The Acquisition of French (L3) Wh-question by Persian (L1) Learners of English (L2) as a Foreign Language: Optimality Theory

Abstract

Recent decade has been prominent in investigating third language acquisition (L3). This study presents an Optimality theoretic account of French wh-question by learners whose first and second language are Persian and English respectively. Additionally, it investigates transfer at the initial stage based on the three dominant transfer hypotheses namely, L1 transfer hypothesis, L2 status factor, Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM) in the domain of L3 acquisition. First, in French and Persian wh-question structure, the wh-word move to pre subject position (Spec-CP & Spec-FOCP) but the interrogative verb do not raise to C. This is the indicator of L1 Factor hypothesis. Second, in French and English the wh-word follows by an interrogative verb in French or by subject-auxiliary inversion in English so in these languages the wh-word occupies the Spec-CP and the verb occupies the C position. This is an evidence for L2 status factor. Third, in English and Persian the wh-word remains in original position for echo questions, this feature triggers this parallel structure in French; this confirms Cumulative Enhancement Model hypothesis. Two groups of Persian native speakers with different English proficiency levels (the lower-intermediate & advanced) that were at the initial stage of acquiring L3 French were asked to complete two test namely, grammar judgment task and translation test. The results showed that the main source of transfer was L1 transfer hypothesis and partially CEM. Regarding OT, although the advanced learners transferred their L2 knowledge in the L3 acquisition in GJT, there was not any significant difference between L1 transfer and L2 transfer context. Therefore, the following constraint hierarchies were obtained for TT and GJT respectively, Q-Scope>> Lex-V>Stay>>Q-Mark and Stay>>Lex-V>>Q-Mark>>Q-Scope. In fact, these ranking, particularly the former one, advocated the L1 transfer hypothesis.

Syntax Matters: Exploring the Effect of Linguistic Similarity in Third Language Acquisition

“…This may be attributed to the immediate access to information about lexical crossover, but information about overlaps in syntactic structure requires a deeper knowledge of the L3 (Rothman, 2013; Westergaard, 2021b). This finding was compatible with similarity‐driven models of L3 acquisition (Flynn et al., 2004; Rothman, 2011, 2015; Slabakova, 2017; Westergaard, 2021a), as opposed to accounts that have argued for a default L1 or L2 effect (e.g., Bardel & Falk, 2007; Bayona, 2009; Berends et al., 2017; Falk & Bardel, 2011; Hermas, 2010, 2015; Mollaie et al., 2016; Na Ranong & Leung, 2009; Park, 2016). Our results did not support the idea of wholesale transfer at the initial state as proposed by Rothman (2011), nor did the findings support the idea of wholesale transfer taking place as soon as the parser detects similarity between the L3 and one of the previously acquired languages (at the initial stages) based on the four‐way hierarchy of Rothman (2013, 2015)—lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax.…”

“…The rejection of H 0 is incompatible with a default explanation of crosslinguistic influence in L3 acquisition as previous studies have suggested (e.g., Bardel & Falk, 2007;Bayona, 2009;Berends et al, 2017;Falk & Bardel, 2011;Hermas, 2010Hermas, , 2015Mollaie et al, 2016;Na Ranong & Leung, 2009;Park, 2016). A L1 or L2 default would predict that bilingual speakers of the same language combination should behave similarly regardless of the nature of the L3, a conclusion that is not compatible with the results of our experiment.…”

“…Previous studies have presented arguments for both a L1 default effect (e.g., Hermas, 2010Hermas, , 2015Mollaie et al, 2016;Na Ranong & Leung, 2009;Park, 2016) and a L2 default effect (e.g., Bardel & Falk, 2007;Bayona, 2009;Berends et al, 2017;Falk & Bardel, 2011;Williams & Hammarberg, 1998). However, only the L2 default effect position has been formalized as a L3 model called the L2 status factor (Bardel & Falk, 2007;Falk & Bardel, 2011;Falk et al, 2015).…”