The acquisition of additive scope particles by Moroccan Arabic L1 learners of French

Abstract

The paper analyzes the acquisition of the additive particles aussi (‘also’), même (‘even’) and encore (‘still’) by five Moroccan Arabic L1 adult learners of French, participants in the ESF project (Perdue 1984). On the basis of a comparison between the French scope particles and their Moroccan Arabic equivalents, it is hypothesised that transfer from L1 plays an indirect role in the acquisition of French scope particles because of major semantic and syntactic differences between the two languages. The paper sets out to describe the emergence and use of additive scope particles in a sample of texts spanning ca. three years. It is shown that aussi is used quite early in the longitudinal data collected. Même is differently used in various learner varieties and encore is acquired late. The paper compares the findings about the acquisition of additives particles in Moroccan Arabic learner varieties with previous work.