Resumen de L3 morphosyntactic effects on L1 vs. L2 systems: The Differential Stability Hypothesis
This study investigates the extent to which L1 versus adult L2 syntactic systems resist influence from a third language (L3) via observation of the effect of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) on Spanish in L1 Spanish/L2 English and L1 English/L2 Spanish bilinguals that are advanced L3 BP speakers. We examine the phenomenon of raising across a dative experiencer out of a TP complement (TPExp), which is acceptable in BP and English but not Spanish. Spanish data from an acceptability judgment task indicate that although both experimental groups rate TPExp higher than the Spanish control, L2 Spanish speakers are more accepting of TPExp than L1 Spanish speakers and Spanish controls. We take these results to support our hypothesis of differential stability conditioned by age of acquisition.
