Setting the Context General IntroductionThis book is about the acquisition of a third language (or more additional languages) in adulthood; that is, when a bilinguala child who is a simultaneous (2L1) bilingual, a child who has sequentially acquired a second language (L2) or an adult who is a sequential L2 bilingualacquires yet another language later in life. Is learning a third (L3) or more (Ln) language different from learning an L2 or just more of the same? If the process is different or similar, what are the implications for important questions related to linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and other fields? Addressing and providing some answers to the aforementioned is the overarching goal of this book.For a very long time, it was taken for granted that all instances of nonnative, sequential language acquisition were fundamentally equivalent. Such a claim was never stated explicitly; however, standard empirical practice in the study of adult L2 acquisition across virtually all paradigms suggested that few people were preoccupied with the heterogeneous groups in so-called L2 studies before the turn of the millennium. In fact, it was not until the mid-2000s that researchers, at least those studying the acquisition of morphosyntax, began to contemplate in earnest the effect of knowing more than one previous language and thus to differentiate true L2 from multilingual learners systematically, at least with regard to L3 learners. Consequently, new questions began to emerge organically, such as the role that having more than one previously acquired system has on subsequent acquisition/processing or how this influence is selected among choices. At the time of writing this book in 2017-2018, gone are the days in which no one questioned linguistic-experience inclusion criteria in L2 acquisition. We now know that whether or not a target nonnative language is chronologically a second or later language matters a great deal for morphosyntax in the L3 initial stages and throughout L3 development. While we do not yet 1

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The present systematic review examines what factors determine when, how and to what extent previous linguistic experience (from the first language, second language or both languages) affects the initial stages and beyond of adult third language (L3) acquisition. In doing so, we address what a bird’s eye view of the data tells us regarding competing theoretical accounts of L3 morphosyntactic transfer. Data couple together to suggest that some factors are more influential than others. As discussed, the systematic review transcends the field of adult multilingualism precisely because of what it reveals, as a prima facie example in behavioral research, in terms of how different types of methodological considerations impact the way data are interpreted to support or not particular claims.

This study examines the role of language dominance (LD) on linguistic competence outcomes in two types of early bilinguals: (i) child L2 learners of Catalan (L1 Spanish-L2 Catalan and, (ii) child Spanish L2 learners (L1 Catalan-L2 Spanish). Most child L2 studies typically focus on the development of the languages during childhood and either focus on L1 development or L2 development. Typically, these child L2 learners are immersed in the second language. We capitalize on the unique situation in Catalonia, testing the Spanish and Catalan of both sets of bilinguals, where dominance in either Spanish or Catalan is possible. We examine the co-occurrence of Sentential Negation (SN) with a Negative Concord Item (NCI) in pre-verbal position (Catalan only) and Differential Object Marking (DOM) (Spanish only). The results show that remaining dominant in the L1 contributes to the maintenance of target-like behavior in the language.

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