Development of object clitics in child L2 French

A comparison of developmental sequences in different modes of acquisition

Jonas Granfeldt | Lund University

It has been argued that the study of child L2 development can inform different maturational accounts of language acquisition. One such specific proposal was put forward by Meisel (2008), arguing for a cut-off point for monolingual or bilingual first language acquisition — (2)L1 — type of development at 3–4 years. The paper analyses the longitudinal development of object clitics in child L2 French (L1 Swedish) and compares the developmental sequence in child L2 learners (n = 7) with different Ages of Onset of Acquisition (AoA) (from 3;0 to 6;5) to the adult L2 sequence that was found in previous studies (Granfeldt & Schlyter 2004). The study also includes age-matched simultaneous bilingual children (n = 3) and monolingual controls (n = 5). The results show that some of the child L2 learners with an AoA over 4 years display structures that are typical of adult L2 acquisition, whereas these structures were not found in the simultaneous bilingual children or in the child second language acquisition (cL2) children with an AoA under 4 years. It is suggested that differences in developmental sequences are due to a combination of AoA and the level of L1 linguistic development at the onset of L2 acquisition.

Keywords: age of onset, child L2 acquisition, bilingual acquisition, object clitics, French, categorial uniformity

Published online: 07 May 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.3.1.08gra

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Cited by 4 other publications

Bernardini, Petra & Joost van de Weijer

2017. On the direction of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of object clitics in French and Italian. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 8:2 ► pp. 204 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.

Splendido, Frida

2019. The development of obligatory liaison in early L2 learners of French. Language, Interaction and Acquisition. Langage, Interaction et Acquisition 10:1 ► pp. 71 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.

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