The acquisition of the quantitative pronoun by English and French learners of L2 Dutch: An experimental study based on an elicited imitation task

Abstract

It has been argued that an elicited imitation task gives better insights into the L1 acquisition of the Dutch quantitative pronoun er than a picture elicitation task. In this paper the results of an elicited imitation task submitted to adult L1 French and L1 English learners of L2 Dutch are presented and compared to earlier results of a grammaticality judgment task. Like Dutch and unlike English, French uses a quantitative pronoun in noun ellipsis constructions with a numeral. Earlier results revealed that in the grammaticality judgment task there was no significant difference between the two groups of L2 learners in their acceptance of er, although this was predicted on the basis of possible transfer from their L1. In the elicited imitation task, however, the L1 English learners repeated er significantly less often than the L1 French learners. This can be attributed to the different nature of the two types of test.

Keywords

• quantitative pronoun
• l2 acquisition
• elicited imitation
• dutch