Verb acquisition in monolingual and multilingual children and adults (original) (raw)
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Are Second Language Learners Just as Good at Verb Morphology as First Language Learners?
BUCLD 39 Online Proceedings Supplement
We addressed whether children learning French as a first (L1) and multilingual children (MUL, for whom French is a second or third language) are sensitive to sub-regular verb conjugation patterns (i.e., neither default, nor idiosyncratic) (e.g., Albright, 2002; Clahsen, 1999). Some argue that children with other first languages have more difficulty learning verb conjugation patterns due to their lesser exposure to the language (e.g., Nicoladis, Palmer, & Marentette, 2007). We hypothesized that older children would perform better than younger children and that L1 and MUL children learning French would process verb inflection patterns differently based on their default status (-er verbs), and reliability (e.g., sub-regular -ir verbs), with MUL children showing weaknesses in non-default types (Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). We elicited verbs in 169 children (aged 67 to 92 months) attending preschool (n = 105) or first grade (n = 64), who were L1 or MUL learners of Québec French, using 24 verbs with regular, sub-regular, and irregular participle forms (6 of each, ending in /e/, /i/, /y/ or IDiosyncratic) in the passé composé (perfect past). Using our Android application Jeu de verbes, verbs were presented with images (see Figure 1) to each child in an infinitival form (infinitival complements or the periphrastic future, e.g., Marie va cacher ses poupées ‘Mary will hide her dolls’) and present tense contexts (e.g., Marie cache toujours ses poupées ‘Mary always hides her dolls’). Children were prompted to produce the passé composé by answering the question ‘What did she do yesterday, Marie?’. Preliminary analyses (n = 94, 70 in preschool, 31 L1 and 39 MUL; 24 in first grade, 13 L1 and 11 MUL) reveal a Verb conjugation group effect, F(3, 88) = 52.31, p < .001 as well as a Verb conjugation group*Language group*Age group interaction, F(3, 88) = 3.35, p < .05. Moreover, trends toward significant effects were found for Age group, F(1, 90) = 3.07, p = .08, and for the interaction of factors Verb conjugation group*Language group, F(3, 88) = 2.36, p = .08. These results indicate that responses to verb conjugation groups differ according to verb conjugation, age and language group (see Figure 1). Overall, children’s responses to verb conjugation groups highlight morphological productivity and reliability effects on mastery of French conjugation. Results also show higher target productions in the first grade than in preschool and varying response patterns depending on language background. In depth analyses comparing all 169 children including language group analyses (L1 vs MUL) will further inform us on children’s mastery of French passé composé, while non-parametric analyses on frequency of response types should reveal a clearer picture of children’s response strategies by verb or language group. These data will show that MUL children who have lesser exposure to oral French language, rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as L1 children (and might even do better) in immersive (school) contexts.
Insensitivity to verb conjugation patterns in French children with SLI
Specific language impairment (SLI) is characterized by persistent difficulties that affect language abilities in otherwise normally developing children (Leonard, 2014). It remains challenging to identify young children affected by SLI in French. We tested oral production of the passé composé tense in 19 children in kindergarten and first grade with SLI aged from 5;6 to 7;4 years. All children were schooled in a French environment, but with different linguistic backgrounds. We used an Android application, Jeu de verbes (Marquis et al., 2012), with six verbs in each of four past participle categories (ending in -é, -i, -u, and Other irregulars). We compared their results and error types to those of control children (from Marquis, 2012–2014) matched for gender, age, languages spoken at home, and parental education. Results show that children with SLI do not master the passé composé in the same way as typical French children do, at later ages than previously shown in the literature. This task shows potential for oral language screening in French-speaking children in kindergarten and first grade, independently of language background.
Variable effects of morphology and frequency on inflection patterns in French preschoolers
2007
We studied the emergence of productive verb inflection in pre-school native speakers of Quebec French using a verb elicitation task. We verified whether verb conjugation group (regular vs. irregular morphology) and frequency affect ability to produce correctly inflected passé composé forms. Special attention was paid to regularization into regular (default) and sub-regular conjugations, and to irregularization patterns. Results indicate that French-speaking children are able to productively use inflectional rules at very young ages and are sensitive to verb frequency and morphological patterns, both default and sub-regular, as evidenced by differential production patterns for regular and irregular verbs
2008
This study examines inflectional abilities in French-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) using a verb elicitation task. Eleven children with SLI and age-matched controls (37–52 months) participated in the experiment.We elicited the passé composé using eight regular and eight irregular high frequency verbs matched for age of acquisition. Children with SLI showed dissimilar productive verb inflection abilities to control children (even when comparing participants with similar verb vocabularies and mean length of utterance in words). Control children showed evidence of overregularization and sensitivity to morphological structure, whereas no such effects were observed in the SLI group. Error patterns observed in the SLI group demonstrate that, at this age, they cannot produce passé composé forms in elicitation tasks, even though some participants used them spontaneously. Either context by itself might therefore be insufficient to fully evaluate productive linguistic abilities in children with SLI.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2011
The present study examined the language development of children adopted from China to examine possible early age effects with respect to their use of complement clitics, lexical diversity and verb morphology. We focused on these aspects of French because they distinguish second language learners of French and native French-speaking children with language impairment from children learning French as a native language and, in the case of object clitics and certain verb tenses, are relatively late to emerge in native speakers. Thus, it might be expected that they would be susceptible to the delayed onset of acquisition of French experienced by internationally adopted children. Language samples of twelve adopted children from 3;6 to 4;8 living in French-speaking families were analyzed and compared to those of non-adopted monolingual French-speaking children of the same age, sex and socio-economic status. The adopted and control children had similar levels of socio-emotional adjustment an...
Buregeya, A (2018) Interlanguage variability in the use of French auxiliary verbs ....pdf
Interlanguage variability in the use of French auxiliary verbs by low-proficiency learners of French in Kenya , 2018
This paper set out to identify the variants of the rules governing the choice of the auxiliary (whether avoir, ‘to have’ or être, ‘to be’) in the passé composé tense in the French of low-proficiency learners in Kenya. Data were collected from twenty-three compositions written by students from three different levels (i.e. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year) of proficiency in French as a foreign language in Kenya. A frequency analysis approach was used to establish which variant of the rule the learners used to select, or to avoid selecting, either avoir or être as the appropriate auxiliary. The key observations made by the paper are the following: the learners from the lowest level of proficiency (i.e. the Form-2 students) virtually only used, and “correctly”, the auxiliary avoir. However, their apparent correct uses of this auxiliary can in fact be best analysed as being merely formulaic sequences memorised from earlier lessons. On the other hand, in the majority of cases their higher-level counterparts (the Form-3 and Form-4 students) avoided the use of an auxiliary altogether, while in the minority of cases where they did use one, this tended to be être, which in most cases was wrongly used for avoir. Overall, these observations point to a picture of the U-shaped learning that has been reported in language acquisition.