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Foreign Language Education in Multilingual Classrooms
Edited by Andreas Bonnet and Peter Siemund
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 7] 2018
► pp. 305–330

L1 effects in the early L3 acquisition of vocabulary and grammar

| University of Braunschweig, Germany
| University of Mannheim, Germany
| University of Mannheim, Germany
| University of Mannheim, Germany

This chapter explores cross-linguistic influences in the lexical and grammatical acquisition of L3 English among child L2 learners of German with a variety of L1 backgrounds. For lexical development, we find interrelations in vocabulary size between L1, L2 and English lexicons. For grammar, a sentence repetition task does not show any differences between learner groups. Instead, all learners transfer German word order to English, irrespective of the properties of the L1 grammar. We discuss these findings in the context of current formal approaches to transfer in L3 acquisition and sketch some implications for foreign language teaching in a multilingual classroom.

Keywords: cross-linguistic influence, grammar, heritage speakers, third language acquisition, young learners, vocabulary
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cross-linguistic interactions in multilingual acquisition
    • 2.1The multilingual lexicon
      • 2.1.1Vocabulary size
      • 2.1.2Non-selective lexical access
      • 2.1.3Cross-linguistic lexical influence
    • 2.2Grammatical transfer in child and adult L3 learners
  • 3.Research question and hypotheses
  • 4.The present study
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Materials and methods
    • 4.3Control variables
    • 4.4Procedure
    • 4.5Analysis
    • 4.6Results
      • 4.6.1Group comparisons
      • 4.6.2English vocabulary
      • 4.6.3English grammar
  • 5.Discussion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 24 October 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.7.14hop
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