Investigating the acquisition of phonology in a third language - a state of the science and an outlook for the future

摘要

The empirical and theoretical strides made in the study of L3 phonology as evidenced in this issue are meaningful and provide us with direction for the next several years. That said, as the discipline grows, the number of research questions increases, the language pairings considered broaden, the methodologies employed advance and, as a result, new insights about the linguistic and cognitive underpinnings of language acquisition become evident as a result of these unique data. L3/Ln phonological acquisition is a promising area of inquiry because of all its potential, and we hope that this special issue will provide a forum to work towards answering the questions and addressing the issues outlined above.