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Re-assembling objects: a new look at the L2 acquisition of pronominal clitics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2015

ELENA SHIMANSKAYA  and
ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA
ELENA SHIMANSKAYA*
Affiliation:
West Virginia University
ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA
Affiliation:
The University of Southampton University of Iowa
*
Address for correspondence: Elena Shimanskaya, Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, 217D Chitwood Hall, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506elena.shimanskaya@mail.wvu.edu
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Abstract

We test the predictions of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) as applied to the L2 acquisition of French pronominal clitics by Anglophone learners, capitalizing on the fact that different semantic and morphosyntactic features are lexically encoded by French and English pronouns. A picture selection task and a self-paced reading task examine how the information encoded in the L2 forms affects off-line and on-line pronoun interpretation. Our findings suggest that the initial L1–L2 mapping was indeed influenced by the L1. Nevertheless, L2 learners successfully reassembled features into L2 bundles, as evidenced by target-like off-line performance. L2 reading time patterns, however, indicate that L1 representations may have a longer-lasting impact: learners’ reactions to the mismatching input followed a different pattern and were slightly delayed as compared to native speakers’. These results are in line with the FRH, which conceptualizes L1 influence as the transfer of atomic linguistic features and their combinations.

Keywords

Frenchobject cliticslanguage processingfeature reassemblyacquisition of morphosyntax
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 512 - 529
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

We thank Amandine Lorente-Lapole, Ellenor Shoemaker, faculty and instructors in the department of French and Italian of the University of Iowa for their help in recruiting the experiment participants. Our appreciation also extends to two anonymous reviewers who helped us strengthen the paper. All remaining shortcomings are our own.

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