Sources of Lexical Cross-linguistic Influence in English L3 Production

Abstract

This study investigates lexical errors in English production by third-year university students, exploring their types, frequencies, and sources of Cross-Linguistic Influence (CLI). Content Analysis was utilized to systematically evaluate written and spoken English samples, facilitating the identification and categorization of lexical errors. James' Taxonomy (1998) was employed as the framework to classify errors into formal and semantic types, enabling a nuanced comprehension of error patterns. Employing Content Analysis and James' Taxonomy (1998), prevalent errors including overinclusion, omission, and calque were identified in both written and spoken forms. The impact of CLI was traced to the students' native languages, Moroccan Arabic/Amazigh L1 and French/Standard Arabic L2. Results illustrated that a substantial proportion of errors classified under the distortion category (overinclusion, omission, misselection) and one within the misformation category (calque) originated from L1 Moroccan Arabic/Amazigh, while overinclusion, misselection, and lexical borrowing errors were attributable to L2 French. The study encountered challenges arising from intertwined language sources and structural similarities between English and French. These results have interesting implications for English vocabulary learning and teaching in Morocco.