Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition

Abstract

The present study examins how adults who speak Turkish as their first language and English as their second language acquire possessive pronouns in Norwegian as their third language, focusing on cross-linguistic influence. The study uses a combination of methods including a language history questionnaire, Norwegian and English proficiency tests, and an acceptability judgement task, while testing the grammatical accuracy of possessive agreement in the local and the non-local domains in Ln Norwegian. Predictions were based on six primary models of third language acquisition, each of which varies in its assumptions about which language is the source of cross-linguistic influence —whether it is from the first language, the second language, or both, bearing in mind that while Turkish does not have possessive agreement, it has suffixal elements that overlap phonologically with the local possessive forms in Norwegian. The Generalised Local Bias Hypothesis (GLBH; Pozzan and Antón-Méndez, 2016) is also taken into account, which suggests that there is a universal bias towards local possessive agreement. Everything considered, unfortunately it is not possible to determine whether there is cross-linguistic influence from the second language, English, given that English proficiency is found to correlate significantly with Norwegian proficiency. The findings are in line with the GLBH, showing that a bias for local agreement is a general phenomenon that should be evident in participants, which their improved performance in the local domain draws this conclusion. Another interpretation of the learners' responses in acceptability judgement task sentences, is a facilitative effect of cross-linguistic influence of the surface similarity with their first language, Turkish, however this cannot be disambiguated between these two explanations.