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Article published In:
Journal of Second Language Studies
Vol. 5:2 (2022) ► pp.235–265

Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of articles in L3 English by Danish-Russian bilingual children

| Independent researcher
| UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Recent models of third language acquisition (L3A) propose that previous linguistic knowledge largely has a facilitative effect. That is, either typological proximity or linguistic similarity will mostly lead to facilitation and the patterns of non-facilitation will be rather subtle. The present study investigates whether Danish-Russian bilingual children may overcome difficulties associated with knowing Russian, an article-less language, and benefit from knowing Danish when learning L3 English. To isolate the effects of each language we use a subtractive language groups design and compare article use in bilinguals and two control groups (L1 Russian-L2 English and L1 Danish-L2 English children). The results of a forced choice elicitation task show that the use of articles is near target-like in Danish-Russian and L1 Danish children and that bilinguals outperform L1 Russian children. A detailed investigation of article use, misuse and omission errors also suggests that non-facilitation from Russian is virtually non-existent. Thus, young bilinguals can successfully transfer article semantics from Danish at early stages of L3A.

Keywords: third language acquisition, child bilinguals, article semantics, cross-linguistic influence, English, Danish, Russian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definiteness and specificity in English, Danish, and Russian
    • 2.1English
    • 2.2Danish
    • 2.3Russian
  • 3.Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of articles in L2 and L3 English
  • 4.Present study
    • 4.1Research questions and predictions
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Design and procedure
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.21025.rod
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