French Studies

In this article, we examine the issue of L3 French liaison acquisition by learners whose L1 (Japanese) and writing system (mixed logographic-moraic) are typologically very distinct from French. First, we describe the educational and (psycho)linguistic characteristics of the acquisition context of French in Japan, without a knowledge of which global data analyses may prove to be interpretatively misleading. Then, we present production data collected in the reading task of the IPFC-Japanese project, thanks to which we can sketch the liaison production profile of the learners under scrutiny. More specifically, we examine the effect of linguistic experience (in terms of study-abroad experience in a Frenchspeaking area) on the production of liaisons by advanced Japanese learners. Our data shows that linguistic experience seems to improve the command of both "obligatory" and "forbidden" liaisons, as well as the selection and the enchaînement of the liaison consonant. On the other hand, for the variable liaison, linguistic experience seems to help the acquisition of less formal variants, as is the case for other populations of learners.