A TRANSFERÊNCIA GRAFO-FÔNICO-FONOLÓGICA L2 (FRANCÊS) - L3(INGLÊS): UM ESTUDO CONEXIONISTA

by BLANK, CINTIA AVILA

The research in the area of second language acquisition presents a strong tendency toinvestigate the relationship between an L1 and an L2, leaving out the process of transferwhich can occur when one is learning more than one foreign language. The present studyaims at analyzing the transfer of grapho-phonic-phonologic patterns of an L2 into an L3 in aconnectionist perspective. For that purpose, a case study was carried out with one male adultBrazilian Portuguese native speaker, who speaks French (L2) in an advanced level and islearning English (L3) in a pre- intermediate level. Therefore, the main goals of this researchwere: 1) to investigate whether the vowel assimilation in the L3 would happen towards thevocalic characteristics (F1, F2 and duration) of subject?s L1 or L2; and 2) to assess whetherthe effects produced by the L2 orthography would cause L2-L3 grapho-phonic-phonologictransfer. The data relative to the first objective of this research was obtained via naming tasksperformed in the three languages spoken by the subject, whose productions were analyzedacoustically with the aid of Praat (version 4.4.2.2). The results regarding the acoustic vowelanalysis suggest the creation of hybrid categories between the L1 and L2, which wereassimilated by the L3 vowels of the subject. As for the data concerning the second goal,obtained by a lexical access task in the participant?s L2 and L3, the software E-Prime wasused together with a Serial Response Box. For the lexical access task, apart from graphophonic-phonologic transference from the L2 (French) into the L3 (English), evidence ofgrapho-phonic-phonologic transference from the L3 into the L2 were also found. The resultsobtained are in consonance with a connectionist view of the processing of memory systems,which would work in a collaborative way, which would enable the interaction betweenprevious knowledge from the L1 and the L2 (more consolidated), and the knowledge of a newL3 (less stabilized)