Chapter 16. A revised Natural Growth Theory of Acquisition

Different theories have been put forward to model bilingual acquisition, yet only few assume a multilingual perspective. In this chapter, the authors aim to briefly overview relevant theoretical approaches to L2/L3 acquisition and offer a revised version of a new framework, which can account for the complexity of the acquisition process. In this theory, the authors want to modify and extend the explanatory potential offered by classic natural phonology with the epistemological support from complex systems and with inductive support from the data. The assumptions of the Natural Growth Theory of Acquisition are further developed based on principled explanations and inductive data-driven accounts. In this contribution, selected data from studies on third language phonology (L3 phonology) are reinterpreted for this purpose.