Syntactic development in the second language acquisition of French by instructed English learners
This thesis seeks to empirically examine six contemporary theories of language acquisition by considering the acquisition of French word order by instructed English speaking learners. French and English differ in terms of surface word order with respect to negation, adverbs and object clitics. These differences are shown in the table below. Structure S-V-Neg-X S-aux-Neg-V-X S-Neg-V-X S-V-Adv-X S-Adv-V-X S-CI/Pro-V S-V-CljPro French elle ne regarde pas la telâŹ *elle n'est pas regarder la tele *elle ne pas regarde la tele elle regarde souvent la tele *elle souvent regarde la tele elle la regarde *elle regarde la English *she watches not TV she is not watching TV *she not watches 'IV * she watches often TV she often watches TV *she it watches she watches it Table 1: Word order differences between French and English Pollock (1989) argues that these different word orders are due to one single parametric difference between the two languages - namely verb placement. Negation, adverbs and clitics are in fixed positions in the underlying structure. In French the verb undergoes movement whereas in English it does not. The difference between the two languages is argued to be the result of French having a strong uninterpretable
Rogers, Vivienne
Syntactic development in the second language acquisition of French by instructed English learners. This thesis seeks to empirically examine six contemporary theories of language acquisition by considering the acquisition of French word order by instructed English speaking learners. French and English differ in terms of surface word order with respect to negation, adverbs and object clitics. These differences are shown in the table below. Structure S-V-Neg-X S-aux-Neg-V-X S-Neg-V-X S-V-Adv-X S-Adv-V-X S-CI/Pro-V S-V-CljPro French elle ne regarde pas la telâŹ *elle n'est pas regarder la tele *elle ne pas regarde la tele elle regarde souvent la tele *elle souvent regarde la tele elle la regarde *elle regarde la English *she watches not TV she is not watching TV *she not watches 'IV * she watches often TV she often watches TV *she it watches she watches it Table 1: Word order differences between French and English Pollock (1989) argues that these different word orders are due to one single parametric difference between the two languages - namely verb placement. Negation, adverbs and clitics are in fixed positions in the underlying structure. In French the verb undergoes movement whereas in English it does not. The difference between the two languages is argued to be the result of French having a strong uninterpretable
syntactic development second_language_acquisition french instruct english_learner seek empirically examine contemporary theory language_acquisition consider acquisition french word_order instruct english_speaking learner french_english differ term surface word_order respect negation adverbs object clitics difference show table below structure pro french pas pas english she watch watch she watch watch often often watch she watch watch table word_order difference french english argue different word_order due single parametric difference_two language namely verb placement negation adverbs clitics fix position underlying_structure french verb undergoes movement whereas_english not difference_two language argue french strong