Non-Facilitative Transfer Effects of the First (L1) and Second Language (L2) in Third Language (L3) Acquisition of Pronominal Possessors, Differential Object Marking, and Resultative Constructions

NON-FACILITATIVE TRANSFER EFFECTS OF THE FIRST (L1) AND SECOND LANGUAGE (L2) IN THIRD LANGUAGE (L3) ACQUISITION OF PRONOMINAL POSSESSORS, DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING, AND RESULTATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS Abstract This paper's objective is to evaluate the hypotheses of some L3 models of morphosyntactic transfer/crosslinguistic influence (CLI) using a generative approach. An experiment was carried out with trilingual child learners (L1 Hungarian L2 Romanian L3 English) to investigate the nature of transfer (positive or negative) and its possible source (L1 or/and L2). An acceptability judgement task (AJT) was used with 3 target conditions: pronominal possessors, differential object marking, and resultative constructions. Results confirm the predictions with evidence of non-facilitative transfer from both the L1 and L2 for the target grammatical properties. The novel combination of languages and the analyses of these grammatical features make a substantial contribution to the linguistic field of L3 acquisition and language teaching in general by providing insight into the comprehension and processing of specific grammatical features during the initial stages of learning.