Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2021

This paper offers an overview of current models of third language (L3) acquisition, classifying each as a Wholesale Transfer model or as a Piecemeal Transfer model. We discuss what we consider to be some conceptual and empirical problems for the Piecemeal Transfer approaches and then discuss some advantages we see in Wholesale Transfer. Next, we home in on Wholesale Transfer models, arguing that one of them in particular seems to us to be the most promising, viz., the Typological Primacy Model (TPM – e.g., Rothman, 2011, 2015). Finally, we take up some open questions associated with the TPM and suggest some possible directions for future L3 research.