The development of clause linking and complex sentences in the second language acquisition of Dutch and French. (FWOAL629)

The ability to produce complex sentences through clause linking (I can't go shopping. I am ill -> I can't go shopping because I am ill) is essential for mature and efficient language use but for many second language learners it also represents a major learning obstacle. This project is the first to investigate both developmental and crosslinguistic aspects of clause linking and sentence complexification within the framework of a unified linguistic theory (Role & Reference Grammar).
We analyse the language productions collected over a period of three years from both native speakers and second language learners (Dutch- and French-speaking secondary school pupils from Brussels) of two different languages, Dutch and French. This will enable us to identify languagespecific features and more universal features in the production and development of complex sentences. The corpus consists of both spoken and written language representing several text types (description, narration, argumentation), which allows us to also investigate the impact of language register and language task on the development of clause linking in a second language.
The aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of how people learn languages and also to test linguistic theories about the structure of sentences.

Keywords:linguistique et littérature, linguistics and literature

Disciplines:Languages and literary studies