The category of instrumentality in french interlanguage of multiligual students

Abstract

The interlanguage of artificial multilinguals experiences the influence of their native language and first foreign language both at deep and superficial levels. This article attempts to describe the impact of Russian and English on the instrumental meaning expression in French interlanguage. The research is based on the experiment which involved students of MGIMO university learning French as a second foreign language after English. The functional and semantic field of instrumentality in Russian is monocentric and its nucleus is formed by the instrumental case. In English the same field has two prepositions as its core: with and by. The experiment results have led the authors to the conclusion that native language dominates language mentality at the deep level. The fact that such meanings as “instrument”, “means”, “way of doing” have weak differentiation in Russian results in non-differentiation of those meanings in French interlanguage. The interfering influence of the English language is observed at the superficial level as it affects the choice of a relation marker. Multilingual students would try to find equivalent markers in two languages and then to absolutize this equivalence. While there is no difference in native language, first foreign language becomes a basis for differentiation. The tendency to an explicit way of expressing relations (characteristic of any interlanguage) increases the importance of certain markers, for example, the preposition par, which is perceived by multilingual students as a full equivalent of Russian instrumental case and the best way to express instrumental meaning.