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Since the concept of language transfer was put forward, it has been an important and meaningful topic in the field of second language acquisition. Transfer was originally a psychological term. In the 1940s and 1950s, the term transfer was applied to linguistic research. With the development of language transfer, it is roughly the same as some terms, most notably crosslinguistic influence (CLI), as they both refer to the influence of one language on another, most typically in the context of second language acquisition. The various terms used for this phenomenon can reflect a current state of L2 learning research and the theoretical context used to address the issue. Different scholars defined and explained language transfer from the perspective of their own research. Therefore, it is difficult to give a specific definition of language transfer. In broad terms, language transfer can be defined as the influence of previous knowledge of one language on the knowledge or use of another (Jarvis & Pavlenco, 2008). However, the currently most accepted definition was put forward by Odlin, who pointed out that language transfer refers to “the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired” (Odlin, 1989: 27). This definition reflected more about the nature of language transfer and was more comprehensive.

2.2 Relevant Studies on Conceptual Transfer

2.2.1 Development of Conceptual Transfer

Conceptual transfer has remarkable development in three aspects respectively: theory-construction, empirical and methodological aspects.

2.2.1.1 Theory-Construction of Conceptual Transfer

As for theory constructions of conceptual transfer, there were some representative achievements. At the beginning, Jarvis (1998) pointed out that there were three fundamental steps to realize second language acquisition: first, establishing the form of second language, then mapping it to the L1 conceptual system, finally reconstructing L1 conceptual representation in light of L2 experience. He further asserted that L2 learners’ conceptual representation system was a compound system made up primarily of three categories of concepts: L1-based concepts (concepts that only exist in L1), L2-based concepts (concepts that only exist in L2), shared concepts (concepts that are related to both L1 and L2). Due to the fact that they co-exist in the same conceptual representation system of the learners, three types of concepts are accessible regardless of the language the learners used. From the perspective of conceptual transfer, he sorted out the processes and concepts in the language for the learner’s second language acquisition.

With the help of linguistic relativity, Odlin (2005) made a distinction between meaning transfer and conceptual transfer. But there was no clear division between semantic transfer, pragmatic transfer and conceptual transfer in nature. Subsequently, Conceptual transfer was split into concept transfer and conceptualization transfer by Jarvis (2007). Concept transfer is mainly related to long-term memory, while conceptualization transfer to work memory. Although they are hard to tell apart, they are a new direction for the research of conceptual transfer theory.

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