Cognitive Studies On Language Transfer In Syntax

Language transfer has always been a central concern in the study of second language acquisition, and pedagogy. Recently with the development of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics, mother tongue influence on L2 is re-assessed from new perspectives. The study of language transfer can be studied within many disciplines, for instance, pragmatics, linguistics, sociology, psychology and so on. The writer of this thesis only chooses linguistic property, specifically syntax, as focus. The writer proposes her own theoretical framework using the theories of prototypicality, psychotypology, and markedness theory. Questionnaire, language database, and interview were used to verify the hypotheses proposed in the theoretical framework. From these studies the writer drew the conclusions: 1) mother tongue does influence the second language acquisition; and 2) prototypicality, psychotypology and markedness have the predicative power on language transfer. The study of language transfer offers important pedagogical implications, which is part of the aim of this thesis: 1) by contrastive analysis between L1 and L2, the similarities and differences will be summarized which will predict learners' possible errors; and 2) teaching will become more effective through a consideration of language transfer.