L1 vs. L2 vs. L3 transfer: Evidence contra wholesale transfer models and privileged languages from grammatical gender and definiteness acquisition in sequential quardilinguals

Abstract

The acquisition of the fourth language (L4A) is an underinvestigated field, and this study of acquisition of grammatical gender and determiners in sequential quadrilinguals (RUS-UKR-ENG-FRA) of CEFR A0 to A2 levels of French (n=22) aims at testing the hypothesis that all three languages are available as a source of transfer to (L4). The results were found to be significant by ANOVAs and MANOVA, thus the study presents evidence to support the hypothesis that language learning is cumulative, as well as to scrutinize the existing models of L3A on how they could be extended to the research in L4A and what the boundaries of "linguistic proximity" used so widely in L3A theories are.