the role of dari, uzbek, and pashto background languages in the acquisition of english third language noun modifiers

The newly-developed field of l3 acquisition has been explored at an exponential rate recently. the present study aimed to investigate learning the syntactic position of adjectives in english (l3) through the role of first and second languages. to examine the role of variables that condition syntactic transfer, such as the typological proximity model (tpm) and the cumulative enhancement model (cem), two groups of english learners (l3) at the low to intermediate proficiency level were investigated. the first group members included dari (l1; n = 15) speakers of pashto (l2; n = 15) where dari was the language spoken at home and pashto was the dominant language used in society. the second group consisted of l1 uzbek (n = 15) speakers of l2 dari (n = 15), where uzbek was the language applied at home and dari was the formal language in the community. in the first group, the adjective structure of pashto (l2) is similar to that of english (adjective + noun) contrasting the one used in dari (noun +adjective). regarding the second group, the adjective structure of uzbek (l1) is similar to that of english (adjective + noun) contrasting the one used in l2 dari (noun +adjective). all participants were required to perform a grammaticality judgment task and a production task in english to determine the source and type of l1 or l2 transfer. although the findings corroborated cem, shreds of evidence from other l3 studies necessitate some modifications to this model, offering the tpm for multilingual transfer.