Re-assembling objects: a new look at the L2 acquisition of
pronominal clitics
Re-assembling objects: a new look at the L2 acquisition of
pronominal clitics
We test the predictions of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) as applied to the L2 acquisition of French pronominal clitics by Anglophone learners, capitalizing on the fact that different semantic and morphosyntactic features are lexically encoded by French and English pronouns. A picture selection task and a self-paced reading task examine how the information encoded in the L2 forms affects off-line and on-line pronoun interpretation. Our findings suggest that the initial L1–L2 mapping was indeed influenced by the L1. Nevertheless, L2 learners successfully reassembled features into L2 bundles, as evidenced by target-like off-line performance. L2 reading time patterns, however, indicate that L1 representations may have a longer-lasting impact: learners’ reactions to the mismatching input followed a different pattern and were slightly delayed as compared to native speakers’. These results are in line with the FRH, which conceptualizes L1 influence as the transfer of atomic linguistic features and their combinations.
French, object clitics, language processing, feature reassembly, acquisition of morphosyntax
512–529
Shimanskaya, Elena
2686e787-a8f3-4a40-ab63-5d5a2cd4f897
Slabakova, Roumyana
1bda11ce-ce3d-4146-8ae3-4a486b6f5bde
May 2017
Shimanskaya, Elena
2686e787-a8f3-4a40-ab63-5d5a2cd4f897
Slabakova, Roumyana
1bda11ce-ce3d-4146-8ae3-4a486b6f5bde
Shimanskaya, Elena and Slabakova, Roumyana
(2017)
Re-assembling objects: a new look at the L2 acquisition of
pronominal clitics.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20 (3), .
(doi:10.1017/S1366728915000784).
Abstract
We test the predictions of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) as applied to the L2 acquisition of French pronominal clitics by Anglophone learners, capitalizing on the fact that different semantic and morphosyntactic features are lexically encoded by French and English pronouns. A picture selection task and a self-paced reading task examine how the information encoded in the L2 forms affects off-line and on-line pronoun interpretation. Our findings suggest that the initial L1–L2 mapping was indeed influenced by the L1. Nevertheless, L2 learners successfully reassembled features into L2 bundles, as evidenced by target-like off-line performance. L2 reading time patterns, however, indicate that L1 representations may have a longer-lasting impact: learners’ reactions to the mismatching input followed a different pattern and were slightly delayed as compared to native speakers’. These results are in line with the FRH, which conceptualizes L1 influence as the transfer of atomic linguistic features and their combinations.
Text
BLC SubmissionProofs.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 20 October 2015
e-pub ahead of print date: 7 December 2015
Published date: May 2017
Keywords:
French, object clitics, language processing, feature reassembly, acquisition of morphosyntax
Organisations:
Modern Languages and Linguistics
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 386901
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/386901
ISSN: 1366-7289
PURE UUID: b1afd79d-7857-48c4-b8a0-fc00e9ae518b
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Date deposited: 05 Feb 2016 11:59
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:48
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Author:
Elena Shimanskaya
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