Crosslinguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition CLI in L3 English acquisition of Persian-Mazandarani Bilinguals

Abstract

Aims and Objectives: This thesis aims to find the influence of previously acquired languages, specifically Mazandarani and Persian, on the early stages of English acquisition. The primary objective is to test word order patterns in noun modifiers and Of-genitive usage across Mazandarani, Persian, and English. The study includes three groups: bilinguals of Mazandarani and Persian and native speakers of Mazandarani and Persian. Methodology: The research methodology is a forced-choice task through Google Forms appropriate for 6-7-year-old children in the beginning of English acquisition. The participant selection involved a non-random approach complemented by background questionnaires and assessments of English, Mazandarani, and Persian proficiency. Data and Analysis: The collected data was analyzed in RStudio, R version 4.2.2 (R CoreTeam, 2023). The lme4 R (Bates et al., 2015) and emmeans (Searle et al., 1980) packages were used to fit the logistic mixed effects regression model. Findings and conclusion: According to the Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM) (Flynn et al., 2004), the performance of Group 2L1 is not only facilitated by Persian and Mazandarani languages. Instead, it shows a combination of facilitative and non-facilitative influences from both languages. This suggests that the CEM model does not fit the results. The Typological Primacy Model (TPM) (Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2015; Rothman et al., 2019) posits that 2L1 uses a previously acquired language with higher typological similarity. However, results showed that Group 2L1 struggled with noun modifier properties despite Mazandarani's typological similarity to English. The Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) (Westergaard et al., 2017) is the only model that supports some aspects of the findings. It indicates that only the Attributive adjective condition has a non-facilitative influence from Persian and a facilitative influence from Mazandarani. Generally, there is no significant cross-linguistic influence in English. Significance: This study adds to the existing data on CLI in L3 acquisition and contributes to the ongoing discussions on the role of previously acquired languages in L3A. Keywords: CLI, Mazandarani, Persian, English acquisition, word order of noun modifiers, Of-genitive, CEM, LPM, TPM.