unify findings made in the fields of contact linguistics and second language acquisition. The book is divided into seven chapters and is preceded by a Preface which explains the reasons for writing the book, highlights its unique features and situates the main characters of the book. There are extensive name and subject indices following the reference section. Chapter 1, Overview, provides a well-written overview of transfer as a research topic. The authors discuss various phases of transfer research, starting with historical scepticism about the phenomenon and ending up with recent theoretical developments in the field in question. The chapter provides a working definition of transfer and CLI, distinguishes different types of CLI and discusses the similarities and commonalities between them, and why this phenomenon occurs. In Chapter 2, Identifying crosslinguistic influence, the authors begin with the question about the nature of CLI. Referring to CLI at the level of the individual as a psycholinguistic phenomenon, and transfer at the level of society as a societal phenomenon (p. 28), Jarvis and Pavlenko define the primary scope of their work. They attempt to cover various (innovative) methodologies in use today (e.g., the intrasubjective and intersubjective methods). The chapter provides references for each of the methods mentioned not only indicating the strengths and weaknesses of each technique but also pointing out some directions for future investigating methods. Chapter 3, Linguistic transfer, gives an overview of the different types of linguistic transfer, i.e., such types of transfer that are examined primarily in relation to linguistic forms and structures (p. 61). Looking at various stages of this research, Jarvis and Pavlenko describe how linguistic use of one language

4 606 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES may be affected by the other. They subcategorize this dimension into several types: phonological, orthographic, lexical, semantic, morphological, syntactic, discursive, pragmatic and sociolinguistic. With these categories in mind they discuss CLI in the major areas of linguistic and communicative competence. This part gives not only snapshot comparisons from the present research, but charts trends over several decades. Chapter 4, Conceptual transfer, lists commonalities and differences in conceptual categories corresponding to lexical and grammatical categories of the source and recipient languages. When talking about concepts and conceptual categories, the authors follow the tradition in concept research. While the term concepts is connected to mental representations of classes of things, the term categories refers to the classes themselves (Murphy, 2002:5). Chapter 5, Conceptual change, provides a typology of conceptual change in the bilingual mental lexicon aiming at giving some directions for future research. Jarvis and Pavlenko claim that conceptual change can be a modification or transformation in at least one of the three domains: (a) properties, scripts, and mental imagery associated with a particular category; (b) prototypicality of particular category members or properties; (c) knowledge and beliefs about the internal structure of the category (p. 154). The authors discuss such processes as internalization of new concepts, restructuring, convergence, shift and conceptual attrition, viewing them as a logical continuum. What makes Chapters 3 5 highly accessible to those who have had little exposure to the topics at hand are numerous references to previous work and interesting examples. In Chapter 6, Transferability and factors that interact with transfer, factors that affect CLI are discussed. All in all, five categories are represented (p. 175): (a) linguistic and psycholinguistic factors, (b) cognitive, attentional and developmental factors, (c) factors related to cumulative language experience and knowledge, (d) factors related to the learning environment and (e) factors related to language use. Jarvis and Pavlenko provide coverage of one of the most intricate stages in the transfer research transferability. A sharply focused overview of the relevant principles of the nature and occurrence of transfer provides diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives on forward transfer from an L1 to an L2. Chapter 7, Conclusions, is a fundamental summary based on innovative key findings that actually serve as an excellent background for new studies on transfer. The authors also demonstrate how the new knowledge of transfer can be applied in practice.

5 REVIEW: ZABRODSKAJA 607 To conclude, the authors take a clear theoretical orientation, one that sees transfer almost exclusively as a psycholinguistic phenomenon in relation to adult L2 use. Throughout the description and explanation of transfer and CLI, the data presented is interpreted in terms of support for this view. The text covers a vast amount of material in terms of the detail of the research presented and the breadth of the description of cognitive, linguistic, social and situational factors of transfer. Each chapter includes tables which summarize the content or list illustrative examples. A short summary of each chapter also aids in organizing the main points for the reader. The breadth of topics on transfer covered by the authors along with the extensive references to literature on transfer and CLI research makes this volume an essential resource for any level of researcher working on or student interested in transfer processes. References Auer, P., Hinskens, P. and Kerswill, P. (eds) (2005) Dialect change: convergence and divergence in European languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CBO Clyne, M. (1987) Constraints on code switching: how universal are they? Linguistics 25: Croft, W. (2000) Explaining language change: an evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman Linguistic Library. Heine, B. and Kuteva, T. (2005) Language contact and grammatical change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johanson, L. (2002) Structural factors in Turkic language contacts. Richmond, Surrey: Cruzon Press. Murphy, G. (2002) The big book of concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Odlin, T. (1989) Language transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Romaine, S. ([1995] 2000) Bilingualism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988) Bilingualism or not: the education of minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000) Linguistic genocide in education or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Thomason, S. G. and Kaufman, T. ([1988] 1991) Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weinreich, U. ([1953] 1966) Languages in contact. London and Paris: Mouton.