Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
[PDF]
Cross-Linguistic Influence in The Acquisition of Spanish as A Third Language
Deepak Singh
ABSTRACT:
This study explores the acquisition of the present subjunctive mood in Spanish by Indian university students. Hindi is perceived to be quite different from Spanish; nevertheless, the languages share some grammatical structures. This project examines whether knowledge of Indian structures, which function similarly to Spanish (e.g., the subjunctive), facilitates the acquisition of these structures in Spanish. Thus, as a research objective, we were interested in how previous knowledge of two typologically distant/close languages, Hindi, and English, can affect the third language (L3) acquisition of Spanish. Spanish shows certain similarities with both languages but is typologically closer to Hindi. These data can contribute to current debates on the role of previous languages in L3 acquisition by offering insights that can tease apart the predictions of different linguistic models.
keywords: Cross-linguistic influence, L3 acquisition, multilingualism, metalinguistic awareness, and acceptability judgment task