L3 acquisition and crosslinguistic influence as co-activation. Response to commentaries on the keynote “Microvariation in multilingual situations: The importance of property-by-property acquisition

Abstract

I would first of all like to thank the many authors who have provided commentaries on my keynote article ‘Microvariation in multilingual situations: The importance of property-by-property acquisition’ (Westergaard, 2021a). The keynote has generated significant and stimulating debate about central issues on crosslinguistic influence in multilingual language acquisition, and I find it especially welcome that the majority of the commentaries support and enhance the main idea of the keynote, viz. that L2/L3/Ln acquisition takes place as a step-wise process, property by property. The commentaries have provided supporting arguments, additional data, and suggestions for further research, but also new questions and critical comments. This response is divided into sections focusing on the following issues: Full transfer and the notion of copying, the definition of linguistic proximity, some terminological issues, research methodology, predictions, empirical support, and possible misinterpretations.