The Acquisition of French as a Second Language

“This interesting collection of papers aims to put together a recent research on the acquisition of French as a second language based on different theoretical approaches. The richness of this volume lies in the different linguistic levels analysed (morpho-syntax, pragmatics, lexical) and in the various acquisitional stages considered (from initial to very advanced learners). It is an essential reading for researchers in language acquisition.”

“This important volume offers a stimulating exposé of the latest European research on the development of French as a second and foreign language by some of the most prominent researchers in the field. The eight chapters in this book are not only extremely rich and thorough in analysis but collectively also surprisingly broad and comprehensive in scope, covering the acquisition of French as a second/foreign language in a variety of contexts (e.g. migration second language, study-abroad, foreign language), by learners of different first language backgrounds (e.g. Arabic, English, Swedish) and from different age categories (child, adolescent, adult), and spanning the entire specter of L2 development, from the very beginning till the most advanced, near-native-like stages of acquisition (thanks in part to the fact that several of the contributions draw on the same L2 French database, the unique InterFra corpus initiated by Inge Bartning at the University of Stockholm). The editors and authors are also to be commended for presenting a surprisingly rich array of theoretical perspectives (formal, functional-cognitive, psycholinguistic) and methodological approaches (cross-sectional, longitudinal, corpus-linguistic) for investigating the linguistic development of L2 French. Readers will find a broad range of issues (lexical, morphological, syntactic, semantic-pragmatic) covered in impressive breadth and depth, offering something (and often much more) for everybody interested the development of one of the most frequently learned and taught languages in Europe. Highly recommended, not only for those interested in French but in second language learning and development in general.”