This volume brings together new research from different theoretical paradigms addressing the acquisition of French. It focuses on the acquisition of French in combination with English, German, Russian or Spanish and enriches our understanding of the particularities of French and the role of language combinations in the acquisition process. The chapters examine the development of different grammatical aspects (word order phenomena, adjective placement, dislocation and cleft constructions, wh-questions, DP phenomena, argument omissions and constructions with particular word groups) and use various methodologies (such as elicitation tasks, longitudinal studies and parsing experiments) to further add to our understanding of how French is acquired in different contexts. This book will be a resource for researchers and graduate students working in the discipline of language acquisition, especially those who are interested in language contact phenomena where two typologically different languages are involved.

This book provides a fundamental introduction to the recent theories of generative syntax, tailored to the needs of students of French, Italian, and Spanish. The aim of this approach is to develop a model forthe speakers ability to generate an infinite number of sentences from a set of simple rules. The presentation follows concepts tested in university teaching and makes the book suitable both for use in beginners courses and for in-depth study by more advanced readers."