1. Introduction

This article introduces the progress of neurocognitive research on language transfer in the past two decades, pointing out that current studies have focused more on the impact of mother tongue transfer on second language acquisition, while research on second language transfer is relatively insufficient. The article will use ERP methods to study the neurocognitive mechanisms of trilingual learners in French consistency and numerical processing, explore the impact of second language (English) transfer and unique transfer patterns, and focus on analyzing the role of trilingual proficiency in transfer effects, aiming to provide neurocognitive evidence for second language transfer research.

2. Research background

This paper introduces the theoretical framework of second language transfer in trilingual syntactic acquisition, including the hypothesis of functional feature failure and the model of full transfer and full access, and explores the impact mechanism of second language transfer on trilingual acquisition. The hypothesis of functional feature failure emphasizes the influence of acquisition age and mother tongue transfer, suggesting that the role of second language transfer is limited; The fully transferable and fully accessible model suggests that second language transfer can promote third language acquisition. The empirical research results are inconsistent. Some studies have found that second language has a positive transfer effect on third language, while others have not found the influence of second language. There are shortcomings in existing research, such as the predominance of Indo European languages, lack of ERP technology investigation, and failure to consider the impact of trilingual proficiency. This article will use ERP technology to explore the phenomenon of second language syntactic transfer and its neurocognitive patterns among Chinese English French trilinguals at different levels of French proficiency, as well as the impact of trilingual proficiency on second language transfer.

3. Research methods

Introduced a research method on second language transfer in trilingual syntax acquisition. The research subjects are 44 undergraduate students majoring in French at a university in Nanjing, divided into a high-level group and a low-level group, with 22 people in each group. The experiment adopts a mixed design of 2 (subject level) × 3 (grammar conditions), including 90 experimental sentences and 120 filler sentences. The experiment is conducted in a soundproof laboratory, and the subjects need to judge the correctness of sentence grammar. EEG recording and ERP analysis were performed using a 32 channel electroencephalograph, and data from 40 participants were ultimately analyzed.

4. Experimental results

The experimental results showed that the low-level group induced P600 waves of 300-800 ms during numerical consistency violation, and N400 waves of 200-500 ms during sexual consistency violation; The high-level group induced P600 waves of 200-800 ms when there was a violation of both numerical and sexual consistency. Analysis of variance shows that the main effect of grammatical conditions and the interaction effect between grammatical conditions and subjects are significant across multiple time windows. Specifically, in the 200-300 ms, 300-400 ms, 400-500 ms, 500-600 ms, 600-700 ms, and 700-800 ms windows, the main and interactive effects of grammatical conditions are significant, and there are significant differences in the response to log consistency and consistency violation between the low-level and high-level groups in different time windows. These results reveal differences in the neural mechanisms underlying second language transfer in trilingual syntactic acquisition among learners of different levels.

5. Discussion

The experimental results showed that low-level French learners induced N400 under the condition of sexual consistency violation and P600 under the condition of numerical consistency violation; High level learners induce P600 under both violation conditions. This indicates that second language transfer plays a role in trilingual syntactic acquisition, especially when the second and third languages have similar grammatical features. Low level learners mainly rely on shallow semantic processing of vocabulary, while high-level learners can engage in deeper syntactic processing. The experimental results support the fully transferable and fully accessible model, which suggests that second language transfer can promote the acquisition of trilingual syntactic structures, and with the improvement of trilingual proficiency, learners can overcome the impact of missing features in the second language and achieve complete trilingual acquisition. In addition, the early onset of latency for N400 and P600 in the experiment may be related to the difficulty of retrieving consistent relationships.

6. Conclusion

Summarized the processing results of using ERP technology to study the French number consistency relationship and gender consistency relationship among Chinese English French trilinguals. Research has found that the phenomenon of second language transfer, where the numerical consistency relationship shared by French and English triggers deeper levels of EEG components than the unique sexual consistency relationship in French. The logarithmic consistency relationship among low-level learners produces P600, while the sexual consistency relationship only produces N400. High level learners produce P600 for both. These results support the fully migrated and fully accessible model. At the same time, it is pointed out that real-time processing of trilingual syntax may be influenced by both native and second language structures, and future research can explore the interactive effects of native and second language transfer.