6. Multilingualism: New Perspectives on Syntactic Development

Summary

The chapter presents results of a series of studies which provide strong support against simplified accounts of language transfer from either first language (L1) or any previous language. These studies help us better understand language acquisition, and most particularly the nature of the hypotheses language learners impose when learning a new target language. Language development studies focusing on the acquisition of relative clauses in English presented in this chapter seek to elucidate language development by contemplating the development of language-specific properties of the complementizer phrase (CP). The chapter introduces three influential current models of multilingual acquisition: the second-language (L2) status factor; the typological primacy model; and the cumulative enhancement model (CEM) for language acquisition. L1 acquisition studies have provided important insights into how the mind and language work. The chapter also explores L3 acquisition, the acquisition process of any multilingual learner whether of a third language or a fourth language.