Third Language Acquisition and Linguistic Transfer

Abstract

Setting the Context General IntroductionThis book is about the acquisition of a third language (or more additional languages) in adulthood; that is, when a bilinguala child who is a simultaneous (2L1) bilingual, a child who has sequentially acquired a second language (L2) or an adult who is a sequential L2 bilingualacquires yet another language later in life. Is learning a third (L3) or more (Ln) language different from learning an L2 or just more of the same? If the process is different or similar, what are the implications for important questions related to linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and other fields? Addressing and providing some answers to the aforementioned is the overarching goal of this book.For a very long time, it was taken for granted that all instances of nonnative, sequential language acquisition were fundamentally equivalent. Such a claim was never stated explicitly; however, standard empirical practice in the study of adult L2 acquisition across virtually all paradigms suggested that few people were preoccupied with the heterogeneous groups in so-called L2 studies before the turn of the millennium. In fact, it was not until the mid-2000s that researchers, at least those studying the acquisition of morphosyntax, began to contemplate in earnest the effect of knowing more than one previous language and thus to differentiate true L2 from multilingual learners systematically, at least with regard to L3 learners. Consequently, new questions began to emerge organically, such as the role that having more than one previously acquired system has on subsequent acquisition/processing or how this influence is selected among choices. At the time of writing this book in 2017-2018, gone are the days in which no one questioned linguistic-experience inclusion criteria in L2 acquisition. We now know that whether or not a target nonnative language is chronologically a second or later language matters a great deal for morphosyntax in the L3 initial stages and throughout L3 development. While we do not yet 1

Microvariation in multilingual situations: The importance of property-by-property acquisition

“…The field of formal approaches to L3 acquisition has sparked considerable theoretical interest over the last two decades. I will only briefly mention a few relevant issues here, as overviews of this relatively new field may be found in numerous publications, most recently in Rothman et al (2019). In addition to studies finding transfer from the L1 on the L3 (e.g., Jin 2009, Na Ranong and Leung 2009, Hermas 2010, several models have been developed, arguing for a variety of factors responsible for crosslinguistic influence in L3 acquisition.…”

“…Recent work has seen further refinements of the model. Rothman et al (2019) allow for initial surface influence as well as secondary transfer taking place property by property (before and after wholesale transfer), and finally, they speculate that L4 acquisition may proceed property by property, as "L3 experiences of non-facilitation might very well mean that full transfer will be disregarded as a viable option when the mind is an experienced multilingual one, meaning L4 acquisition and beyond" (Rothman et al 2019: 157). Thus, the TPM must assume a number of principled distinctions that seem to be motivated by the idea of wholesale transfer:…”

“…However, the competence/performance distinction has been used in various ways in linguistic theory (see Phillips 1996: 275-277 for four different interpretations), and it is not entirely clear what is meant here. Moreover, it is relatively widely acknowledged in current psycholinguistic research that, despite certain misalignments between grammar and processing, one cannot make a complete separation of the grammar and the parser, since the parser operates on representations in the grammar (see e.g., Lewis and Phillips 2015), a view that Rothman et al (2019) also endorse. 11 Thus, the distinction between transfer and CLE as two different processes has a weak theoretical foundation, in my view.…”

“…the next section. With respect to the concern about non-facilitation expressed by Rothman et al (2019), the assumption seems to be that when the L3 learner has a choice between transfer from the L1 or the L2, it is a question of choosing either the right or the wrong option, as would be the case in an 80s-style macroparameter approach to acquisition. But within a view of language that takes microvariation into account, this should no longer hold: Given that the L3 is hardly ever identical to either of the previously acquired languages, transfer will often be non-facilitative either way, even when the L3 learner chooses the option from the structurally more similar language.…”

L2 transfer of L1 island-insensitivity: The case of Norwegian

“…Models of L2/Ln acquisition disagree on the degree to which L1 functional structure transfers (for review, see Rothman et al, 2019). The Minimal Trees approach of Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994, 1996, 2006 admits no transfer of functional projections from L1 to L2, positing that learners transfer only lexical projections (VPs) during early acquisition.…”