Processing possessives in French as a foreign language: Design of an experiment

The paradigm of possessive determiners differs in systematic ways across languages and causes cognitive resolution problems in the interpretation of a foreign language. Based on previous investigations into cross-linguistic influences (CLI) in learners’ interpretation of possessive determiners, this article presents the design of an experiment for testing English, German and Norwegian adult learners of French. We specify two kinds of processing problems: a direction problem (orientation towards possessor vs. possessee) and a problem of lexical parasites (‘false friends’). The experiment is directed at learners’ spontaneous interpretation of the singular possessives "son", "sa" and "ses", on account of a partly false friendship with the possessive determiners in these learners’ first languages.

Lexical interference in non-native resolution of possessives?

Research on non-native pronoun resolution has predominantly been concerned with (i) ‘ordinary’ 3rd person pronouns/anaphors like En. "he", "she", "they" or "himself", "herself", "themselves", (ii) language pairs involving English as the native (L1) or the foreign (L2) language, and (iii) the role that binding constraints and syntactic structure in general play in L2 versus L1 processing. The present paper – a follow-up study to Pitz et al. (2017) – deviates from this trend in all three respects: We investigate how L1-Norwegian learners of L2-German interpret the two German possessive pronouns/determiners "sein" (≈ his) and "ihr" (≈ her or their), arguing that lexical divergence between the possessive systems, and in particular the formal similarity between binding-neutral L2-German "sein" and the L1-Norwegian reflexive possessive "sin", may enhance or interfere with L2 comprehension, depending on the structural conditions. In Section 2 we briefly present the two possessive systems. Section 3 summarizes relevant research on pronoun resolution, with a special view to possessives. Sections 4–6 present a pilot study on L1-Norwegian learners’ grammaticality judgments of "sein" and "ihr" in simple sentences (Sect. 5) and a forced-choice resolution experiment involving a group of L1-Norwegian learners with a background two or three years’ teaching of L2-German at high-school level and a control group of native speakers of German (Sect. 6). The final Section 7 provides a summary and concluding discussion of our findings.

Processing possessives in simultaneous interpreting from English to Polish

The present paper reports on an experiment in which the use of possessives is investigated in an interpreting task from English to Polish. The English possessive determiner system is neutral with respect to the syntactic position of the antecedent possessor, while Polish distinguishes lexically between locally bound – i.e. reflexive – and non-reflexive possessive modifiers. The interpreter therefore has to ‘compute’ mentally the syntactic position of the antecedent possessor in order to make the correct choice in Polish as the target language. The study shows that this is cognitively a very demanding task in simultaneous interpreting, as many errors as well as self-corrections occur. The study furthermore shows that interpreters adapt their language to their audience, and adequate omissions, as well as correct form of the possessive occur more often when they have a group of engineers in mind than when they interpret for language specialists. We understand this to mean that the cognitive complexity of solving the cross-linguistic asymmetry in the possessive system causes more errors when the interpreter stays closer to the source text in speaking to language specialists.

On the interpretation of possessives in Czech: An experimental approach

This paper presents first findings from an offline study of Czech native speakers’ use and interpretation of reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns. The study is part of a larger possessive project outlined by Fabricius-Hansen et al. (2017), leaning on the comprehension experiment presented in Pitz et al. (2017). The study encompasses questionnaire data collected from 259 informants who were tested under four different conditions on two competing pronouns: the reflexive possessive (svůj) and the 3rd person non-reflexive possessive (jeho). The results revealed that Czech native speakers show a strong uncertainty when interpreting constructions with a cataphoric non-reflexive possessive. This shows that even for native speakers, the establishment of the anaphoric and cataphoric relations under certain syntactic conditions is a challenging and highly complex task. With these results, several hypotheses are formulated in various target-source-language pairs concerning the processing of reflexive and non-reflexive possessives in L2.

Traduire en norvégien des constructions détachées françaises

Le présent article consiste en une étude de la construction détachée en français au prisme de sa traduction en norvégien par des apprenants de niveau B1. Plus précisément, nous nous pencherons sur les cas de syntagmes adjectivaux et participiaux en constructions détachées. En inscrivant leur description théorique dans le cadre formel de Combettes (1998, 2005), nous nous attarderons sur deux aspects de ces structures – le repérage référentiel et la relation sémantique – autant de potentiels défis à la compréhension de l’apprenant. Une enquête établie en deux temps (tests 1 et 2) constituera ensuite l’empirie de nos analyses. Dans une démarche de recherche-action, à partir des descriptions théoriques fournies, nous dresserons un inventaire des écueils syntaxiques et sémantiques sur lesquels se heurtent les étudiants dans leurs traductions. Ce répertoriage mettra en exergue les différences d’emplois fondamentales entre le norvégien et le français et nous guidera vers une conclusion contrastive didactique à l’intention des apprenants.

Motivasjon for separate numerus- og definittprojeksjonar i norsk DP-struktur

I denne artikkelen vil eg legge fram og diskutere to ulike typar empiriske argument for å rekne med at DEF og NUM eksisterer som separate funksjonelle kjernar/projeksjonar i strukturen til DP i norsk. Det første argumentet har å gjere med språkblanding mellom norsk og engelsk, nærmare bestemt data der ein engelsk substantivstamme saman med det engelske pluralsuffikset -s blir blanda inn i norsk. Det andre argumentet har å gjere med interaksjonen mellom pre- og postnominale possessivar og bøyingsmorfologien knytt til substantivet i DPen. Analysane i begge tilfella viser klar evidens for at DEF og NUM må reknast som separate kjernar/projeksjonar. Artikkelen inneheld eksplisitte treanalysar av dei ulike fenomena som blir diskuterte.

Extraction strategies in Norwegian

In this paper I will show that it is possible to extract elements from an embedded root clause in a V2 language, provided that the deleted copy is spelled out in a high position. However, if the embedded clause does not have V0-to-C0 movement, no deleted copy can be spelled out. This difference falls out naturally from the assumption that embedded root clauses must be thematically complete and that in the case of movement chains, the foot of the chain cannot be spelled out. This paper is a detailed study of extraction strategies in Norwegian, based on a corpus of 1329 informants. Its novelty lies in combining the study of extraction strategies with the presence of resumptive elements in the embedded clause.

Norme et variation dans l’enseignement du français langue étrangère : questions de phonétique

La langue orale se caractérise par une multitude de pratiques. Elle ne dispose pas, comme le fait la langue écrite, d’une norme stable et objective ; la variété légitime repose sur des normes subjectives reflétant les usages de groupes socialement dominants. Dans le présent article nous nous interrogeons sur la place de la variation dans l’enseignement de la prononciation dans un contexte de français langue étrangère.