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Structural similarity across domains in third language acquisition
Edited by Nadine Kolb, Natalia Mitrofanova and Marit Westergaard
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13:5] 2023
► pp. 717–742

Crosslinguistic influence in L3 acquisition

Evidence from artificial language learning

| UiT The Arctic University of Norway
ORCID logo | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona | Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA)
ORCID logo | UiT The Arctic University of Norway | Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

This study investigates the role of lexical vs structural similarity in L3 acquisition. We designed a mini-artificial language learning task where the novel L3 was lexically based on Norwegian but included a property that was present in Russian and Greek yet absent in Norwegian (grammatical case). The participants were Norwegian-Russian and Norwegian-Greek bilinguals as well as a group of Norwegian L1 speakers. All participants also knew some English. The morphological expression of the L3 target property was more like Russian than Greek in that case was marked on the noun itself, not on articles. The results of our study indicate that previous experience with a language that is structurally like the L3 (Russian) is facilitative, even when the L3 lexically resembles a language that lacks this grammatical property (Norwegian). Our results suggest overt that the morphological expression of the target property also plays a role: previous experience with Greek that marks the target contrast on determiners did not seem to be facilitative at early stages of acquisition. Overall, our results are in line with models of L3/Ln acquisition which assume that both previously acquired languages influence the development of the L3 and that structural, morphological and lexical similarity play a role.

Keywords: morphological similarity, lexical similarity, facilitative transfer, cross-linguistic influence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Cross-linguistic influence in L3 Acquisition: Full Transfer or Full Transfer Potential (co-activation)
    • 2.2The role of structural (abstract) similarity and overt (formal) similarity
    • 2.3Case in the three relevant languages
    • 2.4Research questions
  • 3.The Aliensk study
    • 3.1Sentence-picture verification task
    • 3.2Design and materials
    • 3.3Participants
    • 3.4Predictions
    • 3.5Results and Interim discussion
    • 3.6Follow-up study
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Data availability statement
  • Competing Interests Declaration
  • References
Published online: 10 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.22063.mit
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