(Event initially planned for 2020) The term translinguistic influence (crosslinguistic influence) introduced by Michael Sharwood-Smith (1983) was proposed as an alternative to the term transfer in order to counter the behaviorist connotation of the latter. Subsequently, the different generativist and/or cognitivist approaches rejected the contrastive analysis and the influence of the source language (L1) towards the target, second or foreign language (L2), to focus on the difficulties intrinsic to the L2 and the internal cognitive processes of the learner.
Since then, the development of theories based on usage has drawn attention to the role of all languages spoken to very varying degrees in language processes. This has not only rehabilitated the influence of the L1, but the emergence of an increasingly multilingual world has pushed researchers to study translinguistic influence, now multiple (L1, L2, L3, etc.), acting on the linguistic, conceptual and cognitive levels, in a multi-directional perspective (L2-L3, L3-L2, L2-L1, etc.) (e.g. De Angelis, Jessner & Kresic, 2015; Westergard et al., 2017; Schmid & Köpke, 2017) while taking into consideration the factors of its appearance (the (psycho)typology, the level of proficiency in the source language and the target language, the second language status or the L2 factor, the level of currency of a source language, etc.) and their interaction (see for example, Cook & Bassetti, 2011; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2010; Pavlenko, 2011). The complexity of these relationships continues to inspire researchers in language acquisition and this is why we invite you to come and take stock with us in Toulouse.