The present study examined the acquisition of tense and agreement by L2 learners of
French. We looked at whether the features and and the categories AGRP and TP emerged
simultaneously or in sequence in the learners' grammars.We conducted
interviews with English-speaking children acquiring French as a second language and
with grade-matched native-speaker controls once a year for three years. The data
were analysed for the productive use of morphosyntax encoding tense and agreement.
Results revealed that items encoding agreement emerged before items encoding tense,
suggesting that the abstract grammatical structures associated with these
morphosyntax items emerge in sequence. The findings are interpreted with respect to
three prevailing views on the acquisition of functional phrase structure in L2
acquisition: the Lexical Transfer/Minimal Trees hypothesis (Vainikka and
Young-Scholten, 1994; 1996a; 1996b), the Weak Transfer/Valueless Features hypothesis
(Eubank, 1993/94; 1994; 1996) and the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (Schwartz
and Sprouse, 1994;1996). Possible reasons for the existence of this acquisition
sequence in French are also discussed.
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