John Archibald (University of Victoria)

Presenter: John Archibald (University of Victoria)

Title: Determining  ‘proximity’ in third language phonological acquisition: Finessing abstract representations, physical systems, and cross-linguistic biases.

Abstract:

In this talk, I will introduce the field of third language (L3) acquisition in the context of generative linguistics. In the study of second language (L2) acquisition it is clear that the first language (L1) can influence the L2 in all linguistic domains sounds, words, sentences, etc.). When it comes to L3 acquisition the potential is there for both the L1 and the L2 to influence the L3. One of the challenges for researchers is to predict and explain when we see L1 transfer and when we see L2 transfer. Often some notion of proximity is invoked whether typological similarity (or language distance) or structural similarity (frequently acoustic). I will provide an overview of some common L3 acquisition models, and then present data to show that abstract phonological representations drawing on an integrated multilingual  grammar repository (equipped with language tags) can account for the redeployment of either L1 or L2 phonological structures to parse the L3 phonological input and represent the L3 phonological  grammar.

The talk will be in person in the Psychology Reading room, COR A228, from 3:00 – 4:30.