Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of third language phonology: A view from a different perspective

Multilingualism has become a norm rather than exception in the contemporary world and a large part of the population speaks several languages on a daily basis. Speech is a particularly relevant aspect of foreign language communication and it constitutes a multifaceted phenomenon with diverse sociolinguistic implications ranging from prestige to stigmatization, with pronunciation being a strong identity marker. Issues related to the mutual impact of several phonological systems, including cross-linguistic influence appear to be particularly interesting and worth investigating. Therefore, the present contribution is intended to address the highly relevant question of the processes involved in multilingual speech production from a novel acquisition perspective, i.e. Third Language Acquisition, which has emerged as a separate field of inquiry and is seen as qualitatively different from the area of Second Language Acquisition.

 

This talk is intended to shed more light on the issue of cross-linguistic influence in L3 phonology, its sources and directionality as well as the conditioning factors. It will be illustrated by the results of three series of studies, which were designed to substantiate a potential mutual impact of the languages from multilinguals’ repertoire, and particularly, to develop explanations for the role of native vs. non-native languages in shaping phonological acquisition patterns in the third language (e.g. Wrembel 2012, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c).

 

To this end, a holistic approach was pursued combining different methodologies of data collection and analysis. Three series of studies were conducted in parallel on four groups of participants with different language repertoires, featuring as follows: 

 

Study 1: Accentedness ratings; an online rating questionnaire including four parameters of foreign accentedness, comprehensibility, pronunciation correctness and L1 identification; with the ratings performed on L3 speech samples.


 

Study 2: Voice onset time (VOT) as a correlate of foreign accentedness: acoustic measures of VOT in all three languages of the participants (i.e. L1, L2 and L3) elicited through controlled reading tasks. 

 

Study 3: Metaphonological awareness (MPhA): introspective and retrospective oral protocols involving  a complex codification system for a qualitative and quantitative analysis of generated data and a composite measure of MPhA.

 

The findings will be interpreted in the light of the existing models of third language acquisition including the Cumulative-Enhancement Model (Flynn et al. 2004); L2 Status Factor Model (Bardel and Falk 2007, 2012) and Typological Primacy Model (Rothman 2011, 2015). Finally, it is hoped that the talk will provide a more comprehensive understanding of L3 phonological acquisition and also offer some practical implications for foreign language educators.