The Influence Of Learning A Second Language In The Oral Production Of The Mother Tongue

Laura Sofia Delgado Muñoz
Yirley Andrea Quirama Cano
* Title: The Influence of Learning a Second Language in the Oral Production of the Mother Tongue
* Question: how do Spanish speakers modify the phonological values of /f -v-ʃ/ when learning English as a second language at the University of Quindío?
* Objectives
General objective: analyze the phonological influence of /f-v-ʃ/sounds in the oral production of Spanish speakers at the University of Quindío.
Specific objectives
* Establish the influence of learning English as a second language within the oral production of Spanish speakers at the University of Quindío.
* Identify the phonological transferences made by Spanish speakers referring to the /f-v-ʃ/ sounds.
* Identify the causes by which Spanishspeakers make the phonological transfer with the /f-v-ʃ/ sounds.
* Find the phonological values of /f-v-ʃ/ sounds in English compared to their equivalent sounds in Spanish.
* Context
Due to the big influence that causes the mother tongue within the acquisition of a second language, there have taken place some studies which were pioneered by Haugen in 1950 with his work “The Analysis ofLinguistic Borrowing and Problems of Bilingualism”, which at the same time let some studies such as: “Interference of First Language in the Acquisition of Second Language” by Sinha, Banerjee and Kumar (2009) and “The Role of First Language Transfer and Second Language Proficiency in the Writing of Chinese Learners of English as a Second Language” by Jyun-Gwang Chen (1999); directed particularly to thisphenomenon, the influence of L1 in L2. That is why most of the works pay attention to how the first language or mother tongue affects the second language either in positive ways (transfer) or negative ways (interference). Nevertheless and even when some experts as Cenoz et al. (2001) and Serrano and Howard (2003) have addressed the huge importance of the impact that has the opposite phenomenon,that is to say the influence of learning a second language in loosing some phonological, semantic, syntactical, and others aspects of the mother tongue; there only exist few studies addressing this problem; for example: “Second Language Acquisition and First Phonological Modification” Lord, (2008), “When Learning a Second Language Means Losing the First” Fillmore, (1991), “On the Automatic LearningAbility of Spanish Learners under the Perspective of English- Spanish Language Transfer” Yuan (2011), “Mother Tongue Maintenance and Second Language Sustenance: A Two-Way Language Teaching Method” Al-Harbi, (2010), among others. As a result, in recent years there have emerged some theories on language transfer, interference and cross linguistic influence that seem to give an explanation or evenan overview of what occurs with the influence of the second language on the first language, specifically its phonological influence what is exactly what we are going to address in this paper.
First of all, it is necessary to refer to one aspect that contextualizes why and what happens with the influence of the second language within the mother tongue. That term is “transfer”, which throughoutseveral years of study some experts have attempt to define since it is a phenomenon that in some way explains in a huge part what occurs with the second language influencing the mother tongue. In linguistics this term refers to the influences of characteristics of the mother tongue upon acquisition of a foreign language, which have both positive influences, if the two languages are similar; andnegative influences (interference) when the languages have different systems. According to Buβmann Hadumod (2003), transfer is “a psychological term that characterizes facilitation to or influences of a behavioral pattern that has already been acquired upon a behavioral pattern that is going to be acquired”. Besides, Ellis (1985) described “transfer” as a kind of hypothesis in which he argues that...