The plausibility of wholesale vs. property-by-property transfer in L3 acquisition

Abstract

In Schwartz and Sprouse’s keynote “The Full Transfer/Full Access model and L3 cognitive states” (henceforth S&S), the authors discuss the concept of Full Transfer from their own work on L2 acquisition in the 1990s in relation to new developments in L3/Ln acquisition. They claim that Full Transfer must be understood as Wholesale Transfer (WT) and argue against what they refer to as Piecemeal Transfer (PT). In their definition of WT as “transfer of a substantial part of or even all of the abstract properties of one of the previously acquired grammars as a block” (p. 2), they seem to introduce a new concept of “substantial parts” as different from the whole grammar, but unfortunately they do not elaborate on the nature and size of such parts. Towards the end of the paper, they sketch some interesting avenues for L3 research involving different language combinations, but the ongoing work referred to has not yet provided any evidence that may distinguish between WT and PT.