TY - JOUR

T1 - On the status of transfer in adult third language acquisition of early bilinguals

AU - Alonso, Jorge González

AU - Puig-Mayenco, Eloi

AU - Fábregas, Antonio

AU - Chaouch-Orozco, Adel

AU - Rothman, Jason

N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2021 González Alonso et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

PY - 2021/3/4

Y1 - 2021/3/4

N2 - The study of linguistic transfer-understood here in terms of the copying of previous linguistic representations-seeks to reveal how domain-relevant prior language knowledge impacts the acquisition and development of new mental representations more generally. Studying sequential multilingualism offers a natural laboratory to observe cognitive-economical mechanisms that avoid redundancy in language learning. One of the key dividing questions between theories of transfer in sequential multilingualism is the extent of transfer, that is, whether a whole previous grammar is transferred (full transfer) or a potentially different source language is selected for each linguistic property (property-by-property transfer). We adopted a novel methodological approach to this question, examining four different linguistic properties from unrelated domains of grammar across the three languages of a heterogeneous population of highly proficient, early Catalan/Spanish bilinguals with different degrees of language dominance and order of acquisition, at the very beginning of (adult) L3 English. Results are variably complex across the different properties, but compatible with a scenario where one of the previous languages, Catalan, was selected as the basis for the initial L3 English grammar of these speakers. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings.

AB - The study of linguistic transfer-understood here in terms of the copying of previous linguistic representations-seeks to reveal how domain-relevant prior language knowledge impacts the acquisition and development of new mental representations more generally. Studying sequential multilingualism offers a natural laboratory to observe cognitive-economical mechanisms that avoid redundancy in language learning. One of the key dividing questions between theories of transfer in sequential multilingualism is the extent of transfer, that is, whether a whole previous grammar is transferred (full transfer) or a potentially different source language is selected for each linguistic property (property-by-property transfer). We adopted a novel methodological approach to this question, examining four different linguistic properties from unrelated domains of grammar across the three languages of a heterogeneous population of highly proficient, early Catalan/Spanish bilinguals with different degrees of language dominance and order of acquisition, at the very beginning of (adult) L3 English. Results are variably complex across the different properties, but compatible with a scenario where one of the previous languages, Catalan, was selected as the basis for the initial L3 English grammar of these speakers. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings.

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0247976

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0247976

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 33662040

AN - SCOPUS:85102506511

VL - 16

SP - e0247976

JO - PLoS One

JF - PLoS One

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 3 March

M1 - e0247976

ER -