Additive relations in L2 French

Abstract

Our study compares the expression of additive relations in oral native (French, Italian, Russian) and non-native discourse (French L2), elicited with the same visual stimulus. On the basis of a comparative analysis of native productions, we argue that, in additive contexts, Russian clearly shares the discourse perspective attested in the two Romance languages. Our French L2 data have shown that both Russian and Italian groups seem to proceed by looking for similarities with respect to their L1, but learners of a closer typological language (Italian L1) rely longer on structures that are formally (or functionally) similar and assume more similarities than there actually are, in comparison to learners of typologically unrelated language (Russian L1), thus confirming the psycho-typology effects.