Cette étude longitudinale contribue aux recherches sur l’ acquisition d’ une langue seconde (L2) dans le contexte de séjour linguistique à l'étranger (Study Abroad), où l’ on s’ intéresse de plus en plus à comprendre comment les facteurs non-linguistiques interagissent avec le développement linguistique. Elle étudie le rôle de la nature du réseau social (au sens sociologique) de l’ apprenant dans le développement de la production orale en français L2 chez deux étudiants suédois qui passent un semestre en France et dont les niveaux d’ intégration dans la communauté de la langue cible (LC) s’ opposent. L’ analyse suggère qu’ un réseau social plus riche en relations en LC confère un avantage supplémentaire en ce qui concerne le développement du répertoire des expressions polylexicales (EPL) de l’ apprenant, mais non pas le développement de l’ exactitude grammaticale, de la diversité lexicale et de l’ usage des marqueurs discursifs. Ainsi, l’ étude vient partiellement à l’ appui de la supposition que le réseau social de l’ apprenant explique la variation individuelle dans le développement linguistique.
Cet article présente une synthèse des recherches en acquisition du français langue seconde/étrangère menées à l’Université de Stockholm. Il fait le lien entre les premiers résultats obtenus au sein du projet InterFra (Interlangue française — développement, interaction et variation) avec les recherches menées récemment sur les stades très avancés. L’article se divise en trois parties. Les deux premières sont rétrospectives, d’abord une description du corpus InterFra — présenté ici dans son intégralité pour la première fois —, puis un bilan des résultats des thèses qui ont utilisé ce corpus, et, finalement, les stades de développement proposés par Bartning et Schlyter (2004). La troisième partie présente un projet sur les stades ultimes d’une L2, High-level proficiency in second language use, programme de recherche commun à cinq départements de l’Université de Stockholm et rend compte des résultats d’études récentes concernant trois groupes d’un niveau proche du locuteur natif, des locuteurs non natifs appelés respectivement avancés, bilingues fonctionnels et quasi-natifs. L’article se clôt sur un bilan de ces études.
The goals of Chapter 1 (‘The advanced learner variety: 10 years later’, by IngeBartning) are to describe the advanced learner variety from the end-stateperspective and towards the end-state as a developmental perspective where theadvanced variety is identified with morpho-syntactic features along a six-stageacquisitional continuum (Bartning & Schlyter 2004) as well as to present astate-of-the-art account of the research carried out since 1997. Themorpho-syntactic features include verbal morphology, negation, object clitics,gender marking, and subordination. The advanced stage is described based onthree main criteria: TAM (tense, aspect, modality), subject-verb agreement, andthe distinction between finite and non-finite forms. This chapter alsointroduces preliminary findings from corpus data (Swedish learners living inParis), which illustrate verb and gender agreement errors produced by highlyproficient learners.
This article examines linguistic complexity in the noun phrase in spoken L1 and L2 French. Research on linguistic complexity in L2 has often concentrated on syntactic complexity, subordination in particular. In this study, we focus on syntactic complexity at the phrasal level, i.e. in the noun phrase, following the assumption put forward by Norris and Ortega (2009: 564) that internal NP complexity provides an important measure of very advanced learners. The present study examines pre- and post-modification in the noun phrase in the oral production of very advanced non-native speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS) elicited through an on-line retelling of a clip from Modern Times. The results confirm our main hypothesis, that there are differences between NS and NNS: NS use more complex NPs, NPs with a higher mean number of words and more NPs with multiple modifiers.
This study builds on the proposition that there are six developmental stages for spoken L2 French, based on morpho-syntactic criteria (Bartning and Schlyter 2004). In order to investigate developmental stages 'beyond stage 6', oral productions of several groups of advanced learners/users and native speakers are analyzed in terms of resources and obstacles. Among the resources, we investigate expected late features such as formulaic language and elaboration of information structure (Forsberg 2008; Hancock 2007). Morpho-syntactic deviances (MSDs), i.e. obstacles are also investigated. MSDs are expected to be almost absent beyond stage 6 (von Stutterheim 2003). Surprisingly, they continue to be present even at these very high levels. The results also show that formulaic language and information structure are promising measures of high levels, although the latter did not yield significant differences compared to lower stages. The study concludes with the proposal of a transitional stage with L2 users called functional bilinguals, which would constitute a stage between the advanced learner and the near-native speaker.
This cross-linguistic study investigates the functionality and use of one particular linguistic collocation in each of two languages, viz. the French c'est and the Swedish det är, both meaning ‘it is’. The data are drawn from conversational speech production by adult native speakers and second language learners. The investigation shows that these collocations are highly polyfunctional as components in different grammatical constructions, that they play a significant role as a formula in the planning and execution of utterances and that they show a characteristic distribution of frequency of use and a characteristic profile of development in learner speech. A usage-based view of how language develops in individuals is adopted in the analysis of these findings, showing that these various properties are connected to each other and that they have an important bearing on the development of learners' interlanguages.
The purpose of this article is to offer contextual linguistic explanations for morphosyntactic deviances (MSDs) in high-level second language (L2) French (30 nonnative speakers vs. 10 native speakers). It is hypothesized that the distribution of formulaic sequences (FSs) and the complexity of information structure will influence the occurrence of MSDs. The study reports that MSDs rarely occur within FSs, and if they do, they occur within sequences containing open slots for creative rule application. The rhematic part of the utterance attracts more MSDs due to the fact that this part is more syntactically complex than the preamble (the thematic part). An additional explanation is the mean length of the rhematic part, which is longer than the preamble and implies a higher processing load. A final explanation of MSD occurrence in the rheme is linked to the distribution of FSs in the information structure. The results are discussed in relation to the ongoing debate on the constructs of complexity, accuracy, and fluency-a promising area of study.
High-proficient Swedish users of L2 French and Spanish were compared with native speakers of French, Spanish and Swedish with regard to how the syntactic peripheries in natural colloquial speech are structured. Two different though interrelated aspects were included: thus a cross-linguistic analysis comparing the three native speaker groups is combined with an analysis addressing the question of the upper limits of L2 acquisition. All left peripheral (LP) and right peripheral (RP) constituents of a corpus of 110,759 words were classified in a taxonomy relying both on syntactic and functional-pragmatic criteria. The cross-linguistic analysis showed that French and Spanish L1 speakers produced significantly longer LP sequences than the Swedish L1 speakers, who, in turn, put conspicuously more weight on the RP. Significant differences between the three languages were also found with regard to several LP and RP constituent categories. The L2 acquisition-oriented analysis showed that with few exceptions the high-proficient L2 users behaved like L1 users. Although a few interlanguage-related phenomena could be observed, no instances of any clear transfer from the speaker's L1 appeared in either L2 speaker group.
This volume investigates cultural migrants: people who, from their own free will, move to another country because of their interest in the target language and culture. Chapters include studies on cultural migrants acquiring French, Italian, Spanish and English and consider linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of language acquisition. Cultural migrants have social and psychological advantages when acquiring a second language as adults, and the study of their linguistic knowledge and production increases our understanding of the possibilities and limits of L2 ultimate attainment. The work thus fills a gap in our understanding of high-level proficiency and will be of interest to researchers working in the field of SLA, as well as to social scientists studying the relationship between language, culture and integration.
The aim of this study is twofold: first, to find evidence for additional advanced stages in L2 French. The continuum of Bartning and Schlyter (2004) is taken as a point of departure. It is hypothesized that a number of linguistic criteria will account for high-level proficiency. It was earlier found that besides morpho-syntax, formulaic sequences and information structure are interesting phenomena for highly proficient learners (Bartning, Forsberg and Hancock, 2009). Three more measures are now added, i.e. perceived nativelikeness, lexical richness and fluency. The second aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the possibility of nativelike attainment. The study shows that several measures are prone to characterise nativelike performance in highly proficient users among whom some attain nativelikeness.