The study investigated longitudinal patterns of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in production and perception of rhotic sounds in young multilinguals. It involved two groups of participants with L1 Polish or German; L2 English and L3 German or Polish, tested three times. The results show non-linear developmental trajectories in both modalities and L1 group effects.
There is ample research exploring the relationship between L2 perception and production, however this interface has been rarely addressed from a multilingual perspective (but see Kopečková, Gut, Golin 2018; Authors 2019). Such studies are necessary to provide more insights into L3 phonological acquisition and to inform relevant theories (Cabrelli Amaro and Wrembel 2016). The present contribution aims to investigate longitudinally patterns of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the production and perception of rhotic sounds in the L2 and L3 of young multilinguals whose languages differ in the realization of this feature. The study involved two groups of participants (aged 12-13) with L1 Polish (14 subjects) or L1 German (11 subjects); L2 English (6 years of learning), who began learning their L3s (German or Polish respectively) at school. They were tested three times: T1 (after 5 weeks of L3), T2 (5 months), T3 (8 months). Production involved delayed repetition tasks in L1, L2 and L3, in which target words with rhotics were embedded in a carrier phrase. The recordings were analysed auditorily by three phonetically-trained raters. The perception test involved a forced-choice goodness task in L2 and L3, submitted in E-prime, including two renditions of the same phrases which differed on the last stimulus items. For perception, accuracy and reaction times were analyzed. For production, accuracy rates in the L2 and L3 were calculated and coded in such a way as to reflect the source/s of CLI. The results show complex developmental patterns in both modalities characterized by non-linear trajectories with visible L1 group effects, transient CLI trends and considerable individual variation. The findings support preliminary hypotheses that perception and production performance develops as the function of time of learning; that L2 and L3 systems interact in multilingual learners; and that L1 group characteristics condition CLI patterns.
