The acquisition of L3 variation among early bilinguals

The present study investigates whether prior experience with formal study of an L2 influences L3 Korean learners’ Type 1 variation (i.e., use of obligatory forms) and Type 2 variation (i.e., variation between alternative acceptable variants). The patterns of variation in Korean argument realization of early bilingual learners (English-Chinese/Malay/Indonesian/Tamil) of L3 Korean were assessed in light of the distribution of variants present in classroom input, learners’ prior L2 learning experience and home language background, argument animacy and number, and familiarity of verb structure type. Our findings demonstrate that prior experience with a typologically-similar L2 facilitates acquisition of grammatical patterns as well as acquisition of native-like patterns of variation between grammatical forms that are constrained by a range of internal linguistic factors. Any L2 experience, regardless of typological proximity, is found to facilitate acquisition of internal linguistic constraints, but not acquisition of grammatical patterns.