Syntax and Discourse in Near-Native French: Clefts and Focus

This study examines aspects of the syntax‐discourse interface in near‐native French. Two cleft structures—c’est clefts and avoir clefts—are examined in experimental and spontaneous conversational data from 10 adult Anglophone learners of French and ten native speakers of French. C’est clefts mark fo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language learning Vol. 62; no. 3; pp. 902 - 930
Main Author: Donaldson, Bryan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01.09.2012
Wiley-Blackwell
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects:
Adults
Adults. Performance, acquisition
Anglophones
Cleft Constructions
clefts
Conversation
conversation data
Discourse
Discourse Analysis
English
Foreign Countries
Foreign language learning
France
French
French as a Second Language Learning
French language
Grammar
information structure
Linguistics
Native Speakers
near-nativeness
Nonnative Speakers
Production and comprehension processes
prosody
Psycholinguistics
Psychology of language
Referents
Second Language Learning
Suprasegmentals
Syntax
Syntax Discourse Relationship
syntax-discourse interface
Task Analysis
France
Discourse
syntax-discourse interface
Prosody
French
French as second language
clefts
Adult
Conversation
Syntax
information structure
near-nativeness
conversation data
ISSN:0023-8333, 1467-9922
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study examines aspects of the syntax‐discourse interface in near‐native French. Two cleft structures—c’est clefts and avoir clefts—are examined in experimental and spontaneous conversational data from 10 adult Anglophone learners of French and ten native speakers of French. C’est clefts mark focus, and avoir clefts introduce new discourse referents. Although previous research on the syntax‐discourse interface has revealed residual difficulties in near‐native speakers, the near‐natives in the present study evinced nativelike behavior on a range of measures, a finding that suggests complete acquisition of aspects of the syntax‐discourse interface.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-BV1N8BJ1-7
ArticleID:LANG701
istex:37D88775B5E240535254D54EB780CF80DCC4224B
Language Learning
reviewers. Thanks to Nicholas Bacuez for assisting with the phonetic analysis.
For their detailed discussions and comments, I would like to thank Julie Auger, Kathleen Bardovi‐Harlig, David Birdsong, Barbara Bullock, Laurent Dekydtspotter, Rajka Smiljanic, Albert Valdman, the audience at the Second Language Research Forum 2009, and the anonymous
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0023-8333
1467-9922
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00701.x