Changes in Sentence Processing as Second Language Proficiency Increases

Processing Strategies in L2 Learners of French: The Role of Transfer

“…The mastery of strategies appropriate t o French, however, does not come immediately. Research on ENS who are just beginning t o learn French demonstrates the time course of mastery for the cues of word order, verb agreement, and noun animacy (McDonald & Heilenman, 1992). In this study, although there was no difference between ENS and FNS in reliance on noun animacy, word order strategies were stronger in English, whereas reliance on verb agreement cues was stronger in French.…”

“…Previous research (Kail & Charvillat, 1988;Kail, 1989;McDonald & Heilenman, 1991Heilenman & McDonald, 1992) has shown, however, that FNS use information provided by clitic pronouns and verb agreement much more strongly than they do information coded by word order. This is not to say that FNS ignore word order in dislocated sequences; work on dislocated sequences with various word orders and clitic pronoun cases has yielded a highly significant interaction between the two factors (Heilenman & McDonald, 1993).…”

“…Cue use by FNS. Several studies have looked at the interpretation of various word orders by adult French native speakers (Kail & Charvillat, 1986;Kail, 1989;McDonald & Heilenman, 1992;Vion, 1992). In general, these studies indicate that FNS prefer to assign the first noun t o the actodagent role for NVN sequences (SVO), exhibit a somewhat weaker first-noun preference for NNV sequences (SOW, and either a neutral or second-noun preference for VNN sequences (VSO or VOS).…”

“…A significant use of verb agreement, as is appropriate in French, did not appear even marginally in these second-language learners until after two or more years of classroom exposure. McDonald and Heilenman (1992) point t o the role of input in explaining the word order results, citing evidence from classroom teacher talk of word order variation in French that would have been misinterpreted using English strategies. The later onset of appropriate verb agreement strategies is attributed t o the relative lack of such cues, given the widespread neutralization of the third-person singular versus plural distinction in spoken French.…”

A la recherche des clitiques perdus: The dictogloss as a measure of the comprehension of y and en by L2 learners of French

“…Is it possible that intermediate-level learners of L2 French are not particularly sensitive to animacy cues during sentence processing? Previous research indicates that adult NSs of French use animacy and agreement cues to interpret sentences in their L1 (McDonald & Heilenman, 1992). In contrast, beginning-and intermediate-level L2 learners of French (whose L1 is English) rely upon clitic case inflection, verb agreement, and noun animacy to a much lesser extent in sentence interpretation; instead, these learners favour effective L1 processing strategies, such as using word order to assign agent and patient roles (Heilenman & McDonald, 1993).…”