First and Second Language Transfer in Korean Lexical Production of Chinese-English-Korean Trilinguals

Abstract

This study employs the comparative-inductive method prevalent in research on cross-linguistic transfer within multilingual production. Taking Chinese, English and Japanese writing samples collected from nine student participants as research data, it conducts cross-text comparisons to investigate lexical errors in tri-lingual Japanese writing and clarify core issues including the sources and frequency distribution of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) transfer. The results demonstrate that content words yield a higher overall error rate than function words. Statistically significant differences exist in error rates among subcategories of content words (namely nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), whereas no significant differences are detected within the category of function words, which consist of auxiliary verbs, particles and other function-word items. From an individual learner perspective, both L1 and L2 transfer exhibit considerable individual variability in the use of either content or function words, with far more prominent divergence observed in content word usage. On the whole, content words involve a higher proportion of cross-linguistic transfer than function words, and instances of L1 transfer appear substantially more fre-quently than those of L2 transfer