The effect of first language transfer on second language acquisition and learning has been a major theoretical concept in second language research and pedagogy since the 1950s. In order to give a historical perspective, the authors offer a brief presentation of some of the major topics from the broad spectrum of issues that have been examined by…

First language (L1) transfer has been a key issue in the field of applied linguistics, second language acquisition (SLA), and language pedagogy for almost a century. Its importance, however, has been re-evaluated several times within the last few decades. The aim of this paper is to examine current research that has investigated the role of L1…

A study investigated "lexical inventions" in the advanced oral French of 39 native Dutch-speakers, 32 of whom had French as a second language (L2) and English as a third language (L3), with the others having L2 English and L3 French. A higher proportion of lexical inventions produced by French L2 speakers derived from non-standard use of…

This paper reports on a pilot study examining how Chinese-speaking learners of English reset the non-empty topic [-Te] parameter. Whereas Chinese allows empty topics coindexed with variables in both subject and object positions, English does not. With respect to this particular parameter, Chinese can be said to form a superset of English as the…

Papers included in this volume are: "The Muted Voice of Immigrant Workers;""The Situation of Foreign Workers in Sweden"; "Situation of Foreign Workers in the Federal Republic of Germany"; "Teaching German to Immigrant Children"; "Using Language Typology in Contrastive Studies"; "On Determining…