Is it time to discard the concept of wholesale transfer in third language acquisition? A critical commentary on González Alonso et al., 2025

In this brief research note, we would like to take issue with a recent paper by Gonzalez Alonso and colleagues [González Alonso, J., Bernabeu, P., Silva, G., DeLuca, V., Poch, C., Ivanova, I., & Rothman, J. (2025). Starting from the very beginning: Unraveling third language (L3) development with longitudinal data from artificial language learning and EEG. International Journal of Multilingualism, https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2024.2415993], which in our view misrepresents the history and current state of the field of third language acquisition (L3A), including some of the L3 models as well as their own. Our discussion focuses on central issues such as initial vs more advanced stages and transfer as copying vs co-activation. Towards the end of the paper, we briefly outline our own view of what is important for the field going forward.