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Tense and verb raising in advanced L2 French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2009

JULIA HERSCHENSOHN  and
DEBORAH ARTEAGA
JULIA HERSCHENSOHN
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Department of Linguistics, Box 354340, Seattle, WA 98195-4340, USA e-mail: [email protected]
DEBORAH ARTEAGA
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of Foreign Languages, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5047, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Two UG approaches to L2A propose different views of parameter resetting, depending on the capacity of interlanguage grammars to gain new values for uninterpretable functional features. Representational Deficit/Interpretability (e.g. Hawkins, 2003) maintains that parameter settings are limited to L1 values, whereas Full Access (e.g. Prévost & White, 2000) claims L2 parameter values may be gained; both assume initial transfer of L1 morphosyntactic settings. We examine verb morphosyntax of three advanced anglophone learners of L2 French, beginning with a description of the theoretical issues. We next report the study: the subjects, data collection and results. The final section discusses the data in terms of the two approaches, concluding that the results generally support FA over RD/I.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 291 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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