Time: Thursday 9 October 2025 @ 08:00
Venue: Sala Górna, Collegium Heliodori Święcicki, Grunwaldzka 6
Speaker: Prof. Stano Kong (Tunghai University, Taiwan)
From second language acquisition to third language acquisition
Abstract
This workshop is divided into two parts. The first introduces participants to five key observations in second language acquisition: L1 transfer, developmental stages, systematicity, variability, and fossilization. These fundamental concepts provide a framework for understanding how non-native grammars emerge, develop, and sometimes resist change. The second part presents an ongoing empirical study on Chinese speakers of advanced L2 English learning Spanish Determiner Phrases (DPs) and adjective placement. This section explores how previously acquired linguistic knowledge interacts with new input and considers how the interplay between two prior languages shapes the acquisition of a third.
About the speaker
Stano Kong is Lifetime Distinguished Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Tunghai University, Taiwan, and founding director of the International Graduate Programme in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL). He has also served as Chair of the department and as Dean of the College of Arts, which includes the Departments of Chinese, Foreign Languages, History, Philosophy, Japanese, the TCSL programme, and the English Language Centre.
Dr. Kong’s research centres on second and multilingual language acquisition within the generative framework. His early work explored L2 Chinese, focusing on wh-questions and classifier use by non-native speakers. More recently, his studies address third language (L3) acquisition, examining the morphosyntactic development of French, German, and Spanish by native Chinese speakers with English as an L2. His current project investigates Spanish noun phrase structures and adjectival placement, aiming to shed light on cross-linguistic influence in multilingual acquisition.