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Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism: In honor of Aafke Hulk
Edited by Elma Blom, Leonie Cornips and Jeannette Schaeffer
[Studies in Bilingualism 52] 2017
► pp. 303–330

The L2 acquisition of the French quantitative pronoun en by L1 learners of Dutch

Vulnerable domains and cross-linguistic influence

| University of Amsterdam
| University of Geneva | University of Zurich (URPP Language and Space)

Success or failure in L2 acquisition has been attributed to different factors, such as the linguistic domain involved, (the absence of) instruction or positive or negative transfer. Whereas in most of the literature these factors are studied separately, in this paper we investigate the relative impact of each of them, analyzing the L2 acquisition of the French quantitative pronoun en by native speakers of Dutch. On the basis of acquisition data elicited in a Grammaticality Judgment Task, we show that the L2 acquisition of en proceeds very slowly. We argue that this is mainly caused by the presence of a similar, but not completely equivalent pronoun in Dutch.

Keywords: L2 acquisition, French, Dutch, pronoun, en , er , Interface Hypothesis, instruction, transfer, cross-linguistic influence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical analyses of en
    • 2.1The interpretation of en
    • 2.2Referential and non-referential des-phrases
    • 2.3The presence/omission of en
  • 3.Modules of grammar, instruction and cross-linguistic influence
    • 3.1The Interface Hypothesis
    • 3.2Instruction
    • 3.3Cross-linguistic influence
  • 4.Experimental study
    • 4.1Research questions and predictions
    • 4.2Methodology
      • 4.2.1Participants
      • 4.2.2The test
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Overall results
    • 5.2Modules of grammar
    • 5.3Referentiality
    • 5.4Comparison of the French and the Dutch data
      • 5.4.1Contexts where en/er behave the same
      • 5.4.2Contexts in which en/er differ
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.52.14sle
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