This book presents the latest developments in crosslinguistic influence (CLI) and multilingualism research. The contributors, both veteran researchers and relative newcomers to the field, situate their research in current debates in terms of theory and data analysis and they present it in an accessible way. The chapters investigate how and when native and non-native language knowledge is used in language production. They focus on lexis, syntax, tense-aspect, phonology of multilingual production and link it to a range of concepts such as redundancy, affordances, metalinguistic awareness and L2 status. The empirical data have been collected from participants with a wide combination of languages: besides English, German, French and Spanish, there is Finnish, Swedish, Polish, Chinese and Catalan.

Third or Additional Language Acquisition examines research on the acquisition of languages beyond the L2 within four main areas of inquiry: crosslinguistic influence, multilingual speech production models, the multilingual lexicon and the impact of bi/mul

Which strategies do multilingual learners use when confronted with languages they don't yet know? Which factors are involved in activating prior linguistic knowledge in multilingual learning? This volume offers valuable insights into recent research in multilingualism, crosslinguistic influence and crosslinguistic interaction. Experts in the field examine the role of background languages in multilingual learning. All the chapters point to the heart of the question of what the «multilingual mind» is. Does learning one language actually help you learn another, and if so, why? This volume looks at languages and scenarios beyond English as a second language – Italian, Gaelic, Dutch and German, amongst others, are covered, as well as instances of third and additional language learning. Research into crosslinguistic influence and crosslinguistic interaction essentially contributes to our understanding of how language learning works when there are three or more languages in contact.

This volume provides an unprecedented insight into current approaches to crosslinguistic influence (CLI). The collection investigates a range of themes including linguistic relativity, the possible contributions of neurolinguistics, the problem of cognitive development and the role of the frequency of structures in acquisition from distinct, overlapping and complementary perspectives. Chapters focusing on vocabulary, morphosyntactic categories, semantic structures, and phonetic and phonological structures feature in the volume, as do over 20 languages, in order to offer new insights into both theoretical and empirical issues in CLI, including the consequences of great or little similarity in structures between languages. The relevance of CLI research for teaching is discussed in a number of chapters, as is the phenomenon of multilingualism. The collection will appeal to researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, teachers and professionals interested in the field of CLI in SLA.

Third language acquisition is a common phenomenon, which presents some specific characteristics as compared to second language acquisition. This volume adopts a psycholinguistic approach in the study of cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition and focuses on the role of previously acquired languages and the conditions that determine their influence.

This book reports on a research project conducted in multilingual Hong Kong, where Cantonese is the mother tongue (L1) of the majority of the population and learning different foreign languages is commonplace. In addition to English, which is usually the second language (L2), more and more people learn other languages, such as French (L3). Drawing on the notions of ‘interface’ and ‘reverse transfer’ in second language acquisition, this book addresses the possible role of L3 French in the acquisition of English as an L2 with two major concerns: firstly, the degree to which L3 acquisition will bring about a positive or negative transfer effect on L2 acquisition and secondly, the way in which an L3 interacts with an L2 and/or even an L1 on different interfaces as identified in second language acquisition. The study will appeal to researchers interested in second and third language acquisition, bi- and multilingualism and crosslinguistic influence.