Acquisition of L2 French Object Pronouns by Advanced Anglophone Learners

Julia Herschensohn,Randall Gess

doi:10.3390/languages3020015

Julia Herschensohn, Randall Gess

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3020015

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Abstract

The role native language transfer plays in L2 acquisition raises the question of whether L1 constitutes a permanent representational deficit to mastery of the L2 morphosyntax and prosody or if it can eventually be overcome. Earlier research has shown that beginning and low intermediate Anglophone L2 French learners are insensitive to French morphosyntactic and prosodic constraints in using in situ pronouns transferred from the L1. The prosodic transfer hypothesis (PTH) proposes that native prosodic structures may be adapted to facilitate acquisition of L2 prosodic structure. Our study presents new evidence from three Anglophone advanced learners of L2 French that indicates ceiling performance for pronoun production (99% accuracy in 300 tokens over nine interviews) and grammaticality judgment (98% accuracy). This native-like performance demonstrates target French morphosyntax and prosody, built—as predicted by the PTH—by licensing pronominal free clitics in a new pre-verbal L2 position distinct from post-verbal L1. Furthermore, the learners’ data confirms accurate prosody by way of appropriate prominence patterns in clitic + host sequences, correct use of clitics with prefixed verbs, use of stacked pronouns, as well as correct prosodic alternations involving liaison and elision. These results counter impaired representation approaches and suggest early missing inflection may be overcome.

Highlights

The role of the native language in L2 acquisition has been a topic of inquiry for decades (e.g., Lado 1957; Schwartz and Sprouse 1996) and is of particular interest in cases where the two languages differ in several dimensions
2004).In this article, we explore implications of the prosodic transfer hypothesis (PTH) for Anglophone acquisition of L2 French clitics by examining new data from advanced learners with extensive experience in the target environment
The three interviewees produced no prosodic errors of clitics in situ or strong pronouns as preverbal; more importantly, they produced consistent and accurate elision and liaison of function words, indicating ease with the L2 prosodic alternations (Tables 3 and 4)

Summary

Introduction

The role of the native language in L2 acquisition has been a topic of inquiry for decades (e.g., Lado 1957; Schwartz and Sprouse 1996) and is of particular interest in cases where the two languages differ in several dimensions. This notion of transfer raises the question of whether the native language constitutes a permanent representational deficit to mastery of the new morphosyntax (Table 1). and clitic pronouns in six persons, while English pronouns are strong unless cliticized to the verb as in (1d) (Table 1). Strong pronouns project the most complex syntactic, semantic and phonological structure, followed by weak pronouns and by clitics. French pronouns include parallel sets of strong and clitic pronouns in six persons, while English pronouns are strong unless cliticized to the verb as in (1d)

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