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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH
Hungarian English Loan translation
íróasztal desk "writing table
mentőautó ambulance *ambulance-car
köszen coal *stone coal
(Heltai 2012)
It is easy to see that in the area of compounds Hungarian learners are influenced
by their mother tongue: Hungarian has a large number of compounds, which
often correspond to monomorphemic English words. So Hungarian learners
may be assumed to transfer word building patterns into English. Yet, as indi¬
cated at the end of the previous chapter, this is not the whole story.
During the years of behaviourism teaching materials were considered to be the
most important factor in second and foreign language teaching. Subsequent learn¬
ing theories placed the learner at the centre of the learning process and advocated
a multi-factor approach to language learning. In a parallel development there was
a shift of focus from the teaching of languages to the acquisition of languages.
These developments led to the realisation that the difficulties of second
language acquisition (SLA) are determined by several linguistic and non-lin¬
guistic factors, and L1 influence is only one of these factors (Gass 1988, Harley
1995, Swan 1997). The terms Li transfer or L1 interference, implying a direct
connection between L1 form and L2 production and/or acquisition and em¬
phasizing negative transfer, were replaced by the term cross-linguistic influ¬
ences (Sharwood-Smith 1983, Kellerman and Sharwood-Smith 1986).
Proponents of the idea of CLI maintain that errors are due to several factors,
interacting in complex ways with other factors, and cross-linguistic influences
constitute only one group of the factors that influence second language learning
and learners’ communication in L2. Cross-linguistic influences also mean that
interference (negative transfer) is not the only form in which L1 influences L2
learning and production. At present, the established thinking is that linguistic
contrasts do not account for all errors and for all difficulties of learning, but they
do influence L2 acquisition.
2.3 FACTORS INFLUENCING SLA
There are several linguistic and non-linguistic factors influencing SLA:
Linguistic factors
— universal principles of acquisition;
— inherent difficulty of the structures or lexical items to be acquired;
— cognitive complexity;
— L1/L2 contrasts at different levels.
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