This article addresses an importance issue in multiple language acquisition: what principles exist in the mixing and merging of interlanguages. The authors argue that learners often experience difficulties in keeping languages and interlanguages apart – a key question both for multiple language acquisition and for a cognitive theory of language and mind. They analysed data from a five-year diary study in the learning of German. The findings suggest that there is an ‘interlanguage logic’ in multiple language acquisition.
This paper addresses the following question: in multiple language acquisition, what principles exist in the mixing and merging of interlanguage? It is our premise that difficulties that learners have in keeping languages and interlanguages apart is an interesting and important topic, both for multiple language acquisition and, more generally, for a cognitive theory of language and mind. The data we use are primarily fragments from a five year diary study into the learning of German. We claim that there is an ‘interlanguaging logic’ in multiple language acquisition, where the learner is in a cognitive mode we can call ‘talk foreign’. We end the paper with the claim that in multiple language acquisition, one can see glimpses of the structure of what Weinrich (1953) claims is the basic learning strategy in interlanguage creation: ‘interlanguage identifications).
Selinker, L., & Baumgartner-Cohen, B. (1995). Multiple language acquisition: ‘damn it, why can’t I keep these two languages apart?’. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 8(2), 115-121