L1 Erosion and L3 French Acquisition: Dynamic Multilingualism, Phonetic Transfer, and Morphosyntactic Transfer among Urhobo Learners in Nigeria

In Delta State, Nigeria, many young people increasingly use Nigerian Pidgin and English rather than Urhobo in daily communication. This study examines how this changing multilingual situation affects the acquisition of French as a third language (L3). The study is grounded in Calvet’s (1999) language ecology, Rothman’s (2010, 2015) Typological Primacy Model, Flynn et al.’s (2004) Cumulative Enhancement Model, Selinker’s (1972) Interlanguage Theory, Corder’s (1967) Error Analysis, and Odlin’s (1989) transfer framework. A stratified mixed-methods design was used. Data were collected from 600 adult participants: 300 older adults in Warri, Sapele, and Ughelli, and 300 undergraduate students of French at Delta State University, Abraka, and Dennis Osadebay University, Asaba. The undergraduate learners were drawn from 100, 200, and 400 levels and completed sociolinguistic, phonetic, and morphosyntactic tasks. The study examined phonetic transfer from Urhobo and Nigerian Pidgin into French front rounded vowels (/y, ø, œ/) and nasal vowels (/ɑ̃, ɔ̃, ɛ̃/), as well as transfer in French gender agreement and past-tense marking. Findings show that Pidgin-dominant learners produced more vowel substitutions and intrusive [ŋ] insertions than Urhobo-dominant learners. Auxiliary omission was also the most frequent morphosyntactic error. The results suggest that Nigerian Pidgin plays an important role in shaping French interlanguage development among Urhobo-background learners.