When multilingualism is more than three

On the nature of gender transfer in L3+ acquisition

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11655755
AutoresCharlotte Englert (0000-0003-1777-542X, University of Konstanz, Germany; UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway, autor de correspondencia), Ilaria Venagli (0009-0006-0024-666X, University of Konstanz, Germany; UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway), Tanja Kupisch (0000-0002-2653-2692, University of Konstanz, Germany; UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway)
Año2024
Volumen41
Número2
Páginas263-288
Fecha de publicación2024-03-29
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSecond language Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0267-6583 • E-ISSN: 1477-0326
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/02676583241237763
OpenAlexW4393309888
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas35

In this article we investigate transfer in the ab-initio acquisition of grammatical gender in two groups of multilingual learners. The first group knows two gender languages (German and French), which can potentially act as transfer sources; the second group knows three (German, French and Italian). Both groups had to assign gender to nouns in Franco-Provençal, a Romance language which is new to the learners, and which shares similarities with both French and Italian. Based on our data, we address the question whether there is a unique transfer source and what the respective roles of sub-lexical structural similarity, proficiency, and recency of use of the background languages are. The findings of this study reveal that learners of the first group use both French and German as transfer sources, whereas learners in the second group additionally transfer from Italian. We show that the amount of transfer increases with higher proficiency, more recent use of the source language(s), and increasing structural similarity between the source and target language. Finally, not only is the gender feature transferred but also orthographical cues

Linguistics · Multilingualism · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Sociology · Gender Studies in Language · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching