Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:11:07.760Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The influence of lexical aspect and input frequency in the L2 French of adult beginners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2010

Anita Thomas
Anita Thomas*
Affiliation:
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Box 201, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden. [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This article presents a study of the variation found in the oral production of verbs in L2 French by adult beginners with Swedish as L1. The study deals with the production of the two main forms of regular verbs in spoken French, a short form /parl/ and a long form /parle/, in present-tense and infinitive contexts. Learners at beginner stages use these two forms invariantly in both finite and non-finite contexts. The aim of this study is to investigate the choice of the invariant forms made by the learners. This is done by testing the influence of lexical aspect and input frequency. The investigation is made with concrete data from input sources. The results from both a free production task and an imitation test suggest that input frequency contributes more significantly than lexical aspect, although both factors overlap for most of the studied verbs.

Keywords

beginner learnersFrench L2frequencyimitation testinputlexical aspectmorphological variation
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 33 , Special Issue 2: The Nordic Languages and Second Language Acquisition Theory , October 2010 , pp. 169 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ågren, Malin. 2008. À la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse. Sur le développement du pluriel en français L2 écrit. Ph.D. dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
Andersen, Roger W. 1991. Developmental sequences: The emergence of aspect marking in second language acquisition. In Huebner, Thom & Ferguson, Charles A. (eds.), Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories, 305–324. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, Roger. 2002. The dimensions of ‘pastness’. In Salaberry, Rafael & Shirai, Yasuhiro (eds.), The L2 Acquisition of Tense–aspect Morphology, 79–105. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baddeley, Alan D., Gathercole, Susan & Papagno, Costanza. 1998. The phonological loop as a language learning device. Psychological Review 105 (1)158–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 2000. Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition: Form, Meaning, and Use, special issue of Language Learning 50(s1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartning, Inge & Schlyter, Suzanne. 2004. Itinéraires acquisitionnels et stades de développement en français L2. Journal of French Language Studies 14 281–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bley-Vroman, Robert & Chaudron, Craig. 1994. Elicited imitation as a measure of second-language competence. In Tarone, Elaine E., Gass, Susan M. & Cohen, Andrew D. (eds.), Research Methodology in Second-language Acquisition, 245–261. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 1995. Regular morphology and the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes 10 (5)425–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2008. Usage-based grammar and second language acquisition. In Robinson & Ellis (eds.), 216–236.Google Scholar
Carroll, Susanne E. 2001. Input and Evidence: The Raw Material of Second Language Acquisition. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cresti, Emanuela & Moneglia, Massimo (eds.). 2005. C-ORAL-ROM: Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. 2002. Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24 143–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. 2008. Usage-based and form-focused language acquisition. In Robinson & Ellis (eds.), 372–405.Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick C. & Cadierno, Teresa. 2009. Constructing a second language. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7 111–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erlam, Rosemary. 2006. Elicited imitation as a measure of L2 implicit knowledge: An empirical validation study. Applied Linguistics 27 (3)464–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flyman Mattsson, Anna. 2003. Teaching, Learning, and Student Ouput: A Study of French in the Classroom. Ph.D. dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
Granfeldt, Jonas, Nugues, Pierre, Persson, Emil, Persson, Lisa, Kostadinov, Fabian, Ågren, Malin & Schlyter, Suzanne. 2005. Direkt profil: A system for evaluating texts of second language learners of French based on developmental sequences. The Second Workshop on Building Educational Applications Using Natural Language Processing, 43rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Computational Linguistics, 53–60. Ann Arbor, MI.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herschensohn, Julia. 2001. Missing inflection in second language French: Accidental infinitives and other verbal deficits. Second Language Research 17 (3)273–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaffré, Jean-Pierre & Brissaud, Catherine. (eds.). 2006. Morphographie et homophones verbaux (Langue Française 151). Paris: Larousse/Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne & Barlow, Michael. 2000. Introduction: A usage-based conception of language. In Barlow, Michael & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Usage-based Models of Language, vii–xxviii. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kihlstedt, Maria. 1998. La référence au passé dans le dialogue. Étude de l'acquisition de la temporalité chez des apprenants dits avancés de français. Ph.D. dissertation, Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang & Perdue, Clive. 1997. The basic variety (or: Couldn't natural languages be much simpler?). Second Language Research 13 (4)301–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labelle, Marie. 2005. The acquisition of grammatical categories: The state of the art. In Cohen, Henry & Lefebvre, Claire (eds.), Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science, 433–457. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naiman, Neil. 1974. The use of elicited imitation in second language acquisition research. Working Papers on Bilingualism 2 1–37.Google Scholar
Noyau, Colette, Houdaïfa, Et-Tayeb, Vasseur, Marie-Thérèse & Véronique, Daniel. 1995. The acquisition of French. In Dietrich, Rainer, Klein, Wolfgang & Noyau, Colette (eds.), The Acquisition of Temporality in a Second Language, 145–209. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perdue, Clive, Benazzo, Sandra & Guiliano, Patrizia. 2002. When finiteness gets marked: The relation between morphosyntactic development and use of scopal items in adult language acquisition. Linguistics 40 (4)849–890.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Platzack, Christer. 1979. The Semantic Interpretation of Aspect and Aktionsarten: A Study of Internal Time Reference in Swedish. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prévost, Philippe. 2004. Morphological variation in early adult second language French: A cross-sectional study. In Foster-Cohen, Susan H., Smith, Michael Sharwood, Sorace, Antonella & Ota, Mitsuhiko (eds.), EUROSLA Yearbook 4, 147–175. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Prévost, Philippe. 2008. Knowledge of morphology and syntax in early adult L2 French: Evidence for the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. In Liceras, Juana, Zobl, Helmut & Goodluck, Helen (eds.), The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition, 352–377. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Prévost, Philippe & White, Lydia. 2000. Missing surface inflection or impairement in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research 16 (2)103–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riegel, Martin, Pellat, Jean-Christophe & Rioul, René. 1994. Grammaire méthodique du français. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Robinson, Peter & Ellis, Nick C. (eds.). 2008. Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Richard. 2001. Attention. In Robinson, Peter (ed.), Cognition and Second Language Instruction, 3–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segui, Juan & Ferrand, Ludovic. 2002. The role of the syllable in speech perception and production. In Durand, Jacques & Laks, Bernard (eds.), Phonetics, Phonology and Cognition, 151–167. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Speciale, Giovanna, Ellis, Nick C. & Bywater, Tracey. 2004. Phonological sequence learning and short-term memory store capacity determine second language vocabulary acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics 25 293–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Anita. 2009. Les apprenants parlent-ils à l'infinitif? Influence de l'input sur la production des verbes par des apprenants adultes du français (Études romanes de Lund 87). Ph.D. dissertation, Lund University. http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1473797&fileOId=1473802 (accessed 16 August 2010).Google Scholar
Thomas, Anita & van de Weijer, Joost. 2010. Regressionsanalys av L2 produktionsdata. Presented at Seminar on Language Learning, 27 April 2010, Lund University.Google Scholar
Tillman, Birgitta, Winblad, Matts, Martin, Sylvia, Lönnerblad, Véronique, Pettersson, Marie & Sandberg, Ewa. 2001. Escalade 1. Stockholm: Liber.Google Scholar
VanPatten, Bill. 2002. Processing instruction: An update. Language Learning 52 (4)755–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1957. Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66 (2)143–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vet, Co. 1980. Temps, aspects et adverbes de temps en français contemporain. Essai de sémantique formelle. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar