The Acquisition of French

The development of inflectional morphology and syntax in L1 acquisition, bilingualism, and L2 acquisition

Philippe Prévost | François-Rabelais University, Tours

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027253125 | EUR 115.00 | USD 173.00

Paperback – Available

ISBN 9789027253132 | EUR 36.00 | USD 54.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027288851 | EUR 115.00/36.00*
| USD 173.00/54.00*

This book presents a thorough description of morphosyntactic knowledge developed by learners of French in four different learning situations — first language (L1) acquisition, second (L2) language acquisition, bilingualism, and acquisition by children with Specific Language Impairment — within the theoretical framework of generative grammar. This approach allows for multiple comparisons across acquisition contexts, which provides the reader with invaluable insights into the nature of the acquisition process. The book is divided into four parts each dealing with a major morphosyntactic domain of acquisition: the verbal domain, the pronominal domain, the nominal domain, and the CP domain. Each part contains four chapters, the first one presenting an overview of the basic facts and analyses of the relevant properties of French, and the next three focusing on the different acquisition contexts. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the acquisition of French and in language development in general. It is also meant to stimulate cross-linguistic research from a theoretical perspective.

[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 51] 2009. xx, 458 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.51

Table of Contents

Preface | pp. i–xx

Introduction | pp. 1–14

Part I. The verbal domain

Chapter 1. The verbal domain: Syntactic assumptions | pp. 17–26

Chapter 2. The verbal domain in child L1 French | pp. 27–54

Chapter 3. The verbal domain in French bilingual acquisition and in children with SLI learning French | pp. 55–76

Chapter 4. The verbal domain in French L2 acquisition | pp. 77–112

Part II. Subject and object pronouns

Chapter 5. Subject and object pronouns: Morphosyntactic background | pp. 115–130

Chapter 6. Subject and object pronouns in child L1 French | pp. 131–178

Chapter 7. Subject and object pronouns in French bilingual acquisition and in children with SLI learning French | pp. 179–202

Chapter 8. Subject and object pronouns in L2 French acquisition | pp. 203–232

Part III. Determiner phrases

Chapter 9. Determiner phrases: Morphosyntactic assumptions | pp. 235–250

Chapter 10. Determiner phrases in child L1 French | pp. 251–266

Chapter 11. The development of DPs in French bilingual acquisition and in children with SLI learning French | pp. 267–288

Chapter 12. Determiner phrases in L2 French acquisition | pp. 289–320

Part IV. Questions and embedded clauses

Chapter 13. Questions and embedded clauses in French: Facts and analyses | pp. 323–344

Chapter 14. Questions and embedded clauses in child L1 French | pp. 345–372

Chapter 15. The development of questions and embedded clauses in French bilingual acquisition and in children with SLI learning French | pp. 373–388

Chapter 16. Questions and embedded clauses in L2 French acquisition | pp. 389–412

Conclusion | pp. 413–424

Author index | pp. 449–452

Subject index | pp. 453–458

“An excellent introduction to anyone who is interested in the acquisition of French, this volume provides an overview of and begins to bridge the gap between various learning situations. [...] With the ambitious goal of providing a description of the acquisition of French in different learning situations, Prévost must be commended for his efforts in providing a critical discussion of the different learning situations that deal with the acquisition of French. [...] this volume is recommended for anyone who is interested in discovering what has been said about the acquisition of French in various learning situations. Moreover, Prévost offers many research ideas throughout the book, thus fulfilling his third objective. Covering such a breadth of information, this volume should soon become a reference for those studying the acquisition of French.”

Claire Renaud, Arizona State University, in Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33(3): 464-466.

“With this comprehensive and extremely well-written monograph on the acquisition of French in several contexts, Philippe Prévost has accomplished a scholarly tour de force sure to please a wide audience. The book will certainly interest applied French linguists, especially those focusing on acquisition. Given its meticulous attention to the acquisition of morphosyntactic phenomena in both L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) contexts - including bilingual child language acquisition and acquisition by French L1 children with specific linguistic impairments (SLI) - the book will also merit a large readership among all acquisition researchers. In addition, Prévost brings a wealth of acquisition data to bear on important theoretical questions in the Universal Grammar (UG)/Minimalist Program and highlights the contributions that French acquisition research has made to the development of both syntactic and acquisition theory.”

Mary Ellen Scullen, University of Maryland, College Point, in French Review 84(6): 1349-1350

“With this comprehesive and extremely well-written monograph in the acquisition of French in several contexts, Phillipe Prévost has accomplished a scholarly 'tour de force' sure to please a wide audience. The book will certainly interest applied French linguists, especially those focusing on acquisition. Givens its meticulous attention to the acquisition of morphosyntactic phonomena in both L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) contexts - including bilingual child language acquisition and acquisition by French L1 children with specific linguistic impairments (SLI) - the book will also merit a large readership among all acquisition researchers. In addition, Prévost brings a wealth of acquisition data to bear on important theoretical questions in the Universal Grammar (UG)/Minimalist Program and highlights the contributions that French acquisition research has made to the development of both syntactic and acquisition theory.”

Mary Ellen Scullen, University of Maryland, College Point, in French Review *4(6): 1349-50

Cited by (54)

Cited by 54 other publications

Order by:

Avram, Larisa, Alexandru Mardale & Elena Soare

2024. Chapter 7. On the production of subject and object relative clauses by child speakers of heritage Romanian in France. In Language Acquisition in Romance Languages [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 18], ► pp. 168 ff.

Fonseca-Greber, Bonnie B.

2023. William J. Ashby – A pioneer in diachronic Spoken French corpus linguistics. In On Spoken French [Studies in Language Companion Series, 226], ► pp. 1 ff.

Kpoglu, Promise Dodzi

2023. Subject-verb agreement marking by Ghanaian learners of French. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41:2 ► pp. 130 ff.

Moscati, Vincenzo, Andrea Marini & Nicoletta Biondo

2023. What a thousand children tell us about grammatical complexity and working memory: A cross-sectional analysis on the comprehension of clitics and passives in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics 44:6 ► pp. 1161 ff.

Müller, Natascha

2023. AAiMLL: Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners: The Case of the Multilingual Child. Languages 9:1 ► pp. 8 ff.

Müller, Natascha

2024. Chapter 5. Parameter setting in multilingual children with special reference to acceleration in French. In Language Acquisition in Romance Languages [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 18], ► pp. 114 ff.

Müller, Natascha

2024. From the child’s perspective. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 14:1 ► pp. 90 ff.

Palasis, Katerina, Richard Faure & Fanny Meunier

2023. Wh-in-situ in child French: Deictic triggers at the syntax-semantics interface. Journal of French Language Studies 33:3 ► pp. 273 ff.

Stanford, Emily & Hélène Delage

2023. The contribution of visual and linguistic cues to the production of passives in ADHD and DLD: evidence from thematic priming. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 37:1 ► pp. 17 ff.

van Dijk, Chantal & Sharon Unsworth

2023. On the Relation Between Cross-Linguistic Influence, Between-Language Priming and Language Proficiency: Priming of Ungrammatical Adjective Placement in Bilingual Spanish-Dutch and French-Dutch Children. Open Mind 7 ► pp. 732 ff.

Franck, Julie & Despina Papadopoulou

2022. L2 French learning by Eritrean refugee speakers of Tigrinya. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25:4 ► pp. 631 ff.

Pirvulescu, Mihaela, Virginia Hill, Nadia Nacif, Rena Helms-Park & Maria Petrescu

2022. The acquisition of adverbs in child L3 French in Canada. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7:1

Stahnke, Johanna

2022. The Acquisition of French Determiners by Bilingual Children: A Prosodic Account. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 200 ff.

Chilla, Solveig, Cornelia Hamann, Philippe Prévost, Lina Abed Ibrahim, Sandrine Ferré, Christophe dos Santos, Racha Zebib & Laurice Tuller

2021. The influence of different first languages on LITMUS nonword-repetition and sentence repetition in second language French and second language German. In Language Impairment in Multilingual Settings [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 29], ► pp. 228 ff.

Henri, Fabiola

2021. Morphomic structure in Mauritian Kreol: On change, complexity and creolization. Morphology 31:4 ► pp. 447 ff.

Howard, Martin

2021. Introductory Article: French in Second Language Acquisition Research. Languages 6:2 ► pp. 101 ff.

Scalise, Elena, Johanna Stahnke & Natascha Müller

2021. Parameter setting and acceleration. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 12:1 ► pp. 157 ff.

Scheidnes, Maureen, Laurice Tuller & Philippe Prévost

2021. Object clitic production in French-speaking L2 children and children with SLI. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 11:2 ► pp. 259 ff.

Shimanskaya, Elena & Tania Leal

2021. Feature Matching Does Not Equal Convergence: Acquisition of L2 French Accusative Pronouns by L1 Spanish Speakers. Languages 6:3 ► pp. 144 ff.

Thomas, Anita

2021. Input Issues in the Development of L2 French Morphosyntax. Languages 6:1 ► pp. 34 ff.

DELAGE, Hélène & Ulrich Hans FRAUENFELDER

2020. Relationship between working memory and complex syntax in children with Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Child Language 47:3 ► pp. 600 ff.

Edmonds, Amanda, Aarnes Gudmestad & Thomas Metzger

2020. A Longitudinal Study of Grammatical-Gender Marking in French as an Additional Language. Applied Linguistics 41:5 ► pp. 733 ff.

Scheidnes, Maureen

2020. Sentence repetition and non-word repetition in early total French immersion. Applied Psycholinguistics 41:1 ► pp. 107 ff.

Ågren, Malin, Marie-Eve Michot, Cyrille Granget, Sonia Gerolimich, Pascale Hadermann & Isabelle Stabarin

2020. “Les copains *dit au revoir”: On Subject–Verb Agreement in L2 French and Cross-Linguistic Influence. Languages 6:1 ► pp. 7 ff.

Palasis, Katerina, Richard Faure & Frédéric Lavigne

2019. Explaining variation inwh-position in child French: A statistical analysis of new seminaturalistic data. Language Acquisition 26:2 ► pp. 210 ff.

Shimanskaya, Elena & Roumyana Slabakova

2019. L1–L2 differences in the L2 classroom: Anticipating Anglophone learners’ difficulties with French pronoun interpretation. Language Teaching Research 23:2 ► pp. 259 ff.

Antonova Ünlü, Elena & Li Wei

2018. Examining the effect of reduced input on language development: The case of gender acquisition in Russian as a non-dominant and dispreferred language by a bilingual Turkish–Russian child. International Journal of Bilingualism 22:2 ► pp. 215 ff.

Côté, Stephanie

2018. L’effet de la (ir)régularité verbale sur le choix de variante du futur en français L2. The Canadian Modern Language Review 74:4 ► pp. 523 ff.

Delage, Hélène & Stephanie Durrleman

2018. Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: distinct syntactic profiles?. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 32:8 ► pp. 758 ff.

GRANFELDT, JONAS

2018. The development of gender in simultaneous and successive bilingual acquisition of French – Evidence for AOA and input effects. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21:4 ► pp. 674 ff.

Herschensohn, Julia & Randall Gess

2018. Acquisition of L2 French Object Pronouns by Advanced Anglophone Learners. Languages 3:2 ► pp. 15 ff.

HERVÉ, Coralie & Ludovica SERRATRICE

2018. The development of determiners in the context of French–English bilingualism: a study of cross-linguistic influence. Journal of Child Language 45:3 ► pp. 767 ff.

Karpathiou, Nomiki, John Papatriantafyllou & Maria Kambanaros

2018. Bilingualism in a Case of the Non-fluent/agrammatic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia. Frontiers in Communication 3

Poehner, Matthew E. & Rémi A. van Compernolle

2018. Interaction, Change, and the Role of the Historical in Validation: The Case of L2 Dynamic Assessment. Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology 17:1 ► pp. 28 ff.

Poehner, Matthew E. & Rémi A. van Compernolle

2020. Reconsidering Time and Process in L2 Dynamic Assessment. In Toward a Reconceptualization of Second Language Classroom Assessment [Educational Linguistics, 41], ► pp. 173 ff.

Roberge, Yves, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux & Anna Frolova

2018. On Recursive Modification in Child L1 French. Languages 3:1 ► pp. 6 ff.

Shimanskaya, Elena

2018. Chapter 3. Another look at L2 acquisition of French clitics and strong pronouns. In Meaning and Structure in Second Language Acquisition [Studies in Bilingualism, 55], ► pp. 67 ff.

Fotiadou, Georgia & Hélène Vassiliadou

2017. Transitivity and valency: from theory to acquisition. Lingvisticae Investigationes 40:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa, Mihaela Pirvulescu, Yves Roberge & Nelleke Strik

2017. Clitics as input to the acquisition of verbal transitivity in French. Lingvisticae Investigationes 40:1 ► pp. 117 ff.

Ud Deen, Kamil

2017. The Acquisition of Morphology. In The Handbook of Psycholinguistics, ► pp. 567 ff.

Haznedar, Belma & F. Nihan Ketrez

2016. Introduction. In The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 20], ► pp. 1 ff.

Pozniak, Céline & Barbara Hemforth

2016. Acquisition des pronoms objets en français langue seconde. Discours :18

Chondrogianni, Vicky

2015. Production and comprehension of pronouns and reflexives in atypical populations. In The Acquisition of Reference [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 15], ► pp. 285 ff.

AYOUN, DALILA

2014. The acquisition of future temporality by L2 French learners. Journal of French Language Studies 24:2 ► pp. 181 ff.

Roberge, Yves & Nelleke Strik

2014. Two types of wh-omission in first language acquisition. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 59:2 ► pp. 263 ff.

Ågren, Malin, Jonas Granfeldt & Anita Thomas

2014. Combined effects of age of onset and input on the development of different grammatical structures. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4:4 ► pp. 462 ff.

BARRA-JOVER, MARIO

2013. Linguistique et école primaire: en quoi l'approche diglossique est-elle la meilleure façon d'apprendre le français ‘académique’?. Journal of French Language Studies 23:1 ► pp. 87 ff.

PALASIS, KATERINA

2013. The case for diglossia: Describing the emergence of two grammars in the early acquisition of metropolitan French. Journal of French Language Studies 23:1 ► pp. 17 ff.

Rizzi, Silvana, Laia Arnaus Gil, Valentina Repetto, Jasmin Geveler & Natascha Müller

2013. Adjective placement in bilingual Romance‐German and Romance‐Romance children. Studia Linguistica 67:1 ► pp. 123 ff.

ÅGREN, MALIN & JOOST VAN DE WEIJER

2013. Input frequency and the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in number in spoken and written French. Journal of French Language Studies 23:3 ► pp. 311 ff.

Ågren, Malin & Joost van de Weijer

2019. The production of preverbal liaison in Swedish learners of L2 French. Language, Interaction and Acquisition. Langage, Interaction et Acquisition 10:1 ► pp. 117 ff.

Andreassen, Helene N.

2011. La recherche de régularités distributionnelles pour la catégorisation du schwa en français. Langue française n°169:1 ► pp. 55 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. The Acquisition of Italian [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 57],

[no author supplied]

2022. Bilingualism, Language Development and Processing across the Lifespan [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 15],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects