Abstract
This text comments on the Keynote article ‘Microvariation in multilingual situations: The importance of property-by-property acquisition’ by Marit Westergaard, who argues for Full Transfer Potential within the Linguistic Proximity Model in third language (L3) acquisition. The commentary points at some theoretical and methodological issues related to the Linguistic Proximity Model, e.g. the age factor in language learning, the role of metalinguistic knowledge and proficiency in L3 learning, and the lack of predictive power of the model.
Highlights
IntroductionThe study of the L3 (third language, or additional languages), with its roots back in the 1950s has experienced a boom in the last decades
The study of the L3, with its roots back in the 1950s has experienced a boom in the last decades
The reference to the other study brought up to corroborate the model, an unpublished poster by Mitrofanova and Westergaard (2018), suffers from similar shortcomings: the participants are called bilinguals, but nothing is said about at what age they acquired their L2, and no information is given about the number of participants nor about method. We find it hard to acknowledge how these two studies, of which the second is impossible to replicate, can serve as empirical evidence for the Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM), since there is no clear indication of what exactly is found in the data that corroborates a model for L3 learning
Summary
The study of the L3 (third language, or additional languages), with its roots back in the 1950s has experienced a boom in the last decades. One often quoted definition is the one from Hammarberg (2001: 22): ‘In order to obtain a basis for discussing the situation of a polyglot, we will here use the term L3 for the language that is currently being acquired, and L2 for any other language that the person has acquired after the L1’ (emphasis added) From this definition it follows that L3 acquisition takes place when the learner has already acquired (at least) one L2, and that the L2 has been acquired later in life than the L1. In De Angelis (2007) this is further problematized when defining what characterizes third language acquisition She states that ‘it may seem obvious to many that the prior knowledge of a nonnative language is a variable that needs to be properly controlled’ (2007: 6; emphasis added) and further discusses what effect the experience of already having learned a foreign language has on the L3 acquisition process. We will discuss some further critical points of the keynote
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