Multilingual acquisition property by property: A view from a wider perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832093516
Author(s):  
Magdalena Wrembel

This commentary discusses the recent keynote article in Second Language Research by Westergaard (2019), which is an interesting contribution to the field of language acquisition and multilingualism, especially because it attempts to provide a wider perspective by embracing first, second and third language acquisition. I address major claims put forward by Westergaard, to support them with my own research data from the domain of phonology as well as to raise some questions as to potential limitations of the approach, and to point to avenues for future theoretical and methodological refinement.

Paramasastra ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Kholiq

Cross language influence in third language (L3) acquisition is related to the first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. Cross-language influence in third language acquisition studies can be analyzed from the first and second language role in the third language acquisition. Each acquisition Indonesian language as L3 is always English as L2 so that the role of English in acquiring Indonesian as B3 be worth studying. It is a qualitative approach based research. This study focuses on (1) the role of English of articulation and (2) the role of English as the provider acquiring vocabulary in Indonesian as L3. Data used in this research is the conversation conducted by the researcher and research subject; and sentence production based on picture by the research subject. Data analysis result finds 1) the role of English as an addition to the mastery of the sound that is not owned B1 of pemeroleh Indonesian as L3 and English influence language sounds in pronunciation Indonesian, and 2) The role of English as a provider of vocabulary in language acquisition Indonesia as B3 is as a language bridge in language acquisition Indonesia if the Indonesian pemeroleh not master words in Indonesian. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832094103
Author(s):  
John Archibald

There are several theories which tackle predicting the source of third language (L3) crosslinguistic influence. The two orthogonal questions that arise are which language is most likely to influence the L3 and whether the influence will be wholesale or piecemeal (property-by-property). To my mind, Westergaard’s Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) is preferable to other theoretical models (say Rothman’s Typological Primacy Model) insofar as it is consistent with many aspects of L2/L3 phonological learnability that I am familiar with. Westergaard proposes a structure-based piecemeal approach to the explanation of third language acquisition (L3A). The model is driven by parsing and dictates that the first language (L1) or second language (L2) structure which is hypothesized to be most similar to the L3 structure will be the one to transfer.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Bardel ◽  
Ylva Falk

In this study of the placement of sentence negation in third language acquisition (L3), we argue that there is a qualitative difference between the acquisition of a true second language (L2) and the subsequent acquisition of an L3. Although there is considerable evidence for L2 influence on vocabulary acquisition in L3, not all researchers believe that such influence generalizes to morphosyntactic aspects of the grammar. For example, Håkansson et al. (2002) introduce the Developmentally Moderated Transfer Hypothesis (DMTH), which incorporates transfer in Processability Theory (PT). They argue against syntactic transfer from L2 to L3. The present study presents counter-evidence to this hypothesis from two groups of learners with different L1s and L2s acquiring Swedish or Dutch as L3. The evidence clearly indicates that syntactic structures are more easily transferred from L2 than from L1 in the initial state of L3 acquisition. The two groups behave significantly differently as to the placement of negation, a difference that can be attributed to the L2 knowledge of the learners in interaction with the typological relationship between the L2 and the L3.


Author(s):  
Kirsten Lindegaard Helms

This paper explores the crosslinguistic influences of first and second language on third language acquisition. While it has earlier been argued that Universal Grammar is lost with subsequent language acquisition, some studies indicate that Universal Grammar is not lost and is also applied when acquiring other languages. By drawing on two studies of third language acquisition where the third languages are V2, it is shown that when it comes to acquiring a third language, transfer can happen from both the first and second languages. One study showed that both the first and second languages can influence the acquisition of a third language while another argued in favor of the second language being the most dominant influence. On the basis of an examination of different theoretical approaches to language transfer, this paper argues that the Typological Primacy Model provides the most convincing and pragmatic explanation in that language transfer depends on linguistic circumstances.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan-kit Ingrid Leung

The present article reviews three collections of papers edited by Cenoz and colleagues on the topic of third language (L3) acquisition from perspectives including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and education. Our focus is on psycholinguistics, in particular, lexical acquisition studies, and with particular reference to two central notions in the study of L3, namely, language-selectiveness and cross-linguistic influence. The article also discusses expansion of the study of L3 acquisition into the Universal Grammar/Second Language Acquisition (UG/SLA) paradigm, and closes by looking at future directions for the L3 field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingting Xiang ◽  
Boping Yuan

Abstract Recent research on third language acquisition has been focusing on identifying the source of transfer in third language (L3) acquisition. In this article, we report on an empirical study of a less-studied language combination of Mandarin, Cantonese and English, which examines how speakers of Mandarin as a first, second and third language process Mandarin indefinite and definite subjects. Our data reveals that both typologically and structurally similar and less similar languages are available for transfer in third language acquisition, thus such transfer can be facilitative as well as detrimental. We also find that the frequency and length of exposure to the second language and the vulnerability of the property under investigation may cause first language attrition, which could also influence third language acquisition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqing Dai

Guided by the theory of language transfer, this paper examines the transfer of English (second language) in the early stages of the acquisition of German (third language) by Chinese English majors. The results reveal that English has both positive and negative effects on German acquisition, especially on German pronunciation, vocabulary and sentence learning. On the basis of these findings, some suggestions are also put forward in order to improve the efficiency of third language (German) teaching, namely, English-as-a-vehicular-language teaching, contrastive teaching and corpus-based teaching.


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