Segmental and prosodic evidence for property-by-property transfer in L3 English in Northern Africa
Date
2022
Authors
Archibald, John
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Languages
Abstract
In this paper, I argue in favour of property-by-property transfer in the third language
acquisition of English by L1 Arabic and L2 French speakers in Northern Africa (Algeria and Tunisia)
based on a reanalysis of previous work. I provide a phonological analysis of their spontaneous
production data in the domains of consonants, vowels, stress, and rhythm. The L3 phonology shows
evidence of influence from both L1 Arabic and L2 French, with mixed influences found both within
and across segmental and prosodic domains. The vowels are French-influenced, while the consonants
are Arabic-influenced; the stress is a mixture of Arabic and French influence while the rhythm is
French. I argue that these data are explained if we adopt a Contrastive Hierarchy Model of feature
structure with the addition of parsing theories such as those proposed by Lightfoot. These data
provide further evidence in support of the Westergaard’s Linguistic Proximity Model. I conclude by
showing how this approach can allow us to formalize a measure of linguistic I-proximity and thus
explain when the L1 or L2 structures will transfer.
Description
Keywords
third language acquisition, phonology, Linguistics Proximity Model, Arabic, French, parsing
Citation
Archibald, J. (2022). “Segmental and prosodic evidence for property-by-property transfer in L3 English in Northern Africa.” Languages, 7(1), 28. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010028