1.0 Introduction

The present study attempts to describe some distinct factors which are implicated in third-language acquisition by reporting and discussing the results of research carried out on how Hong Kong students with Chinese L1 and English L2¹ backgrounds acquire German Vorfeld (fronting) constructions in their third language L3 (German).

L3 learners seem to be less rule-governed, can "pick up" languages with greater facility, but make more overgeneralizations than L2 learners (Zobl, 1992). According to Zobl, this is due to the learning procedure which is affected by antecedent linguistic knowledge. Previous learning experience also makes a difference and therefore, L3 learners seem to be more flexible in employing and abandoning production strategies (McLaughlin & Nayak, 1989). Nevertheless, there is also an increasing potential for interference from other available languages as a learner increases the number of languages learned (Ahukanna, Lund & Gentile, 1981).

According to Thomas (1988), L3 learners are more aware in terms of metalinguistic knowledge than L2 learners and are more sensitive to linguistic input. But monitoring may undermine the autonomy of grammar in language acquisition, which calls for an emphasis on cognitive studies such as learning and communicative processes (Faerch & Kasper, 1986).

In Leung's L3 studies (1998), a new type of transfer was discovered, namely the transfer of Interlanguage (IL) - interference of the learners' "Chinese-English IL" in her learners of French (see also Yip, 1995). An indirect interference of L1 Chinese through L2 to L3 is traced and this interference is found to involve not just merely grammatical interaction but discourse transfer as well. Many of the few third-language acquisition studies available (Bartelt, 1989; Ringbom, 1982; Azevedo, 1978; Fitzgerald, 1978) also suggest that the role of L2 seems to be prominent in L3 strategy building.

The existence of additional linguistic resources in third-language acquisition research, such as the second language grammatical system (target L2 and IL L2) and the analysis of the effect of learning experience, can expand the scope of language acquisition studies.
 

2.0 Acquiring the L3 German Vorfeld

Chinese is classified as a 'topic-prominent' or pragmatic word order language (Li & Thompson, 1976; Thompson, 1978), while English has grammatically determined word order and is a subject-prominent language. English topicalization constructions, as compared to Chinese, are much less common and productive. Yet, adverbials of time and location in English are also quite frequently found in initial position as they are in Chinese.

German is also flexible in word order and falls under the pragmatic word order type. In German, learners can choose either "topic-like" or "subject-like" syntactical structures in their German fronting constructions. In the case of acquisition of fronting in L3 German, the question would be how the learners are to decide which word order they should use, whether there would be more L1 (Chinese) influence and henceforth more topicalization constructions, or whether it would be more like the L2 (English).

    2.1 The Vorfeld in German

The term Vorfeld appears in German descriptive grammar in which sentences are said to be composed of three main parts: Vorfeld, Mittelfeld and Nachfeld, that is, the initial, middle and final fields, as laid out in the following example:
 

         (Engel, 1994, p. 184)

The Vorfeld is the initial position preceding the finite verb in the main clause. The study of the Vorfeld concerns the so-called Positionsverhältnisse (position conditions), that is, the question which element can be put in each position and what its functions will be (Engel 1994, p. 122).

As German is a V2 language, the finite verb stands most frequently in second position as the surface structure (Hawkins, 1986). The first position can be filled by a variety of topicalized constituents, including the subject NP. If the initial constituent is not a subject NP, German clauses exhibit inversion in the form of XVSubj (Hawkins, 1986). Meisel, Clahsen and Pienemann (1980) outline the rules of inversion as follows:

1. after an interrogative pronoun (WH): Wann gehst du nach Hause? (When go you to house?)

2. after the preposing of an adverbial: Jetzt gehe ich nach Hause (Now go I to house)

3. after topicalization either of a simple NP [Topic 1]: Diesen Tabak kaufe ich (This tobacco buy I); or of an embedded clause [Topic 2]: Wenn ich nach Hause gehe, kaufe ich diesen Tabak. (When I to house go, buy I this tobacco). (ibid., p. 124)

The Vorfeld may serve a variety of functions (Hammer, 1971, p. 363):

1. It may be a completely normal and neutral way of beginning a sentence.

2. It may give emphasis to the part of the sentence placed at the beginning.

3. It may give emphasis to another part of the sentence, such as the sentence beginning with trotz (although).

4. It may be determined by contextual factors:

i. by what precedes, including the remark of another speaker (discourse topic): e.g., Ich sehe ihn oft; seinen Bruder sehe ich selten. (I see him often, his brother see I seldom)

ii. by what is to follow: e.g., Das Geld gab er seinem Bruder, der dann die Rechnung bezahlte. (The money gave he to his brother, who then the bill paid)

1. Topicalization is the rule by which constituents are fronted and the effect is to lend specific emphasis to the fronted constituents, in a sense more like the effects of focus.

2. Topic prominence in the sense of topic-comment relations serves to "delimit the universe of discourse" (Abraham et al, 1984), introducing what the sentence is about or setting up the frame of the sentence. It may also receive some emphasis since it is in the initial position. Topics of this kind have been termed 'Chinese-style topics'.⁴

We shall also discuss the problem of acquiring the focus function of the Vorfeld, which involves a fronting movement. Since we suggest that all initial constituents, except subjects, in the Vorfeld position may undergo a fronting movement, with the movement co-occurring with inversion, the operation of fronting is crucial in Vorfeld constructions. It is the main focus of study in this work, and henceforth we will refer to the German Vorfeld as "German fronting."

    2.2 Acquiring German fronting constructions: Topic and focus

We propose that there may be two different types of "preverbal fields" (Scherpenisse, 1998) involved in German fronting: (1) topic and (2) focus structures. As clearly distinguished by Gadler (1982), over three quarters of the topic constituents in his German corpus represented rhematic or new information which serves the focus function, while the remainder were topics which are old information, definite, etc. (cf. Chafe, 1976; Li & Thompson, 1976).

We speculate that our L3 learners only acquire the first German topic function partially, to a certain extent having been influenced by their previous linguistic knowledge of Chinese style topics: namely "topic" in the sense of a topic-prominent language, which sets the frame of the sentence, and may not necessarily involve movement as these constituents could be treated as adjuncts.

As for the second theme function, learners seem to be reluctant to front the theme structure; they seem to prefer an alternative to the existential structure. Evidence for this hypothesis may be found in the fact that the learners have difficulty in learning the internal movement of the fronted constituents. They seem to prefer existential constructions as well as Chinese existential construction with the word "yáuh" (have or there is/are) as alternatives (Yip, 1995). For example, subjects/topics in Chinese are normally definite and therefore "yáuh" is used to introduce indefinite noun:

    Yáuh di yàn mh séung jáu.
    (Have some people not want leave.) (Matthews & Yip, 1994, p. 286)

We hypothesize that learners may use the same strategy device by using existential constructions to avoid indefinite initial constituents in their L3 German as they do in L2 English.

Our first proposal is that despite the closer typological affinity between German and English, the influence of L1 Chinese is also salient. It is argued that the learners may acquire German through their L1 channel following the principle of the Common Underlying Conceptual Base (cf. Kecskes & Papp, 1995). This approach focuses on the conceptual rather than the structural nature of transfer. It may also suggest that discourse transfer of Chinese word order could be more influential than the syntactic transfer of English canonical word order.

The second hypothesis is a reinforcement of Clahsen & Muysken's (1986) idea: third language acquisition research seems to rely more on principles of information processing and general learning strategies to 'integrate' (that is, to link) existing and new linguistic knowledge as well as to acquire the target grammar. It is argued that the learners follow principles of information processing and general problem solving strategies in establishing the semantics-syntax correspondences of the target language. They may not have the capacity to postulate the abstract underlying mechanism of the target language. They may tend to assign a function to one target form and overgeneralize it despite of the polysemous nature of the target forms. By pursuing a cognitive approach for the metalinguistic findings, both incremental production and cognitive functioning as language processing strategies would appear to be significant factors in accounting for third-language acquisition and production. They both indicate highly functional means of communication and form-meaning correspondences.

We shall also propose that there are not only different grammatical interactions, but also a transfer of previous experiences from Target L2 as well as IL L2 into L3, through the interaction of one native language and two Interlanguages, L2 and L3 (Leung, 1998). The IL L2 shows an indirect influence of the mother tongue (L1) through the channel of L2. In the L3 case, there may be transfer of the L1 functions concealed by the L2 syntactic forms which should be distinguished from the target L2 transfer. IL transfer is especially relevant since it supports an independent IL research which should be freed from the target grammar constraints. It also implies a deeper definition of transfer, i.e., not merely the transfer of the surface structure, but of underlying functions as well.
 

3.0 Methodology

Forty-five third-year students taking German language courses at the University of Hong Kong participated in this research and completed a background questionnaire. The report of the subjects' personal background information is summarized in Table 9.1.
 
 

In the second part, each subject was asked to submit five home assignment compositions; a total of more than two hundred pieces of work altogether was collected, forming our main pool of L3 German production data.

Lastly, ten students of the group proceeded with two elicitation tasks, one narrative and the other descriptive. They were asked to write about two sets of pictures in all three languages: Chinese, English, and German. This is a novel attempt to directly track the interrelation of the three languages as well as the influence of one or both on the others. The picture description part targets the elicitation of locative prepositional phrases in the Vorfeld position, while story telling is used as a control for the locative modifier which is claimed to be valid not just in the description but also in narration. It also elicits adverbs of time in the topics for the sequence of the story.

For the purpose of setting up a control group, ten native-speaker German students were invited to write about the same two sets of pictures in German, and ten copies of Mainland Chinese students' compositions were collected from the Beijing Goethe Institute. They submitted questionnaires and one home assignment composition.

4.0 Results

The background questionnaire results show that inversion (75%) was voted as the second most difficult target grammar item after verb separation (85%). Over 95% of the students regarded L3 German to be closer to L2 English, and over about 50% regarded L1 Chinese to be far from L3 German. The students admitted that they were always influenced by English in spoken (80%) and written (75%) German production, and about 25% in spoken and 35% in written German were sometimes influenced by Chinese.

The findings from the composition data can basically be classified into three main types: IL topicalization (TOPIC-[S]VO), intralingual errors (V2 position), and extra-sentential constituents constructions (XSVO)

    4.1 IL Topicalizations (TOPIC-[S]VO)

This type is proposed to be the result of a discourse transfer of L1 Chinese and interlanguage transfer of English, including both IL forms and IL strategies. It implies the salient influence of the L1 conceptual base and L2 syntactic structures.

Although the questionnaire results indicate that our students perceived German to be closer to English and also admitted that they were influenced more by English, topicalizations / fronting constructions are still found to be prevalent in the L3 German compositions and elicitation works:

1. Für mich, ich ziehe lieber in der Stadt vor.
(For me, I prefer living in the city)

2. Für mich, jede Familie hat eignie und Probleme.
(For me, every family had its own individual and problems)

The use of für (for) constructions is based on German grammar to fulfill the case-marking functions as in the English periphrastic topic constructions. Example [1] is seen as a Chinese topic-comment construction, plus realizes the tactic of fulfilling German case-marking functions (Für mich {TOPIC} - SVO). The topic is treated as an adjunct, and therefore inversion may be considered unnecessary.

    4.2 V2 position

This type is proposed to be the result of a discourse transfer of L1 Chinese and interlanguage transfer of English, including both IL forms and IL strategies. It implies the salient influence of L1 conceptual base and L2 syntactic structures.

One feature of German fronting constructions involves inversion according to the German V2-finite rule. We propose that learners are well aware of the V2-finite rule, and it may pose an obstacle to learning target fronting constructions. We can identify three types of constructions: a. overgeneralization, b. V2 whereas German requires V-final order and right position, and c. wrong function.

        4.2.1 V2 overgeneralizations

    1. Aber werde ich meine Familie nicht verlassen.
    (But will I my family not leave)

    2. Was fande ich interessant war die Leute in Deutschland.
    (What found I interesting was the people in Germany)

The learners frequently apply V2 word order even for cases where German does not require it. It shows incorrect fronting construction probably due to the overgeneralized V2 rule; the learners may have overgeneralized verb-second (V2) constructions. It may also imply that they have not acquired the Vorfeld fronting constructions, but merely the surface structure of German word order, i.e., wrongly treating any word occupying the first constituent as the Vorfeld which is followed immediately by a finite verb. It shows that L3 learners, like native learners, also make hypotheses about the target rules themselves and overgeneralize them, which indicates their "transitional competence" (Corder, 1981).

4.2.2 V2 whereas German requires V-final order

Learners may also apply the V2 rule in fronting constructions. The learners may not have acquired the verb-final condition in subordinate clause constructions. Indeed, verb-ending constructions are found to be acquired in the last stage (stage VI) of the developmental sequence (cf. Clahsen, 1982; Meisel et al., 1981).

The failure of performing the verb-final movement as in the examples above may be due to the learners' own conception of what the target grammar should be like, which is the V2 feature. Compared to the XSVO L3 productions (which we have argued are easier to process as there is no inversion involved), we find the inversion of XVSO word order taking place here. We suggest that - when certain sentence constructions, such as relative or subordinate clauses, require a higher degree of processing and the learners may have higher monitor control of the sentence constructions (cf. Krashen, 1981) during the language productions - this might be the reason for our L3 learners to apply inversion as a means to maintain V2 feature of the target language.

4.2.3 Right position, wrong function

    2. Jedenfalls, die Ferienarbeit war eine wertvolle Erfahnung, es war gut für meine Karriere in Zukunft.
    (Anyway, the summer job was a valuable experience, it was good for my career in the future)

Some Vorfeld constructions may appear in correct surface forms following the V2 rule, but they could be assigned the wrong function. The examples seem to be syntactically well-formed fronting constructions, except for the appearance of the comma, but this could be a purely orthographic problem. However, the systematic use of the comma punctuation may suggest that the problem goes deeper than that, as we propose the comma actually marks the separation of the two parts of the first constituent from the rest of the sentence.

The comma actually points to a break from the rest of the sentence and makes it clause-external.⁵ The tendency to perform a clause-external movement by separating the boundary with a comma may seem to be due to L2 English influence as a comma following a preposed adverb is common in English syntax. It could also be induced by Chinese topic-comment constructions in which there may also be a pause or comma between the two parts.

    4.3 Constructions with extra-sentential (XSVO) constituents

This type is treated as a possible indicator of active cognitive functioning during L3 language processing. It shows the highly functional and communicative nature of L3 learning and production. This type of XSVO word order is commonly found in L3 German:

    1. Jetzt die meistens haben schon nach Hong Kong zurückgekommen.
    (Now most people have already Hong Kong come back)

This XSVO word order could be caused by English L2 transfer of a preposed adverb since this word order is very common in English adverb-preposing usage such as:

    2. Today, I don't have to go to school.

However, this could also be due to the influence of their Chinese L1 and / or a universal preference for SVO canonical order in SLA.

It is difficult to distinguish between the three influences. Indeed, some native German speakers produce the same XSVO word order, especially in colloquial conversation, such as the example (1) above. Marginally grammatical example such as (1) may therefore not be treated as errors, but could be a type of deviation from the target grammar. The learners may occasionally see such examples as input and overgeneralize them to include similar perspective adverbs.

As a matter of fact, L3 learners' conception of what the target grammar should be like may affect the operation of transfer. As implied by Andersen's notion of "transfer to somewhere", learners may only transfer the existing linguistic knowledge to the target language (TL) on the condition that the TL system is perceived to be compatible.

Although it is difficult to trace the source of the influence since it could be found in all three target languages and is actually known to be universally prevalent, the phenomenon could be explained by cognitive factors which may play a role in forming the XSVO word order.⁶ Semantically, stance or perspective adverbs like also (well), jedenfalls (anyhow) do not form part of the propositional sentence and therefore may not counted as a constituent of the sentence and do not affect the basic V2 word order construction since they are seen as "extra-sentential constituents". This could account for the higher frequency of the adverb preposing than topicalization.

        4.3.1 German clause-internal topic XP

Unlike in Chinese and English, topic XPs are closely integrated in the clause in German (cf. Hawkins, 1986). Topics in German usually maintain a close relationship with the verb and are not separated from it by any pause or intonation break. This may help explain the greater tolerance for the XSVO word order type in Chinese and English than in German. English is more flexible in clause-external placement than German is, and Chinese is even more prone to it since it is a topic-prominent language. Consequently, learners may have difficulty in learning the more rigid and constrained target grammar.

As our learners produced L3 German XSVO word order sentences, we suspect that they might actually treat a constituent occupying the X-position as an extra-sentential part, like an adjunct of the sentence, instead of integrating the target topic XPs into the clause.

In our data, the Chinese learners seem to use both the target XVSO word order and XSVO order alternatives as shown in the following examples:

    In Bild 1, es gibt vier Leute auf der Strasse.
    In Bild 2, da sind zwei Personen, eine Frau und einen Mann.
    In Bild 3 sehen wir die alte Partner, dass wir in Bild I gesehen.
    In Bild 4, die Junge Frau in Bild 1 spielt die Violine in dem Konzert.

    (In picture 1, it has four people on the street.
    In picture 2, there are two people, one woman and one man.
    In picture 3 see we the old couples, that we in the picture 1 seen.
    In picture 4, the young woman in picture 1 played the violin in the concert.)

The sentences show clearly how a speaker perceived the relationship of a sentence part to the rest of the sentence, thus affecting the word order structure as well as the syntactic relation of the sentence. Only in the third sentence is the first-person narrative perspective explicit, and therefore there is a direct link between the experiencer and the topic, i.e., In Bild 3 (In picture 3), which is considered to be part of the sentence and is therefore included in the word order arrangement (hence the V2 word order without a comma) while the other topics are not. The choice between XSVO or XVSO word order in the interlanguage may thus depend on how the learners map the semantic functions onto the forms themselves.

This example shows that learners are more restricted in integrating XPs into the clause unless there is a very close relationship between the topic and the rest of the sentence (i.e., the "ego effect" of the last example, cf. Jordens 1989). In other instances, the learners seem to prefer XSVO word order, namely the sentence-external placement of topic XPs.

        4.3.2 Topic Distribution

A relatively direct way to show the influence of each previously learned language on the target language is to compare the three languages when the same content is written. The table below shows the frequency rate of fronting and topicalization constructions used by the learners use when writing on the same tasks (see table 9.2).
 
 

The results clearly show that topicalization / fronting is used much less frequently in L2 English than in L1 Chinese and L3 German. Indeed, the frequency rate for L3 German learners is strikingly similar to that of the native German control group. The figures could indicate that our Chinese learners have acquired the target grammar successfully. An alternative explanation is the influence of Chinese topicalization constructions on L3 German. Yet, this may raise a question as to why there is L1 influence in L3 German and much less influence in L2 English. We suggest that this is due to the learners' awareness of the differences between the target L2 and L3 grammars, in that they realize that fronting constructions are common in German and are therefore more "willing" to transfer topicalization constructions into L3 German (cf. Andersen, 1984).

Another finding is that there are more fronting constructions in descriptive contexts than in narrative contexts, and once again this result resembles very much that obtained for the German control group. Nevertheless, we shall suggest it is not target grammar-like as we find almost all fronting constituents in L3 German are locative / temporal topicalization constructions as shown in the following examples:

         I. Picture description:
    1. Da sehe ich ein Haus.
       (There see I a house.)

    2. Im Stock eins hat eine Frau, die Klavier spielt.
        (On floor one had a woman, the piano played)

         II. Narrative story:
    3. Später waren die alte Paar ganz überrascht.
        (Later was the old couple totally surprised)

    4. Zum schluss hat das ältere Liebespaar entdeckt, dass das junge richtge Musikanten sind.
        (In the end has the old couple recognized, that the young real musicians are)

The higher frequency rate of fronting construction in descriptive contexts may simply due to a more frequent application of locative / temporal topics. It may also be due to the extra-sentential semantic functions contained in locative / temporal topics, and therefore learners may feel more confident in placing them in the front position as an adjunct topic.

The learners seem to have acquired only one of the two functions of fronting, namely topic function, by taking extra-sentential considerations as adjunct topics while they fail to do so or have not acquired fully the focus function. For the focus function, learners seem to prefer alternative sentence constructions such as es gibt (there has) existential clauses.
 

    5. Conclusions

Three major fronting types have been identified in this study. The first type (Topic-[S]VO) shows that the discourse function of available languages is more prevalent than the transfer of their surface construction. It also shows the indirect transfer of L1 topicalization. The verb-second position problem shows some intralingual errors in which the learners have not acquired the true functions of the target Vorfeld constructions. In the XSVO type, cognitive functioning is employed to explain the usage of the word order in which 'X' is always located as an extra-sentential constituent in L3 German.

The case of the Vorfeld shows how universal constraints, such as cognitive functioning, and communicative strategies, such as incremental production and overgeneralization, all play a role in third-language acquisition. The learners use general learning strategies in solving some linguistic conflicts, such as mapping one function to one form as shown in the V2-overgeneralization type. They also use canonical sentence schemas, which derive from the neutral sentence type, to start out with an SVO phrase structure system.

We suggest that L3 learners have attained a high level of control in both perceiving the relationship between target form and function and in applying learning and production strategies. The learning experience of L2 affects the acquisition process of L3 learners as they have become skilful in both metalinguistic knowledge and general learning strategies.

The learners show a high awareness of the correlation between form and function in language. They seem to have developed their own ideas of what the target grammar is like or, more generally, of how grammar works universally in all language systems; these ideas are based mostly on intuition about the mother tongue's conceptual system.

In acquiring German fronting constructions, our L3 learners are well aware of the inversion rules involved in fronting constructions as they do sometimes perform target-like fronting. Yet, their production seems to be very restricted, depending on the learners' own perception of the role played by the topics in the fronting position. If they perceive the topic to have a close relationship with the theme of the sentence, such as the verb or experiencer role of the subjects, as we have discussed in section 4.3.1, they are able to apply the necessary inversion operation in fronting construction.

However, in other cases, where the learners perform XVSO inversion, they still may not have fully acquired the target fronting constructions as they may treat the fronting as an external clause placement. These L3 productions may superficially work as fronting and yet do not contain target-like functions.

Indeed, we suggest that the functions of the fronting constituents in L3 German are, to a large extent, restricted to the "framing" function found in Chinese-style topics of topic-comment sentences. As Andersen (1984) and Yip (1995) contend in the issue of learnability, learners seem likely to retain the one-function-to-one-form principle (also known as Uniqueness Principle), and it may be the reason why our Chinese L3 learners have not acquired the native-like command of fronting because its acquisition has already been blocked by Chinese-style topic functions.

By way of conclusion, we are calling for more independent research of TLA since we have shown that an additional language does make a difference in the acquisition process and its nature. This study is a limited survey conducted with a small sample and includes interpretations that are still at the hypothesis level. A larger sample in a longitudinal study could confirm these interpretations and provide information on the influence of L2 (English) and L1 (Chinese) on the acquisition of German at different developmental stages. We hope that further investigation will give us a better understanding of the multilingual mind, which will benefit multilingual education.

1. The German sentences have been translated literally in order to demonstrate the respective positions of the constituents in the two languages. Back to the text.

2. L2 English refers to learners' L2 competence of English, which includes target English as well as IL English. (See also Yip, 1995) Back to the text.

3. Rahmen here refers to the "frame" formed by finite verb / auxiliary and the non-finite verb form. Back to the text.

4. The terms "Chinese-style" vs. "English style" topics were first suggested by Chafe, 1976 (see also Huang, 1994). It is claimed that certain topics in Chinese are not sub-categorized by the verb of the comment, and it is an "aboutness" relation that holds between the Chinese topic and the comment. Back to the text.

5. It should be noted that German is more constrained in clause-external movement than English is; with clause-internal movement the relationship is less constrained (Hawkins, 1986). Movement into the Vorfeld should be a case of clause-internal movement. Back to the text.

6. It appears in a very early stage (stage 2 of the total six) of the implicational developmental sequences scale before the stage of inversion (stage 4) (Meisel et al., 1981). This is probably the case because that inversion increases the cognitive cost of language production and is hence acquired later. (Clashen, 1980) Back to the text.

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