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Article published In:
Acquisition of Chinese: Bilingualism and Multilingualism
Edited by Boping Yuan and Yanyu Guo
[Journal of Second Language Studies 3:2] 2020
► pp. 261–289

Facilitative transfer only?

L3 acquisition of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters by English-Cantonese bilinguals

| University College Cork
| University of Cambridge
This study investigates transfer effects and later development in English-Cantonese bilinguals’ L3 Mandarin grammar. Three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters are involved as the target structures. The results show that L3 learners with the knowledge of Cantonese behave in a less native-like way than their English-speaking L2 counterparts on the illicit Mandarin cluster [*de le/* le de] that has a licit corresponding cluster in Cantonese, and outperform their L2 counterparts on the licit Mandarin cluster [le ne] that has a Cantonese equivalent. This is regarded as strong evidence of transfer effects from Cantonese, which is typologically and structurally more similar to Mandarin than English. We hence argue that L3 initial transfer is not determined by the order of the languages previously acquired but the structural similarity. More importantly, our study shows that transfer effects can be facilitative as well as detrimental. In addition, our data cross different proficiency levels show that factors such as the learning situation (learning or unlearning), word frequency and form-meaning relationship can influence the success of acquisition of a specific property in the L3.
Keywords: sentence-final particle clusters, L3 Mandarin, transfer, Cantonese, English
Article outline
  • 1.Transfer at L3 initial stages and later development
    • 1.1Transfer at L3 initial stages
      • 1.1.1Learning order or structural similarity
      • 1.1.2Wholesale or piecemeal
      • 1.1.3Facilitative only or not
    • 1.2L3 development and influential factors
  • 2.Mandarin sfp clusters and their counterparts in Cantonese and English
    • 2.1Syntax and semantics of Mandarin sfps de, le, ne and ma
    • 2.2Investigation of three types of sfp clusters
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials and procedures
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Data on Type 1 sfp cluster [*de le/*le de]
    • 4.2Data on Type 2 sfp cluster [le ne]
    • 4.3Data on Type 3 sfp cluster [le ma]
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Summary of main findings
    • 5.2Transfer source at L3 initial stages
    • 5.3L3 development and influential factors
      • 5.3.1Unlearning vs. learning
      • 5.3.2Construction frequency and form-meaning relationship
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.00013.guo
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