The study of the role of the background languages in third language acquisition. The state of the art
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Ylva Falk
Abstract
The aim of this article is to give an up-to-date picture of study of the role of the background languages (the first language, L1, and the second language, L2) in third language (L3) acquisition, mainly in the two areas of vocabulary and syntax. These seem to be the two linguistic levels on which there has so far been most research concerning cross-linguistic influence (CLI). Lexical CLI and syntactic transfer have in most cases been studied separately, but as we will see studies indicate that L3 learners seem to rely on both vocabulary and grammar from their background languages, at least to some extent. The role of the background languages in morphology and phonology has been less investigated in L3 studies, although there are a few studies that indicate that L3 performance can reflect activation of previously acquired languages at these linguistic levels too. The paper also includes a survey of neurolinguistic approaches to multilingualism and discusses how these findings can contribute to the understanding of transfer in L3 acquisition.
© Walter de Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Approaches to third language acquisition: Introduction
- The languages of the multilingual: Some conceptual and terminological issues
- Multilingualism and affordances: Variation in self-perceived communicative competence and communicative anxiety in French L1, L2, L3 and L4
- Inter- and intralingual lexical influences in advanced learners' French L3 oral production
- The use of prior linguistic knowledge in the early stages of L3 acquisition
- The study of the role of the background languages in third language acquisition. The state of the art
- Informing the age-of-acquisition debate: L3 as a litmus test
- On the typological economy of syntactic transfer: Word order and relative clause high/low attachment preference in L3 Brazilian Portuguese
- On L3 acquisition and phonological permeability: A new test case for debates on the mental representation of non-native phonological systems
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Approaches to third language acquisition: Introduction
- The languages of the multilingual: Some conceptual and terminological issues
- Multilingualism and affordances: Variation in self-perceived communicative competence and communicative anxiety in French L1, L2, L3 and L4
- Inter- and intralingual lexical influences in advanced learners' French L3 oral production
- The use of prior linguistic knowledge in the early stages of L3 acquisition
- The study of the role of the background languages in third language acquisition. The state of the art
- Informing the age-of-acquisition debate: L3 as a litmus test
- On the typological economy of syntactic transfer: Word order and relative clause high/low attachment preference in L3 Brazilian Portuguese
- On L3 acquisition and phonological permeability: A new test case for debates on the mental representation of non-native phonological systems
