Linguistic distance and crosslinguistic influence
Commentary
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11656045 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L White (0000-0003-4694-5950, McGill University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 365-371 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-11 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Second language Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0267-6583 • E-ISSN: 1477-0326 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/02676583251393995 |
| OpenAlex | W4416102852 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 19 |
This commentary addresses three issues that arise in the context of linguistic distance and crosslinguistic differences, namely how linguistic distance is defined, how linguistic distance translates into linguistic knowledge, and what the relationship is between linguistic distance and crosslinguistic influence. As far as distance is concerned, articles in this issue differ as to whether they adopt external or internal measures of language distance, raising the question of how externally defined language relatedness translates into the internalized grammar of an individual learner. As for crosslinguistic differences, there is an assumption in some of the articles that the more different/typologically apart the languages are, the harder the second language (L2) will be to acquire and the greater the prospect of first language (L1) transfer. In contrast, several articles show that typological closeness does not necessarily facilitate acquisition, while distance does not impede it. Discrepancies and commonalities between the various approaches are discussed
Closeness · Construal level theory · Context (archaeology · Grammar · Indo-European languages · Language transfer · Linguistic description · Pragmatics · Raising (metalworking · Categorization, perception, and language · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Second Language Acquisition and Learning
A First Language
Linguistic and cognitive motivations for the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) of third language (L3) transfer
Second Language Instruction Does Make a Difference
Gradual development of L2 phrase structure
Microvariation in multilingual situations
Grammatical restructuring in L3 development
Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition
Investigating crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in L3 morphosyntax through artificial languages
The influence of L1 typology on the acquisition of the L2 English article
Sensitivity to missing plural marking in L2 English
Restructuring vs. development
Linguistic distance effects on country Toefl scores between 2005 and 2020 and the effect of morphological distance in particular
L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model
L3 syntactic transfer selectivity and typological determinacy
Implicational universals as predictors of language acquisition
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |