The Study Of Transfer During Second And Third Language Acquisition

Since the end of the 1960s, language transfer has been one of the major topics in the study of second or foreign language acquisition. (Corder 1967;Selinker 1972;Brown 1985, Wang Churning 1990, Yang Lianrui 2005)However, during the last decade, with the increase in the number of third language learners the world over, a formerly relatively under-explored field, i.e. the role of transfer during third language acquisition, has become a new focus in the study of cross-linguistic influence and has attracted much attention from researchers. As Odlin points out in his famous Language Transfer: Cross Linguistic Influence in Language Learning, "the emphasis on bilingual situation reflects the preponderance of actual cases of language contact. However, individuals learning a new language may already know two. three, or even more languages. Therefore, no study of transfer can neglect the importance of trilingual and other multilingual situations."How do the learner's first and second languages influence the acquisition of a third language? Some researchers hold that the multilingual dynamic differs from LI effects during second language acquisition. In contrast to monolinguals or bilinguals. multilinguals have a different knowledge of their first language, their second language, a different kind of language awareness and language processing system, and the acquisition of more than two language systems leads to the development of new skills due to the learner's experience of learning how to learn a language. (Herdina&Jessner 2002)From the point of view of cross-linguistic influence, the question arises as to how the three languages interact with one another during the language learning process. It is not surprising at all that during L3 utterance, the language learners are strongly influenced by their L2 forms, especially during their early acquisition stages in terms of errors such as substitution, caiques, and alternations of target language items, underproduction, over production and misinterpretations during comprehension, etc.Here, the aims of the present study are to explore how L2 effects influence third language acquisition; discuss the distinction between second language acquisition (SLA) and third language acquisition (TLA); and find the factors that lead to the multilingual speaker to produce mixed utterances.