Petra Sleeman

Action and Agent Nouns in French and Polysemy

In French, three main classes of deverbal nouns can be distinguished: action (or process) nouns, external argument nouns (generally called agent nouns) and internal argument nouns. Zwanenburg (1993) shows that the semantic structure of each of these three groups of deverbal nouns can be described in terms of argument structure, which is based on conceptual structure (Williams 1981). According to Di Sciullo and Williams (1987: 32–45), derived words tend to display function composition, which means that the arguments of the affixal head and those of the non-head base together compose the argument structure of the derived word. Action nouns are assumed to have an external argument position R, which is their reference. They have furthermore inherited all the arguments of the verbal base: (1) l’accusation d’un innocent par Ie procureur ‘the accusation of an innocent person by the prosecutor’ External argument (or agent). nouns are characterized by the identification of the argument position Rwith the external argument position of the verbal base (Sproat 1985: 170–1).

Deverbal adjectivalization as a gradual process

In this paper, we defend the idea that, in languages such as English,German and Dutch, there are in principle three types of (de)verbal modifiersof the noun: the first, postnominal, type is a reduced relative clause, thatis, a full verbal projection with an operator-like subject. Prenominal (de)verbalmodifiers with an eventive meaning represent the second type. We claim thatthey are poorly in ected verbs with a reduced argument structure. The thirdtype is the participle lexicalized as an adjective, which denotes a pure propertyand has completely lost the argument structure of the verbal base.

Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands: Linguistic patterns in the judgment and production of mood.:

Purpose: This study investigates heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands regarding their knowledge of Spanish mood. Previous research has demonstrated that heritage speakers of Spanish in the US have problems with mood, especially subjunctive mood and particularly in contexts where choice of mood is variable and depends on semantic and pragmatic factors. Moreover, heritage speakers are often reported to experience fewer problems with oral production tasks tapping into implicit knowledge than with judgment tasks targeting metalinguistic knowledge. This study aims to investigate whether these patterns can be confirmed for heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands. Methodology: In all, 17 heritage speakers from the Netherlands and 18 monolingual speakers of Spanish completed a contextualized elicited production task. Each item contained a context targeting either indicative or subjunctive mood. Below each context followed the beginning of a sentence which the participants were instructed to complete. Both obligatory and variable uses of mood were included. The results were compared to findings from a contextualized scalar acceptability judgment task described in an earlier study using the same conditions and the same participants. Data and analysis: All responses were coded as felicitous or infelicitous given the accompanying context and were analyzed using mixed effects modeling. The results demonstrate that the heritage speakers are less accurate in their choice of mood than monolingual speakers, particularly on subjunctive mood and in variable contexts. Furthermore, heritage speakers deviated more from the monolingual patterns in the production task than in the judgment task. Findings/conclusion: These results confirm several patterns attested for heritage speakers of Spanish in the US, namely the increased vulnerability of subjunctive mood and in contexts where mood is not obligatorily selected. However, in contrast to previous literature, this study reports better performance on a metalinguistic judgment task than on an oral production task. This finding is attributed to differences in societal circumstances between both heritage speaker populations. Implications of the research: This study confirms the heterogeneity of heritage speakers as a population and emphasizes the importance of taking societal circumstances into consideration.

The role of L2 exposure in L3A: A comparative study between third and fourth year secondary school students in the Netherlands

In this study, we test the L2 Status Factor hypothesis (Bardel & Falk, 2007, 2012), which claims that the L2 is the preferred background language over the L1 in L3 acquisition (henceforth L3A), and we investigate the effect of L2 English exposure on the role of the L1 and the L2 in L3A. We examine how increased developmental L2 exposure changes L1/L2 influence in L3A by comparing third- to fourth-year secondary school students in the Netherlands who are enrolled in either an immersion or a traditional ‘regular’ secondary school programme. We look at verb placement where French differs from English or from Dutch, reporting data from a grammaticality judgement task.