Ollscoil na hÉireann, Corcaigh

National University of Ireland, Cork

CONCEPTUAL TRANSFER: THE INTERFERENCE OF

VIETNAMESE L1 IN THE ACQUISITION OF
ENGLISH SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS

Thesis presented by
Thi Huyen Trang, Nguyen, BA.

for the degree of

Master of Applied Linguistics

University College Cork

2020

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CONCEPTUAL TRANSFER: THE INTERFERENCE OF VIETNAMESE L1 IN THE
ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS

A Dissertation
submitted to the School of
Languages, Literatures and Cultures of University College Cork
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of
Master of Applied Linguistics
By
Thi Huyen Trang, Nguyen

Cork, Ireland
September 30th, 2020

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 CONCEPTUAL TRANSFER: THE INTERFERENCE OF VIETNAMESE L1 IN THE
ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS

Thi Huyen Trang, Nguyen

Thesis Supervisor: Martin Howard, Professor

ABSTRACT
Although a large number of linguistic studies have gained more and more deep insights into the
interference influence of the first language on the process of acquiring the second language,
little has been investigated about the phenomenon given rise by languages spoken by a small
portion of the global population. This inspired the research to explore the manifestation of
Vietnamese L1 on English L2 acquisition in terms of spatial prepositions. The interference is
hypothesized to be subjected to conceptual transfer regulated by the L1.

This study was designed to shed light on two main questions. First is the manifestation of
Vietnamese L1 on the acquisition of specific English spatial prepositions. The second question
is to investigate whether the negative transfer arises from the transfer of L1 spatial
conceptualization.

The findings indicated that the transfer errors observed were relevant to the dissimilarities not
only in the syntactic structures between the two languages but also in the spatial
conceptualization. This research identified several key differences between the use of
Vietnamese spatial prepositions and the equivalent prepositions in English, giving rise to the
appearance of transfer errors found in the responses of Vietnamese L1 speakers. Supported by
quantitative evidence collected via a wide range of statistical tests, the data evidence the role of
the spatial conceptualization encoded differently in each of the languages. These deviations in
the preposition use can be attributed to the distinctions in the choice of frames of reference in
terms of spatial relations, including the relationship among the figure, the ground, and the
speaker. The results also provide insight into the perception of spatial dimensions depicted in
Vietnamese L1, which leads to English L2 preposition misuse.

Vietnamese L1 speakers may have difficulties in acquiring English spatial prepositions since
the way they perceive spatial relations is distinct in some aspects. The implications of this study
suggest that L2 preposition instruction should account for the differences in the spatial
conceptualization system. In other words, teaching a foreign language is not only concerned
with introducing its syntactic system, but should also reflect that perspectives are perceived
differently via each language.
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INDEX WORDS: Language transfer, Transfer errors, Interlingual errors, Spatial reference,
Spatial conceptualization, Spatial prepositions.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 2
1.1. An overview of the dissertation ....................................................................................... 2
1.2. Design of the research...................................................................................................... 3
1.3. Organization of the dissertation ....................................................................................... 4
LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................................... 5
2.1. Second language acquisition ............................................................................................ 5
2.1.1. The role of the native language ................................................................................. 5
2.1.2. Second language acquisition and effects of the native language .............................. 6
2.2. Language transfer ............................................................................................................ 9
2.2.1. Transferability and its aspects ................................................................................... 9
2.2.2. Conceptual transfer ................................................................................................. 11
2.2.3. Error analysis........................................................................................................... 12
2.3. Spatial conceptualization transfer .................................................................................. 13
2.3.1. Cross-linguistic differences in spatial representations ............................................ 13
2.3.2. Patterns in the conceptualization of space............................................................... 15
2.3.3. Prepositions in spatial representations .................................................................... 18
2.3.4. English spatial prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘under’ ................................................. 20
2.4. Summary ........................................................................................................................ 21
METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................... 23
3.1. Overview ........................................................................................................................ 23
3.2. Participants..................................................................................................................... 24
3.3. Design of the study ........................................................................................................ 24
3.4. Data collection method .................................................................................................. 25
3.4.1. Vietnamese questionnaire ....................................................................................... 26
3.4.2. English questionnaire .............................................................................................. 27
3.5. Research questions and data analysis procedures .......................................................... 29
3.6. Summary ........................................................................................................................ 30
RESULTS ................................................................................................................................. 32
4.1. Preposition use in Vietnamese from the perspective of spatial conceptualization ........ 32
4.1.1. Spatial prepositions in Vietnamese representation.................................................. 32
4.1.1.1. Preposition ‘dưới’ (under) ............................................................................. 32
4.1.1.2. Preposition ‘trên’ (on) ................................................................................... 34
4.1.1.3. Preposition ‘trong’ (in) .................................................................................. 36
4.1.2. Overall characteristics of the target preposition use in Vietnamese ....................... 38
4.2. Language transfer in English preposition use by Vietnamese L1 speakers ................... 41

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 4.2.1. Types and sub-types of transfer errors .................................................................... 42
4.2.2. Characteristics of transfer errors regarding substitution ......................................... 43
4.2.3. Language transfer in different groups ..................................................................... 48
4.2.4. Transfer errors among the three target prepositions................................................ 49
4.3. Summary ........................................................................................................................ 51
DISCUSSION........................................................................................................................... 53
5.1. Comparisons of the two groups ..................................................................................... 53
5.2. Factors giving rise to conceptual transfer ...................................................................... 56
5.2.1. Vertical relationship ................................................................................................ 56
5.2.2. Dimensional relationship ........................................................................................ 57
5.2.2.1. A platform versus a container ........................................................................ 57
5.2.2.2. A two-dimensional space versus three-dimensional space............................ 58
5.3. Summary ........................................................................................................................ 58
CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................................... 60
6.1. Summary of the findings ................................................................................................ 60
6.2. Limitations of the present study..................................................................................... 61
6.3. Pedagogical implications ............................................................................................... 62
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 63
APPENDIX A. VIETNAMESE QUESTIONNAIRE .............................................................. 63
APPENDIX B. ENGLISH QUESTIONNAIRE ...................................................................... 78

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This is to certify that the work I am submitting is my own and has not been submitted for another
degree, either at University College Cork or elsewhere. All external references and sources are
clearly acknowledged and identified within the contents. I have read and understood the
regulations of University College Cork concerning plagiarism.

1
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. An overview of the dissertation
Grammatical correctness is considered as a measure to evaluate the success of second language
acquisition of each individual. However, the process of acquiring L2 syntax is not undemanding
to every learner but idiosyncratic which depends on their background factors, such as age,
motivation, and linguistic awareness (Gardner, 1968; Schmidt, 1993; Schumann, 1975).
Especially, perceiving new concepts in L2 that are dissimilar to those regulated in L1 gives rise
to challenges for learners. As an instinct, when confronting unusual linguistic contexts, L2
learners possibly have a tendency to reference their L1 knowledge that has already existed in
their linguistic background to achieve their communication purposes (Odlin, 1989a). This
tendency potentially leads to transfer errors committed in L2 expressions. Interestingly, the
errors reflect not only L1 syntax but also concepts governed by the first language.

Transfer errors relevant to conceptual transfer have been studied to give insights into the
interference of L1 linguistic features in L2 production that reflects L1 conceptual perception
(Odlin, 1996; Zobl, 1980). Arguably, each language contains within itself unwritten rules about
the perception of the worldview, which the speaker receives unconsciously, followed by the
unintentional application of L1 conceptual thinking in L2 use (Jarvis, 2016; Jarvis & Pavlenko,
2008; Odlin, 2005). As a result, the interference of Vietnamese L1 on English L2 acquisition
due to conceptual transfer is not an exception but more of a rule that has been observed in the
case of other languages. Look at the example below.

The artificial intelligence tool automatically translated the sentence “Tôi đang đứng đợi dưới
cổng” (I am waiting at the gate) into “I am waiting under the gate”, which is ill-formed in
English. There is no difficulty in figuring out the error in the translation relevant to the
preposition use that might make English speakers question the rationale behind that particular
choice of words. However, the explanation is simple: the phenomenon just derives from the
nature of the Vietnamese language encoding spatial relations. The same errors are also found
in English expressions produced by Vietnamese L1 speakers who experience a great deal of
difficulties when it comes to English spatial preposition acquisition (Hung, 2017; Trang, 2014).

2
One goal of this dissertation is to clarify such linguistic phenomena which arise in connection
with spatial conceptualization hidden in the first language: Vietnamese. In light of recent
theoretical work on second language competence in terms of conceptual transfer, the interaction
between the spatial conceptualization in L1 and L2 acquisition has been explored in this
research.

1.2. Design of the research

Bearing the research questions in mind, this research is designed to collect two main types of
information, namely the differences of spatial conceptualization between Vietnamese and
English depicted in preposition use, and the manifestation of Vietnamese L1 in the use of L2
English prepositions. The collection of the data aims to shed light on a hypothesis whether the
dissimilarities in spatial conceptualization between the two languages give rise to interference
in the acquisition of spatial knowledge in the second language.

To investigate the data, two types of questionnaires were prepared. Questionnaire 1 measured
how Vietnamese speakers use target spatial prepositions in their L1. Questionnaire 2 measured
to what extent Vietnamese speakers acquired the equivalent prepositions in English. 21
questionnaires were completed by Vietnamese primary school teachers. The collected data
provide crucial background on how the spatial prepositions are used in Vietnamese. Besides
the primary school teachers, another group of 41 participants consisting of two sub-groups,
namely university students and office workers were invited to answer the English questionnaire.
Although the English language proficiency among all participants looked the same on paper,
the distinctive feature separating the groups was their exposure to English. While the student
group has still maintained their English study in a school setting, the other group seems to have
no access to English because the use of English is not essential in their jobs.

The data were subsequently compared and contrasted via statistical tests to give an insight into
the influence of Vietnamese L1 on English L2 acquisition in terms of spatial prepositions. It
should be noted that although this study is originally oriented by error analysis like other studies
which investigated the influence of the first language on L2 acquisition (such as Burhansyah,
2019; Chuang & Nesi, 2006; Pouladian, Bagheri, & Sadighi, 2017; Sawalmeh, 2013;
Watcharapunyawong & Usaha, 2013), this research adjusts some elements in analyzing
language errors to meet the demand of the research questions such as the types of errors and
characteristics of transfer errors, which will be elaborated in-depth in the results chapter.
Moreover, due to the nature of this study, dimensional and spatial illustrations are displayed for
the sake of gaining better insights into this field.

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1.3. Organization of the dissertation
This chapter discusses the linguistic phenomenon underpinning this research as well as an
overview of the research design. The remainder of this dissertation includes five chapters as
follows. Chapter 2 focuses on previous work and study results relevant to the role of the first
language in second language development. In addition, it reviews literature on language transfer
concerning spatial conceptualization that gives rise to challenges for language learners in the
way they use L2 spatial prepositions. After discussing the theoretical perspectives, Chapter 3
sets out the research questions followed by statistical test descriptions and approaches to reach
the goals. The chapter also provides information about the participants as well as tools utilized
to collect the data. Chapter 4 presents the results which then were analyzed in-depth. Chapter 5
continues by offering further interpretations of the results. Finally, Chapter 6 provides a
summary of the whole research along with its implications as well as its limitations.

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 CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Second language acquisition
In the context of the global integration happening worldwide, studies in the field of second
language acquisition (hereinafter called SLA) have attracted more and more interest. The
phenomenon could be explained by a number of factors, perhaps chief among them the fact that
an estimated 1.5 billion people are currently studying English as a second language. Therefore,
elucidating how people acquire non-native languages is an essential step to gain more insights
into the process of second language acquisition. However, there is no solid linguistic theory
able to fully explain the process. As a result, various theories or hypotheses complement each
other in shedding light on this linguistic area.

Although hypothetical clarifications of SLA differ widely, there is a mutual agreement that the
term "second language" could be defined as follows: “L2 refers to two things; first, the study
of individuals or groups who are learning a language ensuing their L1 which they have learned
as children and second, the process of learning that particular language. This additional
language is called L2 albeit it might be the third, fourth, or the eighth language to be acquired”
(Mohamad Nor & Rashid, 2018, p. 161). Nevertheless, the process of SLA varies among
individuals due to learners’ characteristics and learning environments (Lightbown & Spada,
2013, p. 37). The big distinction between learning L1 and L2 is that L2 learners normally have
already mastered at least one native language system. Although it is not obvious as Mehmet
Demirezen’s announcement that “native language growth must pave the way for foreign
language growth”, it is undeniable that advantages as well as disadvantages can arise from this
prior knowledge when studying a second language (Mehmet Demirezen, 1988, p. 135).

2.1.1. The role of the native language

Skeptical linguists who doubt the role of the native language believe that “[i]nterference, or
native to target language transfer, plays such a small role in language learning performance that
no contrastive analysis, no matter how well-conceived, could correlate highly with performance
data, at least on the level of syntax” (Whitman & Jackson, 1972, p. 40). However, since people
learn L2 when they possess one language system already, the behaviorist model proposes that
the process of this habit formation could be influenced by a set of commonly shared language
principles as well as parameters defined by the gap between the native and target languages.
Chomsky (2002) claims that there are particular pieces of grammatical knowledge developing
due to “some pressure internal” activated by “initial cognitive state” in human mind, which
leads to the existence of abstract universal principals as the basis for all languages, but each of
5
them is governed by parameters that makes different languages separate (pp. 6–7). Thus,
likewise progressing a native language, the adult acquisition of a second language is also
dominated by those underlying language principals (Chomsky, 2002, p. 8). Then, when starting
to study a second language, the language state of human mind that already contains an L1
grammar system, has to inherit those principals and parameters to “live alongside” the current
existent syntactic system (Subaşı, 2015, p. 38). For this reason, the role that the first language
may impact the second language improvement should be more appropriately viewed.

According to Corder (1967), errors are pieces of evidence that reflect not only underlying
knowledge but also the process of learning a language in a certain period. Therefore, he claims
that making errors by L2 learners is inevitable because it is “related to the system of his mother-
tongue. These are ascribed to interference from the habits of the mother-tongue” (Corder, 1967,
p. 168). Inspired by this viewpoint, numerous studies were carried out in order to predict the
role of the native language in SLA.

On the one hand, Dulay and Burt (1974) conducted research using the Bilingual Syntax
Measure so as to view the reflection of the native language in the English learning development
of 179 Spanish children. The findings point out that interference-type errors whose utterances
explicitly follow Spanish rules instead of English ones accounted for just 4.7 percent of all
errors. In conclusion, they claim that L1 plays an insignificant role in L2 learning (Dulay &
Burt, 1974, p. 129).

On the other hand, Schachter (1974) presents an investigation of relative clause errors made in
the writings of Persian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese groups. The results reveal that Persian
and Arabic speakers produced utterances using double the total number of relative clauses than
the remaining groups, 328 and 139 utterances respectively. The phenomenon is understandable
because there is a similarity in the production of English relative clauses with Persian and
Arabic, whose clauses also appear to the right of the relative clause head while the opposite
position is true in Chinese and Japanese. Therefore, she argues that the similarity between the
native language (hereinafter called NL) and target language (hereinafter called TL) could
benefit the L2 learning process (Schachter, 1974, p. 210).

2.1.2. Second language acquisition and effects of the native language

According to Skinner (1953), learning a language is compared to a “verbal behavior” that
undergoes a “three-term contingency” (p. 94). First, learners acquire new words through “an
enormous repertoire of responses” appropriate to each specific context. Then, once they speak
the words aloud, “a series of visual stimuli with a series of corresponding vocal responses”

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would be embedded in their minds. Finally, the acquisition of language would be conditioned
when the behaviors are either positively or negatively reinforced (Skinner, 1953, pp. 108–213).
In sum, through behaviorist reinforcement, children can connect words with their meanings
effectively which consequently enhances children’s language development. However, this
process encounters challenges when it comes to learning additional languages.

Experts believe that SLA is facilitated not by “rote memorization” but by “day-to-day
activities”. After a period of repeating new language patterns, learners would become
accustomed to the knowledge that eventually forms a new habit (Powell, Symbaluk, & Honey,
2009, pp. 478–495). Similarly, one of the dominant scientific traditions, behaviorism, argues
that “[l]earning was regarded as a habit formation, the process of making a link between stimuli
and responses. This link, viewed as being instrumental for learning, had to be reinforced,
observed, corrected, and practiced” (Johnson, 2004, p. 10). In other words, to attain the success
of acquiring any linguistic elements, language learners are assumed to visualize and rehearse
the new patterns repeatedly until the usage of this knowledge is deeply embedded in their
conceptions, and learners could utilize the knowledge unconsciously. However, the process of
learning a L2 is not linear like in theory, but subjects to the influence of L1 whose underlying
syntactic rules exist already in a person’s language system.

One of the possible ways that the native language could influence L2 learning is the frequency
of production of particular L2 structures. Kleinmann (1977) investigates four specific
structures, which are predicted to impose difficulties in studying English due to their native
language systems. Strikingly, although all participants knew the structures comprehensively,
there were significant differences found between the Arabic and Spanish-Portuguese groups in
the frequency of using the structures. In Arabic, there is no present progressive tense while the
structure similar to English exists in Spanish. Therefore, the Arabic speakers avoided using the
structures because they found it difficult to produce. In detail, although 69% of the sentences
using the structure made by the Spanish-Portuguese group were incorrect, they still felt at ease
using it (Kleinmann, 1977, p. 100). In sum, it is observed that “the differential behavior between
his groups could not be attributed to a lack of knowledge, but rather to some choice to use or
not to use particular structures to express given concepts” which is related to the NL (Gass &
Selinker, 2008, p. 138).

It is noteworthy that some syntactic forms could be overproduced by a group of the same L1
rather than other language groups. Chinese and Japanese are well-known languages that rely
heavily on the concept of topic. Schachter & Rutherford (1979) analyze English paragraphs

7
written by Chinese and Japanese speakers. The data show that the participants had a tendency
to overuse topic-comment structures (e.g. “As for meat [topic], we don’t eat it anymore
[comment]”). Their hypothesis is that the overproduction illustrates the influence of the first
languages that triggered the demand to use topic–comment type structures to express the
writers’ ideas.

Furthermore, another impact of L1 on L2 is witnessed in differential learning rates. In other

words, the lack of correspondence between the target language and the native language in terms
of specific patterns could be “a factor in preventing learners from moving on to the next
sequential stage” (Gass & Selinker, 2008, p. 140). In Henkes’s study (1974), three children with
different mother tongues: Arabic, French, and Spanish were observed in their acquisition of the
verb "to be" in English. As he claims, the verb “to be” does not exist in Arabic, but that seems
true from a syntactic point of view. However, from a morphological perspective, the verb is
included in the subject that is not used in the same way it is used in English. For instance, the
English sentence "He is an engineer" would be literally rendered as "he engineer" in Arabic. As
a result, while the French and the Spanish children got used to the copula fast, it took the Arabic
child longer to acquire the knowledge to start using it. The absence of the syntactic pattern in
Arabic is assumed to be a factor slowing down the child’s English acquisition.

Not only are the different rates of development influenced, but the native language also affects
the various paths of second language development. In one research, Zobl (1982) investigates
the difference in the acquisition of the English definite article between a Chinese child and a
Spanish one. The evidence shows that the use of the demonstrative “this” embedded in the
Chinese child faster while the article “the” was not retained and changed to “this”. Conversely,
the Spanish-speaking child used both “this” and “the” frequently. The differences between these
two children are explained by the fact that “their native languages lead them down two different
paths: the Chinese child through a stage in which ‘this’ occurs before the definite article, and
the Spanish child to a starting point in which the definite article and the demonstrative 'this' co-
occur” (Gass & Selinker, 2008, p. 142). Other evidence from Wode (1977) reveals a similar
perspective. In the first stage of learning English negation with using the preverbal “no”, there
is no sign of L1 influence collected in the utterances of German children because in German
the negative morpheme also appears after the verb to be. However, the later stage was clearly
influenced when the children needed to place the negative marker after the verb in main clauses
(e.g. “me no close the window”) (Wode, 1981, p. 196). The data show that the children applied
the same structure of their first language to the usage of English.

8
2.2. Language transfer
Eubank & Gregg (1999) state that “the price we pay for successful L1 acquisition is the inability
to acquire an L2”. This sentiment reflects the ideas of scholars who associate L1 influences
with something akin to an obstacle to learning a foreign language. That is why language transfer
is often equated with ‘language interference’ and as the name might suggest, the phenomenon
is considered to be inhibitive to learners’ second language development. In contrast, Kellerman
(1979) claims that “the use of the NL by learners is 'creative'”, a cognitive process which
learners tend to lean on when confronting the incompetence of the target language (pp. 38, 53).
Additionally, apart from being a source to fill L2 knowledge discrepancy, language transfer is
also used as a tool that helps to maintain ongoing communication (Kellerman, 1995, p. 136).

Historically speaking, the term “transfer” was first defined by behaviorist psychologists as “the
automatic, uncontrolled, and subconscious use of past learner behaviors in the attempt to
produce new responses” (Arabski, 2006, p. 12). When it comes to applied linguistics, this term
describes a process in learning additional languages when learners use previous language
knowledge to convey their messages via their new languages. This process resembles the “you-
know-it-when-you-see-it phenomenon” whose expressions are clearly recognized by
researchers but they disagree on defining the term as well as to what extent the native language
influences L2 (Jarvis, 2000, p. 246). In sum, language transfer, also known as “L1 influence”,
“cross-linguistic influence” or “L1 interference”, is used to frame a phenomenon in which
learners apply linguistic features of their previous language(s) to the production of the target
language. Moreover, in the process of achieving target language competence, learners in an
attempt to express their ideas create a structure that could be explained not only by L1
preservation but also by the overgeneralization of L2 structures. Hence, Selinker (1972)
attributes the transfer as a characteristic of “interlanguage”.

2.2.1. Transferability and its aspects

During the last decades, a number of extensive studies have been carried out on language
transfer that explores more various perspectives of this phenomenon. L1 knowledge is known
as the starting point of L2 learning, so as a result, the correlation as well as the distance between
two languages would determine the intensity and type of language transfer. For example, a Pole
might confront more language transfer when studying Russian, a typological close language,
rather than English due to the similarities between Russian and Polish both originating from
Slavic language. In other words, “[l]anguage transfer appears with greater intensity when the
two systems are genetically closer and thus when there are more points of reference for the
transfer to occur” (Leśniewska, 2006, p. 13).
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A classic clarification divides language transfer into two types: positive and negative transfer.
On the one hand, ‘positive transfer’ is considered to be the result of ‘cross-linguistic
similarities’ that brings benefits to learners in several ways. Specifically, in terms of lexicon,
similarities between the native language and target language vocabulary improve reading
comprehension. The closer syntactic systems are, the easier learners could reach grammar
learning completeness. Especially two language systems that share some similar phonetic
identification would eliminate the difficulty of learning pronunciation to achieve near-native
competence (Odlin, 1989b, p. 36).

On the other hand, the instances of ‘negative transfer’ are much more apparent and relatively
easy to identify through research based on analyzing learners’ errors. The expression of this
phenomenon is that learners use old linguistic behaviors to apply in a new learning situation
while the forms of the two languages do not coincide. As mentioned above, Polish learners get
benefits from structural congruence when studying Russian. However, this genetic proximity
also leads to errors such as Poles adding Polish endings to Russian roots, whereas they hardly
ever transfer Polish morphological endings when using English (Leśniewska, 2006, pp. 12–13).

To elaborate on this, Corder (1979) proposes that the greater language distance is, the longer
the learning path traverses between L1 and L2 (p. 28). However, the explanation about
perceived language distance fails to point out other issues such as why idiomatic expressions
are rarely transferred from the native language. Kellerman (1979) suggests that the extent of L1
influence is variable and is dominated by each learner’s perception. Deeply rooted structures in
learners’ own language called ‘markedness’ are less transferable than ‘unmarked’ ones. To
conclude it, he proposes three principal interacting factors that would determine language
transfer which are the psychological structure of the NL, perception of NL-TL distance, and
actual knowledge of the TL (Kellerman, 1979, p. 53).

Strikingly, language transfer is not a linear path but a dynamic one. In one research conducted
on advanced English learners with Japanese as the NL, Zobl (1989) records the effect of reverse
transfer from L2 to L1 which is that the participants overproduced specific English syntactic
structures to fill in the gap of L1 discourse-pragmatic representations. In other words, not only
do L2 learners use their L1 knowledge to produce L2 structures (forward transfer) but they also
used their existing L2 techniques to represent ideas in L1 (reverse transfer) (Ellis, 2015, p. 154).
To fathom the force that shapes language transfer, researchers should go beyond the surface
influence illustrated in external structure comparisons to further investigate the influences of
L1-L2 similarities and differences on learners’ perception.

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2.2.2. Conceptual transfer
As analyzed above, differences, as well as similarities between languages, potentially lead to
language transfer that could impede or facilitate learning foreign languages. The manifestation
of this phenomenon could be seen at any linguistic levels of L2 such as phonology and syntax.
The explanation based on language transfer just elaborates surface features, not underlying
factors. Weinreich (1953) claims that learners just speak either one language or the other at one
time, so there is no connection between the different languages in their minds. However, this
hypothesis is implausible as it fails to explain the differences in word choices between Swedish
and Finnish L1 participants. Specifically, Finns preferred applying the same verb (e.g. crash)
to both human-human and object-object collisions, while Swedes tent to differentiate two
scenarios in words (e.g.*run on and crash). Based on this data, Jarvis points out that the word
choices could be determined by differing conceptual representations due to conceptual
organizations in learners’ minds which are affected by their previous linguistic background
(Jarvis, 2007, p. 49).

Slobin (1996) also argues that “[e]ach native language has trained its speakers to pay different
kinds of attention to events and experiences when talking about them. This training is carried
out in childhood and is exceptionally resistant to restructuring in adult second-language
acquisition” (p. 89). Moreover, the information organization of each language may be framed
in its lexical and syntactic systems, followed by the conceptualization of information impeding
naturally in speakers’ minds (Flecken, Von Stutterheim, & Carroll, 2013, p. 233). Therefore,
second language learners with “a more highly analyzed conception of language”, especially
adults, would build up their representations based on a well-developed L1 analysis as well as a
control mechanism, and ultimately, their L2 implementation includes transitioning from the L1-
based analysis and control (Bialystok, 1994, p. 163).

Conceptual transfer refers to the transfer that originates from conceptual representations that
are then performed through words. For example, L1 Russian-dominant bilinguals have a
tendency to categorize these containers as ‘glasses’ rather than ‘cups’ in English, whereas L2
English-dominant bilinguals prefer labelling the same containers ‘chashki’ (cups) rather than
‘stakany’ (glasses) in Russian (Pavlenko, 2009, p. 132). The shared language preferences
among these groups illustrate the effect of conceptual transfer depending on the language used;
therefore, L2 production might reflect a non-verbal conceptualization that is dominated by the
native language. Jarvis (2011), thus, proposes to distinguish two types of conceptual transfer,
namely the "concept transfer" and the "conceptualization transfer". The cross-linguistic
influences of the former involve the distinction in the arrangement of concepts stored in
11
speakers’ minds whose evidence is shown in tasks such as object naming, categorization, or
linguistic judgments. In contrast, the latter refers to cross-linguistic impacts arising from which
concepts are selected and combined to describe events which lead to specific linguistic
divergences in semantics (Jarvis, 2011, p. 4). A successful L2 learner needs to detect the
divergent pattern of conceptualization between languages to conduct utterances concerning the
selection and organization of content for expression in line with the target language.

2.2.3. Error analysis

It is believed that predicting as well as analyzing errors is crucial to gain insights into complex
factors such as language transfer that affect second language acquisition. Errors reflect not only
the deficiency in language competence but also the complex process of second language
development. However, not all errors are worthy of equal attention as even native speakers still
make lapses in performance which they are aware of and able to self-correct. Therefore, Corder
(1967) proposes to distinguish performance and competence errors, also known as mistakes and
errors. The former refers to errors caused by memory limitations or physical states like tiredness
and fatigue, whereas the latter represents noticeable deviations which are a result of systematic
incompetence revealing the underlying knowledge of learners (Corder, 1967, p. 166).

To gain more knowledge about learners’ errors, the contrastive analysis hypothesis (hereinafter
called CAH) is established as the systematic study of identifying differences and similarities
between the first language and the target language, from which learners’ potential problems can
be predicted and analyzed. The CAH is based on three assumptions: (1) the first language
interferes with second language learning; (2) similarities between L1 and L2 facilitate learning
process while the opposite is true of differences, and (3) by using contrastive analysis, errors
could be predicted and eliminated (Rustipa, 2011, p. 16). However, as analyzed above,
linguistic similarities do not always facilitate but could hinder second language learning like in
the case of Poles studying Russian. The strong version of the CAH has been developed to
predict difficulties relevant to L1 based on contrastive analyses. Although this version is
considered unrealistic and impractical, its contribution to explaining the interference of the
mother tongue that accounts for observable errors is still recognizable. Then, there is a shift
from the prediction focus on the linguistic interference to an explanatory role. The alternative
approach – a weaker version, known as "error analysis", has been used successfully to identify
factors giving rise to existent errors (Joze Tajareh, 2015; Namazian Dost & Bohloulzadeh,
2017).

Three principal sources of errors elaborated by Corder (1975) include:

12
 Language transfer and Interlingual errors are caused by interference from the native
language;
 Intralingual errors that result from the learning process due to the overgeneralization of
learners toward the target language system, also known as developmental errors;
 The transfer of training originates from faulty teaching techniques or materials.

(pp. 207–208)

Furthermore, he also points out the procedure for analyzing errors with clear-cut five stages:
first selecting a corpus of language; next identifying errors in the corpus; then classifying the
errors identified; then finding an explanation of the causes of the errors and finally evaluating
the errors (as cited in Londoño Vásquez, 2008, p. 136).

However, classifying errors is dynamic and mainly depends on researchers themselves. For
example, a classic classification of errors posited by Zobl (1980) consists of two types:
developmental errors and transfer errors that both arise from the processing of properties of L2
input. While the former occurs when learners build up hypotheses based on limited knowledge
about the target language, the latter reflects the structure of L1 (Zobl, 1980, p. 470). Another
classification is to analyze inaccurate linguistic elements like phonology, morphology, syntax,
lexis, and discourse. Regarding surface strategy, Corder (1973) divides errors into four
categories: omission of some required elements; addition of some unnecessary elements;
selection of incorrect elements, and disordering of some elements. Furthermore, errors are also
categorized based on their proximity to other errors. A local error denotes the fault that affects
specific elements in a sentence, whereas global errors affect overall sentence organization, thus
hinder communication (Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982, pp. 191–192)

2.3. Spatial conceptualization transfer

2.3.1. Cross-linguistic differences in spatial representations
Languages vary due to the way they encode information and concepts, which is hypothesized
to result in language transfer. However, the root of the impacts lies not only in the different
linguistic patterns such as phonetics, syntax, or semantics but also in the diverse of
conceptualization encrypted in each language followed by conceptual transfer. When it comes
to spatial expressions, the encoding of spatial concepts differs owing to the usage of three types
of spatial frames of reference (hereinafter called FoR), namely absolute, intrinsic and deictic
frames (Levinson, 2004, Chapter 2; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, pp. 142–145).

13
The differentiation between these three types involves the differentiation in the spatial encoding
process in languages. As the name might suggest, an absolute frame is a binary system that
locates the object in relation to the ground environment like using cardinal directions which is
external to both the speaker and the figure-ground scene. For example, Guugu Yimithirr
speakers (Australia) identify the location of objects with respect to the points of the compass
such as “where’s the salt? … it’s there, to the east” (Foley, 1997, p. 217). Similarly, the intrinsic
frame of reference is also a binary system that uses the facets of the object (e.g. left, right, front,
or back) which are conceptually assigned to frame the location. For example, the saying “the
cat is to the front and to the left of the truck” means that the cat is at the front of the vehicle and
at its left-hand side (Levinson, 2004, p. 42). In contrast, a deictic frame, also known as a relative
frame, is a ternary system in which the location of an object is based on the viewpoint of the
perceiver and the position of another object, e.g. ‘the cat is in the left of the chair’ (Levinson,
2004, p. 45). The connection between the relative frame and intrinsic one is tight because there
is no relative FoR without an intrinsic FoR. Thus saying “The cat is to the left of the truck”
could refer to either two reference viewpoints: only a binary relation between the cat and the
truck or a ternary relation among the cat, the truck, and the speaker himself. Strikingly, there is
a popular misconception that “the fork is in front of me” is a relative FoR because it mentions
the viewpoint of the speaker. However, only a binary relation between myself and the fork is
coded in the expression, thus it still encodes an intrinsic FoR (Majid et al., 2004, p. 109).

There are many languages that use all three types of spatial reference whereas other languages
have restrictions. Strikingly, languages that use all the types still prioritize one type of FoR over
the others. For instance, the use of a deictic frame is dominant in Japanese, Turkish and Dutch
while an absolute frame is favored by speakers of Arrernte (Australia), Hai/om(Namibia),
Tzeltal (Mexico), and Longgu (Solomons) (Majid et al., 2004, p. 109; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008,
p. 142).

The diversity of spatial perception via spatial reference impacts the way an individual perceives
the world around him/her, followed by conceptualization transfer. On one hand, the native
language determines the spatial conceptualization of speakers. According to Bowerman and
Choi (2003), by the age of two or two and a half, English L1 children distinguish locations
involving containment (in), e.g. apples in a bowl and ones involving support (on), e.g. cup on
a table. However, Korean children pay attention to tight fit (e.g. put a book in a bookcase) and
loose fit (e.g. put apples in a bowl) (Bowerman & Choi, 2003, pp. 392–395). Thus, it could be
said that the process of foreign language learning would inherit the spatial concepts embedded
by the native language. As an example, when it comes to learning English, German L1 speakers
14
tend to use a deictic, rather than an intrinsic frame that is more preferred in their L1 (Jarvis &
Pavlenko, 2008, p. 143). It is implausible to say that languages change the way native speakers
see the locations of objects. It, thus, is more reasonable to claim that the diversity in encoding
spatial relations does not prevent language learners from seeing spatial locations from different
viewpoints but navigates them to focus on different specific aspects. For this reason, second
language learning requires “transformation of a conceptual category, rather than simply the
relinking of words and concepts” (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p. 144).

Furthermore, the discrepancy in expressing spatial relations caused by internal category

structures via morphological and syntactic patterns also accounts for cross-linguistic spatial
influences. As an illustration, to describe locations, English and Dutch use prepositions while
Korean has postpositions, and case endings are utilized in Finnish and Hungarian (Jarvis &
Pavlenko, 2008, p. 143). Moreover, even among languages that share similar linguistic systems,
expressing the same spatial relations still requires different linguistic patterns. For instance,
Dutch has three prepositions, namely ‘op’, ‘aan’, and ‘om’ to indicate the English preposition
‘on’ (Bowerman, 1996, p. 152).

2.3.2. Patterns in the conceptualization of space

As mentioned above, spatial concepts with three frames of reference, namely absolute, intrinsic,
and deictic, govern the capacities that learners categorize spatial relations. Talmy (2000)
proposes that spatial scenes are visualized differently in spatial representations due to
parameters that configure the conceptualization of space. Evans and Green (2006), thus, adapt
Talmy’s framework to three fundamentals regulating spatial description, namely figure-ground
segregation, the relative proximity between the figure and the ground, and the location of the
figure with respect to the ground (Evans & Green, 2006, pp. 68–91; Talmy, 2000, Chapter 3).

Figure-ground segregation
The first characteristic that leads to the differentiation in spatial expressions in language is the
relation between the figure and the ground. This connection is asymmetric in which one entity
is given more prominence than the other that mirrors the attention of speakers to specific objects
in spatial scenes. In detail, a figure would be described in relation to a ground, also called a
reference object. This phenomenon reflects the segregation of visual images in spatial
conceptualization whose process is represented via syntactic systems such as in English.

Consider the examples below:

(1) The cat is next to the house.

15
(2) ?[The house] is next to the cat.

Although both sentences above are grammatically well-formed, sentence 2 would be valued by
English speakers as unnatural because it locates the permanently located entity (the house)
according to the movable object (the cat). As the examples might suggest, in general,
nonlinguistic spatial strategies have a set of conceptual codes imbedded in syntactic patterns to
determine the figure-ground relation. Normally the figure is smaller, more moveable, and more
salient, whereas the ground is more located and more independent which plays a role as a
background. As a result, the position of the figure is often framed with respect to the ground
(Evans & Green, 2006, pp. 69–70).

Figure-ground relative proximity

This principle maintains that entities in a scene that are closer together will be grouped together.
The relative proximity between the figure and the ground at a schematic level is encoded into
three possibilities, namely “contact, adjacency or at some distance”.

Consider the examples below:

(3) The poster is on the left-hand side of the building.

(4) The poster is in the left of the building.

(5) The poster is to the left of the building.

First, in example (3), the figure (the poster) has physical contact with the ground (the building)
because it lies on the left-hand side of the building. Apart from having direct physical contact,
the figure can be adjacent to the reference object like in illustration (4) in which the poster is in
close proximity to the referenced building. However, the example in (5) illustrates a further
distance between the two entities in comparison to other descriptions (Evans & Green, 2006,
pp. 65–71). Strikingly, the difference of spatial scenes described in these examples is framed
by syntactic structures, especially the use of prepositions.

Figure-ground location

The position of the figure in spatial scenes is delineated by reference frames that “represent the
means language has at its disposal for using reference objects in order to locate figures” which
is determined by two elements, primary and secondary reference objects (Evans & Green, 2006,
p. 71). The primary reference object is explicitly encoded by lexical terms while the secondary
reference object is often implied. The correlation between the two types of reference objects

16
creates four types of reference frames, namely (1) a ground-based, (2) field-based, (3)
guidepost-based, and (4) projector-based reference frames.

Table 1 below makes a brief comparison to illustrate each of these reference frames. The
illustrations are based on a context in which a speaker is directing a hearer to the grocery store
with a number of ways corresponding to the four reference frames identified.

Table 1 (adapted from Evans & Green, 2006, pp. 71–75)

1 2
ground-based field-based

(1) “The grocery store is next to the office (2) “The grocery store is to the west of
building.” the office building.”
This reference frame that involves only a In example (7), the office building provides
primary reference object (here, the office the frame of reference for locating the figure
building) locates the figure (the grocery store) in relation to an encompassing secondary
based on intrinsic geometry. In other words, reference object, the Earth. This type
the speaker uses an intrinsic front, back, and reminds of Guugu Yimithirr speakers who
sides of the building to describe the store’s use spatial frame of reference based on
location; therefore, this type of reference cardinal points.
frame is ground-based.

17
 3 4
guidepost-based projector-based

(3) “The grocery store is on the tower side (4) “The grocery store is to the left of the
of the office building.” office building.”
Similarly, this reference frame is also certified Likewise, this type of reference frame also
by a secondary reference object, but an involves an external secondary reference
external rather than an encompassing one. In object that is animate (here, the speaker). In
example (8), the tower which is a non-animate example (9), the word ‘left’ refers to the left
entity plays the role of a secondary reference side of the office building from the
object that is external to the primary reference perspective of the speaker whose location
object (the building). Besides, it also serves as a frame of reference with respect
identifies which portion of the building the to the primary reference object to locate the
grocery store is located in. figure.

2.3.3. Prepositions in spatial representations

The location of an object is necessary to be framed in relation to other objects in verbal
descriptions (Schirra, 2012, p. 483). Therefore, the existence of spatial syntax helps to visualize
conceptual relations between objects. However, not all languages use the same syntactic
patterns to reflect the non-verbal spatial conceptualizations. To express the relation, some
languages use prepositions (e.g. English and Dutch) whereas other languages have
postpositions or case suffixes (e.g. Turkish). This discrepancy is claimed to give rise to
hindering effects in foreign language learning progress. For example, Turkish is an
agglutinative language whose case markers are used to reflect spatial scenes. Such syntactic
difference results in the prevalence of preposition omission errors in English representations
produced by Turkish L1 speakers (Antonova Unlu, 2019, p. 16). Strikingly, in Turkish, the case

18
marker ‘-da’ is used equivalently as English prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, or ‘at’. The phenomenon
could explain why the Turkish participants did not show any specific preference between the
prepositions ‘at’ and ‘on’ in their mistaken use of the preposition ‘in’ (Antonova Unlu, 2019,
p. 12).

Although many languages rely on prepositions to depict spatial relations, their spatial syntactic
systems are not homogeneous. For instance, while English has the rigorous regulations of
prepositions, Chinese and Vietnamese do not have clear-cut prepositional classifications. In
English, prepositions are considered as one of four main groups of the lexicon along with nouns,
verbs, and adjectives (Littlefield, 2005, p. 1). Additionally, “[a]bout every eighth word in
contemporary English texts is a preposition” (Mindt & Weber, 1989, p. 229). Meanwhile, some
Chinese prepositions could be classified as a group of coverbs because they could play the role
of prepositions or verbs depending on contexts (Fion, 2005, p. 10).

The use of spatial prepositions plays a crucial role in depicting spatial scenes which are
dominated by spatial conceptualization (Tyler & Evans, 2003). These language-specific
characteristics could be basically divided into two types: those simply locate the position of the
figure according to the ground and the others describe how the figure moves in relation to the
ground (Kracht, n.d.).

Observe the example below

(6) “A mouse emerged from under the table”.

In example 6, the preposition ‘under’ itself is non-directional and serves to identify the location
of the reference point – the table, whereas the preposition ‘from’ takes the preposition phrase
‘under the table’ as its complement to locate the direction of the figure – the mouse (Kracht,
n.d.).

Another classification of spatial prepositions is proposed according to the location that the
entities occupy, namely coincidence and separation.

See the following sentences:

(7) a. “Erika is on the ugly blue carpet.”

b. “Erika is in her bedroom.”

(8) a. “Erika is off the ugly blue carpet.”

b. “Erika is out of her bedroom.”

19
All the prepositions in example (7) illustrate the coincidence relation, whereas those in
illustration (8) exhibit the separation relation. As the name might suggest, the coincidence
relation indicates the location of the objects that occupy the same place in space. In contrast,
in separation relation, there is a spatial gap perceived because the objects occupy two different
physical spaces (Hawkins, 1993, p. 329).

Furthermore, spatial prepositions could be categorized according to their functions: locative

semantic functions (e.g. ‘at’); a starting point (source) (e.g. ‘from’); an intermediate point of
route (path) (e.g. ‘via’); an end-point (e.g. ‘to’); and a direction or an approach (e.g. ‘toward(s)’)
(Mackenzie, 1992, p. 6). This categorization explains why spatial prepositions are not only used
in literally locative descriptions but also utilized in semantic structures like in the example “the
sign to Brussels”. The sign is not assigned a particular location in relation to the space of
Brussels, but the direction of the sign is in respect to the place (Cuyckens, 1993, p. 28).

2.3.4. English spatial prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘under’

To shed light on the characteristics of some spatial prepositions, the preposition ‘on’, one of the
most familiar spatial usages, is analyzed as follows. The preposition ‘on’ denotes physical
contact between the figure and the ground that is conceived either as one-dimensional (a line)
or as 2 dimensional (a surface) (Cuyckens, 1993, p. 30). The relationship between entities, in
this case, is a coincidence, but there must be an attachment than mere coincidence (Rene Dirven,
1993, p. 37). Moreover, the relation between entities framed by the preposition ‘on’ could be
divided into two basic types. First, there is contact and support (e.g. “the mirror on the wall” or
“the book on the table”). In other words, if the ground was not there, the object would fall; thus,
the ground plays the role of a supporting surface. Second, there is contact but not support like
in the examples “a shadow on a wall” or “a blob on a line” (Lindstromberg, 2010, pp. 51–52).

When it comes to preposition ‘under’, the spatial scene suggests that the figure stays lower than
the surface created by the ground. The figure could be relatively close to the ground (e.g. ‘the
fish under the water’) or possibly even touching it (e.g. ‘the pen under the mat’) (Lindstromberg,
2010, p. 157). Prepositions ‘on’ and ‘under’ can sometimes refer to the same physical scene,
but the usage of which preposition depends on speakers’ different perspectives and focus of
interests (Lindstromberg, 2010, p. 58). See the examples below:

(9) The pen is on the book.

(10) The book is under the pen.

20
Speaking of preposition ‘in’, similar to preposition ‘on’, it also stimulates a coincidence
relation. To distinguish the two prepositions, Herskovits (1989) proposes that preposition ‘in’
describes the figure in the interior of the ground like in the example “the bird in the tree”.
Although the bird is not literally in the interior of the tree like in ‘the man in the bathroom’, it
is in the interior that is outlined by the branches of the tree (Herskovits, 1985, pp. 348–349).
However, that is not enough to explain the usage of the preposition ‘in’ in this sentence ‘the
cactus in the desert’. Cuyckens (1993), thus, proposes that the preposition ‘in’ could be used in
circumstances in which the ground creates a boundary that sets the figure off from the rest of
the surrounding area or environment (pp. 50–66). The classification is listed below:

* 3-dimensional physical space (close or open container)

“The vase is in the cupboard.”

* 3-dimensional or 2-dimensional area

“The oasis in the desert”

“Watch out for that curve in the road.”

* 2-dimensional (geographical or geopolitical entities) or 1-dimensional area

“London is in England.”

“a curve in the road”

2.4. Summary
The factor determining the decisive difference between learning a foreign language and
acquiring a native language is that in the case of acquiring the second language, language
learners have already mastered at least one language system, which is able to give rise to
advantages as well as disadvantages in second language development. Although the role of the
first language in SLA still remains controversial, the manifestations of L1's effects have been
identified in numerous studies. First, the similarities of specific syntactic items between the
native language and the target language are able to promote the frequency of L2 production
relevant to the syntactic patterns. Second, the overproduction of particular structures akin to L1
syntax is also found in L2 expressions. Final, paths and rates of development in studying L2
are also differentiated due to the lack of correspondence between the native language and the
second language.

Second language acquisition is believed to develop based on the basis of the native language
unconsciously due to the pre-existence of L1 linguistic knowledge in learners’ minds. Hence,
21
the similarities and differences between L1 and L2 may lead to certain linguistic effects in SLA.
The term ‘language transfer’ is coined to depict the application of a language’s knowledge to
another language production which results in either negative or positive effects. Studies show
that the greater intensity of transfer is found among languages which are genetically closer. On
the one hand, the closer linguistic systems are, the easier learners could attain L2 competence
thanks to that their previous linguistic knowledge aids them in acquiring the similar patterns in
L2. On the other hand, the influence of the native language could lead to systematic errors in
the use of a target language due to the reliance on pre-existent linguistic instinct. Furthermore,
the impact of language transfer is not linear but dynamic, which is elaborated by the influence
of L2 knowledge on L1 expressions.

It is clear that two languages differ not only in syntactic structures but also in the counter-
interactions among concepts, semantics, and words. As a result, cognitive parameters encoded
in L1 could be conveyed to the production of L2 due to the distinction relevant to the
conceptualization of information, which leads to conceptual transfer reflected in linguistic
preferences. The transfer in terms of thinking patterns is also found in spatial expressions which
are hypothesized to appear owing to the usage of three types of spatial frames of reference,
namely absolute, intrinsic, and deictic frames. The diversity of spatial reference frames gives
rise to the differences in spatial perception, followed by distinct linguistic description regarding
spatial relations. Apart from that, morphological and syntactic patterns that are assigned to
depict specific spatial relations are different from one language to the others also account for
the cross-linguistic spatial influences.

Some languages possess the system of postpositions or case endings to denote spatial relations,
whereas other languages use prepositions to do the same function. Even among those languages
that share a similar syntactic system, to describe the same spatial scenes requests different
linguistic expressions, which indicates the variant in spatial conceptualization encoded in
different languages.

As mentioned above, the linguistic background of language learners could hinder the
development of L2 acquisition. Error analysis approach, thus, is utilized to identify the
interference of L1 that triggers systematic errors in the target language and to find a plausible
explanation for the phenomenon.

22
 CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
3.1. Overview
This study has been designed to shed light on the existence of transfer errors which result from
the impact of the first language - Vietnamese - in the process of English language acquisition.
The ultimate goal of this research is to find a plausible explanation of the phenomenon in
relation to spatial conceptualization among the learners as displayed in their language use.

Following the approach of the set goal, this research is navigated by five research questions as
follows:

Question 1: How do Vietnamese speakers perceive the three spatial prepositions in their L1?

Question 2: What are the overall characteristics of spatial preposition use in Vietnamese?

Question 3: To what extent does negative L1 interference influence the acquisition of the target
English spatial prepositions by Vietnamese L1 learners?

Question 4: How does language transfer manifest itself across the different learner groups?

Question 5: Are there any differences in the transfer errors between the three target
prepositions?

To better control for potential factors that might arise, the study focuses on analyzing errors
made by Vietnamese speakers in using purposively chosen English spatial prepositions, namely
‘on’, ‘in’, and ‘under’. The participants are divided into two groups, university students and
office workers who all share a similar level of English competence which is equivalent to B1
according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

The data relating to the use of the specific English prepositions by Vietnamese L1 speakers will
be juxtaposed with the standard of using equivalent Vietnamese prepositions in order to
hypothesize the causes of the language transfer phenomenon. To elicit the Vietnamese
preposition framework, this study collected the information directly from one survey among
Vietnamese primary teachers at a public school in the capital of Vietnam.

This chapter is organized as follows. First, it gives a description of the participant profiles, and
then, the research design will be explained in detail. After that, the design of the questionnaires
which were used to collect the data will be illustrated. Finally, the procedure for data analysis
will be considered.

23
3.2. Participants
To meet the research hypotheses, two types of subjects participated in this study. On the one
hand, to establish the characteristics of the Vietnamese framework of using the Vietnamese
spatial prepositions which are equivalent to the target English prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, and
‘under’, the responses were collected from Vietnamese primary teachers who are seen as the
role models in using standard Vietnamese. They were aged between 23 and 50 years old, with
a mean age of 38 years. Twenty-one teachers participated in this research.

On the other hand, to collect the data on how Vietnamese speakers use the target spatial English
prepositions, this part of the study involves Vietnamese university students and office workers.
Regarding the students, all of them are aged from 18 to 22 years old. They are studying at the
end of their either first, second, or third year as medicine majors in Hanoi. The mean age of this
group is 20 years. Due to the application requirements of their medical courses, all of them had
to pass an English university entrance examination at a B1 level or above. They also study one
English course at university every semester. Twenty-one students voluntarily completed the
questionnaires.

A further group of Vietnamese office workers, aged between 25 and 55 years old, also
participated in this research. The mean of this group age is 42 years. All of them have attained
B1 certification due to the regulations applied to public employees. The total number of
participants in this group is 20.

It should be noted that regarding English proficiency, the two groups share a similar
background. However, due to the nature of their jobs which lacks opportunities for exposure to
English, the working group has basically stopped expanding their English use after achieving
the language certificates. Meanwhile, the student group still has access to learning academic
English in a school setting.

3.3. Design of the study

Language acquisition is often seen as a process rather than a state. For this reason, it seems that
a longitudinal study would be better able to investigate phenomena in this field (Opitz, 2011,
p. 97). Following this line of thinking, Amaro (2012, p. 53) argues that to shed light on language
transfer, a longitudinal design is more valuable because it is able not only to control individual
variation but also to examine the initial stages as well as the development of foreign language
acquisition. Contrary to popular belief, however, a cross-sectional study carries benefits when
it comes to exploring conceptual transfer. First, this is derived from the nature of the volatile
process of spatial conceptualization in human mind which is hard to divide into separate phases

24
(Taylor & Brunyé, 2013, p. 95). Although observing the transformation of the whole conceptual
process is challenging, analyzing its explicit performance in linguistic expressions is achievable
at a specific moment in time such that it is not necessary to rely on a long-term study. Another
advantage of a cross-sectional approach is to allow researchers to access a large amount of
subjects at the same time which benefits generalizing this phenomenon from various
perspectives (Dörnyei, 2007, pp. 88–89).

As mentioned above, the data on Vietnamese speaker use of the target English prepositions
were collected from the two separate groups, which are distinguished mainly based on
differences in when they stopped following English language classes. Taking into consideration
the subtypes of data collection, this research is designed in the form of a survey with a list of
questions that aims at extracting information about English language acquisition among the two
groups in using the three target prepositions. This approach is beneficial to the analytical
process later.

3.4. Data collection method

To achieve the goals of this research, the materials utilized were intended to elicit target
information including the tendencies and preferences of Vietnamese speakers in using the target
Vietnamese and English prepositions in specific contexts. The research, therefore, was designed
in the form of questionnaires that naturally are linguistic tests involving preposition
intensification. The benefits of this tool are confirmed in many kinds of research, especially
within a comparative linguistic fieldwork (Vander Klok & Conners, 2019). However, in order
to create a sense of comfort for participants, the questionnaires were designed on Google Docs
platform which was convenient for the participants to work on with their smartphones whenever
they had a chance.

Using linguistic tests is common in research on language transfer. For example, in one
publication, Leśniewska draws attention to her previous research in 2003. In the study,
participants were requested to complete two paper tests in turn involving adjective
intensification, whose results were used to investigate the cross-linguistic phenomenon of
collocational restrictions on word combinations influencing Polish learners in studying English
at an advanced level (cited in Leśniewska, 2006, Chapter 7). Slightly different from her tests
organized in class settings, this research made use of technology through an online platform.
This not only saved human resources in organizing tests in real time but also benefits the
aggregation of massive data.

25
This research includes two types of questionnaires, corresponding to Vietnamese and English
with details as follows:

3.4.1. Vietnamese questionnaire

Multiple-choice questions are considered to be able to give access to deeper understanding and
thinking as well as cognitive skills (Tractenberg, Gushta, Mulroney, & Weissinger, 2013, p.
959). Via the design of given options, each of which represents a different perception toward
the same question, the multiple-choice test plays as a helpful assessment tool to broadly
evaluate the acknowledgment of participants about the same topic (Xu, Kauer, & Tupy, 2016,
p. 149). To accumulate a comprehensive understanding about preferences in Vietnamese
preposition use, this questionnaire is designed to be a combination of various types of multiple-
choice questions, namely Checkbox Multiple Choice Questions to collect multiple preferable
answers; Single Select Choice Questions, and Yes-No Questions to collect the most
preferences.

This questionnaire consists of five sections with 20 questions that aims at constituting a
database of how Vietnamese speakers use the target prepositions in their first language. The
whole survey was composed in Vietnamese with a parallel English translation for every
sentence. Noticeably, this was designed with a fixed list of answer options which is not only
more convenient for respondents to follow but also more focused to meet the goals of this
research.

First, the participant is introduced to this research with its purpose in a brief description. This
part also requires them to provide their age information. In the next section including five
sentences, participants need to look at the picture and choose all suitable answers to fill in the
blank. This step is expected to stimulate visual thinking among participants.

See the following example:

26
Next, section 3 consists of four sentences and participants need to choose the best answer to
complete the gapped sentence. The purpose of this section is to tap into their own preference in
using the target prepositions.

Below is an example:

In section 4 with seven sentences, on the contrary, they are asked to choose all correct answers
to fill in the gap which would illustrate a more complete picture of how flexible the prepositions
could be in their usage in Vietnamese.

See the example below:

The last section is a yes/no question part which consists of four sentences and participants need
to choose whether they have ever heard anyone use the preposition in a particular context.

See the example below:

3.4.2. English questionnaire

Similar to the Vietnamese questionnaire, opening this English questionnaire is a brief
introduction to this research whose success is determined by genuine answers from participants.
For this reason, participants are asked to not reference other sources. This questionnaire also
includes five sections that aim at investigating how the participants might use the target

27
prepositions in their second language. Both of the groups, students, and office workers took the
same version of the questionnaire, but there is a question about the occupation to distinguish
participants of each group. Parallel language translation is provided only for the introduction
part and the instruction to each section.

Similar to the second section in the Vietnamese questionnaire as a means of engaging the
participants in visual thinking, participants are asked to look at the picture and choose all
suitable answers to fill in the blank. This section includes 4 sentences.

Below is an example:

In the third section with twelve sentences, participants need to choose all suitable answers to
fill in the blank without seeing illustrations.

See the example below:

In contrast to the yes/no-question section in the Vietnamese questionnaire, this English survey
uses four true/false questions because these questions are about grammatical facts, not about
personal opinions.
28
See the following example:

Lastly, in the English questionnaire, participants are asked to translate a short paragraph from
Vietnamese to English which entails use of the target prepositions. The results of this step
provide a picture of Vietnamese speakers’ tendencies in using English spatial prepositions.

3.5. Research questions and data analysis procedures

The main purpose of analyzing the data in this research is to answer the research questions
below.

Question 1: How do Vietnamese speakers perceive the three spatial prepositions in their L1?

To shed light on the language transfer phenomenon in English preposition use of Vietnamese
L1 speakers, having an insight in how the spatial prepositions are perceived in their L1 is
essential. Percentage analyses, therefore, were conducted to investigate the preferential choices
of each target preposition, from which is to build background on the principals of the
preposition usage. Those principals, then were compared and contrasted with similar rules in
English syntax to draw the differences and similarities between the two languages when it
comes to spatial preposition use.

Question 2: What are the overall characteristics of spatial preposition use in Vietnamese?

After analyzing the tendency of preposition use in the Vietnamese questionnaire, this research
continues to generalize the characteristics of spatial preposition use in the language. In order to
summarize the factors that govern spatial perception in the first language, a percentage analysis
was utilized accompanied with spatial graphs to illustrate spatial frames of reference. This
information provides a useful basis to analyze the aspects of negative language transfer relevant
to L1 which will be investigated in-depth in the next research questions.

Question 3: To what extent does negative L1 interference influence the acquisition of the target
English spatial prepositions by Vietnamese L1 learners?

To answer this question, descriptive statistics were used to calculate the percentage of language
transfer errors which are those that could be traced back to L1. Since question 3 aims at
investigating the basic properties of the database, descriptive statistics are suitable to summarize
29
the primary features of the dataset numerically (McNabb, 2013, p. 134). First, the
questionnaires were explored in relation to the errors the participants made in their answers.
Then, these errors were classified into three types as follows:

- substitution due to L1 negative interference

- omission

- substitution not involving L1 interference

After categorising the type of errors, the total number, and percentage of each type of errors
were calculated. Based on the information collected, the negative L1 influence in the
Vietnamese speaker groups is undeniable, which raises a question of whether the different
characteristics of the two groups did determine the extent of the L1 influence in their L2 use or
not. This concern will be explored in the following research question.

Question 4: How does language transfer manifest itself across the different learner groups?

This research question relates to differences in language transfer between the student and office
worker groups. To answer this question, a T-test was employed to analyze the results. Since the
number of participants in each group was different, with 20 participants in the worker group
and 22 participants in the student group, a Welch’s T-test was applied to deal with the unequal
variance.

Question 5: Are there any differences in the transfer errors between the three target
prepositions?

The aim of this question is to explore the extent of difficulty of each of the target prepositions
in English. A one-way ANOVA test was conducted to examine the statistical difference among
the three groups. However, instead of using the classic ANOVA, an adjusted version – Welch’s
ANOVA – was used due to the unequal size of the groups. Furthermore, a post-hoc test played
a key role in determining which of these prepositions differs from each other. Then, a
percentage analysis was taken to analyze which preposition gives more rise to the language
transfer.

3.6. Summary
This chapter, first, mentioned the detailed description of the study participants and the overall
design of this study. Then, the method of collecting the data was discussed corresponding to
each research question. After the step of obtaining the information, statistical tools such as a
percentage test, a T-test, and ANOVA test were illustrated for the purpose of analyzing and

30
computing the quantitative data. Noticeably, spatial graphs were also made use of in order to
illustrate a more complete picture of how Vietnamese speakers perceived spatial relations in
their L1.

To meet the research questions, analyses were carried out on both Vietnamese and English
questionnaires. Regarding the Vietnamese questionnaire, the investigation was focused on the
preferences in preposition choice in order to establish a framework about spatial
conceptualization in Vietnamese. Then, the data were compared and contrasted to the standard
use of the equivalent English prepositions. After that, the data of preposition errors in English
L2 were analyzed in juxtaposition with the Vietnamese L1 preposition preferences collected in
the previous step. The statistical differences in the ratio of transfer errors between the student
group and the office worker group, as well as among the three target prepositions will be also
examined.

Corresponding to this structure, in the following results chapter, all the data will be elaborated
in two separate sections, namely Vietnamese L1 preposition use and English L2 preposition
transfer errors.

31
 CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
This chapter reports on the findings concerning language transfer in the participants’ spatial
conceptualization. As mentioned in the methodology chapter, this research includes two sub-
studies that are complementary to each other in the relationship between phenomena and
hypothesized causes. To fulfill the goals set, this chapter is divided into two sections that draw
on the two datasets recorded to present the quantitative analyses and result interpretations.

First, this chapter starts with an analysis of the usage of the equivalent target prepositions in
Vietnamese to explore how it is different from widely acceptable English preposition use. The
investigation is based on the information collected in the Vietnamese questionnaires completed
by a group of Vietnamese teachers, which provides a profile of the characteristics of spatial
conceptualization in Vietnamese. This step, thus, plays a crucial role in hypothesizing the roots
of the language transfer phenomena observed in this research. Then, the second main section is
dedicated to illustrating how language transfer is manifested in the syntactic errors made by the
two different groups of L1 Vietnamese speakers in using the target English prepositions, namely
‘in’, ’on’, and ‘under’. Their idiosyncratic use in English spatial preposition acquisition will be
classified via quantitative tests.

4.1. Preposition use in Vietnamese from the perspective of spatial conceptualization

4.1.1. Spatial prepositions in Vietnamese representation
One of the explicit signs that distinguish one language from others is depicted in syntactic
patterns. For example, Turkish and Finnish rely on case-marking and postpositions to describe
locations of objects, whereas, in other languages such as English, prepositions play a crucial
role in denoting these relations. Similarly, regarding spatial description, Vietnamese also
possesses a system of prepositions whose parallel translations can be found in English. As
proof, the preposition ‘dưới’ is translated into English as ‘under’, the preposition ‘trong’ is
equivalent to the preposition ‘in’, and the preposition ‘trên’ is a translation of the preposition
‘on’. However, the usage of these Vietnamese prepositions recorded in the Vietnamese dataset
shows marked differences in comparison to the English preposition use.

4.1.1.1. Preposition ‘dưới’ (under)

In English, the preposition ‘under’ is used to describe the location in which the figure stays
lower than the surface created by the ground, which is also accepted in Vietnamese. Look at
the example below.

[1.1] Có một con mèo … ghế. (There is a cat … the chair.)

32
In example [1.1], all of the participants shared a mutual agreement that the preposition ‘dưới’
(under) is the most suitable preposition to locate the cat which occupies a position lower than
the surface of the chair.

However, when it comes to example [1.2], the principle that the figure is lower than the ground
loses its applicable value in Vietnamese preposition use.

[1.2] Những cái cây non đang mọc ... đất. (The young trees are growing ... land.)

In English, normally the preposition ‘on’ will be used because in this case, the ground ‘land’
creates a supporting surface for the figure ‘the young trees’ to grow on which shows both
coincidence and attachment relations. This preposition use was also observed in the Vietnamese
expressions with the number of participants who chose the preposition ‘trên’ (on) and those
who used the preposition ‘dưới’ (under) being perfectly equal and double the remaining option.
As the illustration might suggest, Vietnamese speakers tend to locate objects based on their own
viewpoints; therefore, the preposition ‘dưới’ (under) was one of the favorite options. The
speakers seem to imagine that they need to look down to see the young trees on the ground,
both of which are lower than their eyesight line. Although this preposition choice violates

33
English grammatical rules, it makes sense in Vietnamese in which people certify the location
of objects from the perspective of the speaker's observation.

Furthermore, contrary to English whose usage of prepositions is rather fixed, Vietnamese

preposition use is more flexible like in example [1.3].

[1.3] Tôi thích đi bộ ... mưa. (I like walking ... the rain.)

Although the preposition ‘dưới’ (under) is more preferred by 17 participants, four participants
still chose the preposition ‘trong’ (in) (which is supposed to be used in the same English
sentence). To elaborate on this phenomenon, the fact is that rain comes from the sky which is
seen as a higher place than the position of speakers on the ground. For this reason, the location
of speakers in relation to things falling from the sky such as rain, snow, or hailstones could be
interpreted by using the preposition ‘dưới’ (under).

4.1.1.2. Preposition ‘trên’ (on)

In Vietnamese, the preposition ‘trên’ (on) is employed to illustrate two relations in space, which
is similar but also different compared to the use in English as follows:

First, there is physical contact between the figure and the ground in which the figure stays in a
higher position than the ground, which seems to be consistent with the English principal. The
application in representation, however, is distant as illustrated below.

[1.4] “Cô ấy đang nằm … giường.” (She is lying … bed.)

34
In the same English sentence, the preposition ‘in’ would be preferred since the person lies inside
the imaginable space delimited by the bed as well as underneath some bedclothes. This
acknowledgment is not preferred in Vietnamese. According to the bar graph above, 19 out of
21 participants chose the preposition ‘trên’ (on) as the most suitable preposition to fill in the
blank, followed by 2 participants preferring the preposition ‘trong’ (in). This example again
illustrates the inconsistency in Vietnamese preposition rules, which is better explained based
on differences in the beholder’s viewpoint. Since the figure occupies a higher position and has
physical contact with the ground which is just seen as a surface, not as a space, the preposition
‘trên’ (on) is the most preferred option in Vietnamese.

Correspondingly, the same rule is observed in illustration [1.5].

[1.5] Có những quả táo … cây. (There are apples … the tree.)

The majority of the participants chose the preposition ‘trên’ (on) (20 out of 21 participants)
which is similar to English syntax applied to the sentence “There are apples on the tree”. This
case could be explained given that the apples obviously grow on the tree so using the preposition
‘trên’ (on) is the most suitable choice. However, this sole principle will fail in generalizing
other cases in which using the preposition ‘trên’ (on) is required.

See the expression below.

35
[1.6] Hôm nay có ông trăng TRONG trời. (The moon is IN the sky today)

The number of participants who opposed using the preposition ‘trong’ (in) surpasses the number
of those who agreed with the option, respectively 85.7% and 14.3%. Normally, English
speakers perceive that ‘the sky’ creates a dimensional space that contains ‘the moon’ inside
instead of viewing it as a surface. By contrast, the spatial relationship between the two objects
encoded in Vietnamese is that the location of both objects is higher than the eyesight of
observers, so speakers have to look up to observe them. Generally, the second rule to use this
preposition is to describe the location of both the figure and the ground which are located higher
than the eyesight of beholders such as ‘*a bird on the sky’ and ‘dirt on the ceiling’.

4.1.1.3. Preposition ‘trong’ (in)

As mentioned in example [1.6] above, the Vietnamese participants strongly disagreed with
using the phrase “in the sky”, which calls into question in which cases the preposition ‘trong’
(in) is applicable.

Take a look at the representation below.

[1.7] Có những bông hoa … cái lọ. (There are many flowers … the vase.)

All of the participants were in agreement that the preposition ‘trong’ (in) is the only correct
answer. Similar to English in the same case, although the whole part of the flowers is not inside
the vase, the main part of them which holds the remaining parts firmly stays in the interior
framed by the vase. Therefore, the preposition ‘trong’ (in) is the most suitable option.

36
Look at another example that depicts a more complete picture of how the Vietnamese
preposition is used.

[1.8] Có năm người ... ô tô. (There are five people ... the car.)

In the sentence, participants were requested to choose all suitable options to fill in the blank.
The option preferred most is the preposition ‘trong’ (in) followed by the preposition ‘trên’ (on)
and ‘dưới’ (under). It could be explained that the car builds up a three-dimensional space in
which people can stay inside, therefore, the preposition ‘trong’ (in) is the most suitable answer.
To generalize, the preposition ‘trong’ (in) will be employed in which the figure stays inside the
real or imaginable space that the ground creates. Noticeably, although English requires its
speakers to imagine the space that the ground could expand to, this is limited to some extent in
Vietnamese. See the example below:

[1.9] Những con chim TRONG những cái cây đang hót.

(Many birds IN the trees are singing)

On the one hand, English speakers will acknowledge that the branches of the tree could create
a space that contains the bird inside, which is why using the preposition ‘in’ is the most suitable.
On the other hand, the sentence sounds unnatural in Vietnamese with 71.4% of participants
disapproving of the idea of using the preposition ‘trong’ (in) in the case.

37
4.1.2. Overall characteristics of the target preposition use in Vietnamese
As the examples analyzed above might suggest, there are incompatibilities in the way
Vietnamese speakers and English speakers interpret spatial relations in their languages. This
phenomenon does not imply that the order of objects is turned upside down in space in the
individual’s observation. It, thus, appears to relate the differences in spatial conceptualization
that are encoded in each language. Following this line of analysis, this section will present a
more detailed picture of this phenomenon based on further analyses.

First, there are cases in which using a preposition is compulsory in English but it is optional in
Vietnamese. Take a look at the example below:

[1.10] Con tôi ở ... trường đó. (My child stays ... the school.)

4 out of 21 participants (19% of the participants) agreed that the sentence was grammatically
correct enough without any preposition. This decision comes from the fact that in Vietnamese,
the word ‘ở’ (stay) is able to not only play a role as a preposition such as in the sentence “Tôi
học ở trường đó” (I study in the school), but also function as a verb like in the sentence “Tôi ở
trường đó” (*I stay the school). When the word occupies the position of the main verb in a
sentence, it itself conveys the information of location corresponding to the following subject
mentioned in the sentence; as a result, there is no preposition compulsory here. Due to the
transitional nature of the coverb, the preposition choice in such expressions relies on the
personal preference of speakers, which possibly gives rise to preposition omission when
Vietnamese people use another language.

Second, there is a lack of consistency in syntactic principles for applying prepositions, which
mainly depends on the spatial conceptualization of observers. See the expression below:

[1.11] Có bao nhiêu người ... thuyền? (How many people are there ... the boat?)

38
 The most popular choice is the preposition ‘trên’ (on) with 19 out of 21 participants (equivalent
to 90.5% of the participants), followed by the preposition ‘trong’ (in) (52.4%) and ‘dưới’
(under) (42.9%). These statistics again confirm the flexibility of the Vietnamese preposition
system which will be further elaborated based on the patterns of spatial conceptualization in the
table below.

Projector-based Ground-based Figure-based

Có những người dưới thuyền Có những người trong thuyền Có những người trên thuyền
(*There are many people under the (There are many people in the (?There are many people on the
boat) boat) boat)

Regarding this frame of spatial As the name might suggest, the By contrast, in this context, the
reference, the location of the group of speaker locates the people in spatial reference used by the
people is perceived based on the relation to the ground – the boat. speaker is the location of the people
viewpoint of the speaker in relation to Concerning the spatial nature of a relating to the boat which is
the position of another object – the boat, it creates a three-dimensional acknowledged as a two-
boat. To elaborate, the land is often space that contains the figure – the dimensional surface. In English,
considered as taller than the water group of people inside. Therefore, normally the phrase ‘on the boat’
surface, so choosing the preposition using the preposition ‘trong’ (in) is would be used to express that the
‘under’ emphasizes that the figure suitable and makes sense in English figure walks on the boat instead of

39
corresponding to the ground is lower if the circumstance is perceived in sitting or standing on the deck.
than the position the speaker is the same way. However, in Vietnamese, the
standing on. people are seen as if they are
locating on a higher position in
comparison to the surface created
by the bottom of the boat.

Look at another example where in English, preposition use cannot be altered.

[1.12] Gia đình tôi đang ngồi ... phòng khách.

(My family is sitting ... the living room.)

Projector-based 1 Projector-based 2 Ground-based

Gia đình tôi đang ngồi trên phòng Gia đình tôi đang ngồi dưới phòng Gia đình tôi đang ngồi trong phòng
khách. khách. khách.
(*My family is sitting on the living (*My family is sitting under the (My family is sitting in the living
room.) living room.) room.)

40
In the expression, the spatial Similarly, because the speaker stays As it is expected, the spatial
reference is the speaker; therefore, upstairs which is higher than the reference relied on in this case is
the relation between the figure and family in terms of space, the use of the ground - the room. In terms of
the ground is required to be the preposition ‘dưới’ (under) is space, a room creates a three-
juxtaposed with the location of the necessary to express the spatial dimensional space that can contain
speaker. As seen in the image, since relation. the figure. Therefore, the
the speaker stays in a place preposition ‘trong’ (in) is used to
physically lower than the family, the illustrate the spatial relationship,
preposition ‘trên’ (on) is beneficial which is also well-formed in
to show the space discrepancy. English.

4.2. Language transfer in English preposition use by Vietnamese L1 speakers

To shed light on the influences of the first language on second language acquisition, this part
of the research focuses on analyzing errors in spatial preposition use by Vietnamese L1
speakers, and is to identify factors which give rise to the language deficiency. First, the errors
found in this study will be classified to generalize preposition-using preferences among the two
groups of participants, namely a group of university students and a group of office workers.
The classification is based on types of errors, namely interlingual errors and intralingual errors
according to their sub-types, namely substitution, and omission. After that, the aggregated
statistics will be computed in a T-test and an ANOVA test to draw statistical information on
whether there are any noticeable differences between the groups in the types of preposition-
using errors as well as among the target prepositions inappropriately used or not.

41
 4.2.1. Types and sub-types of transfer errors
As mentioned in the preceding methodological chapter, errors involving preposition misuse
recognized in the English questionnaires were classified and divided into two groups which are
interlingual errors and intralingual errors. Their frequency is shown below.

Student Worker
Types
Group Group
% %
Interlingual 215 96.85 176 94.62
errors
Intralingual 7 3.15 10 5.38
errors
Total 222 100 186 100

In general, the total of interlingual errors surpasses the intralingual errors in both groups. The
contribution of errors involving rule learning is minor which accounts for around 3% of all the
errors in the student group and 5% in the worker group, whereas the percentage of transfer
errors constitutes more than 90% in both groups. To better illustrate the ratio of interlingual
errors and intralingual errors, the information is reflected in the pie chart below.

Interlingual Intralingual Total

errors errors
391 17 408
% 95.83 4.17 100

42
 In summary, while the influence of interlingual errors in using the English spatial prepositions
is significant at 95.83%, the opposite is true of intralingual errors at 4.17%.

Furthermore, due to the nature of the questionnaire’s design with questions accompanied by
given choices, the diversity of errors is limited to substitution and omission types. The
comparison between the sub-types of the preposition errors is illustrated below.

Student Worker
Types Group Group
% %
Substitution due to L1 215 96.85 176 94.62
Substitution not involving 7 3.15 8 4.30
L1
Omission due to L1 0 0 0 0
Omission not involving L1 0 0 2 1.08
Total 222 100 186 100

In both groups, substitution errors that can be traced to the L1 are the most prevalent type with
above 94%, followed by substitution errors unrelated to the first language with around 3%.
Strikingly, as mentioned in the analysis about Vietnamese prepositional syntax, there are
sentences in which using prepositions is obligatory in English but preferential in Vietnamese
which seems to lead to potential omission errors in English L2 expressions. However, when it
comes to using English, none of the participants omitted prepositions according to the principles
of their mother language. Only 2 out of the total 408 errors recorded were related to omission
not involving the L1 and those were made by only one participant. As a conclusion, although
preposition omission is a linguistic phenomenon in Vietnamese, the participants were not
affected by this pattern of L1 syntax.

4.2.2. Characteristics of transfer errors regarding substitution

According to the overall analysis above, substituting incorrect prepositions is the most prevalent
type of errors made by the participants. For this reason, this section aims at giving an insight
into language transfer between the two languages based on analyzing preferences in preposition
substitution.

Regarding overgeneralization

43
It is undeniable that the amount of knowledge required to master a new language is enormous.
Language learners, thus, tend to learn a grammar item that is similar to their first language, then
apply it to other similar contexts. However, this method has implications, especially when it
comes to grammatical structures involving spatial cognition. Look at the examples below.

While the first sentence “There is a bird … the tree” requires the preposition ‘in’, the preposition
‘on’ is prevalently used in the latter “There are apples … the tree”. However, the participants
shared common linguistic preferences in both contexts with above 80% of all participants
choosing the preposition ‘on’ while the remaining participants (above 14%) preferred the
preposition ‘in’. As the data might suggest, the participants assumed that due to the similarity
of spatial contexts in the two expressions, their choices in both cases should be the same.
Furthermore, in their mother language, the preposition preferred in both contexts is ‘trên’ (on)
due to the fact that both the figure and the ground are located at a higher position than the
speaker, which is explained in-depth in the earlier section about the Vietnamese prepositions.

Regarding word-to-word translation

When using any foreign languages, it is difficult for speakers to avoid automatic translation
from their mother tongue. In many cases, this unconscious habit leads to negative language
transfer as seen in the examples below.

Trong biển này có rất nhiều cá. Tôi nhìn thấy những con thuyền trên biển.
(There are fish in the sea) (*I see boats on the sea)

44
In the task, the participants were requested to translate a short paragraph from Vietnamese into
English. In the sentence “Trong biển này có rất nhiều cá” (There are fish in the sea), in which
the preposition use is the same in both languages, there was up to around 88% of participants
who made the correct preposition choice. By contrast, in the case of “Tôi nhìn thấy những con
thuyền trên biển” (*I see boats on the sea), in which the preposition use is inconsistent between
the languages, the rate of correct translation reduced and just constituted around 23%. It could
be concluded that the inconsistency in preposition translation between the languages poses a
challenge to English L2 learners in acquiring the appropriate knowledge. The participants,
therefore, relied on their first language to make up for their knowledge deficiency when
producing expressions in the second language.

Conceptualization of vertically spatial distance

As outlined in the first part of this chapter, Vietnamese speakers have a tendency to use their
location as a spatial frame of reference to describe the spatial relationships between the figure
and the ground, which is reflected in the way they use English as illustrated below.

45
In the Vietnamese sentence, the majority of participants (85.7%) found using the preposition
‘in’ unnatural to describe the spatial relationship. Due to the vertical distance in space, where
the moon and sky are located higher than the speakers, they normally would use the preposition
‘on’ to emphasize the location, whose purpose could not be achieved if using the preposition
‘in’. Influenced by this preference, one-quarter of the participants (25.58%) assumed that the
preposition ‘in’ was also unacceptable in English, whereas this is actually correct.

Moreover, the answers collected shed light on how Vietnamese L1 affects English L2
acquisition. When producing the English expressions, the Vietnamese L1 speakers still used
the projector-grounded frame to describe the objects. For this reason, in the sentence “The
young trees are growing ... land”, the participants chose all three prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, and
‘under’ that are acceptable in their mother tongue, especially with 3.51% of the participants
choosing the preposition ‘under’. Although the rate of using the prepositions differed from what
was collected in the Vietnamese questionnaire, the data still confirmed the correlation in spatial
conceptualization between Vietnamese preposition use and English L2 performance.

46
Dimensional spatial conceptualization

One of the factors that determine which preposition, ‘in’ or ‘on’, will be used relates to the
perception of spatial dimensions. Dimensional perception influences the way speakers perceive
the ground as a platform or a container, and this is unconsciously affected by the first language
that impacts on the way of thinking in the second language. That is why in the example “Can
you see the man ... the plane?”, 39.02% of the participants completed the English questionnaire
agreed with using the preposition ‘on’ to fill in the blank. Strikingly, in the Vietnamese
questionnaire, the amount of participants who preferred the preposition ‘trên’ (on) to complete
the equivalent sentence in Vietnamese is similar (38.71% of participants)

Vietnamese questionnaire English questionnaire

47
4.2.3. Language transfer in different groups
To examine whether there is a statistically significant difference in preposition errors made by
the student group and the office worker group, a T-test was conducted. Furthermore, since the
size of the two groups is unequal, a Welch’s test was utilized to give a more accurate result.

First, a F-test was conducted in order to test the equality of group means, which is the basis to
determine the suitable type of the T-test applied to analyze these collected data. According to
the result of the F-test which is illustrated below, because F < F Critical one-tail (1.634 < 2.137),
it is unable to reject that the variances of the two sample means are equal. Therefore, it is
necessary to implement a T-test with two samples assuming equal variances.

Then, the presumption is that the distributions of the percentage of transfer errors in each group
are proportional. A Welch’s T-Test, thus, was conducted to test the following null hypothesis:
H0: π1 = π2, which means that the true difference between these groups’ means is zero. Below
is the result of the T-test.

48
According to the result, the p-value associated with the test statistic for a two-tailed test is more
than the alpha, (0.093 > 0.05); as a result, it is unable to reject the null hypothesis. The
conclusion is that the mean transfer errors between the two groups are not significantly different
at the level α = 0.05. In other words, there was no statistically significant difference in making
transfer errors between the groups of students and office workers.

4.2.4. Transfer errors among the three target prepositions

In this analysis, a one-way ANOVA is used to test the null hypothesis because there are more
than two samples. Below is the hypothesis of this test.

H0: μ1 = μ2 = μ3: the means of several populations are all equal which means that there is no
difference in the percentage of transfer errors among the prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘under’.
The result of the ANOVA test is illustrated below.

Based on the data, because F > F crit (48,873 > 3.082), the null hypothesis is rejected which
proves that the means of the three preposition groups constituting the total transfer errors
recorded were not all equal. In other words, there is at least one of the means of the populations
49
which is different, but the ANOVA test does not reveal in which population correlation the
difference lies. For this purpose, a Post-hoc test based on a set of T-tests is implemented. The
statistics of the Post-hoc test are displayed below.

To account for the fact that type 1 error rate, also known as the rejection of a null hypothesis
although it is accurate, could be increased due to repeatedly running a test of 3 sets of
comparisons, a Bonferroni correction was applied to find a new p-value to compare each of the
tests:

New α = α / 3 = 0.05/3= 0.016666667

Hence, since the values p two-tail of all three tests were less than the index of new α, it could
be concluded that all of the groups significantly differ in their contribution to the total of transfer
errors recorded. In other words, the results suggest that there are significant differences in the
contribution of the three prepositions in comparison to each other.

The result gives rise to a concern that is which preposition among the three prepositions poses
the most challenging influence on English L2 acquisition. The ratios of transfer errors classified
according to the three prepositions are illustrated below.

50
Although the questionnaire offers the options for choosing the three prepositions equally, the
preposition misused most is the preposition ‘on’, accounting for the highest percentage at
54.19%. It is followed by the preposition ‘in’ giving rise to 32.98% of the transfer errors while
the preposition ‘under’ is the least misused preposition at 12.83%.

4.3. Summary
Based on the information collected in the Vietnamese questionnaires, it could be concluded that
although there are similarities between Vietnamese and English in expressing spatial
relationships, the differences pose challenges in English L2 acquisition to Vietnamese L1
speakers. First, the challenge comes from syntactic patterns that each language relies on to
describe spatial relations. While Vietnamese possesses coverbs such as ‘ở’ (stay) which is able
to express the position of the figure without the support of any prepositions, this similar variant
does not exist in English. This linguistic mismatch could possibly prompt the appearance of
preposition omission as transfer error. Furthermore, English has a more fixed preposition
system whereas Vietnamese syntax is more flexible due to the fact that in the language, spatial
perception relies mainly on individual spatial conception. In other words, Vietnamese native
speakers have a tendency to use their location as a spatial frame of reference to describe the
location of the figure and the ground. For example, when a person stands on a higher or lower
position in comparison to the figure and the ground, potential representations are often required
to display the vertical distance in space. This tendency possibly gives rise to transfer errors
owing to L1 negative interference.

The anticipated impact of the L1 on L2 acquisition was examined through analyzing English
questionnaire responses, in which two groups of Vietnamese native speakers were required to
do a four-part grammatical test. The first analysis indicated that the majority of the errors

51
recorded could be traced to the L1’s syntax while the influence of intralingual errors is minimal
(95.83% and 4.17% respectively). Furthermore, substitution errors constituted a large part in
the total of errors whereas the percentage of omission errors was insignificant. More
importantly, contrary to expectations about the omission due to L1 influence, there was no
evidence found in the dataset.

Regarding substitution errors, there were four major phenomena observed in the answers of the
participants. First, there were errors made due to the overgeneralization. The learners found the
item of grammar similar to their first language and assumed that it could be applied in other
contexts which leads to grammatical errors. Second, it is noticeable that some participants had
a habit of translating from their mother tongue to the L2 which results in errors. Moreover,
when using English prepositions, the participants used their conceptualization dominated by
their L1 to describe location which is unacceptable in English. Finally, dimensional spatial
conceptualization which is different between the two languages such as classifying the ground
as a container or surface is another factor that gave rise to negative interference.

A T-test was employed to identify the statistical differences between the group of university
students and that of the office workers. However, there was no statistically significant
difference between the two cohorts. Furthermore, since the ANOVA test showed that there were
significant differences in the contributions of the three prepositions to the errors, post hoc tests
were carried out whose results revealed that significant differences existed in the relationship
between each preposition and the remaining ones. Noticeably, the preposition giving more rise
to the transfer errors is the preposition ‘on’, while the misuse of the preposition ‘under’ accounts
for the smallest percentage.

52
 CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
Chapter 4 outlined the principal characteristics of spatial conceptualization encoded in
Vietnamese, as demonstrated in the use of the spatial prepositions ‘trong’ (in), ‘trên’ (on), and
‘dưới’ (under), compared to the use of the equivalent prepositions in English. The main
statistical results were reported regarding the errors committed by the two groups, namely
university students and office workers in using the English prepositions. The analysis also
focused on the statistical differentiation regarding the target spatial prepositions.
The results indicate that the interference of Vietnamese L1 in English L2 performance relevant
to preposition acquisition is statistically significant. This chapter will continue addressing key
factors where significant errors committed by the participants were detected.
This chapter starts with comparisons between the two participant groups. Then, the specific
features triggering language transfer regarding spatial conceptualization are also further
analyzed, followed by a brief summary of the whole chapter.
5.1. Comparisons of the two groups
According to the result of the T-test, the differentiation in committing transfer errors between
the student and office worker groups was statistically insignificant. However, there are a
number of features that exhibit linguistic performance distinctions between the two groups.
First, avoidance behavior recorded reflects one of the differences.
While other tasks in the English questionnaire offered participants preposition options, part 4
required them to translate a short paragraph from Vietnamese into English. It is noticeable that
there are more cases avoiding using prepositions found in the student group rather than the
office worker group. Those participants used adverbs to express the spatial relation or skipped
translating difficult sentences. The number of cases in which participants avoided using
prepositions in the student group was nearly double the number of the other group (12.38% and
6% respectively), which is illustrated in the graph below.

53
Some studies have also provided evidence for this avoidance phenomenon in L2 production. In
Laufer & Eliasson’s research (1993) comparing the avoidance patterns among two groups, the
Israeli learners of English used fewer phrasal verbs than the Swedish ones. The result
strengthens their hypothesis that avoidance occurs in the behaviors of learners whose L1 is
deficient in the grammatical categories.
However, in this study, the avoidance behavior is unlikely to originate from the lack of the
prepositional patterns in the L1, but it possibly is the result of the dissimilarities concerning
spatial conceptualization encoded in the two languages. One sentence that recorded a high
number of avoidance behaviors is “Họ đang bắt những con cá dưới nước” (*They are catching
fish under the water”). As the translation suggests, the perspective of spatial conceptualization
in Vietnamese applied directly to the English translation will make it sound unnatural. The
challenge might make Vietnamese L1 learners of English become more cautious in using L2
prepositions, so they decided to avoid translating these sentences using prepositions. The
alternative translation found is “They are catching fish underwater”, using an adverb instead
of a preposition. To account for the higher number of avoidance behaviors recorded in the
student group, it is possible that the students were in the process of acquiring the L2 syntactic
pattern that led to a sense of uncertainty to make the decision, while the older group who have
mastered the knowledge to some extent might have a better language reflex in using L2
prepositions.
A similar phenomenon is also found in Kleinmann’s investigation (1977). The Arabic speakers
avoided producing L2 structures that appeared unfamiliar to them. The researcher explained the
54
behavior based on the gap between their first language and the second language relevant to
particular linguistic items that made the participants concern the correctness if they used the
unfamiliar structures. Consequently, those people chose to use more familiar alternatives to
maintain their good L2 performance.
Second, the student group showed a clearer tendency to rely on projector-based reference (based
on the spatial perspective of the speaker) which is preferred in their L1, but is different from
the spatial frame of reference prioritized in English. The evidence is indicated in the number of
overusing the preposition ‘under’ observed in the student group surpassing the other group
(15.79% and 9.2% respectively).

As analyzed in the Results chapter, Vietnamese speakers use their position as a reference mark
to refer to the position of other objects in space. Look at the expressions given by the
Vietnamese participants below.
(1) *How many people are there under the boat?
(2) *The young trees are growing under land.
To explain the linguistic performance, from the spatial perspective encoded in Vietnamese,
since the location of the objects is considered as being lower than the speaker’s imaginary or
real position, using the preposition ‘under’ seems appropriate to Vietnamese speakers. This
phenomenon is elaborated by Dinh (2013) based on the hypothesis of Ly (2009) that a neutral
viewer, “a conceptual human-being as a coordinate system” is used by Vietnamese speakers to
compare the spatial relation between them and the objects to describe the position of the figure
and the ground (p. 15). Dinh gave a typical example to illustrate this phenomenon that is “Cậu
bé ở dưới sàn nhà” (*The boy is under the floor) which means “The boy is on the floor”. Instead
55
of locating ‘the boy’ in relation to the ground - ‘the floor’, Vietnamese speakers compare the
location of the figure to their own position or the position of a neutral viewer. In this case, the
speaker sees his/her neutral viewer in a higher position than the position of ‘the boy’, therefore
the preposition ‘dưới’ (under) is used.
With regard to the expressions produced by the participants, the “*people under the boat” does
not refer to the physical position of the group of people in relation to the boat, but it denotes
that the boat and the people on it stay at a lower position than the “neutral viewer”. Due to the
fact that boats are often located in the river while the viewer, assuming he or she is not on
another boat, stands on the bank, higher than the water surface, thus explaining the rationale to
use the preposition ‘under’ in the context.
To sum up, the expressions above clearly confirm the interference of Vietnamese L1 in English
L2 production, which is governed by the transfer of spatial conceptualization. The Vietnamese
students were more subjected to negative language transfer, which leads to either more
unacceptable grammatical errors or more avoidance behaviors.
5.2. Factors giving rise to conceptual transfer
The transfer errors concerning the use of spatial prepositions found indicate the differentiation
in spatial conceptualization between the two languages. The potential features giving rise to
negative transfer regarding English preposition use could be categorized into two main types,
namely vertical and dimensional relationships.
5.2.1. Vertical relationship
As mentioned above, using the speaker’s position to refer to the location of other objects is
popular in Vietnamese, which unconsciously becomes the basis for them to select English
prepositions. One factor that makes spatial conceptualization in Vietnamese different from the
perspectives encoded in English is the preference for a projector-based frame regarding vertical
space as shown in the examples below.

(1) *My family is sitting on the living room.

(2) *How many people are there under the boat?

From the spatial perspective of Vietnamese speakers, the objects higher than the position of the
speaker or the neutral viewer (his/her imaginary viewer) could go with the preposition ‘on’,
while to describe the objects located lower, the preposition ‘under’ will be used. This spatial
concept leads to the choice of the preposition ‘on’ in example (1) to describe the location of the
figure in the room, and the preposition ‘under’ in example (2) to describe the figure in the boat,
which is grammatically incorrect in English.

56
Look at another example.

(3) *I like walking under the rain.

Although such an expression is grammatically incorrect in English, it is prevalently used in

Vietnamese. Vietnamese speakers see ‘the rain’ as something falling from a higher place – the
sky, so the figure stays lower than the position of the ground. Therefore, using the preposition
‘under’ makes sense. Even in French, a similar spatial concept is also found such as in the
sentence “La femme marche sous la pluie” (*The woman walks under the rain) (Evans & Tyler,
2005, p. 12). Furthermore, this linguistic behavior regarding perceiving dimensional space is
observed not only in the English expressions given by the Vietnamese participants but is more
universal. Such a similar error like in sentence (3) is also found in the English L2 utterances
produced by Turkish speakers such as “*The little girl was singing under the rain” (Bozdağ,
2015, p. 109).

The instinct to rely on the projector-based frame to locate the position of the figure and the
ground in line with perceiving vertical space prevents Vietnamese speakers from producing
well-formed English expressions.

5.2.2. Dimensional relationship

5.2.2.1. A platform versus a container
Another common type of transfer error in using English prepositions comes from a mismatch
in the perception of a platform versus a container as illustrated in the two following examples.

(4) There are five people … the bus.

(5) There are many people … the train.

More than half of the participants chose the wrong prepositions for the two sentences above
(60.98% and 63.41% respectively), and all of them selected the preposition ‘in’ for both
sentences. This choice originates from their L1 spatial perception seeing big vehicles like a bus
or train as closed containers, in which people stay to be carried elsewhere. Therefore, the
preposition ‘in’ is suitable to express the concept of space according to their L1 spatial concept.
Whereas in English, due to the size of these vehicles creating large surfaces for people to move
freely on, using the preposition ‘on’ is compulsory. It can be concluded that the lack of
similarities in spatial perceptions of the surface and the container gives rise to more errors
concerning the choice between the preposition ‘in’ and the preposition ‘on’, which reveals the
interference of L1 spatial conceptualization in L2 production.

57
5.2.2.2. A two-dimensional space versus three-dimensional space
Unlike the cases listed above in which the spatial boundary created by the vehicles is rather
visible, the cases mentioned below create imaginary spaces that are more difficult to decide
correct prepositions to complete expressions. Look at the examples below.

(6) There are many species living … this world.

(7) We are living … earth.

In the context in English, ‘the world’ is considered as the earth, but an abstract three-
dimensional space, which contains creatures within, so the preposition required in sentence (6)
is ‘in’. However, ‘the earth’ is seen as a planet where humans live on, and they have physical
contact on the surface of it, so the use of the preposition ‘on’ in sentence (7) is correct. By
contrast, Vietnamese people tend to perceive the spaces created by ‘the world’ and ‘the earth’
similarly, both being three dimensional. This perception, therefore, is feasible to lead to more
negative transfers when it comes to choosing prepositions to fill in sentence (7) than in sentence
(6), which is provided below.

Number of errors Rate (%)

(6) … this world 6 14.63
(7) … the earth 15 36.59

The number of errors committed in sentence (7) is nearly double the number of errors found in
sentence (6) (36.59% and 14.63% respectively). Strikingly, the only preposition misused in the
case of sentence (7) “We are living … earth” is the preposition ‘in’, which gives more evidence
to confirm the interference of L1 spatial conceptualization in L2 behaviors.

5.3. Summary
Further investigation in the language behaviors recorded confirms that the impact of
Vietnamese spatial conceptualization probably connects to the prepositional errors found.
Moreover, although both student and worker groups committed errors in using English
prepositions linked to their first language, there are two factors that make their L2 performance
different. First, there are more avoidance behaviors witnessed in the younger group. Those
students instead of using prepositions chose adverbs to locate the position of objects or skipped
translating challenging sentences. The explanation for this phenomenon is that the students
avoided the production of the target language when they had incomplete knowledge of
particular linguistic patterns in L2. Second, it is noticeable that the group showed a stronger

58
preference for using projector-based reference which is preferred in their L1, but gives rise to
errors in L2 preposition use. The lack of competence in L2 syntactic knowledge could lead
people to rely more on their L1 background.
The conceptual transfer influenced by Vietnamese L1 reflected in the errors concerning the use
of the spatial prepositions indicates the differences in spatial conceptualization shaped in the
two languages. There are two main spatial aspects that Vietnamese speakers pay their attention
to when it comes to describing spatial relationships which are different from what is regulated
popularly in English, namely vertical and dimensional relationships.
First, Vietnamese speakers possibly make errors in using English spatial prepositions because
they rely on projector-based reference to describe the location of objects. Consequently, the
location of objects higher than the speaker’s position goes with the preposition ‘on’, whereas
those located lower are used with the preposition ‘under’ regardless of the relation between the
figure and the ground, which leads to grammatical errors in their English production. Second,
the spatial conceptualization encoded in Vietnamese classifies dimensional space differently
from the perspective in English. The classification of the ground as a surface or a container, or
more broadly, a two-dimensional space or three-dimensional space determines the suitable
preposition used in each context. However, due to the inconsistency on this issue between the
two languages, Vietnamese speakers often make mistakes in choosing between the preposition
‘in’ and the preposition ‘on’.

59
 CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS
This final chapter summarizes the main findings, followed by identifying the limitations of the
present study. It also demonstrates the pedagogical implications of this research.
6.1. Summary of the findings
The results collected indicate that there was a strong influence of Vietnamese L1 on English L2
expressions regarding using English spatial prepositions. Linguistic interference that potentially
gives rise to transfer errors can be attributed to a number of factors. The first cause comes from
the dissimilarities in terms of morphological and syntactic features in the two languages. There
are Vietnamese words that function as either prepositions or verbs depending on specific
contexts, which possibly results in potential cases of omitting prepositions in English L2
production. Additionally, the rules of preposition use are rather flexible in Vietnamese in
contrast to fixed grammatical English rules. It means that in Vietnamese, to describe the same
spatial relation, there are several prepositions that could be used depending on the speaker’s
preferences, which might affect the correctness of English prepositional expressions produced
by Vietnamese speakers. Last, there are significant differences in the usage of the three target
prepositions between the two languages.
Analyzing the transfer errors recorded shows that the number of interlingual errors surpassed
the total of intralingual errors (95.83% and 4.17% respectively) and the main type of errors
found was incorrect preposition substitution (96.85% in the student group and 94.62% in the
office worker group). Further analyses shed light on the factors which hypothetically gave rise
to the prevalence of the substitution behaviors. First, the overgeneralization of specific English
prepositional structures led to errors when the learners implemented the same grammatical
items in other inappropriate contexts. Second, the data also implies that the spatial preposition
use in Vietnamese was translated word-for-word to apply to English L2 production, followed
by the incorrectness in English preposition use. Moreover, the Vietnamese speakers also
addressed vertical and dimensional relationships in their English expressions according to
Vietnamese spatial conceptualization which resulted in a number of transfer errors.
Additionally, this research set out to explore the differences in linguistic performance between
the two groups. After the data collected in the groups had been quantitatively compared in a T-
test, the findings show that there was no significant difference in making transfer errors between
the two groups. However, there are a number of features in which their linguistic behaviors
were distinct. First, more avoidance cases were observed in the student group who chose
alternative adverbs or skipped translating some sentences. Second, the group also had a more

60
serious tendency to focus on projector-based reference (based on the speaker’s perspective)
instead of paying attention to the spatial relationship between the figure and the ground. The
phenomenon could be explained in that the incompetence in specific L2 grammatical patterns
made the students resort to their L1 knowledge.
Among the three target prepositions, namely ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘under’, the ANOVA test and post
hoc tests indicated that the relative contributions of the prepositions to the transfer errors,
comparing one preposition to other prepositions, were significantly different. Strikingly, the
preposition ‘on’ triggered the majority of the transfer errors while the contribution of the
preposition ‘under’ was insignificant (54.19% and 12.83% respectively)
This study also identified typical features that potentially give rise to transfer errors when it
comes to English spatial prepositions used by Vietnamese speakers. Plausible explanations
were given corresponding to the differences in spatial conceptualization encoded in the two
languages. First, instead of describing the location of objects based on the relation between the
figure and the ground, Vietnamese speakers keep using projector-based reference which is
preferred in their L1 but leads to negative transfer in English L2 production. Second, the
classification of surfaces and containers or two-dimensional space and three-dimensional space
is diversified in spatial perspectives performed in the two languages, followed by the
interference caused by conceptual transfer.
In summary, this project highlights a significant step toward the underlying factors impacted
by the counter-interaction between human cognition and linguistic performance with regard to
spatial conceptualization.
6.2. Limitations of the present study
The applicability of the data presented in this research is limited by a number of factors. First,
the scale of this study is restricted by the number of participants, which might influence the
generalization of the findings. It would be more statistically valid if the English questionnaire
had been completed by a larger number of Vietnamese L1 learners of English, hence linguistic
preferences would be illustrated more clearly via their linguistic behaviors. The second
limitation that should be mentioned is the fact that the spatial prepositions investigated are
selective; therefore, further research needs to continue to gain a more complete picture of the
distinction in the spatial conceptualization among the two languages. Third, due to the design
of the questionnaires mainly with given options, it may limit the performance of the
participants, which, in turn, possibly influences the judgment concerning the participants'
English spatial preposition proficiency. A solution is to add more open questions to presumably
make for a larger range of responses. Last, and related to the third point, the questionnaires

61
were designed on an online platform, which allows participants to access them whenever they
can and offer no guarantee that the participants did not cheat by looking up the answer online.
6.3. Pedagogical implications
This study has identified a number of grammatical errors relevant to English spatial preposition
use committed by Vietnamese L1 speakers. Most of these inappropriate linguistic choices
indicated L1 influence which has negative impacts on L2 spatial prepositional acquisition.
When it comes to learning English spatial prepositions, Vietnamese L1 learners are often
introduced to the meaning of prepositions equivalent in their first language, along with common
examples. However, that is not enough for learners to successfully grasp the core knowledge of
English preposition use, which results in a reference to their first language when selecting
prepositions to describe unfamiliar contexts. This tendency could lead to positive as well as
negative transfer. For example, in the sentence ‘The cat is … the chair’, Vietnamese L1 learners
will easily choose the correct preposition ‘on’ over the prepositions ‘in’ and ‘under’, since it is
similar to the way they say in their mother tongue. Nevertheless, in the example "The cat is …
the armchair", there are many errors that are possibly committed due to dissimilarities in spatial
conceptualization among the two languages. This gives rise to a concern in the effectiveness of
the traditional approach in teaching English spatial prepositions.

It is suggested that the teacher should help students recognize that the errors regarding spatial
prepositions they have made are associated with the unconscious reliance on their L1 instinct.
In order to attain English language proficiency in terms of spatial prepositions, Vietnamese L1
learners need to perceive spatial relations in line with the way English L1 speakers do. Instead
of referencing spatial relationships solely based on the speaker’s location and personal
viewpoints, learners should focus on the relationship between the figure and the ground to
choose the correct preposition. Furthermore, learners should be educated that the spatial
preposition systems of the two languages share similar characteristics that equivalent
prepositions could be found in both languages; however, the usage of the prepositions is
dissimilar due to the differentiation of spatial conceptualization encoded in the two languages.
In summary, it is beneficial for Vietnamese L1 learners to be educated about the gap in spatial
conceptualization between Vietnamese and English to achieve L2 proficiency successfully
regarding spatial descriptions.

62
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