Acquisition of the Verb Movement Parameter in French by Adult English Speakers

Abstract

This paper focuses on a parametric difference between French and English, namely the verb movement parameter. Previous re-search shows that verb-raising in French causes learnability problems for Anglophone learners. Because of verb raising in French, an adverb may be placed between the verb and its direct object, allowing the subject-verb-adverb-object (S-V-Adv-O) structure. However, the lack of verb movement prohibits the S-V-Adv-O structure in English. The acquisition of verb movement is a well-documented topic in the second language (L2) acquisition research. However, previous L2 acquisition studies have focused on L2 speakers who are in the initial stage of their L2 acquisition. The present paper focuses on the acquisition of the verb movement parameter by a group of intermediate L2 French speakers whose first language (L1) is English. It also investigates two models, namely the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH) and the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (FTFAH). The FFFH predicts that L2 speakers are unable to reset parameters from their L1 values to the L2 settings, as they do not have access to Universal Grammar (UG). On the contrary, the FTFAH suggests that L2 speakers can reset parameters to the target L2 settings due to the full accessibility of UG. The data was collected via three tasks: an acceptability judgment task, a preference task, and a production task. The findings suggest that the L1-English–L2-French speakers had not fully acquired the adverb placement in French. Therefore, the results sup-port the FFFH, as the L1-English–L2-French speakers had not reset parameters from their L1 values to the L2 settings.