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Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 16:2 (2026) ► pp.141–170

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Cross-linguistic influence in L3 acquisition

Investigating the roles of dominance,  recency, and property

ORCiD logo with link | UiT the Arctic University of Norway
ORCiD logo with link | Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
ORCiD logo with link | UiT the Arctic University of Norway | Norwegian University of Science and Technology
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Published online: 6 March 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.24022.cas
Abstract
In recent years, there has been considerable research into the factors contributing to cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of a third language. Much of the focus has been on linguistic cues, with less emphasis (and conflicting results) on experiential factors, such as the role of dominance. Additionally, there is very little literature on the role of the language used for instruction in experiments, which may be argued to reflect a recency effect. In this article, we investigate whether dominance (in one of the previously acquired languages) and recency may be responsible for cross-linguistic influence in the third language at early stages of acquisition. We exposed four groups of Polish–English speakers to thirty-six lexical items in a new language (Norwegian), followed by a picture-matching task to ensure word comprehension. Participants gave forced-choice judgements on sentences where the morphosyntax was either Polish-like or English-like. Four properties were tested: articles, ditransitives, number agreement, and semantic gender. The results showed complex relationships between dominance, recency, and linguistic property, which are discussed in light of a foreign language effect, differential cognitive control, language domains, and previous L3 studies. Additionally, we suggest some experimental considerations for future L3 research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background literature
    • 2.1Dominance
      • 2.1.1Definition and operationalisation
      • 2.1.2Dominance in CLI and L3A of morphosyntax
    • 2.2Recency
  • 3.The current study
    • 3.1Research questions and predictions
    • 3.2Assumptions
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Materials and procedure
      • 4.2.1Vocabulary exposure
      • 4.2.2Picture-label matching task
      • 4.2.3Forced-choice judgement task (main experiment)
      • 4.2.4Mini post-experiment task questionnaire
      • 4.2.5Proficiency tasks (English and Polish)
      • 4.2.6Background questionnaire
    • 4.3Coding
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Confirmatory analysis
    • 5.2Exploratory analysis
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Article condition
    • 6.2Semantic gender condition
    • 6.3Ditransitives and number agreement
  • 7.Insights for future research
  • 8.Limitations and future directions
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Competing interests
  • Data availability statement
  • Notes
  • References
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