Cover not available
Part of
L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning: The view from Romance
Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 289–314

Chapter 11
Gender marking in L1 and L2 French

Syntactic complexity, lexical category and phonological expression

 | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Very little is known about the accuracy of grammatical inflection in written language. In this study we investigated the effects of syntactic complexity, lexical category and phonological expression on gender marking in L1 and L2 French. Native speakers of French (n = 40) and Dutch learners of French (n = 45) completed a fill-in-the-gap task in which the test items were controlled for the linguistic factors under investigation. The results showed main effects for syntactic complexity and lexical category. For phonological expression we only observed moderation effects. We conclude that syntactic complexity and lexical category affect the accuracy of gender marking in written L1 and L2 French more than phonological expression.
Keywords: gender marking, syntactic complexity, phonological expression, lexical category, French
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.L1 and L2 acquisition of inflection: The role of syntactic complexity
  • 3.The L1 and L2 acquisition of inflection: The role of phonological expression
  • 4.Gender marking on adjectives and past participles in French and Dutch
    • 4.1Gender marking in French
    • 4.2Ranking agreement constructions in French
    • 4.3Gender marking in Dutch
  • 5.The research question and hypotheses
  • 6.The experiment
    • 6.1Method
      • 6.1.1Participants
      • 6.1.2Materials and procedures
    • 6.2Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.11bri
References (40)
References
Adani, F. (2011). Rethinking the acquisition of relative clauses in Italian: Towards a grammatically based account. Journal of Child Language, 38(1), 141–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ågren, M. (2008). A la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse: Sur le développement du pluriel en français L2 écrit (Etudes Romanes de Lund 84, PhD dissertation). Lund University.
(2009). The advanced L2 writer of French: A study of Number agreement in Swedish learners. In F. Myles & E. Labeau (Eds.), The advanced learner variety: The case of French (Vol. 12, pp. 149–172). Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Alario, F. X., Costa, A., & Camarazza, A. (2002). Frequency effects in noun phrases production: Implications for models of lexical access. Language and Cognitive Processes, 17(3), 299–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aydin, O. (2007). The comprehension of Turkish relative clauses in second language acquisition and agrammatism. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 295–315. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, M., Johnson, K., & Roberts, I. (1989). Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry, 20(2), 219–251.Google Scholar
Bartning, I. (2000). Gender agreement in L2 French: Pre-advanced vs. advanced learners. Studia Linguistica, 54(2), 225–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blom, E., Polišenská, D., & Weerman, F. (2008). Articles, adjectives and age of onset: The acquisition of Dutch grammatical gender. Second Language Research, 24, 297–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bock, J. K., & Levelt, W. J. (1994). Language production. Grammatical encoding. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 945–984). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bril, M. (2016). Syntactic complexity and inflections in the written production of L1 and L2 French. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 2, 99–114.Google Scholar
Brunet, E. (2014). Liste des mots par nature et par fréquence. Retrieved on 13 June 2017 from [URL]
Cinque, G. (1994). On the evidence for partial N movement in the Romance DP. In G. J. Cinque, J.-Y. Koster, L. Pollock, L. Rizzi, & R. Zanuttini (Eds.), Paths towards Universal Grammar (pp. 85–110). Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). How native-like is non-native language processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(12), 564–570. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., Penke, M., & Parodi, T. (1993). Functional categories in early child German. Language Acquisition, 3(4), 395–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corver, N. & van Koppen, M. (2009). Let’s focus on noun phrase ellipsis. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischer Linguistik, 3–26.Google Scholar
Dewaele, J. M., & Véronique, D. (2001). Gender assignment and gender agreement in advanced French interlanguage: A cross-sectional study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4(3), 275–297. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fanselow, G., Kliegl, R., & Schlesewksy, M. (1999). Processing difficulty and principles of grammar. In S. Kemper & R. Kliegl (Eds.), Constraints on language: Aging, grammar and memory (pp. 170–200). Springer.Google Scholar
Foucart, A., & Frenck-Mestre, C. (2011). Can late L2 learners acquire new grammatical features? Evidence from ERP’s and eye-tracking. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(1), 226–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C., Osterhout, L., Mclaughlin, J., & Foucart, A. (2008). The effect of phonological realization of inflectional morphology on verbal agreement in French: evidence from ERP’s. Acta Psychologica, 128, 528–536. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garrett, M. F. (1975). The analysis of sentence production. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 133–177). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goldschneider, J. M., & DeKeyser, R. M. (2001). Explaining the “Natural order of L2 morpheme acquisition” in English: A meta-analysis of multiple determinants. Language Learning, 51(1), 1–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. (1994). A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, R. S. (1994). The antisymmetry of syntax. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Largy, P., & M. Fayol. (2001). Oral cues improve subject-verb agreement in written French. International Journal of Psychology, 36, 121–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindström, E. (2008). L’acquisition du genre en français L2: L’accord des déterminants et des adjectifs (Unpublished Bachelor thesis). University of Stockholm.
Moscati, V., & Rizzi, L. (2014). Agreement configurations in language development: a movement-based complexity metric. Lingua, 140, 67–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moscati, V., & Tedeschi, R. (2009). The delay of Italian past participle agreement. In J. Chandlee, M. Franchini, S. Lord, & G. M. Rheiner (Eds.), BUCLD 33: Proceedings of the 33rd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 379–390). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. (1997). Syntactic development. The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osterhout, L., Poliakov, A., Inoue, K., McLaughlin, J., Valentine, G., Pitkanen, I., Frenk-Mestre, C., & Hirschensohn, J. (2008). Second language learning and changes in the brain. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21, 509–521. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pienemann, M. (1989). Is language teachable? Psycholinguistic experiments & hypotheses. Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 52–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polišenská, D. (2010). Dutch children’s acquisition of verbal and adjectival inflection (PhD dissertation). LOT, Utrecht.
Renaud, C. (2013). Examining the uninterpretable gender feature in L2 French: evidence from eye-tracking and moving-window experiment. Paper presented at EUROSLA 2013, University of Amsterdam.
Roll, M., Frid, J., & Horne, M. (2007). Measuring syntactic complexity in spontaneous spoken Swedish. Language and Speech, 50(2), 227–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saito, K. (2011). Examining the role of explicit phonetic instruction in native-like and comprehensible pronunciation development: An instructed SLA approach to L2 phonology. Language Awareness, 20(1), 45–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandra, D. (2010). Homophone dominance at the whole-word and sub-word levels: spelling errors suggest full-form storage of regularly inflected verb forms. Language and Speech, 53, 405–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiller, N. O., Münte, T. F., Horemans, I., & Jansma, B. M. (2003). The influence of semantic and phonological factors on syntactic decisions: An event-related brain potential study. Psychophysiology, 40, 869–877. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schoorlemmer, E. (2009). Agreement, dominance and doubling: The morphosyntax of DP (PhD dissertation). LOT, Utrecht.
Sénéchal, M. (2000). Morphological effects in children’s spelling of French words. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54, 76–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van der Velde, M. (2003). Déterminants et pronoms en néerlandais et en français: syntaxe et acquisition (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Paris 8.
Westers, C. (2017). Les apprenants avancés du français L2 et l’accord verbal et adjectival à l’écrit (Unpublished Master thesis). Radboud University Nijmegen.