Full Transfer Potential in L3/Ln Acquisition Crosslinguistic Influence as a Property-by-Property Process

Abstract

This chapter discusses L3/Ln acquisition as a step-by-step acquisition process, where crosslinguistic influence is considered to be the result of co-activation of lexical items and syntactic structures of the previously acquired languages in processing. That is, as argued by the Linguistic Proximity Model and the Scalpel Model, L3/Ln acquisition is learning by parsing/processing. The main focus of the chapter is on theoretical arguments for crosslinguistic influence taking place incrementally from either or both previously acquired language(s). The chapter also discusses methodological issues for studies that aim to identify hybrid influence, emphasizing the importance of a subtracted language group design, where the influence of individual languages can be isolated by comparing L3 learners to L2 learners of the same target language, but where one of the previously acquired languages is missing (subtracted). Furthermore, the chapter provides a brief overview of empirical L3 studies, finding support for property-by-property acquisition.