The production of preverbal liaison in Swedish learners of L2 French

Abstract

The acquisition of preverbal liaison (e.g. ils arrivent /ilzaʀiv/) in second language (L2) French has rarely been explored in detail in previous studies on obligatory liaison. In this study, we conducted an elicited imitation test in order to study the influence of proficiency level, modality (spoken or written), and verb frequency on the use of preverbal liaison among 42 Swedish learners of L2 French and 21 native speakers of French. The results indicate that L2 beginners had considerable difficulty with the production of preverbal liaison, while the most proficient L2 learners performed nearly as well as the native speakers. In addition, we observed that beginner learners, in contrast to the more proficient ones, performed better with written than spoken stimuli. Finally, we observed no impact of verb frequency on participant performance. Based on these results, we discuss the possible influence of input frequency (both type and token) on the production of preverbal liaison, and conclude that future studies need to address the input characteristics of the L2 classroom in more detail.

The effect of morphosyntactic training on multilingual fifth graders’ spelling in French

“…However, to elucidate more precisely the individual learning development regarding the plural of grammatical categories, a longitudinal study is needed. Ågren (2008)’s study on the development of plural markers in French as a foreign language showed, however, that learners have more difficulties with correctly spelling adjectives than other word categories independently of their position. The analysis of the test scores in the present study, however, indicates that children’s performance with prenominal adjectives was significantly higher than with postnominal adjectives, a result that is in line with L1 pupils.…”

“…In contrast, adjectives were never marked with plural in the initial stage, and even the most advanced learners did not fully master the agreement on (pre- or postnominal) adjectives. As for the position of the adjectives, it was found to have a clear impact on the spelling development of French as L1 (Fayol et al, 2006) but not on French as L2 (Ågren, 2008). Ågren (2008) could not report clear pluralizing tendencies related to the position of the adjectives.…”

“…As for the position of the adjectives, it was found to have a clear impact on the spelling development of French as L1 (Fayol et al, 2006) but not on French as L2 (Ågren, 2008). Ågren (2008) could not report clear pluralizing tendencies related to the position of the adjectives. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that the author provides evidence based on data from high school students learning French as a foreign language, and her results cannot be directly generalized to primary school children.…”

“…The error rate might, however, be related not only to the linear distance but also to a limited understanding of semantic and syntactic relations within the sentences. In a longitudinal study, Ågren (2008) observed the development of plural markings among Swedish pupils of different levels (beginners vs. advanced) learning French in high school. The study reported that the production of morphological spelling markers is limited to nouns, pronouns, and determinants at the beginning of language acquisition.…”

“…For pluralizations of real words, performance would be better with nouns, followed by adjectives and then verbs (Hypothesis 1a); or performance would be better with nouns, followed by verbs and then adjectives (Hypothesis 1b). Furthermore, we differentiated between the two adjective positions (pre- and postnominal) to determine whether the distance to the determinant influenced our L2 learners and to learn whether they behaved like French monolinguals or like the L2 learners from Ågren’s (2008) study. We included pseudowords in our study to determine whether pupils apply morphosyntactic rules independent of semantics.…”