# Crosslinguistic influence of the L2 (French) on the L1 (Spanish) : the case of semantic extensions in the L1 of recently immersed late bilinguals in France

Lyanne Ahumada Ebratt, Barbara Köpke

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Lyanne Ahumada Ebratt, Barbara Köpke. Crosslinguistic influence of the L2 (French) on the L1 (Spanish) : the case of semantic extensions in the L1 of recently immersed late bilinguals in France. The First HaBilNet Colloquium, May 2018, La Hulpe, Belgium. hal-02283227

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Submitted on 10 Sep 2019

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UNIVERSITÉ TOULOUSE
Jean Jaurès

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Contact :

lahumada@univ-tlse2.fr

# Crosslinguistic influence of the L2 (French) on the L1 (Spanish): the case of semantic extensions in the L1 of recently immersed L2 late bilinguals in France

Lyanne Ahumada Ebratt & Barbara Köpke

URI Octogone-Lordat, Université de Toulouse, UT2J, Toulouse, France

## BACKGROUND

"Semantic extension (SE) refers to two different types of meaning transfer whose differences are at times very subtle, but which are nevertheless quite important" (Jarvis, 2009:113).

las escaleras corriendo (Spanish) <to ride, to assemble, *to climb

les escaliers en courant (French) <to go up, to climb

He climbed the stairs running (Grosjean & Py, 1991: 42).

L1 semantics extension are produced by late bilinguals (Ahumada, 2016), such changes suggest that the acceptability of L1 structures could be restructured due to increasing L2 usage.

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## RATIONALE

**Given that:**

1) Bilingual's lexical networks differ from monolinguals regarding word frequency (Schmid, 2007; Malt & Sloman, 2003) and activation (Paradis, 2007) suggesting that cognates in L1 and L2 are co-activated.

2) There are differences concerning conceptual representations and words association (Dong, Gui & MacWhinney 2005; Pavlenko, 2009).

**And that the following factors are involved in lexical retrieval:**

1) Words with dense neighborhood are easier retrieved than words with dispersed neighborhood due to multiple accumulated sources of activation (Costa et al., 2006).

2) Independently of the orthographic and phonological intersections between languages morphology plays a role in processing (Frost & Grainger, 2000).

## RESEARCH QUESTION

Is acceptance of SE higher in bilinguals than in monolinguals?
Are semantic extensions due to greater facility of processing, e.g., in lexical access?

Is the process influenced by formal features (at the lexemic level) such as morphological family size and neighborhood density?

## PARTICIPANTS

<table><tr><td>Groups</td><td>19 (50) late</td><td>53 monolinguals</td></tr><tr><td>Languages</td><td>Colombian Spanish, French, English</td><td>Colombian Spanish</td></tr><tr><td>Age</td><td>mean: 28 min:21 max:43</td><td>mean:22 min:20 max:27</td></tr><tr><td>LOR</td><td>4,5 years</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Proficiency</td><td>L1 L2 (B2-C1)</td><td>L1</td></tr></table>

## EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Studying the effects of interlingual neighborhood density and morphological family size will allow us to analyze whether or not formal features are capable of boosting language activation while a semantic extension is produced in L1.

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## EXPERIMENTAL TASK

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Ahumada Ebratt, L. & Köpke, B. (2016). The restructuring competence of L1 in Spanish/ French late bilinguals: the semantic extensions.

Poster presented at Third International Conference on Language Attrition (ICLA3), Colchester (GB), 5-7 July

Costa, A., La Heij, W. & Navarrette, E (2006). The dynamics of bilingual lexical access. Bilingualism: language and cognition 9,137-151.

De Jong, Schreuder & Baayen (2000). The morphological family size effect and morphology. Interfaculty Research Unit for Language and Speech, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. language and cognitive processes, 15 (4/5), 329-365.

Dong, Y., Gui, S. & MacWhinney, B. (2005). Shared and separate meanings in the bilingual mental lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 8, 221-238.

Frost & Jonathan Grainger (2000). Cross-linguistic perspectives on morphological processing: An introduction. language and cognitive processes, 15 (4/5), 321-328

Jarvis, S. (2009). Lexical transfer. In A. Pavlenko, (eds),The bilingual mental lexicon : interdisciplinary approaches (99-124) Bristol :

Multilingual Matters.

Malt, B. C. & Sloman, S. A. (2003). Linguistic diversity and object naming by non-native speakers of English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 47-67.

Paradis, M. (2007). L1 attrition features predicted by a neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism. In B. Köpke, M. S. Schmid, M. Keijker, & S. Dostert (Eds.). Language attrition: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 121-134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pavlenko, A. (2009). Conceptual representation in the bilingual lexicon and second language vocabulary learning. In Pavlenko, A. (Ed.) The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Schmid, M. S. (2007). The role of L1 use for L1 attrition. In B. Köpke, M. S. Schmid, M. Keijzer & S. Dostert (Eds). Language attrition: theoretical perspectives (pp. 135-153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

## PRELIMINARY RESULTS

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Bilinguals</th><th>Monolinguals</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>NA</td><td>18</td><td>18</td></tr><tr><td>Correct</td><td>372</td><td>347</td></tr><tr><td>Synonym</td><td>78</td><td>143</td></tr><tr><td>Semantic related</td><td>44</td><td>41</td></tr><tr><td>Plausible</td><td>17</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>Errors</td><td>3</td><td>8</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><tr><td>Bilinguals</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>SE</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>Switch to French</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>English translation</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>French translation</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Phonological</td><td>2</td></tr></table>

**RT:**

-There are no significant differences between groups.

**Errors:**

- Bilinguals produce some SE as well as switches to French and literal translation words in Spanish.

- Bilinguals produce more synonyms than monolinguals which can be interpreted as a sign of lexical richness.

- Bilinguals produce more target responses than monolinguals who use more paradigmatic plausible alternative responses.