The data from this study investigate phrase-final vowel devoicing in Metropolitan French among L1 and L2 speakers, in terms of number of times a speaker devoices a phrase-final high vowel and percentage of the vowel that is devoiced. The goal is to assess whether experienced L2 speakers use style-based variation in response to the same factors as…

This study examined contributions of lexical factors to native-speaking raters' assessments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Extemporaneous oral narratives elicited from 40 French speakers of L2 English were transcribed and evaluated for comprehensibility by 10 raters. Subsequently, the samples were…

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the…

The current study addresses an aspect of second language (L2) phonological acquisition that has received little attention to date--namely, the acquisition of allophonic variation as a word boundary cue. The role of subphonemic variation in the segmentation of speech by native speakers has been indisputably demonstrated; however, the acquisition of…

This study analyzes stylistic variation among first-, second-, and third-year instructed learners of French engaged in synchronous French-language computer-mediated communication (CMC) and compares the results with data from nonlearner discourse in a public, noneducational synchronous CMC environment. We focus specifically on variability in…

This study investigates whether second language (L2) phonological learning can be characterized as a gradual and systematically patterned replacement of nonnative segments by native segments in learners' speech, conforming to a two-stage implicational scale. We adopt a dynamic approach to language variation based on Gatbonton's (1975, 1978)…

In traditional classifications of languages by inflectional subsystems, both creole languages and the results of untutored SLA (interlanguages) are classified as isolating. We focus on remnants of verbal inflectional morphology in French-related creoles and ask: (a) Can the properties of verbal morphology be attributed to SLA, and (b) what does…

Introduces this special issue of the journal and presents results from comparative research into the principles constraining learner varieties (interlanguages) in use. Articles analyze the oral production of complex verbal tasks in second language Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian. (Author/VWL)

This paper synthesizes research on the acquisition of linguistic variation by learners of French as a second language--an overview that, to our knowledge, is the first of its kind. It also presents a case study on French immersion students' acquisition of the pronouns "nous" and "on" "we," an alternation in many varieties of spoken French. The…

A "system" comprising the learner-speaker, the specific linguistic system itself, and the interactions with native speakers is posited to explain the dynamics of the acquisition of French as a second language. Through self-regulation, this system devises solutions which pertain to that common area in language at the crossroads of…