Cross-linguistic influence

The present study aimed to investigate Mazandarani-Persian Bilinguals' L3 learning of simple present tense to see whether their L1, L2, or dominant language of communication affect their L3 learning. To this end, 90 male and female students, with the mean age of 14.5 were selected from among the elementary L3 learners of English. The participants were assigned into three groups of L1 Mazandarani/L2 Persian/ L3 learners of English. The first group had Mazandarani as the dominant language of communication while the second and the third group had Persian as the dominant language of communication. The Grammaticality Judgment Task and Oral Translation Task were used to check the participants' production and comprehension of the target structure. The results of the Kruskal Wallis and the Mann Whitney U tests showed that the dominant language of communication, irrespective of its status as the first or second language, was the primary source of cross-linguistic influence in learning simple present tense at the initial stages of learning this tense.

The goal of the present study was to realize whether L1 (first language) or L2 (second language) affects the third language (L3) learning. Three mirror-image groups learning English were compared, as early learners of sequential Persian-Arabic bilinguals. The first group used L1 Persian-L2 Arabic languages. The second and the third groups used L1 Arabic-L2 Persian languages. Moreover, the first and the second groups used Persian, and the third group used Arabic as a language of communication. The Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) was administered to select initial L3 English learners. Sixty English learners participated in the study. The translation task and Grammaticality Judgment Test were administered to elicit English attributive adjectives. To compare the performances of the three groups, the non-parametric equivalent of One-Way ANOVA, which was the Kruskal-Wallis test, was used. Mann-Whitney U tests were applied to recognize the probably significant differences among groups. None of the Cumulative Enhancement Model (CEM), the L1 Factor Hypotheses, the L2 Status Factor, and the Typological Primacy Model was confirmed. However, the influence of the dominant language of communication on L3 learning supported data. Groups one and two had better performances in the comprehension and production of attributive adjectives. Group three obtained the lowest mean score. This study lets us determine the influence of earlier acquired languages, Persian and Arabic, on the initial stage of learning L3 English attributive adjectives. The results indicate that the language of communication has a substantial effect on transferring from the first and second languages into the L3 language.  

This study aims to identify the role of transfer in the L3 acquisition of indefinite frequency adverbs, be it L1, L2 or both; and to find out whether CLI occurs on a feature-by-feature basis or as a wholesale phenomenon. Also, this study intends to investigate the influence of the learners' L2 proficiency on the L3 acquisition of indefinite frequency adverbs; and to examine the effect of different task modalities on the facilitative/detrimental role of background languages in the transfer of indefinite frequency adverbs in the early stages of German learning. To this end, we studied 30 Persian-speaking L3 learners with previous L2 knowledge of English. We collected data from a grammaticality judgement task to account for learners' receptive knowledge and an element rearrangement task to measure learners' production. The data were analyzed using multivariate tests and paired samples t-tests, which allowed us to estimate the effects of background languages, learners' L2 proficiency, and task type on the acquisition of indefinite frequency adverbs in L3. The results contradicted the wholesale CLI and supported the hybrid transfer models of CEM and LPM, which claim that transfer occurs property by property. The results also refuted the role of micro-variables, including learners' L2 proficiency and task type.