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Part of
Perspectives on Input, Evidence, and Exposure in Language Acquisition: Studies in honour of Susanne E. Carroll
Edited by Lindsay Hracs
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 69] 2024
► pp. 118–143

Chapter 5
Acquisition of 3pl verb markings by (very) advanced FSL learners and bilingual Franco­phone students

| York University
| York University
| University of Toronto

This study examines acquisition of distinctive 3pl markings of French verbs by bilingual Franco­phone students attending French-medium high schools in four Ontario Franco­phone communities of varying demographic strength and by learners enrolled in high school immersion or university FSL programs in Toronto. It documents the impact of the following factors: (i) the discursive frequency of the verbs; (ii) the students’ exposure to French in and outside of school, (iii) their individual frequency of use of French, (iv) teachers’ in class speech, and (v) invariant vs. variable use of the 3pl verb markings in the local varieties of French. The impact of these factors is manifested by different patterns of intergroup hierarchies in rates of acquisition.

Keywords: French verbal morphology, French immersion, Ontario Franco­phones, language dominance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Prior research
    • 2.1Acquisition of the 3pl verb forms
    • 2.2Acquisition of other aspects of French morphosyntax
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Corpora
      • 3.1.1Franco­phone student corpus
      • 3.1.2FSL university student corpus
      • 3.1.3FSL high school immersion student corpus
      • 3.1.4Franco­phone teacher speech corpus
      • 3.1.5French immersion teacher speech corpus
    • 3.2Data on the Franco­phone community speech norms
  • 4.Data analysis
  • 5.Research issues
  • 6.Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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