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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2021
Edited by Mark Dingemanse, Eva van Lier and Jorrig Vogels
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 38] 2021
► pp. 114–127

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French as a foreign language in the Netherlands

An L2 or an L3? A study on crosslinguistic influences from Dutch and English

 | Utrecht University
 | Utrecht University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Utrecht University.

Published online: 29 October 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00056.tes
Abstract
Exposure to English is more extensive in today’s society than to French. In this study we investigated crosslinguistic influences from Dutch and/or English to language performances in French as a foreign language, while controlling for language proficiency in French, English and Dutch, and exposure to English.
We tested Dutch learners of French (n = 65) with respect to the acceptability of reduced relative clauses and attachment preferences in full relative clauses. The results showed crosslinguistic influence in the acceptability task and the preference task from English and Dutch respectively. Furthermore, language proficiency in English seems to affect attachment preferences in French. We concluded that these findings support the Linguistic Proximity Model (Westergaard, Marit, Natalia Mitrofanova, Roksolana Mykhaylyk & Yulia Rodina. 2017. “Crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of a third language: The Linguistic Proximity Model.” International Journal of Bilingualism 21 (6): 666–682. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and that French in Dutch secondary education might be a third language, instead of a second language.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Source of transfer in L3 acquisition
  • 3.Reduced relative clauses and attachment preferences in Dutch, English and French
    • 3.1Structural differences
    • 3.2Research questions and hypotheses
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Materials and Procedures
      • Acceptability task
      • Attachment preference task
    • 4.3Data analysis
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (18)
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Cited by two other publications

Hordijk, Marieke & Marco Bril
2025. Do bilinguals perform better than monolinguals in foreign language vocabulary learning? A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Bilingualism DOI logo
Lindqvist, Christina
2025. Approaches to investigating French as a third language. In Approaches and Methods in French Second Language Acquisition Research [Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, 9], ► pp. 334 ff. DOI logo

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