Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 07:13:12 -0500 From: "Dennis R. Preston" Subject: Re: 'going to' Ron's observations have been more carefully studied in recent research (showing the influence of 2nd languages on 3rd, 3rd on 2nd, and the like). One of our grad students here at MSU is working on the interfernece of English on the acquisition of Japanese by Korean and Chinese learners. She has shown that errors in Japanese (in modification, negation, and some other areas) made by Chinese and Korean learners reflect English (rather than L1) patterns. Anecdotally, I remember once I was in Germany after a pretty intensive Polish-learning experience (in Poland). I met a colleague who introduced me to a Spanish-speaking colleague of his and suggested that we speak Spanish to each other. I'm sure that my memory of the moment attributes more than actually happened, but I recall a great struggle with what I thought was am pretty well-entrenched language, and the new Polish stuff slipped in all over the place. The other interesting thing I recall about this was that the interferences were all pretty much at structure-word (prepositions, etc...) levels, not content. Your brain sure is a funny place. (Not yours in particular, Ron.) Dennis >I've been meaning to write and thank you for your kind correction to my >French grammar, but I wanted to try to figure out first why I wrote what I >wrote (i.e., "Je vais a' laver mes chats" and "Je vais a' me laver les >mains," neither of which should have "a'"). Obviously, interference from >English "I am going to wash my hands," etc., would lead the native speaker of >English to assume that French also had the 'to' morpheme. However, I learned >my French entirely from books, so I suspect that at least at one time I knew >that in French one says "Je vais + INF" and not *"Je vais a' +INF". I think >that what happened is that Spanish interferred--in Spanish one says, "Voy a >estudiar"; I learned what Spanish I know years AFTER I learned French. I >believe that the Spanish interferred more than the English! Dennis R. Preston Department of Linguistics and Languages Michigan State University East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu Office: (517)432-1235 Fax: (517)432-2736