... f Aspect€'of the acquisition of the ,French verb system by young speakers of, English and French in Quebec and Ontario -41 o , ~'\ Edouard Beniak ,~ ~ ~ A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty, McGill University, in partial fulfillment of the requlre- ments for the degree of Master of Arts Departrnent of Linguis"tics McGill University rbvember 1981 c ( f '\ ,--:; ... f"'~'~+...,.""~.o;_,,o; .......__ ~_....---....~ Beniak M.A. Linguistics' Short title: . ~spects of the ~cquiaition of the French ve system .------- \ \ \ \ . ,~ 1 \ \ \' \ \ \ 1 \ (. 'Sommaire \- ,> Aspects of the acquisi tion\ of the French verb ;~stem \ \ by young speakers of Epglish and French in Quebec and \Ontario \ \ \ Edouard Ben ak \ .. Ce mémoire comporte t'ro(is études dont chacune consiste en 1 ~ , "une comparaison de l' acquis~ tion d'ut aspect du systême verbal du français par trois groupes de loc teurs différents. Le~ lo­ cuteurs sont des jeunes anglophones ·bui apprennent le franFais comme deuxi~me langue dans un prograbne d'immersion hâtivé' au Québec, des jeunes francophones unilingues inscrits dans d~S écoles élémentai res de langue franç~is~ au QuéD~c et des jbunes francophones bilingues inscri ts dan~ des écoles ~ langue (ran­ çaise en Ontario. Les trois aspect~ du syst~me verbal du 1fran- ça~s, a,. l'''teue d son t 1 a syn t axe d e l~'~n f'1n1tl "f pur ('1.e., sans1 ,/ préposi tion) aprês les' verbes de mouvement, la morpholog±e des verbes pronominaux (i.e., pronom réfléchi + verbe) et la morpho- 10gie de~ participes passés (i.e., th~me + désinence). ChaÇIue étude présente et tente d'expliqueE les erreurs d'apprentissage commises par les trois groupes de locuteurs ainsi que les diff~- \ rences qu'il Y a entre eux par rapport aux stades d' acquisi ti'on qu'ils ont atteints. ( \ \ \ \ r i r Abstract " Aspects of the acquisition of the French verb system by young ~peakers of English and French in Quebec and Ontario Edouard Beniak This thesis consists of three studies each one of which is a comparison of the acquisition of an aspect of the French verb system Dy three different groups of speakers. The speakers are young Anglophones learning French as a second language in an early French inunersion program in Montreal, "young ;nonolingual 1 Francophones attending elementary French lang,uage schools in Quebec and young bilingual Francophones enrolled in elementary French language s chools in Ontario. The three aspects of the French verb system under study are the syntax of the bare (i.e. 1 prepos i tian ~ess) infini ti val complement of motion verbs, the morphology of the pronominal verbs (i.e. , reflexive pronoun + verb) and the morphology of the past participles (Le. 1 stem + /~ , " J, affix). Each study presents and attempts to explain the lan- guage acquisition errors c,?mmi tted by the three speaker groups as weIl as the di fferences in the language acquisition stages reached by the three speaker groups., ( Preface ( In its publication enti tled General Information and Fa:culty , r > Regulations, the Graduate Faculty (1981:24) states: ,/ The Candidate has the option, subject to the approval of the Department 1 of including as part of the thesis the text of an original paper, or papers, suitable for submission. to learned jour­ na.ls for publication. In this 'case the thesis must still conform to aIl other requiremen~ts ex­ plained in tbis document 1 and a,dditional material (e.g., experimental data, details of equipment and experimenta;L design) may need féo be provided. In any case abstract, full introduction and con- ; cl usion must be incl uded, and where more than one manuscript appears, connecting texts and c.mmon abstract 1 introduction and conclusions ale re­ quired. A mere collection of rnanuscripfs is not acceptable; nor can reprints of published papers be accepted. While the inclusion of manuscripts co-author­ ed by the Candidate and others is not prohibi ted for a test period, the Candidate is warned ta make an explicit statement on who contributed to such wor"k and to what extent, and 'Supervisors and others wi 11 have to bear wi tness to the accuracy of such claims before the Oral Committee. It should also be noted that: the task of the exter­ nai examiner is much more difficult in such cases . • l have availed myself of this option in the present thesis. Since it is probably unusual for a student seeking the degree of Haster of Arts to be in a position to do 50, l think it is appropriate that l provide a few :,ords of explanation before identi fying my col1aborators and stating their contribution. In the winter of 1977 , as l was busy completing the depart- mental course requiremen ts for the t-laster' s degree in linguis- tics 1 l decided to write a thesis in the area of second lan- ' guage learning.- l set out ta perform an error ana1ysis of selected aspects of the spoken French of young English-Canadian ( " iii ( students learning French as a second language. To this end l ) obtained tape-recorded speech sarnples from students attending '7'n early French immersion prograrn offered by the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. For comparative purposes, l also obtained, tape-recorded speech samples trom francophone students attending a private French language school in Montreal as weIl. This data collection phase took place during the spring of 1977. In the early sununer of that same year, however, l took leave of McGill to accept fuil-time ernployment as a research officer at the Ontario Insti tute for Studies in Educa- tion in Toronto. There l joined a team of researchers working in the Franco-Ontarian Centre. In the now over four years that l have been part of the Franco-Ontarian Centre, I have had the unique opportuni ty to instigate and carry out comparative re- search on the acquisition of French by three different groups of young speakers: early French irrunersion students, Québécois students in primary school and Franco-Ontarian stûdents in pri- mary school. This research was based on the irrunersion and Qué- bécois corpora which l had constituted in Montreal and -on the Franco-Ontarian and Québécois corpora to which l had access as a member of the Franco-Ontarian Centre. It gave rise to a total of three papers each one of which compared the th;r-ee student \ groups' acquisition of a different aspect of the French verb system. One paper has been published in a journal (Beniak, Mou- geon and Canale 1979) and the other two have appeared in the proceedings of the conferences at which they were presented (Be- \ iv niak, Mougeon and Côté 1980; Beniak and Mougeon 1981a). In writ­ ing these paperV"was ~le ta benefi t from the cri tical feed­ back of Raymond Mougeon and Michael Canale, both academic rnem­ j. bers of the Franco-Ontariap Centre, and from the technical as­ sistance of N:>rmand Côté, a fell0f' research officer, in collect­ 1 ing and organizing the data for one of the studies, the contri- '- bution/of aIl of whom l saw fit ta recognize in the ~orm of co- authorship. As principal author i t is l, nevertheless f. wh'o 'took full responsibility for the contents of each paper. What I have done is to revise these three papers for the pur- pose of bringing them together as the main compon~n t of this the­ sis. This would not have been possible had they not aIl borne on the same topic. The conunon topic guarded this thesis from " being a 'rnere. colle.ction of manuscripts '. The revisions that l / have made are r,~ther substantial and represent what l hope are , 1 improvements over the original papers. 1 , j -- / v '\ AcknCM ledgements ( l. \ o , \ l woul'd like to "take this opportunity to express my indebt- 1 edness to aIl those who through thei r 'teachings 1 wri tings or 1 \ >. discussions have imparted thei knawledg~ of lang1;lage to me. .1 ! Among these l am forever in th debt of Raymond Mougeon and Mi- i \ '1 chael can\e. l also wish ta e press my h~art-felt thanks to Michel Para is " my thesis super~sor, for having been receptive to the idea 0 my basing th.e main. part of this\ thesis, on re­ search that l ha carried out in collaboration with others, <_for the improvements t at his cri tical comments allowed me to make 1 and last but nat lea t 1 for his patient enéouragemènt. '.1 , ~, . ' ( vi , \ ( ,~ " T able of contents \ \ Abstract ...........•..•. ..................................... • ............. l Preface .....•.•.•....... ...... ii J Acknow ledgements .......... " .............................................. , ........ v / O. Introducti"on ................................................................ " ..... 1 .......,~" 0.1 The development of French immersion education .••....••.. 2 0.2 The plight of French in Ontario ..•.•....••.....••....••. 7 \ 0.3 The situation of French in Quebec .......••........... ~ .10 0.4 Conclusion ............ ............ " . .. 11 1. The corpora ........... • •...••. 13 1.1 The immersion 'corpus .••••...•.....••.•.••• · ... " . " . 13 1.2 The Franco-Ontarian corpus .••.•...••.•..•• • .~ ...... .. 13 1.3 The Québécois corpus" .. " .... " ... " ...................................... 16 2 . Acquisition of th~ bare infinitive of motion verbs ..••• 19 2.1 Introduction .....•......•...•.....•.......•.........•.• 19 a 2.2 Th e Blan dPI . • . • . • . • . 19 2.3 Moti on ve.rb s ..... " .... "..................... ~ ..... " .......... " . ,:" .. , " .. " .. 23 (\ 2.4 Use of the PI instead of the BI .••• .24 2.5 Conclusion ................ " ...................... .. • J ........ 33 ~, 3. Acquisi tion of "the reflexi ve pronoun .••.•••...•••..•••• 36 \ 3.1 Introduction ..................... ____._ ........... ~ ................. 36 /" " \. 3.2 Verb by verb variati_on ..••.. : ......••.•-.-::-:. ~-~ . :' .: ....• 37 3.3 Causes of the verb by verb variation •....•.....•....... 39 / ) / 3.3.1 N:mpronominal coun/t(erparts .••.......•.........•........ 41 , ~ 3.3.2 Sem~r:!tic equi valence .. ____.......... _ ................