Questions of Language Processing and Language Awareness, as Exemplified by German as the L2, English as the L3 and Swedish as the L4 of Polish Students of German Philology Cover Image

Fragen der Sprachverarbeitung und des Sprachbewusstseins am Beispiel des Deutschen als L2, des Englischen als L3 und des Schwedischen als L4 polnischer Germanistikstudenten
Questions of Language Processing and Language Awareness, as Exemplified by German as the L2, English as the L3 and Swedish as the L4 of Polish Students of German Philology

Author(s): Teresa Maria Włosowicz
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Comparative Linguistics, Western Slavic Languages, Baltic Languages, Philology, Translation Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
Keywords: multilingualism; language processing; cross-linguistic and intralingual interaction; language awareness

Summary/Abstract: The study aims to investigate the processing of four simultaneously activated languages, that is, Polish as L1, German as L2, English as L3 and Swedish as L4, in written L4 production. Errors which can be attributed to negative transfer and interference, as well as the participants’ ability to exploit the similarities between the languages, which reflects their language awareness, are analysed here. As the results show, all the four languages are indeed activated and participate in the processing, but at the same time a lot of intralingual interaction between Swedish words and structures can be observed, and despite the language distance, the native language also remains an important source of transfer and interference.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 27
  • Page Range: 221-241
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: German