Multilingual phonological development through the lens of different time scales

Most previous studies into L3 speech learning have employed product-oriented methods in analysing cross-linguistic patterns of acquisition, and as such offer an indication of general trends in how native and non-native languages interact in multilingual speakers. To gain a better understanding of the developmental processes behind such general trends, it seems imperative to also engage in analyses of individual variability between and within learners, ideally via insights from dense data collection (cf. Hammarberg 2017). The present study attempts such a comprehensive analytical procedure in investigating /w/ production in L2 English and L3 Polish by seven L1 German speakers (aged 21-39). During the first ten months of L3 learning, the multilinguals were recorded four times, doing picture naming, delayed repetition and story telling tasks in their foreign languages. In addition, two learners were recorded over the course of 20 weekly sessions between the second and fourth testing time. Based on auditory analyses performed by three phonetically trained raters, the group analyses suggested little overall improvement of /w/ productions in both the L2 and L3 across the ten months of learning. At the individual level, however, the L2 and L3 performance was highly variable and different from each other. For both learners, the patterns of cross-linguistic interaction showed initially a competitive relationship, which became increasingly supportive towards the end of the testing period. The results suggest that product- and process-oriented analyses may offer differing pictures of multilingual phonological development, and that with an increasing L3 experience the L2 and L3 emerge as supportive growers on the production of a shared novel phoneme.