Dutch compound constructions in additional language acquisition

Several studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g. Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) (Van Goethem 2009; Van Goethem & Amiot 2019), especially when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation (Fradin 2009). The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this study, we investigate the impact of these typological differences on the acquisition of Dutch nominal compounds by French-speaking learners in the context of multilingual Belgium. We provide an in-depth corpus analysis, based on the MulTINCo database (Meunier et al. 2020), of the acquisition of Dutch compound constructions at the schematic and substantive levels of abstraction. Moreover, we explore the impact of additional target-language input through CLIL programs (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on the acquisition of Dutch compounds by French-speaking learners of Dutch. The results are described and interpreted from the theoretical perspective of Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG) (among others Höder et al. 2021), which conceptualizes the linguistic competence of multilingual speakers as one integrated network of constructions, containing language-specific idioconstructions and shared diaconstructions. References Fradin, B. (2009). IE, Romance: French. In R. Lieber and P. Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 417-435. Hiligsmann, Ph., Van Mensel, L., Galand, B., Mettewie, L., Meunier, F., Szmalec, A., Van Goethem, K., Bulon, A., De Smet, A., Hendrikx, I., & Simonis, M. (2017). Assessing Content and Language Integrated Learning in the French-speaking Community of Belgium: linguistic, cognitive and educational perspectives. Cahiers du GIRSEF, 109, 1- 24. Höder, S., Prentice, J. & Tingsell, S. (2021). Additional language acquisition as emerging multilingualism: A Construction Grammar approach. In H. C. Boas & S. Höder (eds.), Constructions in Contact 2: Language change, multilingual practices, and additional acquisition. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 309-337. Meunier, F., Hendrikx, I., Bulon, A., Van Goethem, K. & Naets, H. (2020). MulTINCo: Multilingual Traditional Immersion and Native Corpus. Better-documented multi-literacy practices for more refined SLA studies. In L. Van Mensel & Ph. Hiligsmann (eds.), Assessing CLIL: A multidisciplinary approach [special issue]. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Van Goethem, K. (2009). Choosing between A+N compounds and lexicalised A+N phrases: The position of French in comparison to Germanic languages. Word Structure, 2, Special issue on Words and Phrases, edited by B. Schlücker & M. Hüning. 241-253. Van Goethem, K. & D. Amiot. (2019). Compounds and multi-word expressions in French. In: B. Schlücker (ed.), Complex lexical units: compounds and multi-word expressions. Berlin: De Gruyter. 127-152.