A modular representation of interlingual errors: the causes of crosslinguistic influence

Abstract EN

The influence of the mother tongue on the processing and production of the target language has spilled a lot of ink inasmuch as it represents the epitome of multi-linguistic competence.

understanding the niceties of such influence helps provide a learned account of the generative and cognitive features of second language learning and sketch a more adequate model for the mental representation of two languages in the mind of a multilingual.

the present study has the goal of providing an exhaustive theoretical discussion of interlingual errors resulting from the interplay between the learners’ knowledge of their mother tongue and the newly lateralized forms of the target language.

the study shows that while there seems to be a lack of scholarly consensus with regard to the modularity of the second language acquisition, there seems to be an accord with regard to the factors that cause the surfacing of interlingually-induced production errors.

the recognition of learner-related and language-related causes of errors help sketch more descriptive theoretical models that serve as a purveyor for prescriptive language pedagogy plans.