The Acquisition of L3 Spanish Objects and Clitics by L1 Japanese L2 English Learners

Abstract

This study explores the effect of typological proximity on the acquisition of a European language as a second (L2) or third (L3) language by East Asian first language (L1) speakers. Specifically, we investigate the acquisition of Spanish null objects and associated clitics by L1 Japanese speakers whose L2 is English and whose L3 is Spanish. While both Japanese and Spanish allow null objects, their typological proximity is more distant than that of Spanish and English (Miyamoto & Yamada, 2017), and English does not allow null objects. Spanish clitics are considered phi features, which are present in English but absent in Japanese. We hypothesize that Spanish clitics provide positive evidence for the acquisition of grammatical gender agreement, and the acquisition of Spanish null objects is a prerequisite for the acquisition of Spanish clitic. This study classified participants based on their English proficiency and administered an English grammaticality judgement task. After that, Spanish grammaticality judgment tasks were carried out as the main experiment. The results suggest that the effect of object related knowledge from L1 and L2 on L3 is complex, and the effect from participants' L1 Japanese is not eliminated. Participants showed difficulty in learning L3 Spanish clitics, which may be due to the difference in the feature configurations between their L2 English and L3 Spanish. Our findings do not support the acquisition order suggested in previous works, nor the models based solely on typological or syntactic proximity, and highlight the need for further investigation into the over-suppliance of phi features in L3 acquisition, that are not available in learners’ L1/L2, as well as the nature of the Spanish clitics.