Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:43:19.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acquisition outcomes across domains in adult simultaneous bilinguals with French as weaker and stronger language1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2013

TANJA KUPISCH ,
TATJANA LEIN ,
DAGMAR BARTON ,
DAWN JUDITH SCHRÖDER ,
ILSE STANGEN  and
ANTJE STOEHR
TANJA KUPISCH*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg Lund University
TATJANA LEIN
Affiliation:
University of Bremen
DAGMAR BARTON
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
DAWN JUDITH SCHRÖDER
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
ILSE STANGEN
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
ANTJE STOEHR
Affiliation:
CLS, Radboud University Nijmegen/IMPRS for Language Sciences, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
*
Address for correspondence: Tanja Kupisch, Italian Studies, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Helgonabacken 12, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden e-mail: tanja.kupisch@uni-hamburg.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates the adult grammars of French simultaneous bilingual speakers (2L1s) whose other language is German. Apart from providing an example of French as heritage language in Europe, the goals of this paper are (i) to compare the acquisition of French in a minority and majority language context, (ii) to identify the relative vulnerability of individual domains, and (iii) to investigate whether 2L1s are vulnerable to language attrition when moving to their heritage country during adulthood. We include two groups of German-French 2L1s: One group grew up predominantly in France, but moved to Germany during adulthood; the other group grew up predominantly in Germany and stayed there. Performance is compared in different domains, including adjective placement, gender marking, articles, prepositions, foreign accent and voice onset time. Results indicate that differences between the two groups are minimal in morpho-syntax, but more prominent in pronunciation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 347 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The research presented in this paper originated in project E11 at the Research Centre of Multilingualism in Hamburg. We wish to acknowledge funding by the German Science Foundation granted to the first author. Part of the research we present is based on thesis work by Deniz Akpinar, Dagmar Barton, Tatjana Lein, Judith Schröder, Ilse Stangen and Antje Stöhr at the University of Hamburg.

References

REFERENCES

Abdelli-Beruh, N. B. (2004). The stop voicing contrast in French sentences: Contextual sensitivity of vowel duration, closure duration, voice onset time, stop release and closure voicing. Phonetica, 61: 201–219.Google Scholar
Abney, S. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Abrahamsson, N. and Hyltenstam, K. (2009). Age of onset and nativelikeness in L2: Listener perception versus linguistic scrutiny. Language Learning, 59.2: 249–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, G. D. (1985). How the young French child avoids the pre-voicing problem for word-initial voiced stops. Journal of Child Language, 12: 37–46.Google Scholar
Andersen, R. (1982). Determining the linguistic attributes of language attrition. In: Lambert, R. and Freed, B. (eds), The Loss of Language Skills. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, pp. 83–118.Google Scholar
Ayoun, D. (2010). Corpus data: shedding the light on French grammatical gender. . .or not. Eurosla Yearbook, 10.1: 119–141.Google Scholar
Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S. and Polinsky, M. (forthcoming). Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics.Google Scholar
Bernardini, P. (2003). Child and adult acquisition of word order in the Italian DP. In: Müller, N. (ed.), (In)vulnerable Domains in Multilingualism. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 41–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E. and Ryan, E. (1985). A metacognitive framework for the development of first and second language skills. In: Forrester-Pressley, D. L., MacKinnon, G. and Walker, T. (eds), Metacognition, Cognition and Human Performance, Orlando FL: Academic Press, pp. 207–252.Google Scholar
Birdsong, D. (1989). Metalinguistic Performance and Interlinguistic Competence. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P. and Weenink, D. (1992–2012). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. <http://www.praat.org/>..>Google Scholar
Bortolini, U., Zmarich, C., Fior, R. and Bonifacio, S. (1995). Word-initial voicing in the productions of stops in normal and preterm Italian infants. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 31: 191–206.Google Scholar
Bullock, B. and Gerfen, C. (2004). Frenchville French: A case study in phonological attrition. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8.3: 303–320.Google Scholar
Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, K. (1995). Phonetic and phonological contrasts in the acquisition of voicing: voice onset time production in Hindi and English. Journal of Child Language, 22: 275–305.Google Scholar
De Houwer, A. (1995). Bilingual language acquisition. In: Fletcher, P. and MacWhinney, B. (eds), Handbook of Child Language. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 219–250.Google Scholar
Deuchar, M. and Clark, A. (1996). Early bilingual acquisition of the voicing contrast in English and Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 24: 351–365.Google Scholar
Domahs, U., Wiese, R., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I. and Schlesewsky, M. (2008). The processing of German word stress: evidence for the prosodic hierarchy. Phonology, 25: 1–36.Google Scholar
Fabiano-Smith, L. and Bunta, F. (2012). Voice onset time of voiceless bilabial and velar stops in 3-year-old bilingual children and their age-matched monolingual peers. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 26.2: 148–163.Google Scholar
Fischer-Jørgensen, E. (1972). PTK et BDG français en position intervocalique accentuée. In: Valdman, A. (ed.), Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics to the Memory of Pierre Delattre. Mouton: The Hague, pp. 143–200.Google Scholar
Fischer-Jørgensen, E. (1976). Some data on North German stops and affricates. Annual Report of the Institute of Phonetics of the University of Copenhagen, 10: 149–200.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. (1984). The detection of French accent by American listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 76.3: 692–707.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning. Theory, findings, and problems. In: Strange, W. (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research. Timonium, MD: York Press, pp. 233–277.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. and Eefting, W. (1987). Cross language switching in stop consonant perception and production by Dutch speakers of English. Speech Communication, 6: 185–202.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. and Hammond, R. M. (1982). Mimicry of non-distinctive phonetic differences between language varieties. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 5.1: 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores, C. (2010). The effect of age on language attrition: Evidence from bilingual returnees. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13.4: 533–546.Google Scholar
Fowler, A. C., Sramko, V., Ostry, D. J., Rowland, S. A. and Hallé, P. (2008). Cross language phonetic influences on the speech of French-English bilinguals. Journal of Phonetics, 36: 649–663.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gabriel, C. (2002). Französische Präpositionen aus generativer Sicht. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galmiche, M. (1986). Référence indéfinie, événements, propriétés et pertinence. In: David, J. and Kleiber, G. (eds), Déterminants: syntaxe et sémantique. Paris: Klincksieck, pp. 41–71.Google Scholar
Genesee, F. and Nicoladis, E. (2007). Bilingual first language acquisition. In: Hoff, E. and Shatz, M. (eds), Handbook of Language Development. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 324–342.Google Scholar
Granfeldt, J. (2005). The development of gender assignment in bilingual first and second language French. In: Dewaele, J.-M. (ed.), Focus on French a Foreign Language: Multidisciplinary Approaches. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 164–190.Google Scholar
Granfeldt, J., Schlyter, S. and Kilhstedt, M. (2007). French as cL2, 2L1 and L1 in pre-school children. In: Granfeldt, J. (ed.), PERLES 24. Studies in Romance Bilingual Acquisition–Age of Onset and Development of French and Spanish. Lund University, pp. 7–42.Google Scholar
Haag, W. K. (1979). An articulatory experiment on voice onset time in German stop consonants. Phonetica: International Journal of Phonetic Science, 36: 169–181.Google Scholar
Håkansson, G. (1995). Syntax and morphology in language attrition: a study of five bilingual expatriate Swedes. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5.2: 153–169.Google Scholar
Jesney, K. (2004). The Use of Global Foreign Accent Rating in Studies of L2 Acquisition. Annotated Bibliography, Language Research Centre University of Calgary.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979). A Functional Approach to Child Language. A Study of Determiners and Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M. M., Lleó, C. and Rakow, M. (2004). Voice onset time in bilingual German-Spanish children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7.1: 71–88.Google Scholar
Kewley-Port, D. and Preston, M. S. (1974). Early apical stop production: A voice onset time analysis. Journal of Phonetics, 2.3: 195–210.Google Scholar
Kupisch, T. (2012). Specific and generic subjects in the Italian of German–Italian simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15.4: 736–756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kupisch, T., Müller, N. and Cantone, K. F. (2002). Gender in monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition: Comparing Italian and French. Lingue e Linguaggio, 1: 107–149.Google Scholar
Kupisch, T. and Pierantozzi, C. (2010). Interpreting definite plural subjects: A comparison of German and Italian monolingual and bilingual children. In: Franich, K., Iserman, K. M. and Keil, L. L. (eds), 34th BUCLD Proceedings. Boston: Boston University Press, pp. 245–254.Google Scholar
Laenzlinger, C. (2000). French adjective ordering: Perspectives on DP-internal movement types. Generative Grammar in Geneva, 1: 55–104.Google Scholar
Laeufer, C. (1996). The acquisition of a complex phonological contrast: voice timing patterns of English initial stops by native French speakers. Phonetica: International Journal of Phonetic Science, 53.1–2: 86–110.Google Scholar
Lisker, L. and Abramson, A. S. (1964). A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: acoustical measurements. Word, 20: 384–422.Google Scholar
Lyster, R. (2006). Predictability in French gender attribution: a corpus analysis. Journal of French Language Studies, 16: 69–92.Google Scholar
Macken, M. A. and Barton, D. (1979). The acquisition of the voicing contrast in English: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants. Journal of Child Language, 7.1: 41–74.Google Scholar
Macken, M. A. and Barton, D. (1980). The acquisition of the voicing contrast in Spanish: a phonetic and phonological study of word-initial stop consonants. Journal of Child Language, 7.3: 433–458.Google Scholar
MacLeod, A. A. N. and Stoel-Gammon, C. (2009). The use of voice onset time by early bilinguals to distinguish homorganic stops in Canadian English and Canadian French. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30.1: 53–77.Google Scholar
MacLeod, A. A. N. and Stoel-Gammon, C. (2010). What is the impact of age of second language acquisition on the production of consonants and vowels among childhood bilinguals? International Journal of Bilingualism, 14.4: 400–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Major, R. C. (1987). English voiceless stop production by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Phonetics, 15: 197–202.Google Scholar
Major, R. C. (1992). Losing English as a first language. The Modern Language Journal, 76.2: 190–208.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (ed.) (1990). Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (ed.) (1994). Bilingual First Language Acquisition: French and German Grammatical development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (1995). Parameters in acquisition. In: Fletcher, P. and MacWhinney, B. (eds), Handbook of Child Language. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 10–35.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2009). Second language acquisition in early childhood. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 28.1: 5–34.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2011). First and Second Language Acquisition: Parallels and Differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2006). Incomplete acquisition as a feature of bilingual and L2 grammars. In: Slabakova, R., Montrul, S. and Prévost, P. (eds), Inquiries in Linguistic Development: In Honor of Lydia White. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 335–359.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism. Re-examining the Age-Factor. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2009). Re-examining the Fundamental Differences Hypothesis: What can early bilinguals tell us? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31.2: 225–257.Google Scholar
Montrul, S., Foote, R. and Perpinán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and adult Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58.3: 503–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. and Ionin, T. (2010). Transfer effects in the interpretation of definite articles by Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13: 449–473.Google Scholar
Moyer, A. (1999). Ultimate attainment in L2 phonology. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21: 81–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, N. (1990). Developing two gender assignment systems simultaneously. In: Meisel, J. M. (ed.), Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 193–234.Google Scholar
Müller, N. (1993). Komplexe Sätze: der Erwerb von COMP und von Wortstellungsmustern bei bilingualen Kindern (Französisch/Deutsch). Narr: Tübingen.Google Scholar
Müller, N. (1999). Gender and number in acquisition. In: Unterbeck, B. and Rissanen, M. (eds), Gender in Grammar and Cognition. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, pp. 351–399.Google Scholar
Neuhauser, S. (2011). Foreign accent imitation and variation of VOT and voicing in plosives. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Phonetic Science, Hong Kong, 1462–1465.Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross linguistic transfer in adjective-noun strings by preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9.1: 15–32.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. and Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18: 1–15.Google Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., Lewedeg, V. and Oller, D. K. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18: 41–58.Google Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A., Munn, A., Schmitt, C. and DeIrish, M. (2004). Learning definite determiners: genericity and definiteness in English and Spanish. In: Beachley, B., Brown, A. and Conlin, F. (eds), Proceedings Supplement of the 28th BUCLD, pp. 1–12.Google Scholar
Piske, T., MacKay, I. R. A. and Flege, J. E. (2001). Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: a review. Journal of Phonetics, 29: 191–215.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. In: Browne, W.et al. (eds), Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, Cornell Meeting (1995). Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 370–406.Google Scholar
Polinsky, M. (2008). Gender under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun categorization. Heritage Language Journal, 6.1: 40–71.Google Scholar
Rizzi, S., Gil, L., Müller, J. and Müller, N. (2013). Adjective placement in bilingual Romance-Romance and Romance-German children with special reference to Romance (French, Italian and Spanish). Studia Linguistica 67.1: 123–147.Google Scholar
Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13.2: 155–163.Google Scholar
Royle, P. and Valois, D. (2010). Acquisition of adjectives in Quebec French as revealed by elicitation data. Journal of French Language Studies, 20: 313–338.Google Scholar
Schmid, M. and Köpke, B. (2008). L1 attrition and the mental lexicon. In: Pavlenko, A. (ed.), The Bilingual Mental Lexicon. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 209–238.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., Filiaci, F. and Baldo, M. (2009). Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12: 239–257.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (1993). Incomplete vs. divergent representations of unaccusativity. Second Language Research, 9.1: 22–47.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. and Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13: 1–16.Google Scholar
Stoel-Gammon, C. (1985). Phonetic inventories, 15–24 months. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 28: 505–512.Google Scholar
Sundara, M. and Polka, L. (2008). Discrimination of coronal stops by bilingual adults: The timing and nature of language interaction. Cognition, 106.1: 234–258.Google Scholar
Sundara, M., Polka, L. and Baum, S. (2006). Production of coronal stops by simultaneous bilingual adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9: 97–114.Google Scholar
Tucker, G. R., Lambert, W. E. and Rigault, A. A. (1977). The French Speaker's Skill with Grammatical Gender: An Example of Rule-Governed Behavior. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Walker, D. C. (1975). Word stress in French. Language, 51.4: 887–900.Google Scholar
Watson, I. (1990). Acquiring the voicing contrast in French: A comparative study of monolingual and bilingual children. In: Green, J. N. and Ayres-Bennett, W. (eds), Variation and Change in French: Essays Presented to Rebecca Posner on the Occasion of her Sixtieth Birthday. London: Routledge, pp. 37–60.Google Scholar
White, L. (2009). Grammatical theory: Interfaces and L2 knowledge. In: Ritchie, W. B. and Bhatia, T. K. (eds), The New Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, pp. 49–68.Google Scholar