Yves Roberge

The Role of Feedback in Adult Second Language Acquisition: Error Correction and Morphological Generalizations.

This study looked at the effects of feedback (explicit correction) on the learning of morphological generalizations in an experimental setting. Subjects Were 79 adult native speakers of English with intermediate (39) and advanced (40) levels of proficiency in French. All subjects were individually trained on two rules of French suffixation. Experimental subjects received correction if they gave erroneous responses to stimuli in a “feedback” session. Afterward, all subjects “guessed” responses to novel stimuli and were retested (twice) on the feedback items. Comparison subjects dealt with the same stimuli but were never corrected. Analyses of feedback responses indicated differences in favor of the experimental groups, but comparisons of guessing responses between experimental and comparison groups showed no evidence of learned generalizations. The learning of absolute exceptions was more likely among advanced learners.

Bilingualism as a Window into the Language Faculty: The Acquisition of Objects in French-Speaking Children in Bilingual and Monolingual Contexts.

Where do the two languages of the bilingual child interact? The literature has debated whether bilingual children have delays in the acquisition of direct objects. The variety of methods and languages involved have prevented clear conclusions. In a transitivity-based approach, null objects are a default structural possibility, present in all languages. Since the computation of lexical and syntactic transitivity depends on lexical acquisition, we propose a default retention hypothesis, predicting that bilingual children retain default structures for aspects of syntactic development specifically linked to lexical development (such as objects). Children acquiring French (aged 3;0–4;2, N = 34) in a monolingual context and a French/English bilingual context participated in a study eliciting optional and obligatory direct objects. The results show significant differences between the rates of omissions in the two groups for both types of objects. We consider two models of how the bilingual lexicon may determine the timetable of development of transitivity.

The End of Argument Structure

Includes papers that explore the issues and re-assess generally accepted premises on the relationship between lexical meaning and the morphosyntax of sentences by confronting two competing approaches to this issue.

Bilingual effects: exploring object omission in pronominal languages

This article assesses the impact of bilingualism on the acquisition of pronominal direct objects in French and English (clitics in French and strong pronouns in English). We show that, in comparison to monolingual children, bilingual children omit more pronominal objects for a longer period in both languages. At the same time, the development in each language spoken by the bilinguals follows the developmental asymmetry found in the language of their monolingual counterparts: there are more omissions in French than in English. It is also shown that language dominance affects the rate of omissions as there are fewer omissions in the language in which children receive more exposure, i.e. the dominant language. We analyze these results as reflecting a bilingual effect based on the retention of a default null object representation. This in turn is supported by reduced overall input for bilingual children and by language-internal input ambiguity.

The high applicative syntax of the dativus commodi/incommodi in Romance

Abstract Dative benefactive/adversative arguments, also known as the ‘dativus commodi/incommodi’ (DCI) in the Latin grammatical tradition, present variable behaviour in Romance. This paper compares and contrasts the syntactic restrictions on DCIs in five Romance languages to reveal that clitic-doubling covaries with the possibility of lexical DCIs and the possibility of combining the DCI with a bare unergative. We argue that Pylkkänens (Introducing arguments, MIT, 2002) High Applicative analysis should be broadened to account for these Romance datives and their variable behaviour so that the DCI clitic is always generated as the head of a high applicative projection. Doubling and non-doubling languages diverge based on the type of D-element that merges in the specifier of ApplP. In clitic-doubling languages (Romanian and Spanish), the DCI essentially matches the Bantu high applicative construction in that lexical datives, as DPs, are merged in the specifier position of the applicative phrase. The Appl head in doubling languages may also introduce a pro as an applied argument whose reference is recovered via the agree relation established with the applied morpheme. In non-doubling languages (French, Portuguese, Italian), the DCI functions quite differently. It may only occur in clitic form as the head of the applied phrase, since lexical indirect objects are PPs and consequently may not merge in Spec,ApplP. A result of this restriction is that an expletive operator is merged in the specifier, binding a VP-internal referential DP, accounting for the restriction on bare unergatives.

Topicalization and object omission in child language

This article offers a closer look at the relationship between object omission in child language and the acquisition of object clitics. The study isolates a context in French where the use of an object clitic is not only possible, or optimal, but mostly obligatory in the adult grammar, namely the clitic left-dislocation context. In addition, the article contrasts French with English, a language that requires a null element in a similar context, topicalization. By exploring the topicalization structures, the study separates the acquisition of object clitics from object omission phenomena. The results confirm those obtained from other experimental methods and from naturalistic observation: French children, in contrast to adults, uniformly prefer null objects across different domains; they continue to do so even in a syntactically triggered context such as clitic left-dislocation. Thus, the article provides evidence for a null object stage in child acquisition independent of the parametric settings of the target language.

Thematic indirect objects in French

We present a descriptive generalisation according to which a verbal or an event argument is merged as an indirect object (IO) when the direct object (DO) position is occupied. Our goal is to formalise this generalisation and to show how current syntactic theory provides the necessary tools to support it. Specifically, the converging consensus that all so-called intransitive verbs have an internal nominal argument resolves previous exceptions to the generalisation and shows that the transitivity restriction on thematic IOs is structural.

PREPOSITION STRANDING IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND FRENCH

This article is concerned with the behavior of prepositions in the variety of French spoken in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The inventory of prepositions which can occur äs so-called orphan prepositions is larger in Prince Edward Island Acadian French (hereafter PEIF) than in other French varieties reported on in the literature: the list of prepositions which can occur without an adjacent lexical complement in PEIF includes ä and de. We will argue, principally on the basis of data involving extractions, that PEIF also allows preposition stranding, a phenomenon not known to occur in other French varieties, and that the essential difference between prepositions in PEIF and in other varieties is that in PEIF they are head governors. The data presented here are of both descriptive and theoretical importance. Research conducted over the last fifteen years within the Exteuded Standard Theory Käs revealed that Preposition Stranding is rare among the worlds languages (cf. Van Riemsdijk 1978). Further, it

1: Remarks On Argument Structure

This volume explores a basic but central question that drives much of the current research in formal syntax. Simply put, this question asks where the various components used to create a clause come from. This area of linguistic research has been investigated in the last few decades within a certain domain called argument structure (AS), and within the generative framework, there are two competing approaches (with variants). This chapter offer remarks on the nature of argument structure designed to set the stage for the various contributions included in this volume. As such, they are not meant to exhaustively present the state of the art in this area of linguistic research, and the references cited here should be complemented by the ones found in the subsequent chapters. The last section of this chapter provides a short summary of the papers included in this volume. Keywords: argument structure; linguistic research

On the Distinction between Preposition Stranding and Orphan Prepositions.

Poplack, Zentz and Dion (PZD; Poplack, Zentz & Dion, 2011, this issue) examine the often unquestioned assumption that the existence of preposition stranding (PS) in Canadian French is linked to the presence of a contact situation with English in the North American context. Although this issue has been the topic of previous research from a syntactic perspective (Bouchard, 1982; Vinet, 1979, 1984), to my knowledge, it has never been explored using variationist sociolinguistic methods applied to a large corpus of spontaneous speech, with emphasis on code-switchers as potential agents of contact-induced change.