The discussions about transfer gradually developed into several kinds of theories and hypotheses。

1。2。1 Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis

From the middle of 20th century, language transfer started gaining more and more attentions from linguists, and many study theories emerged at the right moment。 Dr。 Robert Lado, an American linguist, first put forward the Contrastive Analysis in 1957, which was used extensively in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining why some features of a target language were more difficult to acquire than others。 According to the behaviorists theories at the time, language learning was a procedure of forming a habit, and this could be strengthened or hindered by existing habits。 As a result, the difficulty in mastering certain structures in a second language depended on the difference between the language learners were learning and ,their mother language, while the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) derived from the Behaviorism which emphasized negative transfer, claiming that interference means difficulty in learning。 Among all the earlier linguists, Lado could be regarded as the most distinctive representative of CAH。 In his master work “Linguistics Across Cultures”, he presented the opinion that errors in the L2 learning are mainly caused by transfer from the L1 habits。 Besides, He maintained that mother tongue is the primary obstacle during the second language learning。 The differences between mother tongue and the target language are in direct proportional to difficulty。 CAH holds that the main barrier in second language acquisition is negative transfer, which is caused by the differences between the mother tongue and the target language while  the positive transfer is caused by the similarities between them。论文网

    However, this hypothesis includes some deficiencies, such as the subjective problem of CAH, the scope of applying CAH is limited and so on。 It is because these deficiencies that the Interlanguage Hypothesis emerged。

1。2。2 The Interlanguage Hypothesis 

Interlanguage, first put forward by American linguist Larry Selinker (1972), is the term that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) who has not yet reached proficiency。 A learner's interlanguage preserves some features of their first language (or L1), and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules。 These two characteristics of an interlanguage result in the system's unique linguistic organization。 The interlanguage hypothesis holds the idea that the language learners acquire is neither the target language nor the mother tongue。 The language learning is a dynamic process of continually being close to target language。 Flexibility, dynamics and systematicness are three features of the interlanguage。 The flexibility means permeability, that is, the rule of interlanguage could be corrected constantly, in other words, the rule to form the interlanguage is unfixed and it could be permeated by the rules or forms of mother tongue and target language。 The dynamics means changeable, that is, the interlanguage is changeable all the time and the change does not mean the jump from one stage to the next stage, but to modify the existing rules with the help of “ hypothesis- examine” method。 The third one, systematicness, means the interlanguage is a kind of rather inpidual language system and it has a set of unique system of rules of phoneme, grammar and vocabulary。

However, when interfered by mother tongue and with the overgeneralization of target language, the interlanguage is reinforced so that to lead to learners’ errors。 

1。2。3 The Markedness Theory文献综述

Markedness is first raised by Prague linguist Trubetzkoy in 1930, which is the state of standing out as unusual or difficult in comparison to a more common or regular form。 In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one。 The dominant default or minimum-effort form is known as unmarked; the other, secondary one is marked。 Markedness can apply to phonological, grammatical, and semantic oppositions, defining them in terms of marked and unmarked oppositions, such as honest (unmarked) vs。 dishonest (marked)。 Marking may be purely semantic, or may be realized as extra morphology。