Language Switches in L3 Production: Implications for a Polyglot Speaking Model

In general, discussion of cross-linguistic influence has focussed almost exclusively on the role of L1 in L2 production, both in the form of crosslinguistic influence on the learner's interlanguag and in the form of language switches to the L1 during L2 production As yet, there has been little work done on the influence of a learner's other previously learned L2s in the acquisition of a new language (L3) The few studies that have been earned out on the role of L2 in L3 production however show that L2 does play an important role in L3 acquisition. This paper presents the results of ongoing research on non-adapted language switches, using data from a two-year longitudinal case study of an adult learner of L3 Swedish with L1 English and L2 German Our study is, based on 844 non-adapted language switches We indentified four main types of switch, three of which had pragmatic purpose, namely (1) EDIT (marking self-repair, beginning of turntake etc), (II) META (used for asides, to comment on L3 performance or ask for help) and (III) INSERT (use of non-L3 items to overcome lexical problems in L3), and the last of which we refer to as Without Idenufied Pragmatic Purpose (WiPP Switch, of ‘non-intentional switches’, Pouhsse and Bongaerts 1994) We found that While L1 English prevailed in EDIT, META and INSERT functions, almost only L2 German occurred in WIPP Switches Most of these WIPP Switches were function words We also noticed that a number of the English utterances used in INSERT function appeared to show German Influence, although this was not the case when English was used in META function Our results, show that in this case study of L3 acquisition, L1 and L2 play different roles We suggest that L2 German, Which was shown to be the non-L3 language predominantly used to supply material for lexical construction attempts in the L3 (Williams and Hammarberg 1994), is activated in Parallel to the L3 interlanguage, underlying L3 production and even L1 production We refer to this as the default supplier role L1 English, on the other hand, is more seldom used in lexical construction attempts in the L3 or activated in parallel but rather is kept separate from the L3 and used largely with a metalinguistic function We refer to this as the INSTRUMENTAL role We propose a developmental model of L3 production based on de Bot's (1992) model of bilingual speech production but involving role assignment to the background languages, such that only the language which has been assigned the role of DEFAULT SUPPLIER' is regularly activated in parallel to the L3 interlanguage Over time, these two roles are largely taken over by the L3 itself We suggest that these roles also exist in L2 acquisition but since there is only one background language, this takes over both roles and over distinctions between them collapse.