Introduction

Bourns, Stacey Katz; Myers, Lindsy L.

doi:10.1075/pbns.244.00int

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…While this analysis also holds for the English it -cleft, there are subtle, but crucial differences that distinguish it from the French c'est -cleft. First, in terms of construction frequency, the French c'est -cleft is used much more commonly than its English counterpart (Bourns, 2014; Carter-Thomas, 2009). This is primarily due to constraints on French prosody: whereas English can shift prosodic prominence to match the location of the focus constituent, French is more rigid, placing prosodic stress only at the right edge of an intonation phrase.…”

Section: Basic Properties Of the French C'est-cleftmentioning

confidence: 99%

Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft

Destruel

Donaldson

2016

Applied Psycholinguistics

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This paper examines the extent to which second language (L2) speakers of French acquire the semantic and pragmatic (or interpretive) properties associated with the c'est-cleft, specifically the exhaustive inference. This phenomenon is relevant to theories of language acquisition because it is situated at the interface of syntax and pragmatics. The results from a forced-choice task challenge the empirical adequacy of the interface hypothesis (Sorace, 2011, 2012; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006), which claims that external interfaces between a linguistic module and a cognitive module remain problematic even at the highest levels of L2 acquisition. The results from 40 L2 learners at three proficiency levels reveal development from nontargetlike to nativelike behavior. In particular, the high-proficiency group interprets the c'est-cleft, as well as canonical subject–verb–object sentences and sentences with exclusives (i.e., seul(ement) “only”), in a statistically identical way to the French native speaker control group.

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Section: Basic Properties Of the French C'est-cleftmentioning

confidence: 99%