ABSTRACT
The aim of the first chapter is to provide a brief introduction of the main topics that are dealt with in the remainder of this book. It introduces the fundamental differences between second and third language acquisition and alludes to the issue of whether bi- or multilingual learners have an advantage when acquiring additional languages. Furthermore, it zooms into crosslinguistic influence by presenting the motivation for comparing crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition with third language acquisition. Second language acquisition allows influence exclusively from the first language, as this is the only other language source available. With one additional language, possible transfer processes augment, because crosslinguistic influence is likely to occur between all three languages, i.e., in all directions. This study sets out to investigate performance in English as a third language and to define the roles of the L1 and the L2 in L3 acquisition.
