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The acquisition of connectors in French L2 narrative discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Betsy Kerr-Barnes
Betsy Kerr-Barnes
Affiliation:
Dept. of French & Italian, University of Minnesota, 260 Folwell Hall, Minneapolis, MN 55455–0122, USA, e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The article examines the use of connectors in oral narratives of 27 adult American learners of French, who are classified in four groups according to length of instruction and type of learning environment, i.e. classroom or immersion or mixed. The patterns of acquisition are found to be in general quite similar to those of child LI French learners, including a routinised use of one or more markers which serve as pause fillers. Surprisingly, even very proficient learners show overgeneralisation of some connectors, in particular of transitional connectors (alors, donc) and discourse-structuring particles (eh bien, bon), whose functions are relatively opaque.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , September 1998 , pp. 189 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

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