Interference between non-native languages during trilingual language production
Data
2023Egilea
de Bruin, Angela
Hoversten, Liv J.
Martin, Clara D.
Angela de Bruin, Liv J. Hoversten, Clara D. Martin, Interference between non-native languages during trilingual language production, Journal of Memory and Language, Volume 128, 2023, 104386, ISSN 0749-596X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2022.104386
Journal of Memory and Language
Journal of Memory and Language
Laburpena
Most research on multilingual language control has focused on a bilingual’s first (L1) and second (L2) languages.
Studies on third language (L3) acquisition suggest that, despite the L1 being more proficient, L3 learners
experience more L2 than L1 interference. However, little is known about how a trilingual’s L2 and L3 interact
after initial stages of language learning. In the current study (Experiment 1: 30 Spanish-Basque-English trilinguals;
Experiment 2: 50 English-French-Spanish trilinguals), participants completed a speeded naming task to
assess cross-language intrusions (e.g., using the Spanish “perro” instead of the French “chien”). Both experiments
showed more L3 than L1 intrusions during L2 naming. Furthermore, using two different tasks, we assessed if this
cross-language interference was related to language inhibition. Both experiments suggested that trilinguals
inhibited their L1 more strongly than their L3. Together, this suggests that a trilingual’s non-native language
might experience more interference from another non-native language than from their L1, possibly because
trilinguals apply more inhibition over their L1.