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Variation in Second and Heritage Languages: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Robert Bayley, Dennis R. Preston and Xiaoshi Li
[Studies in Language Variation 28] 2022
► pp. 223–252

Chapter 9
Variation in choice of prepositions with place names on the French L1–L2 continuum in Ontario, Canada

ORCID logo | University of Toronto Mississauga
ORCID logo | Glendon College, York University
ORCID logo | Glendon College, York University
This study examines the use of prepositions à (‘in/to’), au (‘in the/to the’), and en (‘in/to’) with place names across the French first-language – second-language continuum in Ontario, Canada. The study draws on speech corpora collected among seven groups of students who use French and English to varying extents in daily life. Choice of expected prepositions in French is determined by complex rules reflecting a place name’s category and morphological and phonological properties, while in English it reflects the ‘+/– motion’ feature of the verb. The findings reveal that rates of expected preposition use are influenced to varying extents by the relative difficulty of the prepositions, the students’ position on the continuum, their individual use of French, and their susceptibility to the influence of inter-systemic transfer.
Keywords: acquisition of French, highly-advanced FSL students, Ontario French immersion students, Franco-Ontarian students, French/English bilingualism, prepositional usage, place names
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Complexity and inter-systemic transfer
  • Context and continuum
  • Prior research
    • Ontario French immersion students vs. Franco-Ontarian students
    • Variation in preposition choice by Franco-Ontarian students
    • Variation in preposition choice by FL2 speakers
  • Methods
    • Corpora
      • Quebec city student corpus (Group 1)
      • Franco-Ontarian student corpus (Groups 2, 3, 4, 5)
      • FL2 university student corpus (Group 6)
      • FL2 high school student corpus (Group 7)
      • Summary of corpora
    • Data analysis
      • Place names requiring à
        • Expected use
        • Unexpected use
      • Place names requiring au
        • Expected use
        • Unexpected use
      • Place names requiring en
        • Expected use
        • Unexpected use
    • Research issues and hypotheses
      • Inter-group differences for à, au, and en
      • Individual use of French
      • Inter-systemic transfer: ‘+/– motion’ verbs
  • Results
    • Inter-group differences for à, au, and en
    • Influence of individual use of French
    • Inter-systemic influence of the ‘+/– motion’ verb distinction
  • Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.28.09reh
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KENNEDY TERRY, KRISTEN M.
2022. At the Intersection of SLA and Sociolinguistics: The Predictive Power of Social Networks During Study Abroad. The Modern Language Journal 106:1 ► pp. 245 ff. DOI logo

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