scholarly journals Uncovering transfer effects of dominance and proficiency in L3 English acquisition using the visual moving window paradigm and grammaticality judgments

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Angelovska ◽  
Dietmar Roehm ◽  
Sabrina Weinmüller
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Moving Window ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
Russian Speakers ◽  
Key Factor

AbstractUsing a novel combination of visual moving window paradigm and timed grammaticality judgment task, this study examines how third language (L3) learners (beginners and intermediate) with L2 German and different non-verb-second L1s process violated and non-violated main declarative sentences with fronted adverbials in L3 English. It examines the extent to which so far less-explored predictors (language dominance and proficiency) modulate non-facilitative word order transfer from the L2. Our results from experiment 1 corroborate existing (offline data) results (Angelovska, Tanja. 2017. (When) do L3 English learners transfer form L2 German? Evidence from spoken and written data by L1 Russian speakers. In Tanja Angelovska & Angela Hahn (eds.), L3 syntactic transfer: Models, new developments and implications (Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 5), 195–222. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins; Fallah, Nader & Ali Akbar Jabbari. 2018. L3 acquisition of English attributive adjectives dominant language of communication matters for syntactic cross-linguistic influence. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8. 193–216) and are in support of a hybrid transfer suggesting that neither proficiency nor dominance plays a role in transfer selection. Results from experiment 2 reveal that L1-dominance was the determining key factor for accuracy performance for low proficiency L3 subjects but higher L3 proficiency tended to neutralize this strong influence - providing evidence for the Scalpel Model (Slabakova, Roumyana. 2017. The scalpel model of third language acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism 21. 651–665). We explain the contradictory results from the two experiments as a function of task effects.

Source(s) of syntactic cross-linguistic influence (CLI): The case of L3 acquisition of English possessives by Mazandarani–Persian bilinguals

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Fallah ◽  
Ali Akbar Jabbari ◽  
Ali Mohammad Fazilatfar
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Third Language ◽  
The Third ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L3 Acquisition

This study investigates the role of previously acquired linguistic systems, Mazandarani and Persian, in the acquisition of third language (L3) English at the initial stages. The data have been obtained from 31 students (age 13–14 years), testing the placement of attributive possessives in a grammaticality judgment task, an element rearrangement task and an elicited oral imitation task. The participants consist of three groups: The first two groups have Mazandarani as the first language (L1) and Persian as the second language (L2), but differ from each other with respect to the language of communication, Mazandarani and Persian, respectively. The third group has Persian as the L1 and Mazandarani as the L2, with Persian as the language of communication. English and Mazandarani pattern similarly in the target structures. That is to say, possessors precede possessed nouns and possessive adjectives come before nouns. In contrast, in Persian, possessives occur post-nominally. The results of this study reveal that none of the proposals tested (e.g. the L1 Factor, Hermas, 2010, 2014a, 2014b; the L2 Status Factor, Bardel and Falk, 2007; Falk and Bardel, 2011; the Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM), Flynn et al., 2004; the Typological Proximity Model (TPM), Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015) could account for the results obtained. This study provides support that at the initial stages of L3 acquisition, syntactic transfer originates from the language of communication, irrespective of order of acquisition.

Interpretation of NPs in generic and existential contexts in L3 Brazilian Portuguese

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Ionin ◽  
Elaine Grolla ◽  
Hélade Santos ◽  
Silvina A. Montrul
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Third Language ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
L1 English

This paper examines the interpretation of NPs in generic and existential contexts in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) as a third language (L3) by learners who speak English and a Romance language (Spanish, French or Italian). The paper examines whether transfer / cross-linguistic influence is from English, Spanish/French/Italian, or both, and whether it matters which language is the learners’ first language (L1) vs. their second language (L2). An Acceptability Judgment Task of NP interpretation in BrP is administered to L1-English L2-Spanish/French/Italian and L1-Spanish L2-English learners of BrP as an L3, as well as to a control group of native speakers of BrP. The findings point to a nuanced picture of transfer in L3 acquisition, in which both languages can serve as the source of transfer, but transfer from a previously learned Romance language is more pronounced than transfer from English, both for L1-English L2-Romance and L1-Spanish L2-English L3-learners of BrP.

Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Sea Hee Choi ◽  
Tania Ionin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Plural Marking

Abstract This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of –s oversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of –s omission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing –s with definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

scholarly journals PERAN BAHASA INGGRIS SEBAGAI BAHASA KEDUA DALAM PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA INDONESIA SEBAGAI BAHASA KETIGA

Paramasastra ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Kholiq
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Language Influence

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. 

L3 acquisition of German adjectival inflection: A generative account

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Jaensch
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
Adjectival Inflection ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Grammatical Number ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Studies testing the knowledge of syntactic properties have resulted in two potentially contrasting proposals in relation to third language acquisition (TLA); the Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al., 2004), which proposes that previously learned languages will positively affect the acquisition of a third language (L3); and the ‘second language (L2) status factor’ hypothesis (Bardel and Falk, 2007), which proposes that the primacy of the L2 can block the potential positive effects that may be transferable from the first language (L1). This article attempts to extend these hypotheses to the domain of morphosyntax, in relation to the TLA of the properties of grammatical number and gender concord marking on German attributive adjectives; these properties not present in the L1 of Japanese, or the L2 of English. Two further factors are of interest in the current study; first, the performance of the learners according to their L3 and their L2 proficiency levels, a variable not discussed in the above-mentioned studies; and, second, the role that the type of task has on the performance of these learners. Three groups of Japanese native speakers (matched for proficiency within each German group), but with differing English proficiencies, completed a carefully balanced gap-filling task, together with two oral elicitation tasks in the form of games; both of these elicited tokens of adjectival inflection. Initial results offer partial support for weaker versions of the two hypotheses mentioned above. However, neither of the L3 models tested can fully account for the results obtained, which are more consistent with a feature-based account of the organization of grammar in the domain of morphosyntax, such as that of Distributed Morphology (DM) (Halle and Marantz, 1993). DM is a model for language acquisition which — coupled with a view that the Subset Principle proposed by this account is not observed by non-primary language learners — has recently been proposed to explain the optionality observed in L2 learners’ production (Hawkins et al., 2006). The data presented here suggest that it could be extended to L3 learners’ production.

The role of the second language in third language acquisition: the case of Germanic syntax

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Bardel ◽  
Ylva Falk
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Initial State ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
L3 Acquisition

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.

L2 activation and blending in third language acquisition: Evidence of crosslinguistic influence from the L2 in a longitudinal study on the acquisition of L3 English

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA SÁNCHEZ
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
Source Language ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence

This paper reports the findings of a four-year longitudinal study that examined the role of prior linguistic knowledge on the written L3 production of 93 Spanish/Catalan learners. Two research questions guided the study: the first asked whether a background language (L1s Spanish/Catalan, L2 German) would activate in parallel with L3 English during word construction attempts involving verbal forms, and if so, which would be the source language of blending. The second addressed the progressive readjustments of L2 activation and blending in the course of the first 200 hours of instruction. The elicitation technique was a written narrative based on a story telling task. Data were collected first when the learners were on average 9.9 years old (T1), and again at the ages of 10.9 (T2), 11.9 (T3) and 12.9 (T4). The focus of analysis was on word construction attempts that involved verbal forms. The results suggest that a background language, the L2, did indeed activate, especially at early stages of L3 acquisition.

MOTION VERBS WITH GOAL PPs IN THE L2 ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH AND JAPANESE

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunji Inagaki
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Directed Motion ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Japanese Learners

In English, manner-of-motion verbs (walk, run) and directed motion verbs (go) can appear with a prepositional phrase that expresses a goal (goal PP) as in John walked (ran, went) to school. In contrast, Japanese allows only directed motion verbs to occur with a goal PP. Thus, English allows a wider range of motion verbs to occur with goal PPs than Japanese does. Learnability considerations, then, lead me to hypothesize that Japanese learners will learn manner-of-motion verbs with goal PPs in English from positive evidence, whereas English learners will have difficulty learning that manner-of-motion verbs with goal PPs are impossible in Japanese because nothing in the input will tell them so. Forty-two intermediate Japanese learners of English and 21 advanced English learners of Japanese were tested using a grammaticality judgment task with pictures. Results support this prediction and provide a new piece of evidence for the previous findings indicating that L1 influence persists when an argument structure in the L2 constitutes a subset of its counterpart in the L1.

Cross-linguistic influence in the child third language acquisition of grammar: Sentence comprehension and production among Turkish-German and German learners of English

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 567-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Hopp
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
German Children ◽  
The One ◽  
Turkish German

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This paper investigates the extent to which current formal models of third language (L3) grammatical acquisition extend to sequential child L3 acquisition. We examine whether heritage speakers learning a foreign language as an early L3 transfer grammatical properties from the heritage language or the dominant second language (L2). Design/Methodology/Approach: We used a sentence repetition task and a picture story retelling task. The tasks focussed on grammatical phenomena that were either different between English and German, that is, verb-second and adverb order, or between English and German, on the one hand, and Turkish, on the other, that is, verb-complement order as well as subject and article realization. Data and Analysis: We tested matched groups of 31 Turkish-German and 31 monolingual German children learning English in grades 3 and 4, and we compared sentence repetitions as well as oral sentence production across different grammatical phenomena using parametric statistics. Findings/Conclusions: In both tasks, the two groups perform indistinguishably from each other, and both groups show selective transfer of grammatical properties from German. These findings suggest L2 transfer from a typologically related language in sequential child L3 acquisition. Originality: This paper breaks new ground by testing the applicability of formal models of adult L3 acquisition of grammar to sequential child L3 learners. It uses aural comprehension and oral production tasks with carefully matched groups of L2 and L3 learners of English to isolate the source of grammatical transfer in L3 acquisition. Significance/Implications: The research advances our understanding of cross-linguistic influence and unravels the dynamics of grammatical transfer in early child multilingualism. It adjudicates between current models of transfer in L3 acquisition in a multiple-methods design, it shows that these models apply to early L3 acquisition of heritage speakers, and it highlights that these models need to be expanded to include factors such as dominance and proficiency in prior languages.

scholarly journals A systematic review of transfer studies in third language acquisition

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eloi Puig-Mayenco ◽  
Jorge González Alonso ◽  
Jason Rothman
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
First Language ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Transfer Data ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
L3 Acquisition ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Present Systematic Review

The present systematic review examines what factors determine when, how and to what extent previous linguistic experience (from the first language, second language or both languages) affects the initial stages and beyond of adult third language (L3) acquisition. In doing so, we address what a bird’s eye view of the data tells us regarding competing theoretical accounts of L3 morphosyntactic transfer. Data couple together to suggest that some factors are more influential than others. As discussed, the systematic review transcends the field of adult multilingualism precisely because of what it reveals, as a prima facie example in behavioral research, in terms of how different types of methodological considerations impact the way data are interpreted to support or not particular claims.

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