When Is a Preposition a Linking Element? Bilingual Children's Acquisition of French Compound Nouns

Abstract

French is traditionally considered a non-compounding language because speakers prefer to use lexical forms such as NPN instead of N-N compounds. However, the preposition in these French NPNs shares similarities with meaningless linking elements in compounds in other languages. It is therefore hypothesized that children will consider the prepositions in NPNs to add no meaning to the construction and will treat N-N compounds as they do NPNs. To test this possibility, French-English bilingual children's ordering of complex lexical items with and without prepositions was compared in French and English. A group of same-age monolingual English children acted as a control group. The results showed that the bilingual children misordered French compounds equally often when they included or did not include a preposition. In contrast, the use of an English preposition in English expressions improved their correct ordering. One possible interpretation of these results is that bilingual children do not consider French prepositions as meaningful elements within NPNs. If so, the prepositions in French NPN are in an intermediate state between prepositions and linking elements.