Trilingual Acquisition Research Articles

A Case Study of Salar Family Education in Trilingual Environment Based on the Theory of Trilingual Acquisition

This study is based on trilingual acquisition and explores the influence of parental education and a trilingual environment through a case analysis of children's language acquisition in Salar families. The mother language (L1) is Salar, the second language (L2) is Mandarin, and the third language (L3) is English. The children's acquisition of three languages ​​and the acquisition process in a trilingual environment and family education were explored deeply through observation and interviews. The study results show that children are more likely to acquire the three languages in a trilingual environment. However, relying only on family education without providing a trilingual environment makes it generally more difficult for children to acquire three languages ​​than in a trilingual environment.

三语习得理论下英语对德语语音学习的迁移作用研究

三语习得理论下英语对德语语音学习的迁移作用研究

Language Transfer of English Majors in L3 German Learning from the Perspective of Dynamic Systems Theory

As the cultures of the worlds peoples interact and merge, language is an important vehicle for their development and will inevitably influence and intermingle with each other. English and German belong to the same language family, and both languages have commonalities and similarities in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Based on this, from the perspective of dynamic systems theory, this paper focuses on the positive and negative transfer of L2 (English) knowledge in the acquisition of L3 (German) vocabulary and investigates the difficulties of trilingual learning of English majors in Guangzhou, China by means of questionnaires and interviews. The contents of the questionnaire included the different trilingual categories chosen by English majors and the influence of second language in the trilingual learning process. Through the questionnaire survey, the author found that second language had a significant transfer effect on third language acquisition in phonetics and vocabulary. Through the classification of trilingual and the analysis of transfer categories, it is expected to effectively improve the learning effect of German and strengthen the understanding of English majors on trilingual acquisition.

The Correlation Between English and French Proficiency of Chinese Trilingual Learners

Abstract In the context of globalization, multilingual learning and teaching have become more and more popular in China. The phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence is more complex in L3 acquisition than in L2 acquisition. Does the previously learned L2 affect L3 acquisition? From the perspective of trilingual acquisition, the English and French national test proficiency scores of 112 French major students in Chinese universities were selected as the research data to explore the potential relationship between English (L2) proficiency and French (L3) learning. The research results showed a positive correlation between English and French proficiency among Chinese learners, and a predictable equation was established through regression analysis. In addition, the study reveals that a threshold level of English (L2) is essential to generate a significant correlation. The threshold level is roughly equivalent to the level of IELTS 5.5. According to the results, the analogical teaching method is advocated.

A Study of Native Chinese Speakers Learning Indo-european Languages: The Case of English and Russian

Language proximity can have different degrees of influence on trilingual acquisition. For example, Japanese has a strong influence on Chinese, while English has a strong influence on Russian. This study used interviews and corpus analysis to examine learners with different levels of English as a second foreign language and Russian as a third foreign language. It was found that when native Chinese speakers learn a language belonging to the Indo-European family, the influence of English on Russian learning is greater than that of native Chinese, and the specific influence of English will be different at different stages. Based on the study some suggestions are also made for trilingual teaching. Considering that the majority of Chinese language learners today have a certain level of proficiency of English, it is significant to conduct the research of L3 learners who is native Chinese and whose L2 is English. Through interviewing the subjects and analysing their compositions, the researchers find that English as L2 both facilitates and hinders L3 acquisition. In particular, intermediate L3 learners are most likely to be influenced by L2, and conversely, advanced L3 learners are rarely influenced by their L2 English. L3 acquisition is more likely to be influenced by L2 when L3 and L2 are in a closer linguistic distance than L3 and L1. This study contributes to multilingual acquisition research and provides effective suggestions for multilingual teaching strategy.

A Review of Trilingual Acquisition Research

With the continuous change of the world political and economic pattern, language and cultural exchanges are gradually expanding, and cross-ethnic, cross-regional, and even transnational exchanges are very frequent. At the same time, there are a large number of language learners with multilingual backgrounds. They have already mastered two or more languages, and on this basis, they learn one or several other languages. Second language learners and trilingual learners have similarities and differences in the learning process, and trilingual learners are more complicated than second language learners. Therefore, it is of great significance to review and summarize the research on trilingual acquisition.

The Linguistic Competence of a Trilingual at Age Five

Linguistic competence is an essential component of the overall competence in a language. It is indicated by the speaker's knowledge of vocabulary and knowledge of the morphological, syntactic, semantic, phonetic, and orthographic rules. This study aimed to determine the trilingual competence of a Kenyan child, at age five, raised in an urban multilingual setting. This was done by calculating the Mean Length of Sentences (MLU) in three languages the children spoke: English, Kiswahili, and Mother Tongue. The study employed Canale and Swain's communicative competence model as the theoretical framework. Purposive and Snowball sampling methods were used to get a sample of six children (three boys and three girls) for this Study. The results indicate that children have linguistic competence in the three languages by age five. The language with the highest MLU was Kiswahili, followed by Mother Tongue and English, respectively. The trilingual acquisition is enabled by the multilingual factor, while the variation in competence is explained by Language in Education Policy (LiEP) and language use at home.

Language exposure in early bilingual and trilingual acquisition

ABSTRACTThe present study contributes to the field of bilingual and trilingual language acquisition by analysing four multilingual families. In each family, at least one parent is bilingual. Following research questions will be addressed: (A) How relevant are the (amount of) input and the (kind of) parental language strategies for language maintenance? (B) Which language choice can we observe in bilingual parents? (C) Is there a uniform definition for multilingual acquisition of immigrant languages? (D) Which language-external factors are possibly relevant for language transmission? The results reveal that exposure in some languages is lower than 20%, a level regarded as possibly crucial for becoming a productive multilingual speaker (Quay [2008]. Dinner conversations with a trilingual two-year-old: Language socialisation in a multilingual context. First Language, 28(1), 5–33). Some bilingual parents use the minority, others the majority language. Independently of the acquisition context, we claim it is unnecessary to label second- and third-generation children heritage language speakers. Taking the family language policy approach, we believe language practices in families with at least one bilingual parent are largely understudied and should be analysed more carefully.

Comprehension of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in a Trilingual Acquisition Context.

Chinese relative clauses (RCs) have word order properties that are distinctly rare across languages of the world; such properties provide a good testing ground to tease apart predictions regarding the relative complexity of subject and object RCs in acquisition and processing. This study considers these special word order properties in a multilingual acquisition context, examining how Cantonese(L1)-English(L2)-Mandarin(L3) trilingual children process RCs in two Chinese languages differing in exposure conditions. Studying in an English immersion international school, these trilinguals are also under intensive exposure to English. Comparisons of the trilinguals with their monolingual counterparts are made with a focus on the directionality of cross-linguistic influence. The study considers how various factors such as language exposure, structural overlaps in the target languages, typological distance, and language dominance can account for the linguistic abilities and vulnerabilities exhibited by a group of children in a trilingual acquisition context. Twenty-one trilingual 5- to 6-year-olds completed tests of subject- and object- RC comprehension in all three languages. Twenty-four age-matched Cantonese monolinguals and 24 age-matched Mandarin monolinguals served as comparison groups. Despite limited exposure to Mandarin, the trilinguals performed comparable to the monolinguals. Their Cantonese performance uniquely predicts their Mandarin performance, suggesting positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin. In Cantonese, however, despite extensive exposure from birth, the trilinguals comprehended object RCs significantly worse than the monolinguals. Error analyses suggested an English-based head-initial analysis, implying negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese. Overall, we identified a specific case of bi-directional influence between the first and second/third languages. The trilinguals experience facilitation in processing Mandarin RCs, because parallels and overlaps in both form and function provide a transparent basis for positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin. On the other hand, they experience more difficulty in processing object RCs in Cantonese compared to their monolingual peers, because structural overlaps with competing structures from English plus intensive exposure to English lead to negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese. The findings provide further evidence that head noun assignment in object RCs is especially vulnerable in multilingual Cantonese children when they are under intensive exposure to English.

A CLOSE LOOK AT BILINGUALISM RESEARCH IN ASIA

Asia is a ‘homeland’ for bilingualism research in regards to its diversity. It is considered as a vivid research site where there is significant growth of academic areas of exploration. Yet, there are very few scientific attempts to map bilingualism research in an Asian context so far. Thus, I bring the idea of mapping previous works through this literature study by specifically scrutinizing (a) bilingualism research in Southeast Asia, (b) bilingualism research in other parts of Asia, and (c) lessons to learn as a stepping stone to define the future of Indonesian bilingualism. The general data mapping I have explored includes Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam) and other parts of Asia (China, India, Israel, and Kazakhstan. The findings from the 33 previous works can be considered as empirical evidence that I will use to portray the research trends in Asia’s bilingualism. The trends show that 19 (55%) works have approached bilingual data from sociolinguistics perspective, whereas the other 14 (45%) have framed their analysis under psycholinguistic approach. Based on the methodological concerns from these works, I propose two major areas of exploration: Family Language Policy (FLP) and trilingual acquisition. FLP in Indonesian is a promising ground, as it brings together issues in language maintenance and shift that instigate a wider aspect of investigation; these aspects include bilingual language dominance, cross language influence, and so forth. Trilingual acquisition, the situation most Indonesian children are growing with, has a potentially significant impact on education, especially where a language curriculum is carefully planned and implemented. In conclusion, this mapping will hopefully shed a light on how bilingualism has academically been very appealing and will continue to fascinate more researchers.

Language Switching as a Window on Trilingual Acquisition

The present study discusses and describes codeswitches produced by two trilingual children acquiring English, Spanish and Hebrew simultaneously from birth. Data were collected regularly over a period of 20 months (from age 2;6 to 4;2 for M and from age 5;5 to 7;1 for E), in naturalistic tape-recorded sessions. Codeswitches drawn from transcriptions of 32 h of spontaneous conversation were analysed. We describe and explain trilingual switches involving morphosyntactic boundary violations, some of which have not yet been reported in the literature. We claim that these switches provide incipient evidence for a developing trilingual competence that stands at the base of trilingual performance.