Third Language Acquisition of Arabic Noun Modifiers by Iranian Persian (L1) Speaking Learners of English (L2)

The present article addresses the acquisition the position and agreement between attributive adjective and the noun modified in Arabic as a third language. The position and agreement of noun modifiers differ among these three languages. To do the research, the researcher selected 32 high school students. Two tasks, i.e., grammaticality judgement task and translation tasks, were given in order to test which multilingual transfer hypotheses such as full transfer/full access, L2 statue, or cumulative enhancement model are more effective in third language acquisition. The former task checked the subjects comprehension of noun modifiers while the latter task checked the production of the learners. Having analyzed the data through SPSS software, the researcher found out that the intended structure is transferred to L3 mostly from L2 than L1. The L2 status was corroborated and has major role in acquiring this structure. Hence, Arabic course book writers and syllabus designers should consider this matter in teaching Arabic.