This study investigates the acquisition of genericity in L2 French and L3 English. While some exponents become generic by assembling morphological, syntactic and discursive cues, definite singular nominals additionally require the well-established kind restriction. It is a pragmatic and language-specific constraint. The participants are L1 Arabic…

The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences. Critical previews were cognate translations of the…

This study attempts to explain a systematic phenomenon that has been described in interlanguage grammars crosslinguistically: Null-Prep, which consists of omitting the obligatory preposition in certain movement constructions. We propose that Null-Prep is not related to lack of knowledge of "wh"-movement, as previously assumed, but to…

This study aims to advance the understanding of sociolinguistic competence among near-native speakers and to further knowledge about the acquisition of variable structures. We conduct a quantitative analysis of variable future-time expression in informal conversations between near-native and native speakers of French. In addition to examining…

The complexity of the linguistic environment in Cameroon raises the question of context and its role in the acquisition of another language. This paper draws a dichotomy between learners in such contexts considered rural and those regarded as urban or cosmopolitan. Using the irregular verb as a yardstick, an evaluation of the acquisition of…

The aim of this study is twofold: to analyze politeness strategies in the online conversations of Thai students, and to suggest how this analysis can be applicable to pedagogical practice. A corpus of a 21-month instant online conversation among students and teachers has been analyzed. Throughout the time of data collection, the teachers…

This paper analyzes the spoken corpus of thirty Iranian learners of French at four levels (A1, A2, B1 and B2). The data were collected in a pseudo-longitudinal manner in semi-directed interviews with half closed and open questions to analyze the learners' syntactic errors (omission, addition, substitution and displacement). The most frequent…

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how complexity, accuracy and fluency interact in early L2 development, when learners' linguistic means are underdeveloped. Learners then resort to rote-learned formulaic sequences to complement their current grammar when it is unable to meet their communicative needs. The interplay between their…

A spoken language eye-tracking methodology was used to evaluate the effects of sentence context and proficiency on parallel language activation during spoken language comprehension. Nonnative speakers with varying proficiency levels viewed visual displays while listening to French sentences (e.g., "Marie va decrire la poule" [Marie will…

French gender marking errors made by 23 Anglophones and 20 Lusophones are analyzed. The observation is made that the errors noted are due to frequent arbitrariness of this particular aspect of the language. It is concluded that the arbitrary portions of this feature of the language are subject to remaining indeterminate in second language…

Variability has been the subject of recent debate in the study of learner interlanguage. Empirical evidence from a longitudinal study suggests that learning follows a systematic route. A grammaticality judgment test is appended. (Contains 19 references.) (Author/LB)

Presents data on interlanguage development obtained from a storytelling exercise using a picture storybook for children in an Australian French-English immersion program. (Author/VWL)

This paper describes several methodological decisions made during a study of linguistic development of French in British classroom learners, highlighting the significance of choosing suitable tools for collecting, transcribing, and analyzing oral interlanguage data and noting the usefulness for interlanguage research of the CHILDES (Child Language…

This contribution documents the strategies bi/plurilingual children spontaneously develop when confronted with a task that demands comprehension of texts in a third language. To illustrate these strategies in context, the paper draws from classroom interaction excerpts: small groups of children (ages 8-10) discover meaning in a text in a language…

A study investigated how skills involved in phonological processing (phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and lexical access) are related to reading achievement when a child learns to read in a language not spoken at home. Subjects were 151 English-speaking children in a French immersion program, initially in grades 1, 3, and 5 in 1995.…