Abstract
In an investigation of the acquisition of grammatical gender at the initial stage of L3 acquisition, beginner L3 German learners with L1 English/L2 Spanish or L1 Spanish/L2 English were compared in their ability to identify gender errors in a German grammaticality judgement task. L2 Spanish learners significantly outperformed L1 Spanish learners. Potential explanations for group differences include (1) exclusive transfer of L2 grammatical knowledge at the initial stages of L3, as predicted by the L2 Status Factor Model (Bardel & Falk 2007), as well as (2) increased metalinguistic knowledge of gender as a result of instruction in the L2.
Highlights
It has long been established in the field of second language (L2) acquisition literature that when adult monolinguals begin to acquire an L2, the grammar of their first language (L1) plays a critical role in the development of the L2 grammar (Flynn 1981; White 2003)
L1 Privilege (L1P) predicts that S-English L2 German (E-G) learners will perform significantly better on a task related to L3 German grammatical gender than E-S-G learners
This work looks to test the predictions of a variety of previously proposed models in their ability to predict the success of sequential English/Spanish and Spanish/English bilinguals in acquiring L3 German grammatical gender
Summary
It has long been established in the field of second language (L2) acquisition literature that when adult monolinguals begin to acquire an L2, the grammar of their first language (L1) plays a critical role in the development of the L2 grammar (Flynn 1981; White 2003) This influence of a previously known grammar on the onset of L2 grammatical development is known as “transfer”. As a result of the array of potential factors that have been found to influence L3 initial state transfer, L3 acquisition researchers have proposed a variety of models in an attempt to predict transfer source(s) at the initial state of L3 While these models are numerous and often make contradicting claims, the majority of them generally fit into one of two categories: wholesale transfer or partial transfer models (Puig-Mayenco et al 2018). Bardel & Falk’s (2007) L2 Status Factor Model (L2S) proposes that increased metalinguistic awareness of L2 syntactic features as well as similarities in acquisition experience, such as learning both the L2 and the L3 in adulthood, result in the L2 becoming the exclusive contributor to the L3 initial state
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