Second language transfer in Third Language Acquisition A Study on the acquisition of word order
- Emma Bornai, University of Greenwich
- Glendinning Lecture Theatre 2D67, UWE Bristol
Language acquisition is a very controversial field of the study of linguistics. There are current debates about how a language is acquired and they always go back to the same question: to what extent is a first language learnt differently from other languages. The three opposing views are: the L1 Initial state, the No Transfer and the Partial Transfer positions. What these views mainly focus on is the study of Second Language Acquisition. This paper intends to take this discussion one step further by looking at Third Language Acquisition.
Although there are existing papers investigating the acquisition of vocabulary in TLA, little seems to have been said about the acquisition of syntactical features. This is why this research will investigate the question of language transfer in word order. There will be three groups of Spanish learners involved: one with L1 English, one with L1 Hungarians learning Spanish as L2 and one with L1 Hungarians, learning Spanish as their L3. The choice of the three languages is deliberate as they are from very different origins: Hungarian is from the Finno- Ugric, English is from the Germanic and Spanish is from the Latin language family. This fact makes them appreciably different in many aspects, but the most conspicuous difference is in their syntax.
The groups will be given the same Spanish grammaticality judgement test on word order and their results will be compared. If first language effect is assumed, Hungarian participants will allow more deviation from SVO in their test than English participants. If the English and the L3 Hungarian groups perform similarly, it suggests that those Hungarians who are learning Spanish as a third language are using their existing second language knowledge, which is English. If this is the case, and the second language has greater effect than the first, it would emphasise the importance of multilingualism and would support the idea that second language learning prepares learners with such language awareness that can help them in their third or other language acquisition.
Although there are existing papers investigating the acquisition of vocabulary in TLA, little seems to have been said about the acquisition of syntactical features. This is why this research will investigate the question of language transfer in word order. There will be three groups of Spanish learners involved: one with L1 English, one with L1 Hungarians learning Spanish as L2 and one with L1 Hungarians, learning Spanish as their L3. The choice of the three languages is deliberate as they are from very different origins: Hungarian is from the Finno- Ugric, English is from the Germanic and Spanish is from the Latin language family. This fact makes them appreciably different in many aspects, but the most conspicuous difference is in their syntax.
The groups will be given the same Spanish grammaticality judgement test on word order and their results will be compared. If first language effect is assumed, Hungarian participants will allow more deviation from SVO in their test than English participants. If the English and the L3 Hungarian groups perform similarly, it suggests that those Hungarians who are learning Spanish as a third language are using their existing second language knowledge, which is English. If this is the case, and the second language has greater effect than the first, it would emphasise the importance of multilingualism and would support the idea that second language learning prepares learners with such language awareness that can help them in their third or other language acquisition.