An empirical L2 perspective on possessives: French/Norwegian

Abstract

The main objective of this chapter is to present empirical evidence for transfer effects between Norwegian (as L1 or L2) and French (as L1 or L2). We start out with theoretical assumptions from a contrastive-comparative treatment of possessives in European languages (chapter 1, this volume) and develop hypotheses for L2-acquisition of possessive systems in Norwegian and French. The various degrees of complexity between the two linguistic sub-systems lead to different kinds of challenges in L2-acquisition based on morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria. Norwegian has a morphologically more complex possessive system than French. The French learner of Norwegian as L2 then has to acquire a system with more formal options than in her mother tongue, whereas the Norwegian learner of French as L2 acquires a system with less formal options. Based on empirical findings, the chapter shows why some parts of the possessive L2 systems are harder or easier to handle than others.

Development of written L2 French: a longitudinal study of learners in the Norwegian school context

“…In fact, whereas French children learning their L1 have the challenge of writing morphemes that they cannot hear in their spoken language, L2 learners in school context may have the opposite challenge in learning not to pronounce the morphemes that they are used to writing and reading (Ågren, 2008). However, possessive determiners in plural contexts were mastered later than the other determiners and appear to be challenging to L2 learners, which is also shown in other studies (Granfeldt, 2003;Helland, 2017Helland, , 2018.…”

An L2 perspective on possessives: Contrasts and their possible consequences

“…Our paper presents the cross-linguistic background and the basic objectives of L2-oriented research on adnominal possessives that may shed new light on this issue. Some preliminary empirical results are presented by Pitz et al (2017), Helland (2017) and Behrens (2017). 2 From a cognitive point of view, possessives seem more complicated than ordinary pronouns due to the fact that they are not only anaphoric (third person alone) or deictic but at the same time relational expressions: An anaphoric adnominal third person possessive like an ordinary anaphoric pronoun demands an antecedent DP; as a determiner or modifier (see section [3.1]) within a DP, it anchors the referent of its host DP to the referent of the antecedent DP by a relation of possession in a more or less broad sense (see references above), where the antecedent DP denotes the 'owner' (the possessor) and the host DP the 'owned' entity (the possessum).…”

“…As far as Norwegian versus German and French is concerned, see (Pitz et al 2017) and Helland (2017) for more detailed discussions.…”

“…Consequently, one might expect form-based priming between the two languages to be more frequent in translation tasks than in non-translational L2 production or comprehension; cf. Pitz et al (2017), Helland (2017 and Behrens (2017). 24 [23] We prefer the term process since processing, as used psycholinguistic literature, seems to used partly in a very general sense but also more specifically for the 'decoding' (comprehension) process.…”

“…form la of the definite article, Fr2 learners may tend to equate sa with the feminine possessor ihr*, ignoring the ambiguity of sa mère between ihre Mutterseine Mutter. Like German Fr2 learners, Norwegian and Russian Fr2 learners will have to 'deactivate' any associative bond between the French s-possessive and their native reflexive s-possessive (si* and svoj*, respectively); for No1/Fr2 see Helland (2017).…”