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Article published In:
Conceptual transfer, (re)conceptualisation and other cognitive aspects of crosslinguistic influence in L2 acquisition
Edited by Cecilia Gunnarsson-Largy
[Language, Interaction and Acquisition 14:1] 2023
► pp. 75–105

Crosslinguistic differences in initial word recognition

A comparative study of French learners of Polish and Arabic

ORCID logo | Université Paris 8
 | Université Paris 8
 | The American University of Paris
 | Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
The present article addresses the extent to which learners’ mental representations, in particular the phonological and lexical representations of learners’ background languages, influence their ability to perceive and extract linguistic units from a novel speech stream. In the study, native speakers of French were exposed to an unfamiliar language, either Polish or Modern Standard Arabic. A word recognition test taken at first exposure revealed important differences in how French speakers/listeners extract words from the Polish or Arabic speech stream, suggesting that source language representations work differently depending on the specificities of the target language. In addition to providing insights into the effects of source and target language properties on speech perception, these results contribute to on-going discussions about what constitutes crosslinguistic influence and conceptual transfer in second language acquisition research.
Keywords: phonological representation, crosslinguistic influence, speech perception, conceptual transfer, L2 Arabic, L2 Polish, L2 input, first exposure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background and previous studies
    • 2.1Conceptual transfer and crosslinguistic influence
    • 2.2Phonological representations
    • 2.3The role of lexical transparency in word recognition
    • 2.4Phonological features of SL French and TLs Polish and Arabic
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1The participants
    • 3.2The experimental procedure
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Overall score
    • 4.2Transparency score
    • 4.3Crosslinguistic differences
      • 4.3.1Category 1
      • 4.3.2Category 2
      • 4.3.3Category 3
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Transparency
    • 5.2Vocalic and consonantal systems
    • 5.3Syllabic structure and phoneme combination
    • 5.4Environment of the target word in the sentence
    • 5.5Summary and future research
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.22017.maj
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