L3 acquisition of aspect: The influence of structural similarity, analytic L2 and general L3 proficiency

Abstract

Research has shown that many factors influence the transfer process in L3 acquisition (e.g., language distance, L2-status, proficiency in the L2/L3). Regarding the L2/L3 acquisition of aspect, a lot of research on the influence of the L1 has been conducted; however, to date, only a very limited amount of studies has analysed the influence an L2 exerts on the acquisition of aspect in an L3. The present study, therefore, focuses on L3 acquisition of perfective/imperfective aspect. We investigated 109 German-speaking learners of L3 Spanish with previous linguistic L2 knowledge in English. Data were elicited by means of a language background questionnaire, a c-test for overall proficiency measures in the L3, an oral retelling of two picture-based narratives, and two semantic interpretation tasks to measure the participants' knowledge of aspect in the L2 and the L3 (i.e., analytic proficiency). The findings provide empirical evidence that L2 English positively influences the acquisition of aspect in L3 Spanish if structural similarities between the L2 and the L3 exist. However, positive L2 transfer seems to depend on L2 and L3 proficiency levels.