Bilingualism and Multilingualism

The Effect of Bilingualism on the Acquisition of a Third Language

Aloysius Ang Weiqiang

02/11/2011

Introduction:
In the early years of bilingualism research, there were many stigmas against
bilingualism due to flawed research as well as experiments that suggest that
bilingualism had negative cognitive effects. Saer; between (1922-1924),
found mainly negative effects for bilingualism, but there were significant
methodological problems with Saers research in both his sampling
procedure and the type of measurements he took. However, this has
changed significantly since Peal and Lambert (1962) in a Canadian Study
strictly controlled the social economic status and language background of its
participants and proved the opposite as well as suggests that bilingualism
has beneficial cognitive effects and would also increases ones metalinguistic awareness. Since then, according to Jasone Cenoz, Many
researchers have also found that bilingualism has a positive effect on foreign
language achievement (Cummins, 1979; Eisentein, 1980; Hoffman, 2001;
Klein, 1995; Lerea & Laporta, 1971; Ringbom, 1985; Sanz, 2000; Thomas,
1988; Valencia & Cenoz, 1992; Zobl, 1993).
In the paper that ensues we will explore the specific positive effects of
bilingualism that have been well documented in research; heighten metalinguistics awareness which gives bilinguals an edge in phonological and
lexical awareness when acquiring a third language. In addition we will
explore the other effects of bilingualism on third language acquisition that
are debatable, less conclusive and reckons more research.

Defining Bilingualism and third language acquisition:

Bilingualism can be broadly defined as the ability to speak 2 languages;
however there are many grey areas when establishing which are the L1 first
language, L2 second language and L3 third language of a bilingual. A
common practice that researchers use is to label the languages known to an
individual in a chronological order. Even so, many problems would arise due
to various reasons such as simultaneous acquisition (acquiring two
languages almost at the same time), incomplete knowledge of a certain
language (only proficient in the usage of the language in certain domains
such as work, social setting or very specific areas), intermittent acquisition
(different languages people get acquainted with during different time periods
of their lives) and even bonus language (languages which the individual got
to know because they were very close to a person who knows the language
or the individual is very involved in an activity that has the language deeply
rooted in).
Therefore a better definition would be as suggested by Bjorn Hammarberg
(2010) that L1 (shall) refer to a language established up to a certain level in
infancy, and L2 to any language encountered and acquired after infancy.
The cutoff point when an L1 can be said to be established will have to be set
by a chosen criterion, e.g., an age criterion such as 3 years as proposed by
McLaughlin (1984: 10). This would ensure that the languages are categorize
according to the periods in the persons life that they are acquired rather
than in a chronological order. As a result, person can have one or more L1s
and one or more L2s and in the paper that ensues, we will explore both
L1+L1 bilinguals and L1+L2 bilinguals.
It is also important that we bear in mind the definition of L3 established by
Bjorn Hammarberg (2010) which states the term third language (L3) refers
to a non-native language which is currently being used or acquired in a
situation where the person already has knowledge of one or more L2s in

addition to one or more L1s. By doing so, we can compare the acquisition of
L3 by bilinguals to the acquisition of a L2 by monolinguals more easily.

Discussion:
Third language acquisition may share many attributes of second language
acquisition but they are not the same. A bilingual who is learning a third
language would have gone through the stages of learning a second language
therefore when he is learning the third language he would have a better
understanding of how the process is; which would make it easier for him,
compared to a monolingual learning a second language.
Bilingualism is proven to have positive cognitive effects which will lead to a
heightened meta-linguistic awareness. Meta-linguistic awareness is the
ability to analyse language more intensely by focusing on different level of
linguistic structures such as words, phonemes and syntax, word awareness,
phonological awareness, sentence awareness, semantic awareness.
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise that speech is composed
of distinct units of sound. Being a bilingual would allow the individual to
know two different sets of sound speech which would give them a greater
sensitivity to sound units of words as they already have to learn to
differentiate the two different types of speech stream when acquiring and
using the second language. On the other hand, a second language learner
would only begin to grasp with this concept. Furthermore, the need to make
careful distinction between both languages when using them would allow
bilinguals to develop a good control over the phonological usage of the
language. Therefore bilinguals would have an edge in phonological
awareness. This is supported by Georgia Andreou (2008) in a study to
investigate phonological awareness in thirty fourth grade students
consisting of Albanian/Greek-speaking bilinguals and Greek-speaking
monolinguals who have learnt English as a third language for approximately
three months. The subjects were all given two tests of phonological

awareness in English, which were the third language of bilinguals and the
second language of monolinguals. The results have shown that the bilingual
school children performed better than monolingual students in both of the
tests, which means that their phonological awareness is better. Georgia
Andreou also explained that people have different linguistic strata when
processing language; a hierarchy of processing put forth by Perecman (1989)
the semantic-lexical, the syntactic and the phonological/phoneticarticulatory levels. While monolinguals only have to grapple with one
system, bilinguals have to differentiate between the two. Andreou stipulates
that language mixing occurs more frequently at the lexical-semantic than at
the phonological-articulatory level, where the links between the systems are
weak thus at the phonological level in which language mixing occurs less
frequently (bilinguals) display better phonological awareness.
This leads us to the issue of whether lexical-semantic awareness is
enhanced by bilingualism or not. According to Klein (1995) because of
having two sets of vocabularies, bilinguals would have a greater
understanding of the arbitrary relationships between words and their
referents which is also reflected in Bialystok (1986) hypothesis affirming
that bilinguals would have an advantage over monolinguals in terms of
lexical awareness. Kleins research (1995) showed that bilinguals presented
significantly higher scores in both prepositional complements (lexical
learning) and preposition stranding (syntactic learning) constructions. But
how does having two sets of vocabulary actually help bilinguals acquire a
third set in the third language that they are trying to acquire? The answer is
found in the research done by Keshavarz and Astaneh (2004) which show
that the skills used in the acquisition of the second set of vocabulary are
transferrable and applicable to vocabulary acquisition during three language
acquisition. Keshavarz and Astaneh (2004) in their research found that
(bilingual) native speakers of Turkish and Armenian who speak Persian as
their second language performed better in the English vocabulary test than
the Persian monolingual learners of English, therefore proving the positive
effects of bilingualism on third language vocabulary acquisition. However

the case of a L1+L1 bilingual would mean that the individual acquired both
sets of his vocabulary incidentally through daily usage of the language when
reading and listening. Keshavarz and Astaneh (2004) also revealed that in
the area of vocabulary production and achievement the Armenian-Persian
bilinguals who had learned their first and second languages both
academically and orally were more successful than the Turkish-Persian
bilinguals who had learned their first language only orally. This affirms the
fact that skills used in the acquisition of the second set of vocabulary are
transferrable and applicable to three language acquisition. Therefore one
can observe that regardless of L1+L1 bilinguals or L1 + L2 bilinguals,
although more so in L1 + L2 bilinguals, bilingualism has positive effects on
third language acquisition in terms of vocabulary.
There are also areas of research on the effects of bilingualism that yielded
inconclusive date. As different languages in the world belong to different
branches of the language tree and share a hypothetical ancestral prototype
language, one might assume that language that are similar or closely
related belong to the same branch as the L1 or L2 of the bilingual would
be cause of the bilingual having a relative ease at learning the language.
According to Francisco Gallardo del Puerto (2007) bilinguals who speak a
language typologically similar to the target language tend to achieve a
significantly better acquisition of the third language than bilinguals who do
not have a language typologically close to the L3 in their linguistic
background (Balke- Aurell & Lindblad, 1982; Swain et al ., 1990) however,
there are also cases in which the superiority shown by bilinguals who speak
a language typologically related to the target language has not always
reached statistical significance (Bild & Swain, 1989). This conforms to the
finding by Mila Schwartz, Esther Geva, David L. Share and Mark Leikin
(2007) that positive transfer of phonological processing skills from L1
Russian to L3 English is observed even in the context of the two
linguistically and orthographically distinct languages. In addition, another
study conducted by Swain, Lapkin, Rowen, and Hart (1990) as explained by
Cenoz (2003) examined the relationships between literacy skills and typology

and the influence of bilingualism (heritage language and English) in the

acquisition of French. And the research results did not support the
importance of closely related typography as well which in the case was when
speakers of Romance and non-Romance languages were compared.
Therefore, it is still inconclusive whether the relationship between the
languages of a bilingual influences the effects of bilingualism on the
acquisition of a third language.
There are also some contentious areas of bilingualism with limited research
information for example, Cenoz (2003)state that the positive effect of higher
levels of bilingual proficiency on L3 competence has been found to be greater
in older than in younger school learners, which is interesting as it suggests
that the cognitive advantages associated with the level of bilingualism
increase as a function of age (Lasagabaster, 1998) this concept goes against
the general idea of the Critical Period Hypothesis Lenneberg (1967) which
establish that the younger one acquires a language the more native-like he
can expect his proficiency in it to be. Kees de Bot (2006) explained that an
initial study done by Mechelli et al. (2004) which showed greater gray matter
density in the inferior parietal cortex in the bilinguals than in the
monolinguals also indicated that the effect was greater for late bilinguals
which conformed to (Lasagabaster, 1998). But a later study by Mechelli et al.
(2004) proved otherwise and suggests that theres a decrease in gray matter
density with the increase of age of onset of bilingual acquisition. Therefore
research in this area is very debatable and more is required in the area for
any further conclusions to be drawn.
Similarly, Maria Pilar Safont Jorda` (2005) claims that there is little research
done that addressed the development of pragmatic competence in third
language learners. She examined pragmatic production of monolingual (L1
Castilian) and bilingual (L1 Catalan, L2 Castilian) learners of English in a
foreign language learning context; that of the Valencian Community in
Spain, and showed that bilingual L3 learners of English employed request
modifiers more frequently and appropriately than monolingual L2 English

learners, but concluded that further research on the pragmatic competence

of third language learners is needed to prove the advantage of bilinguals
over monolinguals regarding their interactional competence; the ability to
communicate with others, to perform and interpret communicative actions
on the basis of the sociocultural and sociolinguistic norms of a particular
speech community.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, there have been much research which show that bilingualism
has a positive effect on cognition which in turn gives a heightened metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals bestowing them better phonological and
lexical awareness when acquiring a third language. On the other hand, there
are other effects of bilingualism that are less conclusive or debatable such
as better understanding of pragmatics during third language acquisition,
greater ease of acquisition when languages are of closely related orthography
and higher levels of positive effect of bilingual proficiency due to age as a
factor where much more research can be done.

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