Cross-linguistic influence and acceptability judgments of L2 and L1 collocations: A study of advanced Polish learners of English

The paper presents an investigation of the extent and nature of cross-linguistic influence on both L2 and L1 phraseological competence of advanced Polish learners of English. We review relevant research studies, which describe various types of collocational deviation from native speaker norms in the language production of advanced learners, and indicate that the collocational choices of learners may be affected by their L1, which results either in incorrect collocations, or in patterns of underuse or overuse. We administered two acceptability judgment tests to 91 Polish advanced learners of English, aged 20–22. The collocations used in the test could be classified with respect to two criteria: firstly, they were either typical or unusual collocations; secondly, they were either congruent with their L1 or L2 equivalents or not. Despite the fact that there is both empirical and theoretical support for the idea that learners may show a preference for those L2 collocations which are congruent with L1, our findings do not support this hypothesis. There is no obvious pattern of cross-linguistic influence emerging from the data. The results of this study seem to give the picture of advanced learners who function in their L2 independently of the L1.