Interlanguage

The term interlanguage (or Interim Language ) is the German equivalent for the English term interlanguage, which was introduced in 1972 by Larry Selinker.

Including language levels are to be understood of a learner that are not yet correspond to a native speaker or near native-speaker competence. Here, learners try through constant testing of hypotheses, the target language to approach more and more. The various interim stages explained mainly by interlingual interference (influence from the mother tongue) and intralingual interference ( overgeneralization of a rule ). The phenomenon of interlanguage plays an important role in the error linguistics.

The interim language is considered a separate language system, which has characteristics of both a mother and a second language, but beyond that also own characteristics, which neither the mother nor occur in the second language.

As a characteristic of the interlanguage apply in linguistics the following features:

• Systematicity
• Transitory, unstable character
• Independence from primary and second language
• Variability
• Permeability
• Variability, such as through well-planned learning and communicating

Selinker (1972 ) mentions the following psycholinguistic processes that may affect the development of an interlanguage:

• Transfer from other languages
• Transfer from the learning environment
• Learning strategies
• Communication strategies
• Overgeneralizations