The prestigious 'International Journal of Bilingualism' has published an article 'Cross-linguistic influence in the comprehension of reflexive possessive pronouns in L3 and L4 Swedish' authored by Dr Kamil Długosz from the Institute of Applied Linguistics.
- Although this is a relatively new area of research, it is safe to say that we know a lot about how already acquired languages, i.e. the mother tongue and foreign languages, influence the learning of grammar in the following foreign language. However, the impact on the production and understanding of grammar remains a mystery. The study presented in the article concentrates on the process of understanding a specific grammatical phenomenon, namely possessive pronouns, in Swedish as a third and fourth foreign language, says the study's author.
- It turns out that the mother tongue and the foreign languages already acquired influence this process differently. The mother tongue seems to have a more direct influence, which involves the subconscious activation of processing mechanisms, while the foreign language has a more indirect influence, which becomes apparent in increased sensitivity to errors. Notably, the results also indicate an advantage for quadrilinguals over trilinguals, which, however, entails some costs, probably related to a different allocation of processing resources," - explains Dr Kamil Długosz.
The research was conducted as part of a scientific project funded by the National Science Centre in the Prelude 17 competition ('Cross-language influences in real-time processing of third language grammatical type').
photo: private archive
