Bryan Donaldson

LEFT DISLOCATION IN NEAR-NATIVE FRENCH

The present study is concerned with the upper limits of SLA— specifi cally, mastery of the syntax-discourse interface in successful endstate learners of second-language (L2) French (near-native speakers). Left dislocation (LD) is a syntactic means of structuring spoken French discourse by marking topic. Its use requires speakers to coordinate syntactic and pragmatic or discursive knowledge, an interface at which L2 learners have been shown to encounter diffi culties (e.g., Sorace, 1993 ; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006 ). The data come from (a) an 8.5-hr corpus that consists of recordings of 10 dyadic conversations between near-native and native speakers of French and (b) two contextualized paper and audio tasks that tested intuitions and preferences regarding LD. Analyses of the near-native speakers’ production of LDs, the syntactic properties of their LDs, and their use of LDs to promote different types of discourse referents to topic status suggest that their mastery of this aspect of discourse organization converges on that of native speakers.

SYNTACTIC AND PROSODIC COMPUTATIONS IN THE RESOLUTION OF RELATIVE CLAUSE ATTACHMENT AMBIGUITY BY ENGLISH-FRENCH LEARNERS

This study investigates the manner in which syntax, prosody, and context interact when secondand fourth-semester college-level EnglishFrench learners process relative clause (RC) attachment to either the first noun phrase (NP1) or the second noun phrase (NP2) in complex nominal expressions such as le secretaire du psychologue qui se promene (au centre ville) “the secretary of the psychologist who takes a walk (downtown).” Learners’ interpretations were affected by the length of the RC, specifically its phonological weight. Effects of intonation contour were found only in a subset of learners. In a response time (RT) experiment that manipulated contexts, fourth-semester learners showed a final bias for NP1 attachment in interpretation but an initial RT bias for NP2 attachment. Second-semester learners also produced a NP2 attachment bias in RTs, but no asymmetry in interpretation was found. We argue that the processing of RC attachment by English-French learners requires a task-specific algorithm that implicates autonomous syntactic and prosodic computations and specific interactions among them.

Nativelike Right-Dislocation in Near-Native French.

Recent research on advanced and near-native second-language (L2) speakers has focused on the acquisition of interface phenomena, for example at the syntax—pragmatics interface. Proponents of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g. Sorace, 2005; Sorace and Filiaci, 2006; Tsimpli and Sorace, 2006; Sorace and Serratrice, 2009) argue that (external) interfaces present difficulties for L2 grammars, resulting in permanent deficits even in near-native grammars. Other research, however, has argued that interfaces are acquirable, albeit with delays (Ivanov, 2009; Rothman, 2009). This study examines right-dislocation (RD) in experimental and production data from near-native French. Right-dislocation marks topic in discourse and thus requires the integration of syntactic and discourse—pragmatic knowledge. Participants were 10 near-native speakers of French who learned French after age 10 and whose grammatical competence was comparable to the near-native speakers of French in Birdsong (1992), and 10 French native speakers. The data come from two experimental tasks and an 8.5-hour corpus of spontaneous informal dyadic conversations. The near-natives demonstrated nativelike judgments, preferences, and use of RD in authentic discourse. Only one near-native displayed evidence of first-language (L1) transfer, which resulted in non-nativelike use of RD. On the whole, the results suggest nativelike acquisition of this area of the syntax—pragmatics interface and fail to provide support for the Interface Hypothesis.

Preverbal subjects, information structure, and object clitic position in Old Occitan

The position of object and adverbial clitics remains problematic in Old Occitan syntax (Wanner 2010 ). This paper analyzes clitic position specifically in affirmative main declaratives with overt preverbal subjects, in which clitics are either preverbal or postverbal with no apparent semantic distinction. Thus, the phrases En Constantis s’en anet and En Constantis anet s’en are semantically equivalent, each meaning ‘Sir Constantine left’, whether the clitics s’en ‘himself.from-there’ appear before or after the verb anet ‘went’. Previous analyses have concluded that this variation is random (Meriz 1978 ) or due to regional or dialectal variation (Hinzelin 2007 ). Neither approach satisfactorily addresses the underlying grammar or the principles underlying the distribution of the variants. The present analysis draws on claims about the left periphery in medieval Romance (Beninca 2006 ) and reports empirical data from the troubadour biographies ( vidas and razos ) and the vida of Saint Douceline. Results from 470 subject–verb declaratives establish that the subject in subject–verb–clitic sequences is left-dislocated, albeit covertly so. This sequence is one of several instantiations of subject left dislocation in Old Occitan and usually signals topic shift.

Null Objects in Old French

Despite claims to the contrary, it has been shown that a number of modern Romance varieties—including European and Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French—allow omission of the object of a verb, even when the object has a definite referent. Taking as a point of departure Arteaga’s (On null objects in Old French. In: Schwegler A, Tranel B, Uribe-Etxebarria M (eds) Romance linguistics: theoretical perspectives. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 1–11, 1997) study of null objects in Old French, this paper discusses contexts in which null objects are attested in Old French, including some not discussed by Arteaga, and including instances of manuscript variation. In addition, drawing on recent theories of null objects, and using the nature of the antecedent to the null object as a diagnostic, it is proposed that Old French possessed both null pronominals and null variables. The wide range of contexts in which Old French evinced null objects is taken to suggest that the ability to license object drop is not an innovation in Modern or even Middle French. Given that null objects are also attested in Latin, the data point to the continual availability of object drop from the earliest stages of French to the modern language.