Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004a) have shown that L2 speakers of English whose L1’s lack articles (Russian and Korean) appear to fluctuate in their interpretation of the and a, allowing them to encode either definiteness or specificity. They argue that these are two options of an Article Choice Parameter offered by Universal Grammar, and that the Russian and Korean speakers fluctuate between them when they are acquiring English. In the present study it is shown that a similar pattern can be observed in L2 speakers of English whose L1 is Japanese (also a language that lacks articles) but not in speakers whose L1 is Greek, a language with articles that encode definiteness like English. It is also shown that while group results for the Japanese speakers suggest fluctuation, individual results do not. It is argued that an account can be given of both cases which does not require appeal either to an Article Choice Parameter or to the concept of ‘fluctuation’. The alternative proposal made here is consistent with Universal Grammar, and follows from an organisation of the grammar where phonological exponents are separated from the lexical items manipulated by syntactic computations, as in Distributed Morphology. It is suggested that a descriptively adequate account which avoids a construction-specific parameter like the Article Choice Parameter and departure from the normal assumptions of UG represented by fluctuation should be preferred.

While research on third language (L3) and multilingualism has recently shown remarkable growth, the fundamental question of what makes trilingualism special compared to bilingualism, and indeed monolingualism, continues to be evaded. In this contribution we consider whether there is such a thing as a true monolingual, and if there is a difference between dialects, styles, registers and languages. While linguistic and psycholinguistic studies suggest differences in the processing of a third, compared to the first or second language, neurolinguistic research has shown that generally the same areas of the brain are activated during language use in proficient multilinguals. It is concluded that while from traditional linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives there are grounds to differentiate monolingual, bilingual and multilingual processing, a more dynamic perspective on language processing in which development over time is the core issue, leads to a questioning of the notion of languages as separate entities in the brain.

Studies testing the knowledge of syntactic properties have resulted in two potentially contrasting proposals in relation to third language acquisition (TLA); the Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al., 2004), which proposes that previously learned languages will positively affect the acquisition of a third language (L3); and the ‘second language (L2) status factor’ hypothesis (Bardel and Falk, 2007), which proposes that the primacy of the L2 can block the potential positive effects that may be transferable from the first language (L1). This article attempts to extend these hypotheses to the domain of morphosyntax, in relation to the TLA of the properties of grammatical number and gender concord marking on German attributive adjectives; these properties not present in the L1 of Japanese, or the L2 of English. Two further factors are of interest in the current study; first, the performance of the learners according to their L3 and their L2 proficiency levels, a variable not discussed in the above-mentioned studies; and, second, the role that the type of task has on the performance of these learners. Three groups of Japanese native speakers (matched for proficiency within each German group), but with differing English proficiencies, completed a carefully balanced gap-filling task, together with two oral elicitation tasks in the form of games; both of these elicited tokens of adjectival inflection. Initial results offer partial support for weaker versions of the two hypotheses mentioned above. However, neither of the L3 models tested can fully account for the results obtained, which are more consistent with a feature-based account of the organization of grammar in the domain of morphosyntax, such as that of Distributed Morphology (DM) (Halle and Marantz, 1993). DM is a model for language acquisition which — coupled with a view that the Subset Principle proposed by this account is not observed by non-primary language learners — has recently been proposed to explain the optionality observed in L2 learners’ production (Hawkins et al., 2006). The data presented here suggest that it could be extended to L3 learners’ production.

Recent work by Tania Ionin and colleagues (Ionin et al. 2004a; Ionin et al. 2008) has suggested that native speakers of article-less languages may fluctuate between selecting articles based on definiteness and selecting them based on specificity. This was termed the Fluctuation Hypothesis (Ionin et al. 2004a). The Fluctuation Hypothesis assumes learners to have full access to Universal Grammar (UG) properties, including those which are not instantiated in their L1 grammars. This contrasts with the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (Hawkins and Chan 1997), now termed the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (Hawkins and Franceschina 2004; Hawkins et al. 2006). This proposes that learners will fail to acquire uninterpretable features, if these are not present in their L1. The current study tests the Fluctuation Hypothesis with two new groups of speakers acquiring languages with definite and indefinite articles which are marked for definiteness, whilst still allowing a semantic distinction between [+specific] and [–specific]. The languages acquired are German, by native speakers of Japanese, a language without articles; and English, by native speakers of Syrian Arabic, a language with an overt marker for definiteness, but not for indefiniteness. Although the initial results seem to indicate that fluctuation may be responsible for optionality amongst these learners, further analysis shows that this variation may be due to other factors.

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