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In:L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning: The view from Romance
Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 289–314

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Chapter 11
Gender marking in L1 and L2 French

Syntactic complexity, lexical category and phonological expression

 | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Published online: 17 November 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.11bri
Abstract
Very little is known about the accuracy of grammatical inflection in written language. In this study we investigated the effects of syntactic complexity, lexical category and phonological expression on gender marking in L1 and L2 French. Native speakers of French (n = 40) and Dutch learners of French (n = 45) completed a fill-in-the-gap task in which the test items were controlled for the linguistic factors under investigation. The results showed main effects for syntactic complexity and lexical category. For phonological expression we only observed moderation effects. We conclude that syntactic complexity and lexical category affect the accuracy of gender marking in written L1 and L2 French more than phonological expression.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.L1 and L2 acquisition of inflection: The role of syntactic complexity
  • 3.The L1 and L2 acquisition of inflection: The role of phonological expression
  • 4.Gender marking on adjectives and past participles in French and Dutch
    • 4.1Gender marking in French
    • 4.2Ranking agreement constructions in French
    • 4.3Gender marking in Dutch
  • 5.The research question and hypotheses
  • 6.The experiment
    • 6.1Method
      • 6.1.1Participants
      • 6.1.2Materials and procedures
    • 6.2Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
References (40)
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