This study examines three L3 transfer proposals, namely the L1 Factor (Hermas, 2010, 2014a, 2014b), the CEM (Flynn et al., 2004) and the TPM (Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015) as well as investigates the role of the language of dominance in L3 acquisition of English attributive adjectives. Three groups of bilinguals took part in this study: L1 Mazandarani/L2 Persian, with Mazandarani as the dominant language of communication, L1 Mazandarani/L2 Persian, with Persian as the dominant language of communication and L1 Persian/L2 Mazandarani, with Persian as the dominant language of communication. The results of a grammaticality judgment task and an element rearrangement task show that the predictions of the above-mentioned L3 transfer proposals were not realized. Instead, the dominant language of communication turns out to be the main source of syntactic crosslinguistic influence at the initial stages of L3 acquisition, irrespective of its status as an L1 or L2.
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Hermas, A. (2010). Language acquisition as computational resetting: Verb movement in L3 initial state. International Journal of Multilingualism, 71, 343–362.
Hermas, A. (2014a). Multilingual transfer: L1 morphosyntax in L3 English. International Journal of Language Studies, 81, 1–24.
Hermas, A. (2014b). Restrictive relatives in L3 English: L1 transfer and ultimate attainment convergence. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 341, 361–387.
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Rothman, J. (2010). On the typological economy of syntactic transfer: Word order and relative clause high/low attachment preference in L3 Brazilian Portuguese. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Teaching (IRAL), 481, 245–273.
Rothman, J. (2011). L3 syntactic transfer selectivity and typological determinacy: The Typological Primacy Model. Second Language Research, 271, 107–127.
Rothman, J. (2013). Cognitive economy, non-redundancy and typological primacy in L3 acquisition: Evidence from initial stages of L3 Romance. In S. Baauw, F. Dirjkoningen, & M. Pinto (Eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory (pp. 217–247). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Rothman, J. (2015). Linguistic and cognitive motivations for the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) of third language (L3) transfer: Timing of acquisition and proficiency considered. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 181, 1–12.
Rothman, J., & Cabrelli Amaro, J. (2010). What variables condition syntactic transfer? A look at the L3 initial state. Second Language Research, 261, 189–218.
Rothman, J., & Halloran, B. (2013). Formal linguistic approaches to L3/Ln acquisition: A focus on morphosyntactic transfer in adult multilingualism. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 331, 51–67.
Rothman, J., & Iverson, M. (2013). Strong islands and null objects in L2 Spanish of Brazilian Portuguese natives: Do you know the learners who drop___?Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35(4), 589–618.
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