"interlanguage" and "Interference"

[Ever Student]

Hi,
What's difference between "Interlanguage" errors and "Interference"?

Thanks for your help.

[sajacas]

This is what I think. (I am just doing pre-course reading for the DELTA so this might not be right.)
Interlanguage errors are developmental errors that learners make as they learn and adapt to rules in both L1 and in L2. So a (native speaker) child will learn ‘he went’, ‘he came’ but then learn the add –ed rule and start saying ‘he goed’, ‘he comed’. So the L1 child will go from right, to over correcting or misapplying a rule, and then back to correct again. Researchers say that L2 learners do exactly the same thing and call these interlanguage errors, (inter-nal language acquisition errors).
Interference is where the L2 learner takes a rule from L1 and applies it wrongly to L2. So a German and an English child will both make the above interlanguage errors when speaking/learning to speak English about forming past simple. But the German child will take the rule for making German past simple, which is have and past participle, and say ‘I have come’ when they mean ‘I came’. The English child, not knowing German, doesn’t have this interference.
So interlanguage errors affect ALL speakers, native and non-native and deal with the internal development of language awareness. Interference can only affect students who have another set of rules, so a German student learning English. Or an English student learning French and German at the same time and using German rules to talk French. Or English rules to talk German, which would be L1 interference.

[Ever Student]

Hello,
Thank you for you describing. However, I have a question here. According to you interlanguage errors are commited in one language either for the child in L1 or for foriegner in L2. Now, this explanation is close to "Overgeneralization" so what difference between "overgeneralization" and "interlanguage errors"??????

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by taghavi

Hello,
Thank you for you describing. However, I have a question here. According to you interlanguage errors are commited in one language either for the child in L1 or for foriegner in L2. Now, this explanation is close to "Overgeneralization" so what difference between "overgeneralization" and "interlanguage errors"??????

Overgeneralisation is a type of interlanguage error. Not all interlanguage errors are errors of overgeneralisation. Other causes of interlanguage errors, for example, might be 'ignorance of rule restrictions', 'incomplete application of rules'.
These terms are not agreed upon by all SLA linguists, so don't be surprised if you run into some contradictions. My textbook doesn't even distinguish between 'interlingual' and 'intralingual'.*
A clue that overgeneralisation is an interlanguage, or developmental, error is that it occurs in children learning L1, so it can't be a transfer (interference) error; because there is no L0 to transfer from! (At least we haven't discovered an L0, as much as Chomsky might like to believe there is one. )
'Developmental' or 'intralingual' error are better terms than 'interlingual' or 'interlanguage' error for children's language, in my opinion, because they are not inter anything.

* Ellis, R. The Study of Second Language Acquisition, OUP, 1994.

[BobK]

Originally Posted by Raymott

...there is no L0 to transfer from! (At least we haven't discovered an L0, as much as Chomsky might like to believe there is one. )...

A bit harsh, but I laughed . (When I did my first degree in the '70s, Chomsky was the guru du jour; when in doubt, cite Chomsky. Now I'm studying linguistics again, the guru du jour is Halliday. Very confusing.)

[Meanwhile, back at the thread... ]

b

[Ever Student]

Hello,
Thanks, so overgeneralization is a branch of INTERLANGUAGE ERRORS. I fell better.