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Clitic placement in L2 French: evidence from sentence matching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2002

NIGEL DUFFIELD ,
LYDIA WHITE ,
JOYCE BRUHN DE GARAVITO ,
SILVINA MONTRUL  and
PHILIPPE PRÉVOST
NIGEL DUFFIELD
Affiliation:
McGill University
LYDIA WHITE
Affiliation:
McGill University
JOYCE BRUHN DE GARAVITO
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
SILVINA MONTRUL
Affiliation:
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)
PHILIPPE PRÉVOST
Affiliation:
Université Laval
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Abstract

In this paper, we argue in favour of the NO IMPAIRMENT HYPOTHESIS, whereby L2 functional categories, features and feature values are attainable, and against the NO PARAMETER RESETTING HYPOTHESIS, according to which L2 learners are restricted to L1 categories and features, as well as against the LOCAL IMPAIRMENT HYPOTHESIS, which claims that the interlanguage grammar is characterized by inert feature values. An online experiment was conducted, investigating adult learners' knowledge of properties relating to clitic projections. Advanced learners of French (L1s English and Spanish), together with a native speaker control group, were tested on a variety of constructions involving clitics by means of the SENTENCE MATCHING procedure (Freedman & Forster 1985). L2 learners distinguished in their response times between certain kinds of grammatical and ungrammatical clitic placement, as did the native-speaker controls, suggesting the attainability of L2 properties distinct from the L1.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , November 2002 , pp. 487 - 525
Copyright
2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Acknowledgements. This research was conducted with the support of research grant no. 410-95-0720 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and research grant no. 98-ER-0720 from the Gouvernement du Québec Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche (FCAR). We should like to thank the following research assistants for their help: Shunji Inagaki, Martyna MacGregor, Sandra Shapiro, Roumyana Slabakova, Jeff Steele, Elena Valenzuela and Myungyhun Yoo. Earlier versions of parts of this research were presented at a number of conferences, including the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Second Language Research Forum, and Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition. We are very grateful to members of those audiences, as well as to Journal of Linguistics referees for comments and constructive criticism.