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 investigation responds to the need for longitudinal data-driven research on additional-language (AL) acquisition by examining grammatical-gender marking among AL learners of French during a 21-month period, which included an academic year abroad (LANGSNAP corpus). The analysis of oral production consists of a generalized linear mixed model…

The second language (L2) acquisition of tense, aspect, and mood/modality (TAM) has been widely explored as it holds the promise of a better understanding of the L2 learners' linguistic competences, particularly semantically and morpho-syntactically. This study focuses on the acquisition of the subjunctive mood by L1 English learners of L2 French…

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 edited volume offers critical reflections on an essential component of research method in the field of second language acquisition -- data. Scholars working on diverse areas (e.g., pragmatics, corrective feedback, phonology) and approaches (e.g., corpus linguistics, concept-oriented analyses, variationism) have come together to identify…

In the past century, French has shifted from being the native language of many Louisianans to being an endangered dialect. Since the creation of the state agency CODOFIL (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) in the 1960's, efforts have been made to revitalize French in Louisiana, and since the 1980's, some parishes have offered…

It is suggested that it is not between two languages that transfers and interference occur, but within the learner. The learner mediates and constructs this relationship according to acquisition operations, processes, strategies, and stages that contrastive analysis, despite its utility, can neither account for nor predict. (MSE)

Describes the three-tiered error annotation system designed to annotate the "French Interlanguage Database" (FRIDA) corpus. The research took place within a project that aims to produce a learner corpus-informed computer assisted language learning (CALL) program for French as a foreign language. (Author/VWL)

This paper reports on two studies that investigated the effectiveness of a contrastive analysis type of pedagogical intervention, which aimed to promote interlanguage development in the use and understanding of English possessive determiners (PDs) among adolescent second language (L2) learners. The first research question asked whether explicit…

From the perspective of Fodor's (1983) theory of mental organization and Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist theory of grammar, considers constraints on the interpretation of French-type and English-type cardinality interrogatives in the task of sentence comprehension, as a function of a universal parsing algorithm and hypotheses embodied in a French-type…

This article first presents an overview of some trends behind the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in a second language. A study is then presented that aims to test the validity of these trends in a quantitative study of a range of socio- and morpho-phonetic variables in French, including liaison, /l/ deletion, and subject-verb agreement…

Reexamines the morphology/functional category debate in light of empirical data drawn from a longitudinal study of two intermediate learners of French as a second language (L2). Argues that inflectional deficits--which appear as both nonfinite verbs and as other morphological errors in the interlanguage data--support neither a codependence of…

Expands on a view of "Valueless Features"--which suggests that the second-language (L2) initial state is distinct from natural language grammars because transfer obliterates the values associated with features located under functional heads--by examining data on the L2 acquisition of English by speakers of German. Despite important differences…

Attempts to describe the interpersonal variation in interlanguage tense and aspect systems of four French/Moroccan Arabic learners of second language (L2) Spanish in a natural setting. In addition to noting differences in the way these four learners use L2 verbal morphology to construct their narratives, results also support previous research on…