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CONTACT, CONTEXT, AND COLLOCATION

The Emergence of Sociostylistic Variation in L2 French Learners during Study Abroad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Kristen M. Kennedy Terry
Kristen M. Kennedy Terry*
Affiliation:
University of California, Merced
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kristen M. Kennedy Terry, Merritt Writing Program, University of California, Merced, 5200 Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343. E-mail: kkennedyterry@ucmerced.edu or kmtkennedy@ucdavis.edu
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Abstract

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the elision of /l/ in third-person subject clitic pronouns (il vient [il vjɛ̃] ∼ [i vjɛ̃] “he is coming”). Speech data are compared and correlated with the results of a social network strength scale designed for the study abroad learning context. Results demonstrate that phonological variation patterns are acquired in a predictable order based on token type and collocation and that social networks with native speakers are statistically significant predictors of phonological variation patterns.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 553 - 578
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

I gratefully acknowledge funding for this research project provided by the Department of French and Italian at the University of California, Davis. I also thank Robert J. Bayley and Eric Russell for their expertise and critical commentary, as well as two anonymous reviewers who provided detailed and constructive feedback on this manuscript. Finally, I am indebted to the participants who shared their experiences with me during their time abroad.

References

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