French Postverbal Subjects: A Comparison of Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual, and Multilingual French
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Issues in Early Child Multilingualism
1. | 3;7 | ||
das war ich | wenn ich | war zwei jahre | |
this was I | when I | was two years | |
‘This was me when I was two years old.’ |
2. | 3;8 |
weißt du was kann ich mal machen? | |
know you what can I PART do? | |
‘Do you know what I can do?’ |
3. | a. | English | |||
red apple | my apple | apple-tree | |||
b. | German | ||||
roter apfel | mein apfel | apfelbaum | |||
c. | Farsi | ||||
sib-e qermez | sib-e man | derakht-e sib | |||
apple-ezafe red | apple-ezafe my | tree-ezafe apple | |||
red apple | my apple | apple tree |
3. Postverbal Subjects in Child French
4. | a. | Ce livre, | il est | très intéressant. | |
This book, | he is | very interesting | |||
‘This book, it is very interesting.’ | |||||
b. | Il est très intéressant, | ce livre. | |||
He is very interesting, | this book | ||||
‘It is very interesting, this book.’ |
5. | a. | Lit maman | (Nathalie, 2;0,1) | ||
reads mama | |||||
‘Mama reads.’ | |||||
b. | Pleure clown | (Daniel, 1;8,3) | |||
cries clown | |||||
‘The clown cries.’ | |||||
c. | Assis la poupée | (Nathalie, 2;2,1) | |||
sat-PART the doll | |||||
‘The doll has sat down.’ | |||||
d. | Dormir là Michel | (Philippe, 2;2,1) | |||
to-sleep there Michel | |||||
‘Michel sleeps there.’ | |||||
e. | Veut encore Adrian du pain | (Grégoire, 2;1,3) | |||
wants still Adrian of-the bread | |||||
‘Adrian still wants some bread.’ | |||||
f. | Pousses toi sandales | (Daniel, 1;8,3) | |||
push you sandals | |||||
‘You push your sandals.’ |
6. | a. | Elle dort | (Daniel, 1;8,1) | ||
She sleeps | |||||
‘She sleeps.’ | |||||
b. | Il veut un bruit | (Daniel, 1;11,1) | |||
He wants a noise | |||||
‘He wants a noise.’ | |||||
c. | Train va tomber | (Nathalie, 2;2,2) | |||
Train falls | |||||
‘The train falls.’ | |||||
d. | Elle la voit l’auto | (Nathalie, 2;2,2) | |||
She it-Cl wants the car | |||||
She wants it, the car.’ |
7. | a. | Ek weet dat sy dikwels Chopin gespeel het |
I know that she often Chopin played has | ||
b. | Ek weet dat sy het dikwels Chopin gespeel | |
I know that she has often Chopin played | ||
‘I know that she has often played Chopin.’ |
7. | a. | Structure of an Afrikaans subordinate clause with V2 order |
b. | Structure of an Afrikaans subordinate clause with V-final order | |
4. The Study
4.1. Participants
4.2. Methodology
- Extremely high “excellent”
- Moderately high “bon”
- High average “moyen”
- Low average “moyen”
- Moderately low “médiocre”
- Extremely low “faible”
9. | a. | clown–pleurer |
‘clown–cry.’ | ||
b. | garçon–dormir | |
‘boy–sleep.’ | ||
c. | fille–sauter | |
‘girl–jump.’ | ||
d. | papi–rire | |
‘grandfather–laugh.’ |
4.3. Results
10. | a. | LE N qui Vfin | |
le garçon qui dort | (Simon, 5;3) | ||
the boy who sleeps | |||
‘The boy is sleeping.’ | |||
b. | UN/UNE N qui Vfin | ||
euh un garçon qui dort | (Delia, 5;7) | ||
a boy who sleeps | |||
‘A boy who is sleeping.’ | |||
c. | IL/ELLE/I/ [ɛ] Vfin | ||
elle saute | (Nadette, 3;11) | ||
she jumps | |||
‘She is jumping.’ | |||
d. | Dislocation (left) | ||
le garçon i dortelle saute | (Louisa, 5;5) | ||
the boy he jumps | |||
‘The boy, he is jumping.’ | |||
e. | Bare N | ||
fille | (Yann, 4;3) | ||
girl | |||
f. | DP | ||
un clown, tout triste | (Lino, 3;11) | ||
a clown, really sad | |||
g. | Vfin with null-subj | ||
rit | (Luca, 4;5) | ||
laughs | |||
h. | Non-finite verb | ||
rire | (Sophie-Alixane, 5;9) | ||
laugh-INF | |||
i. | UN/UNE N qui Vnon-fin | ||
un clown qui qui pleuré | (Fleur, 5;7) | ||
a clown who who (has) cried/cry-INF |
11. | a. | Ça Vfin | |
ça saute | (Emma, 3;9) | ||
it jumps | |||
‘It is jumping.’ | |||
b. | Dislocation (right) | ||
il pleure le clown | (Emma, 3;9) | ||
he cries, the clown | |||
c. | Postverbal subject | ||
fait, fille | (Marla, 2;4) | ||
makes, girl | |||
‘The girl makes (it).’ | |||
d. | DP Vfin | ||
la fille saute | (Manon, 5;6) | ||
the girl jumps | |||
‘The girl is jumping.’ | |||
e. | Mixed utterance (German utterance) | ||
schlafen | (Ava, 2;7) | ||
sleep-INF |
5. Discussion
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | As one reviewer correctly remarks, the Cumulative Enhancement Model consequently assumes that non-facilitative transfer should not be observed in the acquisitional L3 data. In order words, negative transfer in L3 acquisition should be absent or explained differently. In fact, many studies on L3 acquisition have presented counter-evidence to this model (e.g., Bardel and Falk’s 2007 study of the acquisition of negation in L3 Swedish and Dutch). Accordingly, positive transfer is an observable effect of the functioning of the language acquisition device. |
2 | Elwert ([1959] 1973) is a self-report (“Erlebnisbericht” as he writes on p. 274). He describes his own trilingual upbringing first in Italy, then in Germany, by his English-speaking mother and his father who had friends speaking German and Italian to him. It is perhaps due to the fact that the community language was present in the home that Elwert ([1959] 1973, p. 284) reports that he could not understand the German-speaking doctor of the family when he addressed Elwert at the age of three. German became one of Elwert’s languages when the family moved to Germany. This was the case when Elwert was eight years old. |
3 | Kathryn’s mother is Filipino-American, her father Chilean-American. The child’s mother came to the United States from the Philippines at age nine; her father moved to Los Angeles from Chile at age twelve. “From birth, Kathryn was addressed primarily in Tagalog by her mother and maternal grandparents, in Spanish by her father and paternal grandmother, and she heard English from her sister, nine years older than herself, and, more indirectly, from family conversations (English was the main medium of communication in the home)” (Montanari 2009, p. 507). |
4 | One reviewer points out that subject clitics are categorically absent in the children’s structures with postverbal subjects. Indeed, Déprez and Pierce (1993, p. 44) noted that pronominal subjects are absent in the children’s untensed clauses and that subject clitics do not appear in the postverbal subject position. The authors explain these results by assuming that subject clitics are affixes in child grammar which are generated in Infl (Inflection) and lexically realized only when bound to a raised verb. Subjects clitics are therefore not equivalent to full NP (Noun Phrase)/DP subjects since they do not parallel the distribution of full NPs/DPs. |
5 | The monolingual child Léonard differed from his peers: He never reached the 5%-mark for postverbal subjects. Notice, however, that his corpus was small in comparison to that of the other two monolingual children: During the whole period of investigation (1;8,9–3;2,25), he used only 1251 finite clauses (Jansen 2015, p. 137). Philippe uttered approximately four times as many finite clauses during approximately the same period. The difference in the amount of production across children might be seen as part of the children’s idiosyncrasies. Notice, however, that it is less likely that a particular target-deviant form appears in a small corpus. |
6 | Cf. footnote 4. An investigation of the use of subject clitics in child French and in the children studied in the present cross-sectional study is in progress (Stahnke et al. 2018). |
7 | One reviewer suggests that our analysis has the consequence that the difference between pro-drop and non-pro-drop languages is that pro-drop languages have more options for EPP satisfaction (namely VD). Currently, we have nothing to say about this idea. We included a paragraph on the possibility of satisfying T’s EPP feature via a subject clitic. We have seen in the data from the monolingual children that subject clitics are used from early on. The debate on the external and internal syntactic structure of French subject clitics is ongoing. Much relies on the analysis of these clitics. If the subject clitic cannot check off the EPP feature in T, then all sentences which contain a subject clitic without a doubled DP must involve a pro in Spec,TP. If it has the potential to check the EPP feature, it is likely that clitics are merged in T, as in Italian dialects, in which they can be obligatory. We believe that the postverbal subject stage in monolingual French is related to the unclear status of subject clitics in French. Any deeper discussion of this issue is outside the scope of the present article. |
8 | The study is part of a larger research project which is financed by the German Science Foundation (MU 875/12-1). The parents gave their consent for their children to take part in the study. |
9 | One of the trilingual children was not tested in the receptive vocabulary task. |
10 | The PPVT was used in the languages under study for which this passive vocabulary test is available, that is, for French, German, Spanish and Catalan. |
11 | We thank one reviewer for pointing this out to us. |
12 | In other words, we cannot exclude the possibility that our results simply show that children who acquire more than one language know that broad-focus sentences trigger SV. Notice, however, that broad-focus sentences are extremely rare in child spontaneous speech. Therefore, we believe that more research which includes, in addition to cross-sectional data, longitudinal data of bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual children is needed. If broad focus is concerned, more monolingual French corpora should be investigated in future work. Nevertheless, a restriction to the broad focus context was necessary in this experiment to exclude dislocations and cleft-sentences as the children’s responses. Future research should also exactly repeat the present production task with monolingual French children. |
13 | This issue was pointed out to us by one reviewer. |
Size/Type of Category Satisfying the EPP-Feature | Type: DP (Determiner Phrase) | Type: Vfinite |
---|---|---|
Size: Raising | French, Afrikaans, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese | Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese |
Size: Pied-piping | Afrikaans, German |
Number of Languages | Lang. A | Lang. B | Lang. C | Lang. D | Lang. E | Number of Children | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bilingual | French | German | 15 | 19 | |||
Bilingual | French | Spanish | 4 | ||||
Trilingual | French | German | Arabic | 2 | 38 | ||
Trilingual | French | German | English | 18 | |||
Trilingual | French | German | Russian | 1 | |||
Trilingual | French | German | Spanish | 3 | |||
Trilingual | French | Spanish | English | 2 | |||
Trilingual | French | Spanish | Italian | 1 | |||
Trilingual | French | Spanish | Catalan | 10 | |||
Trilingual | French | Spanish | Russian | 1 | |||
Multilingual | French | German | Spanish | English | 1 | 6 | |
Multilingual | French | German | Spanish | Catalan | 2 | ||
Multilingual | French | German | Spanish | Dutch | 1 | ||
Multilingual | French | Spanish | Catalan | Galician | 1 | ||
Multilingual | French | Spanish | German | English | Arabic | 1 |
Type of Multilingualism | Bilingual | Trilingual | Multilingual |
---|---|---|---|
Grammatical test participation | 19 | 38 | 6 |
Receptive vocabulary participation | 19 | 379 | 6 |
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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Gil, L.A.; Müller, N. French Postverbal Subjects: A Comparison of Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual, and Multilingual French. Languages 2018, 3, 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030029
Gil LA, Müller N. French Postverbal Subjects: A Comparison of Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual, and Multilingual French. Languages. 2018; 3(3):29. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030029
Chicago/Turabian StyleGil, Laia Arnaus, and Natascha Müller. 2018. "French Postverbal Subjects: A Comparison of Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual, and Multilingual French" Languages 3, no. 3: 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030029