TY - JOUR

T1 - Low proficiency does not mean ab initio

T2 - A methodological footnote for linguistic transfer studies

AU - Puig-Mayenco, Eloi

AU - Rothman, Jason

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

PY - 2020/4/2

Y1 - 2020/4/2

N2 - The goal of this brief article is to highlight a specific methodological consideration pertaining to the examination of linguistic transfer in sequential language acquisition: When and how can transfer be meaningfully disentangled from issues pertaining to developmental trajectories of the target language? While this methodological issue is relevant for all transfer studies irrespective of learner type or linguistic domain of inquiry, herein we focus on a set of third language acquisition data. We examine the domain of negative quantifiers nobody/nothing and negative polarity items anybody/anything by Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals learning English as the L3 in adulthood. We offer two group analyses. The first is the superset of low beginner proficiency speakers (all participants taking part in a specially designed English course) and then a subset group (only those who were true ab initio L3 learners—that is, with no previous study of English). The analyses combine to show that exposure matters beyond proficiency—even when proficiency is held constant at very low levels, low proficiency L3 learners who have had some instruction/exposure to an L3 pattern differently from truly ab initio L3 learners. We discuss how this reality complicates isolating L3 transfer proper from effects of L3 development/acquisition and thus, by extension, to all cases of transfer such as adult and child L2.

AB - The goal of this brief article is to highlight a specific methodological consideration pertaining to the examination of linguistic transfer in sequential language acquisition: When and how can transfer be meaningfully disentangled from issues pertaining to developmental trajectories of the target language? While this methodological issue is relevant for all transfer studies irrespective of learner type or linguistic domain of inquiry, herein we focus on a set of third language acquisition data. We examine the domain of negative quantifiers nobody/nothing and negative polarity items anybody/anything by Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals learning English as the L3 in adulthood. We offer two group analyses. The first is the superset of low beginner proficiency speakers (all participants taking part in a specially designed English course) and then a subset group (only those who were true ab initio L3 learners—that is, with no previous study of English). The analyses combine to show that exposure matters beyond proficiency—even when proficiency is held constant at very low levels, low proficiency L3 learners who have had some instruction/exposure to an L3 pattern differently from truly ab initio L3 learners. We discuss how this reality complicates isolating L3 transfer proper from effects of L3 development/acquisition and thus, by extension, to all cases of transfer such as adult and child L2.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074600087&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/10489223.2019.1677668

DO - 10.1080/10489223.2019.1677668

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85074600087

VL - 27

SP - 217

EP - 226

JO - Language Acquisition

JF - Language Acquisition

SN - 1048-9223

IS - 2

ER -