Chapter 3 Cross-Linguistic Influence in L2 Verb Frames: The Effects of Word Familiarity and Language Proficiency 1 Christopher J. Hall York St John University, United Kingdom Areli Reyes Durán Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Mexico Abstract This study assesses the effects of word familiarity and general proficiency on cross-linguistic influence (CLI) at the level of verbal frames. EFL learn- ers at three proficiency levels chose between two versions of a sentence dif- fering only in verbal frame (the target L2 frame or the frame of the L1 equivalent). Choice of L1 frame was taken as an instance of CLI. Verbs were known to learners, but varied in familiarity. Comparisons of CLI rates across word groups and proficiency levels show an independent effect of proficiency, suggesting that as proficiency increases, learners become less reliant on L1 for frame information. Introduction Vocabulary knowledge is an important component of language proficiency, and is often assessed as part of classroom-internal, institutional, and standardized tests. Scholars and practitioners in second language pedagogy and testing have for some time now recognized that mere breadth or quantity of lexical knowledge, reflected in number of memorized translation pairs, is a coarser-grained mea- sure of communicative competence than depth or quality of vocabulary know- ledge (Nation, 2001; Read, 2000). Depth of lexical knowledge embraces often very complex patterns of context-dependent form-meaning mapping. But one aspect of native-like vocabulary knowledge that in a sense falls between form- based breadth and meaning-based depth, is knowledge of how individual words AGBenati_03_Fpp.indd 24 AGBenati_03_Fpp.indd 24 1/31/2009 5:19:24 PM 1/31/2009 5:19:24 PM