This study sets out to investigate possible effects of previously learned languages on the acquisition of English as a third language by examining six prepositions (in, on, at, behind, over, to) when they denote spatial relations. Two picture description tasks were employed to find out which of the two known languages (L1 and/or L2) is the major…

Although previous research has observed a facilitative influence of the first language (L1) on the acquisition and processing of gender agreement in a second language (L2), particularly in language pairs with similar gender agreement marking, the question of whether knowledge of two languages with gender can confer an additional advantage for…

Syntactic structures are unobserved theoretical constructs which are useful in explaining a wide range of linguistic and psychological phenomena. Language acquisition studies how such latent structures are acquired by human learners through many hypothesized learning mechanisms and apparatuses, which can be genetically endowed or of general…

This paper compares the initial state of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition for English articles to examine the influence of L2 proficiency on positive transfer from L2 to L3. We tested 36 L1 Turkish/L2 German adolescent learners of L3 English (L3 group), 41 L1 Turkish adolescent learners of L2 English (L2 group), and 10…

This book comprises 20 chapters that have been divided into two distinct parts: language in educational contexts and language in cultural contexts. The contributions included in this book are the outcome of the conference Contacts and Contrasts that was held in Konin, Poland, in 2021 (C&C2021). The contributions featured in the first part of…

The theme for this year's annual Graduate Student Conference of the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature (LLL) was "In a Word," which captured a basic component that runs through the College of LLL since words are essential to the work students do in each of the departments that form the College. The conference opened with a…

In this study, we present and analyze co-constructions from L2 English data collected at the European School in Luxembourg. Co-constructions are morpho-syntactic structures split across two speakers, in which a second speaker completes a grammatical structure initiated by the first speaker in conversation. The corpus features multilingual 13-14…

This study investigates the role of previously acquired linguistic systems, Mazandarani and Persian, in the acquisition of third language (L3) English at the initial stages. The data have been obtained from 31 students (age 13-14 years), testing the placement of attributive possessives in a grammaticality judgment task, an element rearrangement…

This volume includes two sections of the 2019 NORDSCI international conference proceedings: (1) Education and Educational Research; and (2) Language and Linguistics. Education and Educational Research includes 11 papers covering scientific topics in the full spectrum of education, including history, sociology and economy of education, educational…

Several studies on L3 lexicon, and recently also some on L3 syntax, have convincingly shown a qualitative difference between the acquisition of a true L2 and the subsequent acquisition of an L3. Some studies even indicate that L2 takes on a stronger role than L1 in the initial state of L3 syntax (e.g. Bardel and Falk, 2007; Rothman and Cabrelli…

The present article addresses the following question: what variables condition syntactic transfer? Evidence is provided in support of the position that third language (L3) transfer is selective, whereby, at least under certain conditions, it is driven by the typological proximity of the target L3 measured against the other previously acquired…

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…