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Article published In: French liaison in second language acquisition / La liaison en français langue étrangère: Issues, methods and perspectives / Thèmes, méthodes et perspectives
Edited by Martin Howard and Malin Ågren
[Language, Interaction and Acquisition 10:1] 2019
► pp. 117–139

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The production of preverbal liaison in Swedish learners of L2 French

 | Lund University
 | Lund University
Published online: 16 May 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.17023.agr
Abstract
The acquisition of preverbal liaison (e.g. ils arrivent /ilzaʀiv/) in second language (L2) French has rarely been explored in detail in previous studies on obligatory liaison. In this study, we conducted an elicited imitation test in order to study the influence of proficiency level, modality (spoken or written), and verb frequency on the use of preverbal liaison among 42 Swedish learners of L2 French and 21 native speakers of French. The results indicate that L2 beginners had considerable difficulty with the production of preverbal liaison, while the most proficient L2 learners performed nearly as well as the native speakers. In addition, we observed that beginner learners, in contrast to the more proficient ones, performed better with written than spoken stimuli. Finally, we observed no impact of verb frequency on participant performance. Based on these results, we discuss the possible influence of input frequency (both type and token) on the production of preverbal liaison, and conclude that future studies need to address the input characteristics of the L2 classroom in more detail.
Résumé
L’acquisition de la liaison préverbale (par ex. ils arrivent /ilzaʀiv/) a rarement été étudiée en détail dans la littérature sur l’acquisition de la liaison obligatoire en français L2. Cette étude présente les résultats d’un test d’imitation de la liaison préverbale en français L2 mettant l’accent sur l’influence du niveau de langue des apprenants, la modalité du stimulus (oral ou écrit) et la fréquence des verbes. 42 apprenants suédois et 21 locuteurs natifs ont participé à l’étude. Les résultats indiquent un développement très fort dans ce domaine où les débutants ont des difficultés considérables à produire la liaison préverbale alors que les apprenants les plus avancés atteignent un résultat proche du groupe contrôle natif. En outre, contrairement aux apprenants avancés, les apprenants débutants ont un meilleur résultat avec un stimulus écrit qu’avec un stimulus oral. Finalement, la production de la liaison préverbale des participants ne semble pas influencée par la fréquence du verbe. Tenant compte de ces résultats, nous discutons les effets possibles de la fréquence des verbes dans l’input sur la production de la liaison et nous constatons qu’il y a un besoin d’études futures sur les caractéristiques de l’input dans la salle de classe L2 en particulier.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research on French liaison
    • 2.1Preverbal liaison in spoken French
    • 2.2L2 acquisition of liaison
    • 2.3The linguistic representation of liaison in L2 learners
  • 3.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2The task
    • 4.3Tested verbs
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
References (44)
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