Cross Linguistic Influence: The Case of Adjective and Preposition Collocations

Abstract

The impact of previously learned knowledge on newly learned knowledge has long been recognized and named as interference. Interference in language is the influence of a previously learned language on any target language. Named as language transfer, this notion may render the learning process harder for the learners and results in fossilization in some cases. Thus, researchers and language teachers should consider this influence and find ways to repair the damages it might cause. In order to provide the field with a study that analyses the effect of cross-linguistic influence in terms of Turkish EFL learners, this study attempts to pinpoint English adjective-preposition collocation that may induce language transfer by utilizing a test that assesses the aforementioned type of collocation knowledge of 291 Turkish EFL learners. The findings have revealed that; indeed, some collocations result from language transfer and a list that contains transfer inducing collocations have been presented.