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Third language acquisition

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Jennifer Cabrelli Mike Iverson

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Cabrelli Amaro, J., & Iverson, M. (in press). Third language acquisition. In K.
Geeslin (Ed.), Handbook of Spanish Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

1 Introduction
Language acquisition research has long made distinctions between first and
second language acquirers, recognizing the potentially different paths and outcomes and
carrying out systematic investigation of these acquisition scenarios. However, only
recently—within the past 20 years—has the distinction between second and third
language acquirers been treated with the same fervor. Acknowledging that acquiring a
second and third language are different processes is a crucial step for both second
language (L2) and third language (L3) research. For L2 research, it means abandoning
the tacit assumption that all acquisition beyond the native language is comparable and
identifying the possible confound of including multilinguals in an L2 study. For L3
research, it has meant the birth of a new subfield. In the following chapter, we give a
brief history of L3 research, detail the current state of the field with a focus on the impact
of Spanish on the study of L3 acquisition, and provide possible directions for future lines
of inquiry.

2 Early studies of third language acquisition

To understand the origin of the lines of inquiry that currently drive L3 acquisition,
it is necessary to consider a set of studies which arguably constructed the field’s
foundation at the end of the twentieth century. The research we report on here ranges
from early impressionistic diary studies to large-scale quantitative studies, and dates to
Vildomec (1963), which to our knowledge was the first systematic treatment of
multilingualism. Larger-scale experimental work began later in the 1960s (e.g.,
Rabinovitch & Parver [1966] for phonology) and 1970s (e.g., Stedje [1977] for lexical
transfer), but as our review will reflect, appearance of these studies was sporadic and an
appreciable increase in output began in the 1980s and 1990s. From this body of work, we
have pulled out the variables with the most substantial presence, and detail general
findings.1 We then segue into a brief discussion of the limitations of this research before
moving onto research from the last fifteen years. We note that, while most of the studies
mentioned in this section do not involve Spanish, the incorporation of these studies is
necessary to establish the early trajectory of this area of investigation.
When considering the L3 research that came out of the last decades of the
twentieth century, a central theme can be identified, which is that of transfer/cross-
linguistic influence (CLI). Herein, we focus on this theme, while acknowledging that this
is one of several lines of inquiry in the field of multilingualism. The fundamental
questions related to CLI come out of the notion that, unlike second language acquisition,
there are two background languages to contend with. So, what CLI patterns are present at

1We recognize that this overview of L3 research in the twentieth century is abbreviated and (necessarily)
simplified. For exhaustive reviews of earlier L3 research, we direct the reader to De Angelis (2007) for a
general overview, Cabrelli Amaro (2012), Cabrelli Amaro and Wrembel (2016), and Wrembel (2015) for
phonology, García-Mayo (2012) for cognitive approaches, and García-Mayo and Rothman (2012) for
morphosyntax.
different stages in L3 acquisition, and what are the variables that yield these patterns?
One primary variable proposed to drive L3 acquisition has been language status.
Is the source of transfer more likely to be the L1, the L2, or both, and why? Early
research suggested that reliance on the L1 as opposed to the L2 depends on the domain of
grammar, with research from this period limited primarily to lexical transfer and, to a
lesser degree, phonetic/phonological transfer. Several studies showed that lexical transfer
comes primarily from the L2 (e.g., Rivers, 1979; Stedje, 1977; Vogel, 1992), although
semantic transfer has been posited to originate with the L1 (Ringbom, 1987). Regarding
phonological transfer, Llisterri and Poch-Olivé (1987) and Ringbom (2001) report
evidence of L1 transfer (with Ringbom [2001] showing long-term effects of L1 transfer,
particularly for intonation), while Bentahila (1975) and Chumbow (1981) report L2
phonological influence in learner speech.
How might age of acquisition of a language relate to source of transfer? There
was a common assumption that L1 transfer occurs due to the entrenched nature of the
system and the cumulative experience that a learner has with the language compared to
the L2, referred to as the ‘mother tongue effect’ (Chumbow, 1981). Some researchers
proposed that L2 transfer might be driven by a conscious desire to avoid the L1 to sound
‘non-foreign’ (see e.g., Hammarberg, 2001, for a discussion of this phenomenon). Other
proposals for a ‘foreign language effect’ (e.g., Meisel, 1983) focused on similarities in L2
and L3 acquisition processes (cf. Stedje [1977] and Ringbom [1987], who claim that L2
transfer is more likely if acquired naturalistically), which results in the blocking of L1
transfer (e.g., Dewaele, 1998). Still others noted that L2 transfer could be the product of
recency, whereby the L2 is transferred because it has most recently been activated
(Hammarberg, 2001; Vildomec, 1963), or that L2 transfer will be more likely in an L2
context (Stedje, 1977).
How can we be certain of an L2 effect and explain contradictory findings such as
those reported earlier for L3 phonological transfer? Unfortunately, we cannot isolate the
role of language status without considering other potential variables in the research
design. For example, Stedje’s (1977) investigation of L1 Finnish/L2 Swedish L3 German
learners’ lexical transfer reported L2 transfer, but the learners’ L2 also happens to be
more similar than Finnish to German. Therefore, it was not possible to pinpoint whether
there was an L2 effect or whether the typological relationship between Swedish and
German drove transfer. This confound was present in most early research, which
primarily consisted a single learner or group of learners with similar linguistic
backgrounds. Several studies reported (perceived) typological similarity as a catalyst for
transfer (e.g., Bild & Swain, 1989; Singh & Carroll, 1979; Singleton, 1987) but none of
these could rule out the role of other factors in their design. The few exceptions are
studies by Ringbom (1987), Cenoz and Valencia (1994), and Llisterri and Poch-Olivé
(1987), all of which employed a design using mirror-image groups: they observed two
groups of sequential bilinguals that had each acquired the same language pair, but in
reverse order; this design made it possible to tease apart language status and similarity.
For example, Ringbom (1987) compared two groups of L3 English learners, L1
Finnish/L2 Swedish and L1 Swedish/L2 Finnish, and found that both groups transferred
Swedish lexical items independently of whether Swedish was the L1 or L2. These early
studies informed methodological issues, and prompted foundational questions of current
research, which we review in the following section.
3 Research questions that drive the study of L3A and a review of the literature
The research discussed in Section 2 made clear the value of examining third
language acquisition not just as another instance of L2 acquisition and established several
research questions that have been further refined over the last two decades. Researchers
have begun to fill in some of the gaps pointed out by Fouser (1995) in his synthesis of L3
acquisition research, including the lack of investigation of both process and product,
production and comprehension, and facilitative and non-facilitative transfer. Within this
section, we address the progress that has been made towards what we see as the primary
research questions that drive this field: understanding a) what catalyzes initial transfer to
the L3 and b) developmental processes and their effects on the L3 as well as the L1/L2.
Throughout this discussion, the substantial role of Spanish in the investigation of L3
acquisition will become clear.

3.1 Cross-linguistic influence during the L3 initial stages

While L3 acquisition is a distinct area of inquiry, it borrows from insights in the
second language acquisition (SLA) literature. L2 research shows that a learner’s prior
linguistic experience (the L1) can influence L2 development, and that the entire L1
grammar may form the initial state of L2 acquisition (e.g. Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996).
This is readily acknowledged in L3 research, as is the additional layer of complexity of
two potential sources of cross-linguistic influence, the L1 and the L2. The first explicit
models of L3 acquisition aimed to predict patterns of linguistic transfer for beginning L3
learners (specifically, morphosyntactic transfer, which was not a focus of the research
reported in Section 2). However, they differ in their conception of a) the consistency of
transfer—is the source of transfer fixed (always the L1 or L2) or variable (possibly the
L1 or L2)?—and b) the selectivity of transfer—is a full grammatical system transferred,
or only a partial system?—as well as the underlying catalysts for transfer.
One logical possibility in L3 acquisition is that the L1 serves as the L3 initial state
and influences behavior in the L3 at the initial stages. This is consistent with models of
L2 acquisition in which the L1 serves as the initial state of the L2 (e.g. Full Transfer/Full
Access, Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996). In such a model, the L1 holds a privileged role as
the sole source of transfer, to the exclusion of other factors. This should give rise to two
observable consequences. First, behavior at the initial stages of L3 acquisition of (for
example) French by a speaker of (for example) L1 Spanish and L2 English should be
similar to the behavior of a native speaker of Spanish learning French as an L2, as L2
English won’t factor into the initial state of L3 French.. Second, acquisition beyond an
L3—L4, L5, etc.—should yield similar results, at least at the outset. In cases where a
linguistic property is shared in the L1 and the L3, acquisition will be facilitated (i.e.,
positive or facilitative transfer); however, in cases where the L1 and L3 do not align,
acquisition will be hindered (i.e., negative or non-facilitative transfer).
L1 transfer has been demonstrated. In L1 Moroccan Arabic/L2 French learners of
L3 English, L1 influence has been evidenced by placement of negation and adverbs
(Hermas, 2010), subject-verb inversion in declarative sentences (Hermas, 2014), and
knowledge of restrictive relative clauses (Hermas, 2015), despite the closer typological
relation between L2 French and L3 English. Sanz, Park, and Lado (2015) examined
reliance on L1 (English) or L2 (Japanese or Spanish) morphosyntactic cues in the
processing and interpretation of transitive sentences in L3 Latin at the initial stages. In
English, thematic roles in a transitive sentence are established primarily via rigid SVO
word order; both case and subject-verb agreement are not consistently marked. In
contrast, word order in Japanese and Spanish is flexible, and is therefore not a reliable
indicator of an entity’s role. The relationship among entities is established through
morphology: Case in Japanese and subject-verb agreement in Spanish are (sufficiently)
unambiguously marked. Latin, like Japanese and Spanish, exhibits free word order, and
also marks both Case and agreement. Despite the possibility of using a morphological cue
as in L2 Japanese or Spanish, L3 learners of Latin relied on word order for
interpretation—consistent with transfer from L1 English.
Another logical possibility is that the L2 always serves as the L3 initial state. This
has been formalized as the L2 Status Factor (e.g., Bardel & Falk, 2007; Falk & Bardel,
2011). In this model, the L2 serves as the source of transfer because of its status as a non-
native language, a characteristic which it shares with the L3 and all subsequently
acquired languages. This distinction has roots in Paradis’ (2004) Procedural/Declarative
model, in which native and non-native languages are stored in fundamentally different
ways, and therefore rely on different types of knowledge. Native languages are stored in
procedural memory, while non-native languages (learned in adulthood) are learned skills
that utilize declarative memory. One consequence of such a model is that the initial state
of L3 acquisition should be the same for learners who share an L2, regardless of L1.
Seminal work by Bardel and Falk (2007) tested the placement of negation in L3
Swedish or Dutch by two groups of speakers of Germanic L1s and L2s. Both Swedish
and Dutch are classified as verb-second (V2) languages, in which the verb must be the
second element in main clauses. Placement of negation is considered to be a property
related to V2. In this study, one group had an L1 without V2, but spoke an L2 with V2,
and the other group had an L1 with V2, but spoke an L2 without V2. The group who
spoke an L2 with V2 showed no difficulty with the placement of negation, outperforming
the non-V2 L2 group. Given these results, the nature of the L2 seemed to be the decisive
factor in L3 performance. This study was followed by an examination of L1 French/L2
English and L1 English/L2 French learners of L3 German. In German, object pronouns
are post-verbal in matrix clauses, patterning with English, and preverbal in subordinate
clauses, patterning with French. Both groups showed non-facilitative influence from their
respective L2s, failing to reject ungrammatical sentences in German if the word order
was grammatical in the L2. The L2 status factor has also been posited to explain L3
Spanish phonological transfer of voiceless stops by mirror-image groups of
English/French bilinguals (Llama, Cardoso, & Collins, 2010); both groups were shown to
produce L2-like voice onset time (VOT) in Spanish. To our knowledge, this is the only
mirror-image study involving Spanish to show an L2 effect for phonology.
The scenarios mentioned above assume that transfer is non-selective—an entire
grammatical system is transferred—and that transfer is fixed—it is always the L1 or
always the L2 that is transferred. However, the empirical evidence supporting both L1
and L2 transfer calls this assumption into question, and suggests that transfer into an L3
may be variable. Unlike models in which the source of transfer is fixed, models in which
the L1 or the L2 may be transferred require some sort of trigger for transfer, tipping the
proverbial scale to one grammar or the other.
One such model is Rothman’s Typological Primacy Model (TPM) (2011, 2013,
2015). In this model, structural similarity serves as the trigger for the transfer of the L1 or
L2 into the L3. Early conceptualizations of this model claimed that it was the learner’s
perception of overall typological similarity, in the vein of Kellerman’s (1983, 1986)
psychotypology, which drives transfer. If a learner (unconsciously) deemed the L3 more
globally similar to their native language, the L1 would be transferred. In cases where the
L2 was determined to be more similar, the L2 would be transferred. Because this is a
model which envisions the transfer of an entire grammatical system, transfer can be both
facilitative or non-facilitative.
Later instantiations of this model (Rothman, 2013, 2015) detailed how selection
of the source of transfer might happen. As learners are confronted with L3 input, they
make use of the most salient cues across linguistic domains. Rothman (2015, p. 185)
states that the following factors impact the source of transfer, with decreasing influence:
lexicon, phonological/phonotactic cues, functional morphology, syntactic structure. The
lexicon is the first point of comparison. In the case that the learner is able to parse
individual lexical items in the L3 and a sufficient number are similar to those in a
previously acquired language, that language will serve as the source of transfer. If, on the
other hand, both the L1 and the L2 lexicons are comparably similar to the L3 lexicon, or
neither the L1 nor the L2 lexicon aligns with the L3 lexicon, or individual lexical items in
the L3 are not able to be parsed (and cues from the L3 lexicon are therefore unavailable),
the learner will make use of the next set of cues—phonological and phonetic cues. If
these cues are unusable, or result in a tie of sorts, the learner moves on to the next set of
cues, and so on. In this model, typological/structural similarity must be assessed in a
global sense, and independently of the linguistic property under investigation.
Furthermore, because the source of transfer must be determined early, the learner makes
this assessment with extremely limited L3 data, and any claims as to whether the L1 or
L2 grammar will be transferred should take this into consideration.
Although the expected source of transfer is not always easy to determine, much of
the work on the TPM, including the foundational research, has avoided potential
confounds in gauging the more similar language pair by exploiting the close historical,
typological, and linguistic ties between Spanish and other Romance languages. Rothman
and Cabrelli Amaro (2010) tested L1 English/L2 Spanish learners of L3 Italian or L3
French on properties related to the availability of null subjects. Because Italian and
French are both Romance languages, L3 learners are expected to transfer Spanish.
However, Spanish and Italian are null subject languages, while French and English are
not, so transfer of Spanish would facilitate acquisition of only Italian, while transfer of
English would facilitate acquisition of only French. L3 learners showed behavior
consistent with transfer of Spanish, treating both Italian and French like null-subject
languages. This is also consistent with the L2 Status Factor, leading Rothman to
incorporate mirror-image groups in subsequent studies.
Many studies evaluating the TPM have examined the acquisition of L3 (Brazilian)
Portuguese (BP), often using mirror-image groups of L1 English/L2 Spanish and L1
Spanish/L2 English speakers. The grammars of Spanish and Portuguese are similar in
many respects, and an L1 or L2 speaker of Spanish is expected to use the Spanish
grammar at the initial stages of L3 Portuguese. Knowledge of Spanish as an L1 or an L2
has been shown to facilitate acquisition of a range of properties in L3 Portuguese,
including adjective placement and interpretation of pre-nominal and post-nominal
adjectives (Rothman, 2010), and gender/number marking and noun-drop (Iverson, 2009).
For properties in which Spanish and Portuguese diverge, non-facilitative transfer is
predicted. This has obtained for a range of properties, including relative clause
attachment and word order (Rothman, 2011), differential object marking (Giancaspro,
Halloran, & Iverson, 2015), mood distinctions (Child, 2017), verb raising across dative
experiencers (Cabrelli Amaro, Amaro, & Rothman, 2015), object expression (Montrul,
Dias, & Santos, 2011), as well as in intervocalic stop realization and mid-vowel contrasts
(Cabrelli Amaro & Pichan [unpublished data]). Considering the entire body of work on
English/Spanish/L3 Portuguese, it seems evident that transfer may be non-facilitative. It
is also notable that Spanish, whether it is the L1 or L2, is transferred for each property
that has been tested—consistent with the transfer of an entire grammar.
The models mentioned so far all assume transfer of an entire grammatical system.
However, this is not the only logical possibility, and there are models in which transfer is
assumed to happen on a property-by-property basis. The Cumulative Enhancement
Model (CEM) (Flynn, Foley, & Vinnitskaya, 2004) claims that third language acquisition
is both a cumulative and non-redundant process. Transfer is not wholesale, but rather
structures or properties from any previous language are equally available to an individual
L3 learner. Additionally, transfer into the L3 will only happen in cases in which the
transfer is facilitative, which distinguishes this model from the rest. The basis of this
model is data from L1 Kazakh/L2 Russian speakers of L3 English. While Kazakh is a
head-final language (i.e. complements precede heads), both Russian and English are
head-initial languages. These learners’ production of relative clauses L3 English was
head-initial, suggesting influence from L2 Russian and contradicting a claim of any
privileged status for the L1. These results where corroborated by data from L1 German
(head-final in embedded clauses) and L1 German/L2 Hungarian (head-initial) learning L2
or L3 English (Berkes & Flynn, 2012). L3 learners showed influence from L2 Hungarian,
facilitating the acquisition of relative clause structure as compared to L2 English learners.
More recent models of L3 acquisition are similar to the CEM in that they question
wholesale transfer. The Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) (Mykhaylyk, Mitrofanova,
Rodina, & Westergaard, 2015; Westergaard, Mitrofanova, Mykhaylyk, & Rodina, 2016)
claims that transfer into the L3 happens on a property-by-property basis, and can be
sourced from all previously acquired languages. Transfer is conditioned by abstract
linguistic structure. In cases where a target L3 property is structurally similar to a
property from a previously acquired language, transfer into the L3 will be facilitative. If,
however, the L3 input is misanalyzed, resulting transfer may be non-facilitative. This
process is active at any stage of L3 acquisition, not just the beginning stages.
Development is not just comparing initial hypotheses about the L3 grammar to the L3
input and making subsequent adjustments to the L3 linguistic system. Learners entertain
their initial hypotheses, the L3 input, but also continue to access any previously acquired
linguistic structures (and perhaps recruit them based on the L3 input), even at later stages
of the acquisition process. Slabakova’s (2016) Scalpel Model also stipulates transfer on a
property-by-property basis, and allows for facilitative and non-facilitative transfer. In
contrast with the LPM, however, transfer is conditioned by other factors in addition to
structural similarity, such as frequency and misleading input. Low-frequency
constructions and those that would require negative evidence for acquisition (with respect
to the competing property in the L1/L2) are predicted to be susceptible to non-facilitative
transfer.

3.2 L3 development
Transfer at the initial stages is (literally) just the beginning in terms of the
questions we can explore at different stages of L3 acquisition and how these questions
can inform linguistic theory more generally. In this section, we focus on two questions
related to the nature of cross-linguistic influence throughout acquisition: What are the
roles of the L1 and L2 after initial transfer, and what effects does the development of an
L3 have on the L1 and L2? A small but growing body of work indicates that the roles of
the L1 and L2 may change substantially.
Ringbom (2000) put forth the logical notion that the L1 and L2 exert the heaviest
amount of influence on the L3 at the earlier stages of L3 acquisition, and that as L3
proficiency increases, L1 and L2 influence decreases. Early research suggested that the
influence of the L1 and L2 might change throughout development. Specifically, analysis
of production data from case studies by Vogel (1992) and Williams and Hammarberg
(1998) suggests that the learners’ reliance on the L2 diminishes earlier than the L1.
Without controlling for variables such as order of acquisition (via inclusion of a mirror-
image learner group) and similarity, however, it was not possible to definitively conclude
that these learners overcame non-facilitative transfer from the L2 earlier than the L1
because of language status.
As shown in Section 3.1, most studies involving Spanish as an L1 or L2 and a Romance
L3 find that Spanish transfers regardless of other factors. To tease apart the predictions of
the CEM and TPM, the property selected should be a mismatch in its realization between
the two similar languages, resulting in non-facilitative transfer of Spanish. The
subsequent L3 learning task is for the learners to retreat from initial non-facilitative
transfer. Cabrelli Amaro and Rothman (2010) first noted that this task might pose more
of a challenge for learners that transfer their L1 than for learners that transfer their L2,
citing the entrenched nature of the L1 as a potential source of difficulty. Recently,
researchers have begun to examine differences in rate of L3 morphosyntactic
development in cases of initial non-facilitative transfer. Following up on the initial stages
DOM data from Giancaspro et al. (2015), Cabrelli Amaro, Iverson, Giancaspro, and
Halloran (unpublished data) administered the same acceptability judgment task to a pair
of mirror image English/Spanish groups of advanced L3 BP learners. A cross-sectional
analysis reveals that the L2 Spanish advanced group patterns with BP native controls and
appears to have overcome Spanish transfer of DOM, while the L1 Spanish advanced
group continues to pattern with the initial stages groups. Cabrelli Amaro (2015) has
replicated this finding with raising across a dative experiencer (RExp) in L3 BP, a
structure that is ungrammatical in Spanish (*Pedro me parece estar triste ‘Pedro seems to
me to be sad’ vs. Me parece que Pedro está triste ‘It seems to me that Pedro is sad’;
Cabrelli Amaro et al., 2015), but not in English or BP. She took the initial stages data
from Cabrelli Amaro et al.’s (2015) study of RExp in L3 BP and compared it with data
from the same groups of advanced L3 BP speakers from Cabrelli Amaro et al.
(unpublished data). The L1 Spanish advanced group continued to rate grammatical RExp
in BP lower than the BP control, although the ratings were significantly higher than the
L1 Spanish initial stages group. The L2 Spanish advanced group, on the other hand, rated
RExp higher than the L2 Spanish initial stages group and the advanced ratings were not
different from those of the BP controls. Therefore, the L2 Spanish group appears to have
converged on the L3 target while the L1 Spanish group is still in the process of L3
reconfiguration. The question that follows from this apparent consequence of L1 transfer
is whether these learners can eventually converge on the L3 target. Based on his study of
L1 Greek/L2 English/L3 Spanish learners, Lozano (2002) states that fossilization will
occur when the relevant L1 features do not match the L2 or L3 features, a finding
supported by Jin (2009) for L1 Mandarin/L2 English/L3 Norwegian learners. However,
there is evidence from other language triads that L1 transfer can be overcome when the
relevant L3 features are available in the background language(s) (Hermas, 2014). This
finding is supported by Slabakova and García-Mayo (2015), which examines the
acquisition of L3 English syntax-discourse interface properties by Spanish-Basque
bilinguals that exhibit Spanish transfer. The results show non-facilitative Spanish transfer
of topicalization to be persistent even at advanced L3 English proficiency for Spanish-
dominant and Basque-dominant speakers alike. However, a subset of learners in both
groups exhibit L3 English convergence, and the authors conclude that “trilingual learners
are not permanently constrained by the native grammar in this domain” (p. 14). Even if
access to linguistic universals is limited in L3 acquisition, the logical prediction is that
the L1 Spanish group in this case will eventually converge on the L3 target. Cabrelli
Amaro et al. (unpublished data) propose that the asymmetry between the L1 Spanish and
L2 Spanish groups is due to probabilistic processes in L3 acquisition, and that feature
reconfiguration will eventually obtain for both groups. Specifically, L3 input must reach
a certain threshold at which point the mismatch between the L3 and the Spanish
hypothesis will drive reanalysis. They assume that the difference between the L1 and L2
Spanish speakers comes down to cumulative Spanish experience, whereby a greater
amount of L3 input is necessary for the L1 Spanish speakers to reach the same threshold.
Our discussion up to this point has revolved around progressive transfer, that is,
transfer from the L1 and/or L2 to the L3. However, a large body of work has established
that cross-linguistic influence is bidirectional and an L2 can affect an L1 (see Schmid,
2016, for an annotated bibliography). A logical extension of this is that an L3 can affect
previously acquired systems, and researchers have begun to examine a couple of
questions via observation of L3 effects on the L1 and/or L2. The first is a new take on the
long-standing question of whether L1 and L2 systems are fundamentally different (see
e.g., Rothman & Slabakova [2017] for discussion), and the second is whether L3
acquisition can result in facilitative effects on the L2. To understand potential differences
in stability between native versus non-native systems when an L3 is acquired, Cabrelli
Amaro and Rothman (2010) and Cabrelli Amaro (2013a, 2016) compare the Spanish
perception and production by L1 English/L2 Spanish and L1 Spanish/L2 English
speakers. Cabrelli Amaro (2013a) did not find any significant differences in effects of L3
BP word-final vowel reduction on L1 versus L2 Spanish perception or production. As a
follow up, Cabrelli Amaro (2016) reduced the data set to include only L3 BP speakers
that patterned with a group of BP controls. She found that, while perception appeared to
remain stable for both groups, L2 Spanish vowel production was more BP-like than L1
Spanish vowel production, although productions in both groups showed L3 effects.
Sypiańska (2016) found L3 English effects on L1 Polish but not L2 Danish vowel
production, although proficiency was not controlled for in this study. Cabrelli Amaro
(2017) found similar results for morphosyntactic competence in a comparison of initial
stages L3 BP data (from Cabrelli et al., 2015) with advanced L3 BP data. As in Cabrelli
Amaro (2016), only the advanced learners that rated RExp in BP within the confidence
interval of a BP control group were included. While both learner groups rate RExp higher
than a group of Spanish controls, the L1 Spanish speakers rated RExp lower in Spanish
than the L2 Spanish speakers and the BP controls. These initial findings from phonology
and morphosyntax suggest that there might indeed be a critical period for stability of a
linguistic system, but further (longitudinal) research is necessary to confirm these data.
The L3 can also have beneficial effects on a background language(s). Recent
research by Hui (2010), Matthews, Cheung, & Tsang (2014), and Tsang (2015) compares
an L1 Cantonese/L2 English control group with an L1 Cantonese/L2 English/L3 French
or German experimental group. In each case, the French or German property patterns
with English and differently than Cantonese. Results show that the L2 English of the
experimental groups exhibits acquisition of properties that the control groups’ does not;
this is the case for subject relative clauses (Hui, 2010), tense/aspect (Matthews et al.,
2014), and number agreement (Tsang, 2015). A similar result comes from Llinàs-Grau
and Puig Mayenco (2016), who examined that-deletion in L3 English/L4 German
learners (2L1 Catalan/Spanish); they report a higher rate of that-deletion in L3 English by
the L4 German learners than by a control group of 2L1 Catalan/Spanish speakers of L3
English. This finding is attributed to (facilitative) regressive influence from the L3/L4.
Although cross-sectional studies illustrate the potential impact of developmental
data on our understanding of how multiple systems interact across the lifespan,
researchers cannot go back in time and confirm how (advanced) L3 learners’ L2 looked
like prior to L3 acquisition. Subsequent calls have been made for longitudinal research
given the ability to control for variation (e.g., Cabrelli Amaro & Wrembel, 2016; Cenoz,
2003). Currently we know of only a few longitudinal studies involving Spanish (see e.g.,
Kopeckova [2016], for acquisition of L3 Spanish rhotics; García-Mayo & Villareal
Olaizola [2011] and Ruíz de Zarobe [2005, 2008] for L3 English acquisition by
Spanish/Basque bilinguals; Sánchez [2015], for L3 German lexical acquisition by
Spanish/Catalan bilinguals). By observing learners over time, it is possible to first
establish the L3 initial state for each learner, that is, the state of the L1 and L2 prior to L3
exposure. Learners can then be tested in all three languages over time to observe a) initial
stages transfer, b) the roles of the learner’s background languages during acquisition, and
c) how the background languages are affected as L3 proficiency increases. Without this
research, we cannot confirm whether the existing developmental findings hold up. For
example, consider the studies that show regressive transfer: It is not outside the realm of
possibility that the L3 groups had already acquired those properties in their L2 (in the
case of facilitative transfer) or that their L2 was not native-like at the onset of L3
acquisition (in the case of non-facilitative transfer). If we are unable to test those learners
prior to L3 acquisition, however, we simply cannot know.

4 Future directions
As with any line of inquiry, progress in the field of L3 acquisition has given way
to new questions (and extensions of existing questions) as well as new ways of
addressing these questions. In this section we outline a set of research questions yielded
by the existing literature, followed by a brief discussion of some of the novel methods
that are being explored.
4.1 New and understudied research questions
As with any young field of scientific inquiry, progress is incremental. To date, the
primary concerns of the study of multilingual acquisition have overwhelmingly addressed
the initial stages of acquisition and the nature of linguistic transfer, and to a lesser extent,
L3 development. While questions in these areas are still being answered, new questions
are being asked, and additional lines of investigation are ripe for research. Herein, we
consider some (but certainly not all) areas that merit further pursuit.

4.1.1 What happens with three unrelated languages?

Practical limitations often restrict the scope of research, and studies on L3
acquisition are no exception to this. Researchers use the populations to which they have
access, and L3 learners are more difficult to find than L2 learners. For many, language
learning in adulthood is a costly endeavor in both time and effort, especially to reach the
highest levels of proficiency, and learning a third language compounds this. This
immediately restricts the number of L3 learners. The combinations of languages are also
generally restricted. A person learning a third language does so for many reasons, but
advancing linguistic research is not one of these. The combinations that are found are
often the result of geographic and/or educational practicalities, as well as the status of
English as the current lingua franca. Consequently, many L3 studies involve English and
a major European language, and what has been very rarely seen are studies involving
languages that are truly (typologically) unrelated. We only know of a handful of
examples of these to date: L1 Tuvan/L2 Russian/L3 English (Kulundary & Gabriele,
2012), L1 Polish/L2 French/L3 English (Wrembel, 2014), L1 English/L2 Spanish/L3
Arabic (Goodenkauf & Herschensohn, 2015), L1 Arabic/L2 French/L3 English (Hermas,
2010, 2014, 2015), Basque/Spanish/L3 English (Slabakova & García Mayo, 2015).
The purposeful inclusion of unrelated languages might offer insights that using
related languages cannot. For example, some models such as the TPM relies on the L3
learner’s sensitivity to typological similarity. These relationships might be obscured in
unrelated languages, perhaps to the point where the learner is either severely delayed in
identifying similarities, or perhaps completely unable to do so. What happens in such a
scenario? It could be the case that the strategy for selecting the L1 or L2 for transfer is
variable. If the learner is unable to recognize any similarities between the L3 and L1/L2,
perhaps they resort to a default secondary strategy, such as using the L2 as the initial
hypothesis about the L3 grammar. Such an insight is only available if we examine
unrelated languages.

4.1.2 Is L4 acquisition (and beyond) another instance of L3 acquisition?

To our knowledge, there has not to date been a systematic investigation
comparing L3 acquisition and L4 acquisition. At first glance, it may seem like an
uninteresting comparison. On the other hand, it may be an entirely new scenario with
results that differ from L3 acquisition. Consider the learning task as a speaker progresses
from a monolingual to a multilingual. In the case of L2 acquisition, there is one possible
source of transfer, and it is the first experience learning an additional language. L3
acquisition is slightly different: The speaker has experience acquiring an additional
language, but this is the first experience in which there are multiple possible sources of
transfer. For any language beyond the L3, the speaker has already had experience
acquiring an additional language and dealing with multiple possible sources of transfer.
Perhaps this could result in further streamlining of the acquisition process.

4.1.3 Do different types of bilinguals show similar patterns in L3 acquisition and

development?
A central finding from research on second language acquisition is that there are
general differences in path and ultimate attainment among cases of simultaneous
bilingualism, childhood second language acquisition, and adult second language
acquisition (see Montrul [2004, 2008] for an overview). It is not unreasonable to expect
that any differences in the linguistic systems and language experience among these types
of bilinguals could influence the acquisition of a third language, warranting a systematic
investigation of their L3 acquisition patterns. This line of research would be
complementary to the increasingly prominent body of research on heritage speakers,
which in general seeks to go beyond treating age-of-acquisition as a macro-variable,
instead seeking a more nuanced look at variables relating to the relationship between the
L1 and the L2 (or the two L1s). These variables include effects of age-of-acquisition,
language dominance, metalinguistic knowledge, and relative influence of a native vs.
non-native language.
Although the current L3 models do not make explicit predictions for different
scenarios of bilingualism, a handful of studies have examined L3 acquisition by heritage
speakers. Results from Giancaspro et al. (2015) and Cabrelli Amaro et al. (unpublished
data) showed that both English-speaking heritage speakers of Spanish) and sequential
bilinguals of English and Spanish incorrectly used Spanish-like DOM at the initial stages
of acquisition of L3 Brazilian Portuguese (BP). At later stages of L3 proficiency, this
initial non-facilitative transfer was overcome by L1 English/L2 Spanish speakers.
However, errors persisted for native speakers of Spanish, including the English-dominant
heritage speakers of Spanish, suggesting dominance was not a deterministic factor in rate
of acquisition. It is unclear if this result applies to all areas of the grammar, however, and
language dominance may be an explanatory variable for L3 phonology. In fact, English-
dominant heritage speakers of French have been found to produce longer English-like
VOTs in L3 Spanish, despite the more similar, shorter VOTs found among Romance
languages (Llama & López-Morelos, 2016). Language dominance has also been shown to
influence an L3 accent more globally, as German-dominant heritage speakers of Turkish
learning L3 English are perceived to exhibit German-like accents (Lloyd-Smith, Gyllstad,
& Kupisch, 2017).

4.2 New methodological considerations

As the questions at the core of third language acquisition research are further
developed, a need arises for new methodologies. L3 methodological considerations have
been addressed previously for syntax (e.g., García-Mayo & Rothman, 2012) and
phonology (e.g., Cabrelli Amaro, 2013b), and recent applications of methods that have
been gaining traction in the field of second language acquisition have the potential to
provide new insights into the cognitive organization of multiple linguistic systems.
Although selective transfer has been examined exclusively via behavioral
methodology, ranging from grammatical judgments to story retelling to spontaneous
production, none have captured online linguistic processing. Rothman, Alemán-Bañón,
and González Alonso (2015) suggest using neurological data, such as event-related
potentials (ERPs) measure by electroencephalography (EEG), for testing initial stages
models and argue that online methods can “add new insights to and strengthen the
descriptive and explanatory power of these models” (p. 5). If learners show evidence of
native-like ERP signatures in their L2, the L2 should be a viable source of transfer and
these learners can be tested in their L3. Rothman et al. (2015) propose a study that
examines two ERP signatures associated with gender agreement violations and explain
how the initial stages models could be tested in L3 learners of artificial languages (ALs)
that are English/Spanish bilinguals. One of the artificial languages is lexically similar to
Spanish (mini-Spanish) while the other is similar to English (mini-English), and both
languages have number (like English and Spanish) and gender agreement (like Spanish
only). The ALs consist of Spanish or English lexical items and word order but instantiate
novel number and gender morphology. Since English does not have gender, transfer of
English to mini-English would not be facilitative. Transfer of Spanish, however, would
be facilitative for both ALs. To carry out the study, a pair of mirror-image groups would
be trained on mini-English or mini-Spanish, for a total of four groups. After training,
brain activity would be recorded with EEG while the learners completed a grammaticality
judgment task in the relevant mini-language. The authors predict that sensitivity to
gender violations will reflect Spanish transfer while absence of sensitivity will point to
English as the source of transfer. The methodology the authors propose is promising in its
ability to tap unconscious processes, and can be extended to other domains.
Rothman et al.’s (2015) use of artificial language learning (ALL) warrants a brief
discussion of the benefits of using artificial languages in L3 acquisition research. As
alluded to in the previous paragraph, an artificial language is constructed “according to
rules and properties (deterministic or probabilistic) that generate language-like sentences
using pseudowords” (Onnis, 2012, pp. 35-36). While these systems are not natural
languages, ALL stimuli have been found to elicit similar ERP signatures to those elicited
by natural language stimuli (e.g., Friederici, Steinhauer, & Pfeifer, 2002, but cf.
Christiansen, Conway, & Onnis, 2012, who found signatures suggestive of domain-
general processing). The use of the ALL paradigm gives the researcher control over the
input the learner receives, which is especially important in L3 initial stages research,
where one of the greatest challenges is finding a sufficient sample of learners that have
comparable outside exposure and prior knowledge of the target language. Another benefit
is the control that the researcher has over the experimental design. As outlined in Section
3.1, testing all the initial stages models requires the selection of a linguistic phenomenon
that patterns a specific way across the three languages under investigation. In practice,
when working with the natural language triplets, the number of properties or phenomena
that meet the criteria for initial stages testing is limited. However, with ALL, it is possible
to construct a language with the configuration needed to specifically examine the role of
the L1 and L2 we are investigating, while controlling for variables that are otherwise
uncontrollable when the L3 is a natural language.

5 Conclusion
As the field of third language acquisition continues to grow, its contribution to our
understanding of language acquisition and linguistic theory more generally becomes
more apparent. As seen in this chapter, there are a number of questions related to cross-
linguistic influence that currently drive the field. As we get deeper into their examination,
new questions arise that have the potential to make their own mark on how we look at the
multilingual mind, and the ways in which we approach these questions evolve.

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