Segmental and Prosodic Evidence for Property-by-Property Transfer in L3 English in Northern Africa

John Archibald

doi:10.3390/languages7010028

Abstract

In this paper, I argue in favour of property-by-property transfer in the third language acquisition of English by L1 Arabic and L2 French speakers in Northern Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) based on a reanalysis of previous work. I provide a phonological analysis of their spontaneous production data in the domains of consonants, vowels, stress, and rhythm. The L3 phonology shows evidence of influence from both L1 Arabic and L2 French, with mixed influences found both within and across segmental and prosodic domains. The vowels are French-influenced, while the consonants are Arabic-influenced; the stress is a mixture of Arabic and French influence while the rhythm is French. I argue that these data are explained if we adopt a Contrastive Hierarchy Model of feature structure with the addition of parsing theories such as those proposed by Lightfoot. These data provide further evidence in support of the Westergaard’s Linguistic Proximity Model. I conclude by showing how this approach can allow us to formalize a measure of linguistic I-proximity and thus explain when the L1 or L2 structures will transfer.

Highlights

Property-by-Property Transfer in L3This paper draws on existing data from two populations acquiring English as their third language (L3) in Northern Africa (Benrabah 1991; Ghazali 1973; Ghazali and Bouchhioua 2003)
We report on data from the L3 English of L1 Tunisian Arabic and L2 French sequential trilinguals (Ghazali and Bouchhioua 2003) who show evidence of transfer of Arabic stress onto some English words, and French ‘stress’ onto others
I believe that the approach to third language acquisition outlined in this paper provides a valuable synthesis to the sub-fields of language acquisition

Summary

Introduction

Property-by-Property Transfer in L3This paper draws on existing data from two populations acquiring English as their third language (L3) in Northern Africa (Benrabah 1991; Ghazali 1973; Ghazali and Bouchhioua 2003). Each group has a dialect of Arabic as their first language (L1) and French as their second language (L2). One of the elusive goals of the study of third language acquisition (L3A) is to attempt to explain and predict whether the first language or the second language will be the major influence on the third language. I will argue that the data provide evidence that structures from both the L1 and the L2 can transfer into the. Such patterns support the model of L3A proposed by Westergaard et al. (2017) called the Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM). I will argue further that these data are inconsistent with the predictions made by Rothman (2015) and Rothman et al (2019) in their Typological Primacy Model (TPM). The TPM posits that the L3 learner engages in an

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Conclusion