L2 vs. L3 initial state: A comparative study of the acquisition of French DPs by Vietnamese monolinguals and Cantonese–English bilinguals

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This paper compares the initial state of second language acquisition (L2A) and third language acquisition (L3A) from the generative linguistics perspective. We examine the acquisition of the Determiner Phrase (DP) by two groups of beginning French learners: an L2 group (native speakers of Vietnamese who do not speak any English) and an L3 group (native speakers of Cantonese who are also proficient L2 English users). Two current competing models in the field of theoretical second language acquisition, namely Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) and the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH) are compared and their extension to L3A evaluated. Results point to full transfer of L1 in the L2 initial state and partial transfer of L2 in the L3 initial state. The L3 group performed significantly better than the L2 group on most of the properties tested. We suggest that these findings are not totally consistent with either FTFA or FFFH, but argue that they crucially demonstrate that L3A is not simply another case of L2A because transfer in L3A does not necessarily always come from L1.