An experimental study of L2 transfer in L3 syntax acquisition:ERP evidence from Chinese-English-French trilinguals
The present study employed the ERP technique to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese-English-French trilinguals'processing of number agreement and gender agreement in French,focusing on the transfer effect of L2(English)in L3(French)acquisition.The results revealed the following:1)For low-proficiency learners of L3 French,violations of number agreement elicited a P600,indicative of deep syntactic processing,whereas gender agreement violation processing evoked an N400 associated with shallow syntactic processing;and 2)for high-proficiency learners of L3 French,both number and gender agreement violations generated a P600.These results provide evidence for L2 transfer in L3 acquisition with number agreement,which is shared between English and French,eliciting more robust ERP components than gender agreement,which is specific to French.Furthermore,the proficiency level of L3 can influence the extent of L2 transfer,as demonstrated by high-proficiency learners exhibiting a P600 for both types of agreement processing,thereby supporting a Full Transfer/Full Access model.These findings have implications for L3 acquisition theory and teaching practice.
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