Negative Transfer of Native Tongue in SLA

【Abstract】People have controversial ideas about the influence of our native language during the process of second language acquisition. The popular belief is that native language（NL） interferes the second language （L2） learning， which is known as negative transfer. Negative transfer is the basic term we need to master in second language acquisition. This paper tries to analyze negative transfer of Chinese from the aspects of lexis，syntax.

【Key words】Negative transfer; Second language

【作者簡介】張力月（1994-），女，河南開封人，天津工業(yè)大學，碩士研究生，研究方向：外語教育。

1. Definition of Negative Transfer

Negative transfer， also known as interference， is the use of a L1 pattern or rule which leads to an error or inappropriate form in the L2. Negative transfer can be found at all the levels of language structure. A speakers foreign accent in L2 learning is an evidence of negative transfer at the phonological level. Morphological negative transfer is common.

2. Negative Transfer of Mother Tongue

2.1.1 lexical Level

1.Redundancy of Nouns A： Peoples living standard in both urban and rural areas continued to rise. B： Living standard in both urban and rural areas continued to rise. Living standard refers only to people. There is no living standard for animals or any other things. Plain English is simple， concise， and vigorous and， above all， clear. We often make English more complicated and ambiguous by using a lot of abstract nouns in sentences.

2.1.2 Redundancy of Modifiers A： Earthquake is a serious natural disaster. B： Earthquake is a disaster. Many adjectives and adverbs that are carried over into translation from Chinese are simply redundant in English. That is to say their sense is already contained or implied in the word they modify or in some other element of the sentence. Including them in English adds nothing but a useless duplication.

2.1.3 Redundancy of Verbs A： We must make an improvement in our work.B： We must improve our work.Most unnecessary verbs occur in phrases. Usually， they are combined with nouns. Here the verb make is a colorless word having no specific meaning of its own， while the real action is expressed in the noun improvement.

2.2 Syntax Level

2.2.1 Order Although traditional grammatical theory concluded English and Chinese as both SVO type of language， careful learner will find out there are large divergence between the two. Almost every English sentence has subject， while nearly half of Chinese sentence are not SVO structure. A： This secret I cannot tell you. （這個秘密我不能給你說。）B： I cannot tell you this secret.In Chinese this sentence seems to have to two subjects this secret and I. actually， I is the only subject， and secret is the theme of the sentence. If we translated it into English， the order should be changed， or it cannot obey the rule of English syntax.

2.2.2 Cohesion Halliday divides cohesion into five types： reference， ellipsis， substitution， conjunction and lexical cohesion. On the level of syntax， I just want to discuss “reference”.Reference includes personal reference and demonstrative reference.A： Wash hands before have dinner. B： Wash your hands before you have dinner.In the Chinese language， we can express one motion without a possessive pronouns， such as， “洗臉，做作業(yè)” etc. But in English， you should use pronouns. Thats the difference.

3. Conclusion

It is a fact that language transfer exists at all the levels of language structure. However， in this thesis， transfer phenomena have only been presented at the level of lexis and syntax. From the analysis， we have found that the mechanism of L1s function in SLA is very complicated. There seldom exists pure positive or negative transfer in the process. In most cases they merge into one another， forming a cross cause-effect association. Specific conditions are the chief reason deciding the ratio of positive to negative transfer. We would not be able to exploit fully its positive side unless we pursue a profound study in language comparison and mechanism of transfer. We are sure that more examples will be found to show that L1 promotes L2 acquisition.

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