The acquisition of French in different contexts: Focus on functional categories (review)

This collection of recent generative, mainly minimalist, studies on the acquisition of functional categories in French focuses on data from first language (L1), second language (L2), and bilingual acquisition and from specific language impairment (SLI). The comparison among these contexts of study is a major strength of the volume. The editors’ introduction describes the fundamental structure assumed, including the internal structure of DP, making the volume accessible to anyone versed in basic minimalist syntax, and provides a table of the aspects of morphosyntax addressed, cross-referenced by chapter, and chapter summaries helpful for reference.

The first section, on L1 and SLI, includes the examination of distance quantification, apparent non-nominative subjects, DP, and the relationship of the developments of the verbal and nominal domains. By means of grammaticality judgments, Marie Labelle and Daniel Valois demonstrate that indefinite partitive quantifiers (e.g. assez ‘enough’) are acquired before universal quantifiers (e.g. chacun ‘each’) and that initially native speakers do not distinguish between the two, suggesting that they have only one quantifier category above VP. Cécile De Cat, examining spontaneous child and adult L1 data, argues that what appear to be nonnomninative subjects in child French are in fact left-peripheral subjects with missing resumptive clitics and not a result of underspecified agreement. Johanne Paradis and Martha Crago find evidence in L1, L2, and SLI naturalistic child data that the acquisition of DP morphosyntax corresponds with a specific range of mean length of utterance, which suggests that L1 transfer of DP structure is not operative in the age range observed. Finally, Cornelia Hamann, analyzing SLI and child L1 data, concludes that nominal and verbal functional categories develop independently.

The second section, on L2 and bilingual acquisition, includes investigation of null arguments, root infinitives, clitics, gender, and DP structure. Adriana Belletti and Cornelia Hamann’s study of the acquisition of French by children of similar ages but different source languages shows use of neither child root infinitives nor null subjects, indicating that the children are beyond the maturational stage characteristic of very early L1 acquisition; in addition, one child’s speech shows evidence of transfer similar to that found in adult L2 acquisition. Jonas Granfeldt and Suzanne Schylter find that differences between the acquisition of clitics in L1 and adult L2 acquisition are accounted for by economy principles of UG. Roger Hawkins and Florencia Franceschina use data from L1 and L2 acquisition, language processing experiments, code-switching, and impaired speech to show that uninterpretable gender features are UG parameters whose availability is subject to a critical period. In contrast, Julia Herschensohn, based on an analysis of object clitics in the spoken and written L2 French of two teenaged Anglophone learners, concludes that the learners access UG in their learning and also transfer structure from L1. Philippe Prévost examines the distribution of root infinitives in spontaneous data from younger Anglophone learners and finds that the structures do not instantiate functional categories. Aafke Hulk describes stages in the acquisition of determiners based on spontaneous data from a bilingual child and argues that DP acquisition is independent of the acquisition of clausal functional categories. Comparing the speech of monolingual and bilingual children, Natascha Müller finds that they differ mainly in frequency of object omission, which she explains in terms of crosslinguistic influence.

The studies show the benefit of thorough review. The conclusiveness of many of the findings is limited by small sample size, but the states of knowledge about the acquisition of functional categories and the remaining research questions are very well represented.