157 / 2021-06-29 22:03:38

Roles of Source Languages in Third Language Acquisition: L1 Tibetan and L2 Chinese Role Assignment in L3 English Oral Production

cross-linguistic influence; lexical transfer; L3 Production; third language acquisition

The pioneering model proposed by Williams and Hammarberg (1998) postulated a clear role-assignment distinction of L1 and L2 in L3 oral production and had inspired subsequent studies worldwide. Our current cross-sectional case studies aim to explore the applicability of this model with language combinations from both Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European language families. More precisely, we recruited eight Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals currently studying at two Chinese universities for data collection and analysis. Our results, quite surprisingly, are inconsistent with those found in Williams and Hammarger’s (1998) two-year longitudinal case study. In our study, L2 Chinese acts as the instrumental language for all participants, while L1 Tibetan is assigned the instrumental role as well to most of them. The assignment of the supplier role, in great contrast, is far from being clear-cut. Distinct typological and orthographic features shared by Tibetan, Chinese, and English, together with other possible causes accountable for our results, are discussed in detail to provide deeper and wider insights into the sphere of third language acquisition.