Search

This study deals with the expression of additive linking in L2 French by adult German learners with two proficiency levels (advanced vs. intermediate). We examine whether crosslinguistic influences are observed in three domains: the frequency and type of additive expressions in discourse, the syntactic integration of additive particles in the utterance and the prosodic contour associated with them. A total of 70 participants (20 French native speakers, 20 German native speakers and 30 German learners of L2 French) performed an oral narrative task elicited via a video clip presenting abundant additive contexts. Our results show that advanced German learners did not experience an L1 transfer in any of the domains analyzed, but instead they show a learner-specific tendency to overmark the contrastive status of the relevant entities in discourse. Yet traces of crosslinguistic influence are visible in intermediate learners’ choice and frequency of additive means, as well as the preferred position of the particles. All learners seem to have quickly discarded the possibility to mark scope by prosody, in contrast to what they do in their L1. We discuss these findings in the light of the L2 acquisition of cohesive devices in discourse and their interactions with different linguistic levels.

The purpose of this study is to understand the influence of the first language (L1) on the emergence of auxiliary verbal constructions (AVCs) in a second language (L2). In particular, we investigate the influence of Japanese L1 on the use of AVCs in French L2. A first study analyzed and compared the use of AVCs in French L2 narratives produced by 7 Japanese speakers and by a group of 7 speakers with a different L1, German, at the same level of proficiency. The contrastive analysis of verbal forms used in plural contexts revealed a clear tendency for Japanese speakers of French L2 to use AVCs. The second study aimed at, first, verifying the overuse of AVCs in Japanese learners of French by analyzing four retellings from another corpus of French L2 retellings. Second, it tested two hypotheses on the emergence of AVCs in the French L2 used by Japanese speakers. The discourse hypothesis stipulates that information structure and temporal anchoring of the discourse trigger the use of auxiliary verbs to maintain reference to number and adopt the L1 conceptualization of events. The prosodic hypothesis proposes that the auxiliary in French L2 is initially an epenthetical vowel due to the syllabification of French L2 influenced by the phonological and prosodic structure of Japanese. Overall, this investigation shows the influence of the L1 and underlines the benefits of considering more than one hypothesis to analyze the emergence of auxiliary constructions in an L2.

In a recent study of the clause-initial position in verb-second declaratives (the prefield), Bohnacker & Rosén (2008) found significant differences between native Swedish and German concerning the frequencies with which constituents occurred in the prefield, as well as qualitative differences concerning the mapping of information structure and linear word order: Swedish exhibited a stronger tendency than German to place new information, the so-called rheme, later in the clause. Swedish-speaking learners of German transferred these patterns from their L1 to German. Their sentences were syntactically well-formed but had Swedish-style prefield frequencies and a strong pattern of Rheme Later, which native Germans perceive as unidiomatic, as an acceptability judgment and a rewrite-L2texts task showed. The present study extends Bohnacker & Rosén's work in three ways. Learners of the reverse language combination (L1 German, L2 Swedish) are investigated to see whether similar phenomena also manifest themselves there. Secondly, written and oral data from highly advanced learners are examined to see whether the learners' persistent problems can be overcome by extensive immersion (3, 6 and 9 years of L2 exposure). Thirdly, besides investigating theme-rheme (old vs. newinformation), some consideration is given to another information-structural level, background vs. focus. The learners are found to overuse the prefield at first, with non-Swedish, German-style frequency patterns (e.g. low proportions of clause-initial expletives and high proportions of clause-initial rhematic elements). This is interpreted as evidence for L1 transfer of informationstructural or discourse-pragmatic preferences. After 6 and 9 years, a substantial increase in clause-initial expletive subjects, clefts and lightweight given elements is indicative of development towards the target. The findings are related to current generative theorizing on the syntax-pragmatics interface, where it is often maintained that the integration of multiple types of information is one of the hardest areas for L2 learners to master. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the second language (L2) acquisition of a Nordic language; another on the variety of syntactic constructions in Swedish and German languages; and, the discussion on the methodological challenges of ambiguous language structures.