Acquisition of English number agreement: L1 Cantonese–L2 English–L3 French speakers versus L1 Cantonese–L2 English speakers

Abstract

Purpose: Drawing on the notions of ‘interface’ and ‘cross-linguistic influence’ in second language acquisition (L2A), the present study addresses the possible role of French as a third language (L3) in the L2A of English number agreement with two major concerns: (1) the degree to which third language acquisition (L3A) will bring about any positive or negative influence on L2A, and (2) the way in which an L3 interacts with L2 and/or even L1 on narrow syntax or an internal interface as identified in L2A. Design: To address the research concerns, a comparison was made between 48 L1 Cantonese–L2 English–L3 French (CEF) participants and 46 L1 Cantonese–L2 English (CE) participants. Twenty English native controls were also recruited. All participants completed two timed tasks: a grammaticality judgement-correction task and a free writing task. After the experiment proper, the grammatical component of the Oxford placement test, consisting of 60 items, was administered to the two groups of L1 Cantonese speakers. Data and analysis: The following tests were run: the Wilcoxon signed ranks test, the Mann–Whitney U test, the Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance, the non-parametric x2-test and the two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. Findings/conclusions: While the placement test indicated comparable English levels between the two L1 Cantonese groups, the free writing task revealed certain distinctive patterns, suggesting possible influence from L3 French to L2 English among the CEF participants. In particular, the advanced L3 French participants were different from their L3 French peers and the CE participants in their free production of grammatical nominal plurals. Originality: The study highlights the potential of reverse cross-linguistic influence from L3 to L2 among L1 Cantonese speakers. Significance/implications: Possible traces of L3 French–L2 English effect were noted in affecting the CEF learners’ use of English plural morphology by ‘neutralising’ their production of missing or redundant plural ‘-s’. Typological similarities between French and English and L3 proficiency were found to play a role in such transfers.

The effect of L4 on translation students’ L1/L2 writing scripts

“…Moreover, further studies could benefit from discriminating between subjects according to their dominant L1 language, since in line with previous studies (Tsang, 2016;Luque-Agulló, 2020), transfer may happen with greater knowledge of L3 or L2.…”

“…The study by Brown and Gullberg (2008) examined the transfer between Japanese (L1) and English (L2) in the expression of motion and found that there was a difference between monolingual speakers of Japanese as opposed to bilingual speakers, since the latter made a shift towards the English rhetorical style in the expression of motion. Finally, a last study (Tsang, 2016) analysed the use of plural markers in combination with quantity markers by Chinese (Cantonese) speakers (L1) with English as their L2 and who were learning French as an L3. The conclusion was that there was a certain transfer from L3 to L2 especially in subjects with higher proficiency in L3.…”

The sandwich effect in L3 acquisition: A look at the Catalan and Spanish grammars of highly advanced speakers of L3 English

“…Some of these studies examine whether the L3 can have a cumulative enhancement effect on L2 acquisition. These are the studies where the property under investigation behave similarly in the L3 and L2, thus, speeding up the acquisition process (Cheung et al, 2011; Hui, 2010; Llinàs-Grau & Puig-Mayenco, 2016; Tsang, 2016). These studies do not allow us to draw conclusions for our data because (a) they did not prove for negative regressive transfer and (b) the L1 and the L3 do not share the same distribution.…”

“…In line with Hui’s study, the results show a positive/cumulative effect from L3 German to L2 English. In another study, Tsang (2016) compared speakers of L1-Cantonese, L2-English with and without L3 French on the knowledge of number marking in the nominal domain in two different tasks: a grammaticality judgement task and a production one. His results show an effect of L3 French on L2 English on the production task only, suggesting that L3 influence plays a more important role at the production level; recall this is what Cabrelli Amaro (2017) found for phonology.…”

Language Transfer in Third Language Acquisition: Examining the Impact of L3 Korean/Japanese on L2 English of Native Chinese Speakers

“…He argues that the backward transfer from L3 German to L2 English can probably be driven by a closer language distance between these two languages, as well as high frequency of language use and language exposure [6]. In another research on the English number agreement among L3 learners, Tsang (2015) used a grammaticality judgment-correction task and a free writing task and found that there was a possible reverse transfer from L3 French to L2 English among the Cantonese-English-French participants [7]. He proposes that the transfer effect from L3 French to L2 English can only take place when a learner's L3 proficiency has reached a certain threshold [8].…”