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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH
changed now.) In polysemous words the basic or central meaning is unmarked,
and transferred meanings are marked: Dutch learners of English will be more
inclined to transfer the Dutch verb breken into English and use break in mean¬
ings where they feel it has its core, physical meaning than in transferred, idi¬
omatic meanings that they judge to be native-language-specific (Kellerman
1978). Applying this to Hungarian, we may expect Hungarian learners to be
ready to use break in the meanings exemplified by eltöri a szeket, eltöri a lábát,
eltöri, megtöri a csendet, megtöri a jeget, but less ready to use break in the
meaning utat tör, töri a fejét, töri a németet, eltöri a labdát.
Hungarian learners beyond the elementary level will tend to see English as
relatively distant from Hungarian and German as closer to Hungarian. As a
result, they will be more cautious in transferring word building patterns into
English than into German.
Transferability can also be studied in collocations, cognate and compound
words. Judged by the number of unnecessarily used definite articles by Hun¬
garian learners of English, (the) transferability of the definite article a/az seems
to be high. It should be noted, though, that transferability is subject to indi¬
vidual variability and stage of learning: some people are much more likely to
transfer patterns and items from L1 to L2 than others.
When learners judge the transferability of an element or pattern to be low,
the strategy of avoidance may occur (see below), particularly with risk-averse
personalities.
2.4.3.1 Deceptive transferability
Negative transfer may occur when learners are mistaken in their judgement
of transferability, i.e. when a structure or item they judge as unmarked proves
to be marked. We may call this deceptive unmarkedness or deceptive transfer¬
ability. In the case of lexis, deceptive transferability seems to be at its highest
where an L1 item is unmarked and is in agreement with universal principles
of lexical acquisition, such as transparency, simplicity and productivity (Clark
1993). Thus, for instance, transfer based on deceptive transferability is likely
in the following cases (Heltai 2012):
— transfer of meanings of polysemous words that are very close to the cen¬
tral meaning;
— transfer of unmarked collocations;
— transfer of cognates;
— transfer of word building patterns, e.g. loan translation of transparent
compounds.
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