The Acquisition of French in Different Contexts: Focus on Functional Categories

Abstract

Edited by Philippe Prévost and Johanne Paradis (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 32). Amsterdam — Philidelphia, John Benjamins 2004. vii+381 pp. Hb 13200; €110.00. This volume of studies, as the editors claim in their introduction, does indeed fill an ‘empirical gap’ in work on the acquisition of European languages. Although the theoretical framework is strictly defined, the robustness of the research in the varying contexts should entail that the volume also appeals to those who investigate the acquisition of French from other theoretical perspectives. All the studies within the volume are dedicated to a generative framework and concentrate on the acquisition of functional categories within that framework. The editors and authors of individual chapters are all well-established researchers within this field. The studies within the volume cover a range of linguistic contexts: first language (L1) acquisition, second language (L2) acquisition, bilingual first language acquisition and specifically language impaired acquisition (SLI). In all the contexts the research is predominantly with young children, although some of the L2 acquisition studies make comparisons between adult L2 and child L1 acquisition of certain grammatical structures (Hawkins and Franceschina, Granfeldt and Schlyter). The research throughout the volume focuses on a clustering of grammatical aspects, primarily the Determiner Phrase (DP) functional category and the functional categories implicated in the verbal domain. Within a generative approach, the acquisition of functional categories has been the dominant line of inquiry for the last decade. The questions over the years and across different linguistic contexts have been ‘strikingly similar’ and the issues discussed in this volume are no exception. The focus is on the presence or absence of functional categories in developing grammars and what properties they may have once they have been projected. The editors tentatively and perhaps optimistically suggest in their introduction that because the researchers are investigating similar issues and syntactic properties in a range of acquisition contexts, it may be possible to build a unified theory of the process of functional category acquisition. After a concise but informative introduction to the volume and the field of inquiry, the book is divided into two sections, one on LI acquisition and SLI acquisition and the other on L2 acquisition and bilingualism. Each individual chapter presents a thorough summary of the grammatical aspect being investigated, then outlines the research methods used. The research reported in this volume generally used robust methods of participant selection and research methodology. The majority of the studies are longitudinal with a small number of participants, however some are comparative (Hamann, Paradis and Crago) and some make use of data from grammaticality judgements (Labelle and Valois, Hawkins and Franceschina). Results are presented clearly in tables and charts and most of the chapters make appropriate use of comparative statistics. Significantly, within this volume there is the introduction of important new directions in research in this field of inquiry, for example, the semantics/syntax interface in acquiring functional categories (Prévost) and the use of prosodic analysis to support specifically syntactic arguments (De Cat). The collection of studies is an important contribution to work in this field. The volume will prove useful for all researchers investigating the acquisition of French but particularly for those working from within a generative framework.