cross-language influence, transfer, immersion, morpho-syntax, lexicon

Tamar Degani, University of Haifa
Anat Prior, University of Haifa
Zofia Wodniecka, Jagiellonian University Kraków

Cross-language influence (CLI), also termed transfer, has been demonstrated to affect language learning and processing in bi- and multilinguals. Rather than merely documenting the presence of such CLI, the current thematic session aims to explore various factors that might modulate the degree and nature of CLI, namely under what circumstances and for which learners and speakers CLI might be more or less evident. Across various levels of investigation, including words, multi-word units, and morpho-syntax the research in this thematic session documents modulations of CLI. The modulating factors may take several forms. First, the studies highlight how speakers’ characteristics, including age, proficiency, language dominance, and the language context (immersion) in which speakers interact, affect the degree of susceptibility to CLI. Second, individual differences in domain general cognitive abilities (e.g., phonological and working memory) modulate the degree of CLI evident in learning and processing. Further, characteristics of the languages involved (both the known and the to-be learned language), such as typological similarity, are investigated. Finally, the modality of language use (production vs. comprehension) as well as the scope at which linguistic performance is evaluated (words in isolation vs. contextualized sentences) emerge as important modulating factors. The studies included in this thematic session provide converging evidence to the important role of CLI in multilingual behavior, across a wide range of experimental paradigms and measures. Behavioral reaction time and accuracy measures, along with ERPs, eye-tracking, and narrative analyses are uniquely integrated in a single thematic session. Further, by bringing together interdisciplinary research tapping research from children in the classroom to controlled laboratory experimental manipulations, the proposed thematic session provides the grounds for deep and thorough discussions of the underlying mechanisms at play. Across studies, the proposed thematic session provides a window into the complex interactions among the different languages of multilingual speakers, and highlights the need for a multi-dimensional characterization of multilingual behavior. Given the central importance of CLI in determining multilingual performance, a deeper understanding of its modulators will undoubtedly lead to fascinating theoretical and practical advances. The proposed thematic session includes 17 individual submissions from researchers all over the world. Their contributions are organized into 6 sessions of 90 minutes each, focusing on particular aspects of the central questions. Thus, 5 sessions include 3 talks each (20 minutes+5 minutes for questions, with a 15 minute general discussion), and a final session which includes 2 additional talks providing theoretical insight, and an integrative panel discussion. The description of each of these sessions, along with the abstracts of the proposed contributions, are presented below.

Presentations: