Doctoral Dissertation Research: The acquisition of anaphoric direct objects in a third language: A variationist perspective

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When bilingual speakers are learning a third language, the two previously learned languages may influence this learning in various ways under different linguistic and social conditions. This doctoral dissertation investigates the influence of first and second language in third language acquisition. By acknowledging the inherent variability in language use by multilingual speakers, this study facilitates public understanding of language uses that are deemed "non-standard" in formal education, to increase understanding of multilingual speakers. This study further benefits language education in that findings help language educators identify learning difficulties specific to bilingual and multilingual speakers learning an additional language.This doctoral dissertation study elicits third language learners' judgments on the naturalness of sentences with either expressed or omitted anaphoric direct objects in each of the three languages L1, L2, and L3. In the following conversation, "him" is an anaphoric direct object referring to "John": "-Did you see John? -No, I didn't see him." To establish points of comparison, judgment is elicited for the same sentences by native speakers, as well as those whose L1 and L2 are the L2 and L3 of the experimental group, respectively. The research design allows the researchers to tease apart the predictions of several existing hypotheses about factors that influence L3 acquisition. These include influence from the first language, influence from the second language, influence from the language that is more typologically similar to the third language, and influence from the language primarily used in daily life.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.