Cross-linguistic similarity and the L2 acquisition of French subject-verb agreement

Acquiring French verb morphology is a long and slow process for L2 learners (Véronique et al. 2009; Bartning & Schlyter, 2004). Many factors are involved in the very gradual development. The input factor has been investigated and previous studies indicate that the frequency of the verb in the input is a good predictor for the learnability of distinctive forms (Sergeeva & Chevrot 2012; Ågren & van Weijer 2013). The morphophonological type of verb also seems to be a good predictor to account for morphological diversification (Michot 2014). A less often investigated factor is the influence of the properties of the inflectional morphology in the L1 of the learners. The aim of our study is therefore to test the effect of cross-linguistic similarity between source and target languages on the production of subject-verb agreement in L2 French.

The study involves four source languages (Flemish, German, Italian and Swedish) and one target language (French). The source languages are all inflectional languages but with different morphophonological verb properties in the present tense, ranging from very poor (Swedish) to very rich (Italian) verb morphology. 114 L2 learners of French at the A2 and B1 levels of the CEFR (European Council, 2001) participated in the study. They performed an oral narrative task contrasting singular and plural contexts of subject-verb agreement.

Results indicate a significant difference between L1 groups in terms of correct SV agreement but they also show that the overall presence of rich verb morphology in the L1 does not, on its own, result in a more correct SV agreement. It is when comparing learners at two different proficiency levels A2 and B1 that we observe differences in the rate of L2 development, which may be explained as an effect of CLI. Overall, results indicate a complex interplay of different factors, where the role of CLI must be further investigated in future studies in relation to L2 French.